Not Quite Hollywood:
The Wild Untold Story of Ozploitation
Director:
Mark Hartley
Year: 2008
Rating: 7.5
To echo what Quentin Tarantino says (who pops into
this documentary from time to time to enthusiastically exclaim his love),
for me Australian cinema has always meant serious beautifully shot films
like Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career, Gallipoli, The Piano, Walkabout,
The Year of Living Dangerously and The Last Wave - all films that broke into
the American art theater scene with quite a splash in the late 1970's and
early 80's. Sure I knew of the occasional genre film like Mad Max but I thought
that was an anomaly.
Clearly not! This 96-minute documentary goes deeply into the exploitation
genre films of the 1970's through the early 1980's with lots and lots of
wonderful and yet horrible clips of nudity, violence, astonishing stunts
and all around insanity. When censorship loosened in the early 1970's Australian
filmmakers went hog wild - first with lusty vulgar silly nudity - one of
the first films being The Adventures of Barry McKenzie directed by Bruce
Beresford of all people. He would later direct Breaker Morant before moving
to Hollywood.
Then they moved into gore horror films with titles such as Night of Fear,
Lady Stay Dead, Patrick, Long Weekend, Thirst, Snapshot and Harlequin. Then
came all these violent road films ala Mad Max - Road Games (with Stacy Keach
and Jamie Lee Curtis), Stone, Midnite Spares, Turkey Shoot, Fair Game. And
just crazy stunt stuff like Mad Dog Morgan with Dennis Hopper, Race for the
Yankee Zephyr with Donald Pleasance and George Peppard, Death Cheaters, The
Survivor with Robert Powell and Jenny Agutter. They go into some detail on
a few films like Mad Dog Morgan and just how nutty Dennis Hopper was. And
they made a kung fu film- The Man from Hong Kong which I realized when watching
the clips that I have never seen though I think I have it somewhere. This
starred George Lazenby and Hong Kong film star Jimmy Wang Yu. They all say
without a doubt that Jimmy Wang Yu was about the worst person they have ever
met in their lives.
