I won't be arty with this review. This film is an absolute ripper - a super fast paced documentary on the many genre films Australia produced in the 1970s & 80s that were in many cases commercially successful but critically smashed by 'respectable' reviewers at the time. I saw this last night at a premiere AFI Awards screening here in Melbourne and was blown away.
There are so many good stories, amazing revelations and choice excerpts from literally dozens and dozens of outrageous Oz flicks here that if you are expecting a slow, monotonous talking heads-type doco that kills a few minutes in your evening, you will be happily mistaken.
Stunt man deaths, John Holmes, fights with the Australian censor, copycat Italian film rip offs, sex, blood, martial arts fights on Uluru/Ayers Rock, Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, Dennis Hopper going nuts, incredible car fetishistic filming, classic Oz Rock songs on the soundtrack (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Masters Apprentices et al), great Tarantino quotes & so much more - it's absolutely all there.
With docos starting to become more popular with cinema goers, I really hope that this film gets tons of bottoms on seats - I fully applaud the the amount of time the filmmakers must have have spent travelling acrosss three continents to get these interviews as well as the copyright nightmares of needing to clear so many films. Wow.
My only (minor) criticism is that the film is so continually fast paced it just needs a little breathing room sometimes to let you take it all in and have a break. The film is very much at you all the time.
As you can tell, I loved it and I reckon that even if you have never seen a single one of the source films, you are guaranteed to enjoy this wild ride into the commercial Oz film scene of a few decades back when this country actually had a varied and vibrant film industry.
A brief side note - I think Tarantino is claiming credit for coining the collective term 'Ozploitation' used to describe these films. Interesting...
There are so many good stories, amazing revelations and choice excerpts from literally dozens and dozens of outrageous Oz flicks here that if you are expecting a slow, monotonous talking heads-type doco that kills a few minutes in your evening, you will be happily mistaken.
Stunt man deaths, John Holmes, fights with the Australian censor, copycat Italian film rip offs, sex, blood, martial arts fights on Uluru/Ayers Rock, Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, Dennis Hopper going nuts, incredible car fetishistic filming, classic Oz Rock songs on the soundtrack (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Masters Apprentices et al), great Tarantino quotes & so much more - it's absolutely all there.
With docos starting to become more popular with cinema goers, I really hope that this film gets tons of bottoms on seats - I fully applaud the the amount of time the filmmakers must have have spent travelling acrosss three continents to get these interviews as well as the copyright nightmares of needing to clear so many films. Wow.
My only (minor) criticism is that the film is so continually fast paced it just needs a little breathing room sometimes to let you take it all in and have a break. The film is very much at you all the time.
As you can tell, I loved it and I reckon that even if you have never seen a single one of the source films, you are guaranteed to enjoy this wild ride into the commercial Oz film scene of a few decades back when this country actually had a varied and vibrant film industry.
A brief side note - I think Tarantino is claiming credit for coining the collective term 'Ozploitation' used to describe these films. Interesting...