Movie madness
A look at the Ozploitation doco Not Quite Hollywood
WHENEVER I'm pressed to name my favourite Australian movie - and it's not all that often – my nod goes to Wake in Fright Ted Kotcheff's sweaty claustrophobic film based on Kenneth Cook's classic book.
Wake in Fright is one of the first films mentioned in the brilliant new documentary Not Quite Hollywood. Writer-director Mark Hartley takes are look a period of Australian filmmaking that began in the early 1970s and saw the creation of a loosely linked pile of movies. Hartley has dubbed them 'Ozploitation' films.
Some of the films examined in Not Quite Hollywood are very well known –- The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Mad Max and Alvin Purple, some, like Long Weekend will have you testing the resources of your local 'alternative' DVD shop. There are others you wouldn't want to ever see all the way through.
Roughly, the link is their roughness. There are tits and bums and crazy cars and explosions and killer wildlife and horror and gore and spew and things that don't just border on craziness they are truly mad. And there's Nicole Kidman in BMX Bandits.
There are fine interviews with some of the players in Australian film at the time but best of all are the contributions from Quentin Tarantino who reveals he is not just an unabashed fan but also an absolute expert on Ozploitation.
Not Quite Hollywood will fill in gaps in your knowledge of Australian film and the nation itself that you didn't even know were there.
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