| Valley of the Stereos | |
| Producer: | Peter Jackson Jim Booth |
| Starring: | Danny Mulheron Murray Keane |
| Director: | George Port |
| Runtime: | 15 minutes |
| Country: | New Zealand |
| Language: | English |
Valley of the Stereos is a 1992 New Zealand short film written by Costa Botes and George Port and produced by Jim Booth and Peter Jackson.[1] [2]
An escalating battle takes place between River, a hippie and a metalhead who live next door to each other in the countryside. Following the metalhead's late-night music playing, the two battle over who can drive the other away with their incompatible music tastes. Each accumulates a larger and larger pile of stereos, until eventually River converts his house into a multi-stereo mecha and accidentally blasts both homes out of existence.
The film was described as "comic face-off that starts tinny, but gleefully escalates to bass heavy, as a not-so-zen hippy (Danny Mulheron) gets caught up in a vale-blasting battle with the noisy bogan next door (Murray Keane). Made by many key Peter Jackson collaborators, the near-wordless pump up the volume tale was directed by George Port, shortly before he became founding member of Jackson's famed effects-house Weta Digital. Ironically Weta's computer-generated miracles would help render the stop motion imagery seen in the finale largely a thing of the past."[3]
The film received various awards.[4]