The Emu War is unlike any other Australian battle film you've ever seen

Between puppets and gory battle scenes, The Emu War completely transforms an integral part of Australian history. (Supplied: Hot Dad Productions)

Australians love nothing more than the mythos of the great Aussie battler, the working-class, boot-strap-pulling, underdog that could.

It's what led us to ultimate victory in the fraught and dangerous Emu War of 1932, when the Royal Australian Army, armed with nothing but Lewis guns and the battler spirit, saved this sunburnt country from a total avian invasion.

Okay, so maybe it didn't happen exactly like that. The "emu war" was actually more of a culling exercise after the growing emu population wouldn't quit munching on crops. And, it didn't really stop the problem.

But, just like Australia's valiant triumph over the emu army remains part of our collective folklore, so does the Aussie battler. And no one embodies the spirit of the Aussie battler better than the filmmaking team behind absurd comedy film The Emu War.

Director/writer Jay Morrissey, writer/actor/producer/director Lisa Fineberg, actor/writer Dane Simpson and writer/actor/puppeteer Jonathan Schuster are part of the small team that has spent eight years fighting tooth and nail to get their version (which pipped a planned production from John Cleese and Rob Schneider, praise be) of the Emu Wars to cinemas.

"It was kind of one of those things like bubbling away," says Morrissey, who also runs Hot Dad Productions with Fineberg.

"I feel like if you talked to Jonathan [Schuster] at any party between 2015–2016 he'd be like, 'I want to make this Emu War movie'."

Now on the precipice of east coast screenings, they finally have the space to reflect on the mammoth feat that they somehow pulled off.

Emus vs Australia

Gathering their team of writers, The Emu War was originally conceptualised as a seven-part web series. A grant from Screen Australia gave the project the opportunity to leap from the page to the screen, but somewhere along the way, the team realised a web series was too small to contain their vision.

At a lean 72 minutes, The Emu War is pure chaotic delight, following real-life Major Meredith (Damian Callinan, in a role he was born to play), and his ragtag platoon of barely capable soldiers (Simpson, Fineberg and Aaron "Gocsy" Gocs) as they forge towards the battle of the century.

Don't punch down

Jokes in the film come as thick and fast as the bullets raining down from the emu's machine guns.

Missing Prime Minister Harold Holt is skewered as a bumbling coward by comedian Cameron James, the emus eventually team up with the Italian army, and Schuster plays a character that is simply referred to as "the horniest and sexiest man in the country" (who becomes surprisingly integral to the plot).

"I certainly did have moments of concern like "Oh, no, is this too sensitive?" says Fineberg, who pulls double duty on the film as a producer and as Major Meredith's daughter Mary-Sue.

"But then I just reminded myself we have emu puppets. I think that always brought us back to 'this is too ridiculous to upset people'."

Morrissey agrees.

"If you did it like World War II, but you're joking, and people are dying that would make people feel horrible," he says.

"No people were hurt in the Emu War. I mean, I guess some emus were culled, but like, not even enough."

The comedy stuffed into every square inch of the film's restricted run-time is at moments so obscene and so absurd that it's easy to forget this is a Screen Australia-endorsed production

"There would be little hints in the applications and stuff if it was going to go too far or pushed the envelope too much," Morrissey admits.

"But at the end of the day, they respected our humour and absurdity," Fineberg says.

"They just tried to not impede on that too much.

"If we were pulled back too much, that wouldn't really be us being authentic to our comedy. There was an appreciation of that, which we really were grateful for."

Best school camp ever

Once the script was finalised and funding was secured, Team Emu War was faced with their next Sisyphean task: filming during a global pandemic.

Shot in four blocks from November 2021 to May 2022, the movie manages to sneak in some genuinely gorgeous views of the Victorian countryside.

Dane Simpson, who stars as surprisingly level-headed soldier Archie, couldn't believe some of their shoot sites.

"There's a shot where me and Gocsy are sort of on top of a mountain with our arms around each other just looking at the sunset. It was so much fun to film and it looks unreal," he says.

Like with most things for this film, location scouting was a community effort.

"My parents had recently moved to the country and we shot on their property, so we had access to this beautiful scenery," Morrissey says.

And it wasn't just Morrissey's folks doing a solid, their neighbours in surrounding properties also lent their land for filming, not baulking even when the crew were "spraying fake blood all over the ground".

But even with a location on lock, filming was still an uphill battle thanks to a cast scattered across the country and changing border restrictions.

"Those [COVID-19] lockdowns would happen so quickly. We were planning the shoot weeks out, we're travelling to set and suddenly a lockdown is announced and Gocsy can't come," Fineberg says.

"So when everyone actually was on set, it was like, 'I can't believe they're all here and this is happening', because we were just shut down so many times."

The moments when the stars aligned to have everyone on set sound like the best of school camps, the ones where the inadequacy of the amenities foster an indomitable sense of camaraderie.

"Every night I would get a fire going and we would all sit around the fire and chat about the filming of that day, it was a really nice debrief," says Schuster.

"When there's no budget, you can do that. I've been on a big budget film where everyone has their own separate trailer, but we all were sleeping next to each other. We could hear Gocsy snoring, and it was a lot. But it felt like family, it was really special."

We need to talk about the puppets

Instead of being relegated to battleground fodder like the real-life "war", the birds in this film are walking, talking characters brought to life by Melbourne-based art studio The Puppetsmithery.

"We asked them to make the most real-looking emu possible and they did just that!" Schuster says.

"As soon as we saw the finished puppets it was like 'We need to make this good because like the puppets are so, so good'."

There are all kinds of emus in the film: soldier emus in tin hats; mother emus with calming voices; even baby emus covered in adorable fuzz. But the pièce de résistance is the Queen Emu. As big as a hippo and sporting some disturbingly droopy teats, Queen Emu is as impressive as she is fearsome.

"In our minds, we were thinking she's like Jabba the Hutt mixed with Slurm Queen from Futurama and a couple others in there," Morrissey says.

"We didn't know the puppet makers that well so it was a bit awkward explaining our vision. I remember asking if the Queen Emu was going to have a cloaca and they were like, no? And it was like, 'oh yeah, of course not'. It was a fun process."

Stretching the budget

Nearly all of the people who brought the Emu War to life have been in the Australian arts industry long enough to know it's an incredibly tough slog.

Fineberg says it's particularly hard if you have a clear creative vision.

"With the stuff we do, some people are going to absolutely love it and some people, it's not for them, and that's fine. But it feels like unless financiers think a project is going to be for everybody, they don't want to take the risk," she says.

"It's like, maybe they flop, but you gave them a chance. At least you're helping people progress in their careers and helping film stay alive in Australia."

Morrissey says it seems like budgets are getting smaller and smaller.

"My parents were talking about some friends who made a documentary in 2000, and they had the same budget that Emu War had, 20 years earlier."

For Simpson, the success of the film feels more monumental because of the struggle it went through to exist.

"What I really loved about it is, genuinely, just how we did it on a budget. It looks way more incredible than what it should be," he says.

"How we made those dollars stretch is just an absolute genius move from a lot of the people that were involved."

Putting aside all the blood, sweat and COVID swabs The Emu War fought through to even exist, Morrissey says the team adored seeing people's reactions at the film's world premiere at 2023's Monsterfest.

"Like a live stand-up comedy show, the laughter is contagious in the room and it's a really special experience watching it with a crowd," he says.

"If you can't get to a screening, the film is best enjoyed with a group of friends."

Schuster offers up a more succinct reason to get your bum in a cinema seat for The Emu War, "Our flamethrower is better than the one in Furiosa."

The Emu War is holding special screenings in New South Wales, Victoria, Brisbane and Tasmania from the 21st–23rd of June.