Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Sean Lamberger A quick-hits love letter to "Ozploitation" films, the stampede of cruddy cut-rate B movies bred by the Australian cultural craze of the 70s and 80s. It's well-produced, with loads of shiny transitions and a few familiar faces on the couch (Quentin Tarantino, unsurprisingly, is an energetic fan) but it's all cut together with the short attention span you might expect from an episode of VH-1's I Love the 80s. A bunch of talking heads, mostly non-celebrities, gushing about their favorite cinematic turds like a kid on a sugar rush. At least they're passionate about the subject. That whirlwind of mid-sentence breaks left me feeling dizzied and weary, though, with its constant, breakneck topic shifts, and eventually drained the premise dry. The clips can be very funny, in a "how did that get filmed" sense, but it's easy to get the impression that we're really seeing the only worthwhile shreds of these bombs, and by the end it was all starting to feel a bit boring and redundant. Still, true to the era, there's plenty of footage to fill a solid fifteen-minute devotion to gratuitous nudity, so it does have that going for it.

tavm Just watched this documentary of the Australian exploitation pictures of the '70s and '80s-known as "Ozploitation"-on Netflix Streaming. Quite fascinating to see scenes of various sex comedies (with all that full frontal nudity), horror films (with plenty of gore), and actioners (like the first Mad Max movie with Mel Gibson) represented here. Quentin Tarantino provides a fan perspective as we meet various producers, directors, stars, and many critics of Down Under provide many pro and con comments of those drive-in pictures. The only one-besides Mad Max-of them I've actually seen showcased here was one called Road Games starring two Americans-Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom are also interviewed. Many exciting scenes of that movie were shown but when I watched it as a kid on HBO, I didn't remember those but long boring stretches taking place on the road. Maybe I should watch it again to refresh my memory. Anyway, the way many of those "money shots" are presented are soooo quick cut edited that part of the time I found myself laughing especially whenever a particularly funny comment is said during them. So on that note, Not Quite Hollywood gets a recommendation from me.

Woodyanders In the wake of the social upheavals of the late 60s and early 70s, fiercely wild, brazen, and shameless exploitation pictures exploded across drive-in movie screens all over Australia. Made on shoestring budgets by blithely bold and driven maverick indie filmmakers, these movies pushed the envelope when it came to unflinchingly explicit content being presented full-on with a certain cheeky verve and delightful lack of inhibition. Indeed, the choice crazy clips showcased herein are ripe to bursting with gleefully vulgar humor, outrageously over-the-top action (nobody photographs madly careening vehicular carnage quite like the Aussies), oodles of tasty female nudity, and unsparingly graphic violence. Energetically covering everything from bawdy soft-core comedies to slam-bang four-sheets-to-the-wind action to schlocky sci-fi to gory horror, edited with galvanizing rapid-fire ferocity, and rattling along at a dizzying speedy pace, this documentary bristles with a raw, trashy, and anarchic vitality that's a total rowdy treat to behold. The eclectic array of interview subjects adds immensely to the infectiously delirious merriment: Down Under directors Richard Franklin, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Philippe Mora, and Russell Mulcahy, lovely actresses Cassandra Delaney, Lynda Stoner, Wendy Hughes, Joanne Samuel, Candy Raymond, and even super-smokin' 70's "Penthouse" model Cheryl Rixon (who still looks quite hot in her 50's), writer Everett De Roche, producer Anthony I. Ginnane, and actors Roger Ward, Jack Thompson, and John Waters. George Lazenby, Steve Railsback, Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, and the always kooky Dennis Hopper relate plenty of cool stories about acting in films in the Land of Oz (the anecdotes about Hopper's drug-fueled antics during the making of "Mad Dog Morgan" are simply priceless). Moreover, there's a wonderfully gonzo tribute to Grant Page, who's without a doubt one of the most fearless and underrated stuntman in the history of cinema. The sole minor flaw in this otherwise excellent documentary is the ubiquitous Quentin Tarantino's overly gushy fanboy raving; while QT's obvious knowledge on and affection for Ozploitation is genuine and admirable, his insufferably spazzy filmgeek posturing gets pretty tiresome after a while. Essential viewing.

MisterWhiplash Not Quite Hollywood isn't a great documentary - in some ways the quality of its editing and how the interviews and clips are put together resembles a longer DVD special feature 'making-of' history than a documentary. But it is really fantastic for someone like myself, who is always on the look-see for new and exciting (or just trashy) movies. I was aware of some of the Ozploitation films of the 70's and 80's, mostly through coming across some films of Philippe Mora (The Howling III, Mad Dog Morgan, Return of Captain Invincible, two of those three very good, one not so much), and of course Mad Max, which is like the creme-de-la-creme of the output. But there was more, much more, and if you're into crazy B-movie or just genre entertainment, it gives invaluable lots of new finds - it's like, to quote Superbad, a Ghostbusters Treasure-Trove of Aussie-movies! Not all of the movies look as appealing as they should. The one group that looked underwhelming just from the clips were the sex comedies, which, God bless em, looked like low-rent rip-offs of John Waters movies (i.e. Pink Flamingos), which is saying a lot. It's when the doc gets into the bloody, trashy and actually well-crafted stuff that it gets interesting. Better than that, filmmakers will come up on your radar you may have only heard in passing before. The big one here is Brian Trenchard Smith, who made a career out of just going to town with crazy car crashes, anything-goes horror, and intense action, and as his first film, kung-fu (The Man from Hong Kong, which provides one of the most entertaining sections of the film as *everyone* hates on the lead Asian star). By the time the doc ends, not only will you know Smith's name and how his films look so ballsy, but want to check out most of them as genuine articles of exploitation-fare.Other names are good to know too, like the man who makes Long Weekend, an animal-attack movie that has high production quality, or the movie Patrick by Richard Franklin (an intense admirer of Hitchcock), and written by multiple Ozsploitation writer Everett De Roche. Of course we get Quentin Tarantino expounding his love for so many of these films- and sometimes not so much (the "What is this s***" moment about one film in particular is very funny). But it's the actors and filmmakers and the critics, both the praising and the damning, that give the film a good boost as far as nuggets of the making-of the movies. As a documentary the best it does is to do what many good documentaries do: inform about a subject one doesn't know so much about, with a little history (like Decade Under the Influence early on it talks about the changing times in Australia), and as a guide for movie-geeks it's like Christmas has arrived.