PHEROMONE CITY

PHEROMONE CITY

Alternative Title:

THE VENGEANCE OF VAH VAH VAH VELVETEEN!

30 WORD LOGLINE:
A hyper-woke Aboriginal Australian writer’s gonna get hyper-cancelled by a white supremacist’s private army of killer cyborgs after stripper/scientist Velveteen sneakily plants on him an aromatic dose of bio-hacked menstrual blood and urine.

SYNOPSIS:
In Sydney, Australia, the racist, sexist and utterly insane amateur scientist known only by the moniker "Turtleneck", is clumsily transforming the city's effete black and brown men into deadly Schwarzenegger-like cyborg soldiers. The white supremacist’s amateur brain surgery, backed up by the remote-controlled depots of testosterone and methamphetamine he inserts under their skin, quickly turns the Beta Males he kidnaps into monsters: Half-naked, freakishly muscular Alpha Male monsters! And they take to the CBD streets, chasing airborne bio-hacked scents like mindless automatons, helping Turtleneck pursue his fanatically religious dream of right-wing social and racial revolution.

In the virtual world of the online Incel and related toxic masculinity, Turtleneck calls his secret laboratory-based operation “Wimp 2 Warrior,” but its physical activity actually hides beneath the guise of a Bondi Beach stripper agency entitled “Animal Kingdom.” Under Turtleneck’s clandestine direction, the "Wimp 2 Warrior" cyborg soldiers home in on Dr Lewis Jerussy, the androgynous-looking Aboriginal Australian author of a popular new nurture-over-nature non-fiction book, and the hyper-muscular monsters proceed to brutally rip apart all his besties after Lewis (reluctantly) attends his own pre-wedding Buck’s Night party in nearby Coogee - To which Turtleneck has sent three Animal Kingdom strippers!

The muscle-freaks are relentlessly chasing the author Lewis thanks to irresistible fumes wafting from a stripper’s leopard-print G-string. The underwear's been drenched in CRISPR gene-edited pheromones derived from menstrual blood and urine, then sneakily planted on Lewis by Turtleneck’s lieutenant, a strong, independent young woman calling herself ‘Velveteen’. She’s a PhD-qualified research scientist on the “Wimp 2 Warrior” books, also moonlighting as an “Animal Kingdom” stripper!

With the pheromone-soaked leopard-print G-string still undiscovered, the cyborg massacre continues after the Buck’s Night party, and several neighbours meet grisly ends. Lewis and his friends eventually prove themselves unexpectedly formidable, killing two of the monsters before any more innocent bystanders get splattered. But when the cyborg freaks slaughter his fiancée and her bisexual lover, Lewis finally ditches his fashionable pacifism and ‘Mans Up.’ His writing career cancelled, his wife-to-be murdered, Lewis recklessly pursues the latest cyborg muscleman, eventually stumbling into Turtleneck’s underground laboratory … Where he is himself duly captured and transformed into a murderous meathead!

SPOILER ALERT!
As bad as it is, all hope is not lost for Lewis, however. Despite being fundamentally involved in orchestrating the writer’s demise from the start, the stripper/scientist Velveteen does a complete 180 and develops a crush on Dr Jerussy. She vows to rescue and rehab him somehow. Thus, after Turtleneck rejects outright Velveteen’s well-researched proposal to cultivate a regiment of female “Wimp 2 Warrior” cyborgs, she starts a revolution of her own, rebelling against her racist, sexist boss.

Sydney is soon overrun by Velveteen’s new, freakishly muscular, half-naked, multi-racial, female “Amazon” cyborgs ... As they successfully negate Turtleneck’s killer male cyborgs with bio-hacked pheromones the brilliant Velveteen has derived from the female hormone oestrogen. Pheromone city? It’s a pheromone battlefield! And the women are winning!

Australian Writers Guild Script Registration No.: 8353.

COMMENTS:
The Brisbane Indie Film Festival honoured "Pheromone City" with the award of 'Best Screenplay' in 2022 and the judging panel wrote:
'An exceptionally brave script that successfully mixes genres at a breakneck pace while skewering social mores pertaining to politics, racism, gender roles, and everything in between. The characters are well formed and more importantly, entertaining. The premise is nicely introduced in a very well-constructed first act that opens with a visceral tempo and never really lets up. The second act raises the stakes even more and sets up a payoff in the third act that I did not see coming, and enjoyed all the more for it. If I were to make any criticism it may well be that some of the monologues are long, however I must also concede that there is so much comedic gold in these exchanges I would be hesitant to change a word of it. Technically, the formatting and spelling is flawless, and the beats and timing of the acts are perfectly paced. Overall I have to say this is one of the most entertaining scripts I’ve read and I sincerely hope that one day I get to see this hilarious mayhem on the big screen.'