Review: ‘Not Quite Hollywood’

‘Not Quite Hollywood’ is more than just a documentary on Australian genre films, its an amazing and comprehensive look at movies that have influenced some of the greatest minds in cinema. When you watch this movie you better have a pen and something to write on because there are some “i cant believe I haven’t seen this film yet!” moments you will inevitably experience.

Mark Hartley wrote and directed this Australian(weird!) documentary with the help of Quentin Tarantino. Over the course of 5 years he interviewed 80+ writers, directors, actors and film critics which landed him with 250 hours of footage to edit. The doc premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008 and took home the best documentary award at 50th Australian Film Institute Awards.

Being a huge fan of exploitation cinema I was absolutely amazed at how many of the movies featured here I hadn’t heard of. I am actually embarrassed that I didn’t know more about one of the greatest the cinema world had ever seen. I thought I had seen some vulgar/racy stuff from watching Russ Meyer films but over the course of the hour and 43 minutes I was aroused, repulsed and thoroughly ecstatic all at the same time!

The doc is broken down into different parts, each sub genre of ‘ploitation film gets its own topic discussion. First you get all of the sexploitation films which was something very new to Australian culture since they had just introduced the ‘R’ rating into the movie industry over there. This paved the way for lots of nudity, gratuitous sex and me wondering why I am not making sexploitation films!

After that you see all of the Horror/blood and guts films like ‘Howling III’, ‘Long Weekend’, ‘Next of Kin’ and ”Razorback’. There were some I had heard of but most were brand new to me but that really isnt my genre anyways. However the next topic of “Kung Fu and Action Films” was right up my alley.

They kick this one off with a look at ”The Man from Hong Kong’ and everyone delves into just how ridiculous and arrogant Jimmy Wang-Yu was while they were making this film. Being the first Australian martial arts film Wang-Yu came over thinking he was better than all of the costars in the film including George Lazenby who is the villain in the film. The stories the actors and directors tell about this movie is absolutely astonishing and I think they could probably pull off a documentary from the making of that movie alone.

They of course also had to cover ‘Mad Max’ which is by far the most popular and well known “Ozploitation” film to ever come out, but definitely not the best. The film I am most looking forward to seeing is the Dennis Hopper starring ‘Mad Dog Morgan’. I not only want to see the movie because I love everything Hopper does, but all the stuff that happened behind the scenes stuff that went on sound both shocking and awe inspiring. Check out the trailer for this film below:

Watching the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, George Lazenby, George Miller and countless others get so excited about what was going on in Australia at the time these films were hitting theaters just made me wish I had been born 20 years earlier so I could have seen these in an exploitation house somewhere along the way.

Everything about this is absolutely incredible, the only downside to this film is having to go out and find copies of all the films mentioned in the doc, which isn’t easy trust me I have already started my hunt. I actually found myself pausing the movie a few times and jumping to the internet(s) in an attempt to get my hands on some of these before the movie opens on Friday(July 31st). ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ is currently sitting pretty with a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes which as most of you should know is no easy feat.