Directed By: Various
Starring: Various
Tag line: "Jaw-Dropping Vintage Coming Attractions of Sex, Action, & Horror from Down Under"
Trivia: This collection features 65 trailers in all
Director Mark Hartley’s excellent 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood shined a light on a period in Australian cinema history (specifically the early ‘70s to the mid-‘80s) when genre films were all the rage, and the crazier these movies were, the more money they raked in at the Aussie Box Office. Referring to them as “ozploitation” flicks (a term that has since entered the mainstream), Not Quite Hollywood introduced many film fans (myself included) to titles they never even knew existed. Ozploitation Trailer Explosion, a 2014 straight-to-video collection of previews, picks up where Hartley’s doc left off, exposing its audience to a few dozen of the wildest trailers ever made.
Ozploitation Trailer Explosion features 65 trailers in all, spread across three separate categories. The first, titled Sexploitation and “Ocker” Comedies, is where you’ll find the collection’s bawdiest trailers, previews for movies such as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Libido, Alvin Purple, and Felicity, most of which contain high doses of nudity (the trailer for 1976’s Fantasm, also released as World of Sexual Fantasy, is especially frank in its depiction of both the male and female form). Next up is the Horror and Thriller section, where we find previews for such classics as Wake in Fright (here presented under its alternate title Outback), Patrick, Long Weekend, and Road Games. Finally, we come to the category that is undoubtedly director Brian Trenchard-Smith’s favorite: Cars and Action (along with Trenchard-Smith’s BMX Bandits, Stunt Rock, and Dead End Drive-In, there are trailers for the biker movie Stone and the early ‘80s war film Attack Force Z, which co-starred a young Mel Gibson, fresh off his success in Mad Max and The Road Warrior).
Clocking in at about two and a half hours, Ozploitation Trailer Explosion covers a lot of the same ground as Not Quite Hollywood, but like that documentary, this presentation had its share of films that were entirely new to me (like Wompers, a 1975 comedy also released as Dick Down Under, about a couple of cowboys searching for a girl named Eskimo Nell). Revealing some of the craziest, bloodiest, lewdest, and most entertaining movie trailers ever conceived, Ozploitation Trailer Explosion is a wild ride that, in my opinion, is well worth taking.
