Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story of Ozploitation!
Directed by Mark Hartley
At Village East, starting July 31
Runtime: 100 min.
Popcorn cinema is no longer good at being bad. Self-conscious, stylized flicks like Bruno and Transformers 2 epitomize contemporary film’s inability to kick off its shoes and offer straightforward low-brow enjoyment—what summer moviegoing was all about. For quality cheap thrills, the remedy is a raucous trip to the other side of the globe with Not Quite Hollywood.
Essentially a highlight reel of 1970s and '80s Australian genre films, the documentary is replete with full-frontal nudity, car chases, sex, explosions and every other sort of imaginable debauchery.
What makes these genre flick shenanigans so appealing is their authenticity. CGI and safety crews are nowhere to be seen. When famed stuntman Grant Page jumped off an 80-foot cliff into a shallow ravine—while on fire—he actually did it. Dennis Hopper, who was working on that film (and was so coked up and drunk during filming that he is banned from ever entering a motor vehicle in the province where they shot), called the stunt the craziest thing he had ever seen on a film set. Page’s stunt is just one of many jaw-dropping high points of Not Quite Hollywood.
Though the film clips are wildly entertaining, the film is a tad too long for what it sets out to do, and it gets too pious about the “importance” of these films and the value of the current Aussie genre revival. All of these old genre films would be boring to watch in full; it is only in this highlight reel format that they are interesting. Plus, on the list of world priorities, reviving Aussie genre films ranks between expanding the George W. Bush presidential library and filming Leonard Part 7. These are exploitation films, artistic only in their envelope-pushing insanity.
To be fair, the doc is more than a playback of these old movies. Hollywood has snarky in-depth interviews and stylized visuals, and it explores how Australian film, even genre dross, was wrapped up in Australia’s evolving sense of national identity.
At its core, however, Not Quite Hollywood is coarse, devilish fun. This doc is what modern trashy entertainment should aspire to be.
