Thursday, January 14, 2010

Mike The Boss - Films of 2010 - Film the Ninth: Not Quite Hollywood


Not Quite Hollywood (2008) (dir: Mark Hartley)

A quick and fun documentary about Australian exploitation films from the 70s and 80s. Lots of fun clips of nudity, cheap gore effects, ridiculous stunts that probably never should have been done (and would not be allowed today) and lots of talking heads describing what it was like to be making films back then. Quentin Tarantino pushed for this project to get funding and he is one of those talking heads describing how he felt when he discovered Ozploitation and his admiration for the art form.

This is an enjoyable bit of film history but I can't help thinking that it would have been nice if Canada had experienced the same kind of renaissance of trash as Australia did as the same time. It seems to me that we took ourselves too seriously and as a result we have a rather tepid art house film industry and not much else in Canada. Australia is still putting out far superior product both of the art house and exploitation variety. So while getting educated on Ozploitation, I still felt a little morose that such a thing did not happen here.

Gen X has a decent collection of the films featured in this documentary so if you are interested in seeing some of the movies, let us know which ones and we'll point you in the right direction.

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