Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

TedFlicks Rating:

$8 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.

NOT QUITE ENTERTAINMENT

“Not Quite Hollywood,” a 100 minute documentary by helmer Mark Hartley, more than lives up to its name.  This tribute to Australian low-budget films, supported by government funding, is subtitled “The Wild, Untold Story of OZPLOITATION.”  It is likely to have limited audience appeal outside of film buffs.  It’s not the storytelling.  It’s the subject matter.  The gritty details of shooting exploitation films that were hits at drive-in cinemas Down Under during the 1970s and 80s may work for Aussies of a certain age, but for general audiences around the world, pic holds little appeal.  Outside of Oz and professional screening rooms, few are likely to know much about Aussie exploitation films.  Heck, there’s an entire segment of the USfilmgoing public who know nothing of Melvin van Peebles.

Pic does a good job setting the stage: The Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam relaxed the censorship laws in 1971.  It was partly a response to the social upheaval of the 1960s and partly recognition that people didn’t need the government to protect them from naked bodies on the big screen.  The Aussie film industry at the time was hardly vibrant.

All that changed with a spate of films, mostly comedies, which featured some of the hottest naked female flesh ever to grace the screen.  It makes one long for the days before size zero was de rigueur.  The guys weren’t so lucky.  Pix had to be funny.  It’s funny when the hottie jumps on the geek, not the stud.  Critics abhorred them. Filmmakers looked at the crowded drive-in theaters and thumbed their noses at the critics.  Creative vomiting abounded.  So did dog doo on the sidewalk, all in a peculiarly Australian rough-and-ready and mildly xenophobic way.  If one understands the Aussies at Fox who created tabloid TV’s “A Current Affair” in the 1980s, one will understand these filmmakers.  They are cut from the same cloth.

The comedies slowly gave way to horror films.  They’re called “genre films” in Oz.  Blood, gore, rats, explosions, werewolves, strange animals which do not exist in nature and more hot naked girls abound. Evidently, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who never misses a chance to tell interviewers about his admiration for Japanese exploitation film, was heavily influenced by Aussie “genre” films.  His enthusiasm is infectious, and he offers one of pic’s best interviews.  The “genre” died out with the rise of the videocassette. People rented low budget features and watched them at home.  The drive-in cinemas largely vanished. While a movement exists among young filmmakers to revive the “genre” Down Under, one has to ask whether it is out of market demand or reverence.

American auds will recognize a number of Hollywood stars who appeared in “genre” films in order to hypo overseas sales.  Among them are Susannah York, Stacy Keach, Joseph Cotton, Broderick Crawford, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rod Taylor, and Gregory Harrison.  Except for the deceased, all provide contemporary interviews.

There is a bit of modern cinema that owes a debt to these films, especially the comedies.  Think of “Borat”, “Bruno” and the horrific recent release, “The Hangover.”  How much these guerilla Aussie filmmakers, most of whom are still alive, owe to work like the British “Carry On” series and the over-the-top work of John Belushi is an open question, which pic does not attempt to answer.

Hartley, who gets writing and co-editing credit (with Jamie Blanks & Sarah Edwards) as well as direction, manages to cram a lot of information into a limited time.  Pic is loaded with trivia.  Karl von Moller’s shots are more than up to the job.  Jock Healy’s sound recording is fine, but the hard-of-hearing could use subtitles for interviews with thick Aussie accents. “Not Quite Hollywood” carries an “R” rating in Oz.  There is really nothing in it offensive or inappropriate for children unless one has a problem with nudity.  In the US, pic is likely to find an art house audience with subsequent exploitation on pay cable.

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