'Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!' is exactly what it sounds like it is going to be, an examination of the history of low budget/ low brow film making in the land down under. It is also surprisingly interesting, I started this with the intent to sort of half watch it before going to sleep, however I quickly determined that I would need to stop the movie and resume it the next day (it is currently free on Prime).
Turns out Australia was largely without a domestic film industry (save for news reels and nature films) prior to the late the 60's / early 70's when the censorship laws were greatly loosened. This allowed for the production of much cheap exploitation entertainment throughout the 70's and 80's , followed by a revival of such fair in the early 2000's. The documentary focuses on the film makers and actors who worked in this field in the early years and has sections focusing on the most popular sub genres, sexploation, horror, action, and a distinctly Australian road vengeance genre, whose best known examples internationally are the 'Mad Max' films.
The movie mentions briefly some of the more respected/ arty film makers to come out of Australia, such as Peter Weir, but its hart and focus is on enjoyable trash. Quentin Tarantino is a major talking head, which pretty much tells you what you should know about this film going in, it's not for all audience. But I enjoyed the reminiscence, old film clips, and some of the stories are kind of great, my favorite concerns Dennis Hopper's telling off a director based on a humors misunderstanding. I also knew basically nothing about Austrian cinema history going in so I found it very educational. ***
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