Review #267: 'Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!' (2008)

Five years in the making, director Mark Hartley's documentary is his love-letter to the films he grew up with as a child. Like the majority of us film-lovers, we would occasionally stay up late and watch whatever crap late night television would show, whether it involved giant monsters, lesbian vampires, or gruesome horror. Hartley grew up in Australia, and he witnessed first hand the boom in Australia that saw their most prolific time in movie production, producing some of the most full-on B-movies of the time. Disappointed that writings on Australia cinema always failed to recognise this sub-genre, Hartley sent his synopsis to Quentin Tarantino, a long-time fan of 'ozploitation', who helped Hartley fund the project, and himself sitting in as the key interviewee.

As much I love his work, minus the pretty shoddy Death Proof (2007), Tarantino is possibly the most annoying person on Earth. I appreciate his enthusiasm, but he's such a shameless dork that I just want to punch him. And seeing him for long periods of this pretty good documentary just brings the film down. More interesting, however, are the interviews with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Stacy Keach, Dennis Hopper, George Lazemby, and probably the most famous and prolific director of the period, Brian Trenchard-Smith. The film certainly opened my eyes to a sub-genre that I have until now neglected (apart from the globally popular Mad Max (1979)) and introduced me some films that actually look pretty good  (namely psychokinetic thriller Patrick (1978), which I hope to watch very soon).

The documentary itself is obviously designed to be as entertaining as possible. Images, interviews, effects and film-clips fly at you at a relentless speed. Trying to keep in tone with the fast paced enjoyment of the B-movies it is showing, it does this at the cost of allowing the audience to absorb all the information. I don't mean it's hard to keep up with, I would just have liked the pace to slow down a touch so I can differentiate between the films it shows, and the various anecdotes given about their production. At the end of the film I could barely remember any specific films, just a blur of scenes. But like I said, it's certainly fun, and some of the visuals are wonderfully designed, especially the title sequence. Overall, a must-see for exploitation fans - the film is very well researched and Hartley clearly knows his shit - but nothing exactly ground-breaking for documentary fans.


Directed by: Mark Hartley
Starring: Quentin Tarantino, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stacy Keach, Dennis Hopper
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie