Grindhouse, exploitation films, and B-movie cinema makes up the staple of any film fans diet. There is just this love that you have for the reckless abandonment of film technique and norms that permeates every film cell in the camera. Any film fan worth their salt will tell you that you haven’t really experienced film watching if you haven’t watched the delights of low-budget cinema from around the world. We are used to watching films slowly but surely cross the line from time to time on indecency or violence or whatever the hell you can think of that offends people, but so few directors took up the challenge to make truly unique and delightfully over the top films than the Australian directors of the 1970s and 1980s.
The trailer for this film is after the jump, mainly because the trailer contains ridiculous amounts of violence and tons of nudity. So let me repeat for the express purpose of warning the readers and getting cheap page views from SEO, the trailer below contains copious amounts of nudity from the female kind; boobs, tits, butts, sexual content, violence, and more female nudity. Those wacky Aussies really pushed the envelope in exploitative cinema.
Not Quite Hollywood documents the revival of Australian cinema during the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and ’80s through B-movies including Alvin Purple, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, Dead-End Drive In, Long Weekend, Mad Max, The Man from Hong Kong, Patrick, Razorback, Roadgames, Stork and Turkey Shoot. From 1971 through to the late 1980s, Australian directors began to take advantage of the newly introduced R-rating which allowed more on-screen nudity, sex and violence for audiences restricted to age 18 and over.[1] “Ozploitation”—writer-director Mark Hartley’s own portmanteau of “Australian exploitation”—was a subgenre of the New Wave which accounted for the critically panned “gross-out comedies, sex romps, action and road movies, teen films, westerns, thrillers and horror films” of the era, commonly overlooked in Australia’s “official film history”.[2] The film addresses three main categories of “Ozploitation” films: sex, horror and action.[3]
This is film lovers delight. So many stars of the exploitation genre, directors, writers and film buffs all coming together to basically sit around the campfire and talking about the wild west days of Australian cinema. The likes of Tarantino, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nina Landis, and George Lazenby are just the few of the personalities that either starred in these sort of films or were shaped by the crazy stuff that Australia was producing in the 70s and 80s. It is a touching ode to the days when you had to be a bit crazy and out there to make something memorable.
Director Mark Hartley managed to cobble together a briskly paced documentary that has a bit of kick and life to the film. It isn’t stale to watch as you are consistently bombarded with the visuals of the time and the editing of it makes for an interesting watch. Splicing of film clips punctuate interviewers comments on particular mediums and moments in the ozploitation films. It’s a good chronicle of the time when directors basically had a green light from the film board to use that R rating to its fullest. To fully explore the genre, the film is presented in three parts that make up the basic tenants of any good exploitation genre; Sex, Violence and Horror, sometimes all three being used in the same movie.
It is a kick to the chest in terms of documenting the wild west like Australian film scene. A perfect reflection on the time and influences of the daring filmmakers that pushed the boundary of film content and decency. But hey, if not for their envelope pushing, we wouldn’t have some of the classic films we have today like Mad Max.