I'm not sure that the story of Australia's exploitation film industry was begging to be told, but I had a good time with it nevertheless.  Not Quite Hollywood is an exploration and celebration of Ozploitation cinema, which means that it's a documenatry on a subject about which most people know nothing, featuring clips from films that most people have never seen.  I guess you would need to be a little invested in the art of moviemaking, the cultural history of Australia, or trashy movies in general to be up for a film like this.  Luckily, I am!

If nothing else, Not Quite Hollywood features more nudity and extreme graphic violence than any other film I'm likely to see this year.  I was astonished, actually, at just how much the movie was able to exerpt from its subjects.  It's not a documentary for the squeamish or easily offended, as it tends to use all of the juiciest bits of sleaze from the movies it features to tell the story.  And it's quite a story--of a renegade film culture developing out of censorship, insecurity about cultural identity, and financial opportunism.  It seems that there was a magic brew that made producing high octane action films and slapstick sex comedies with copious nudity profitable for a time.  The drive-in theaters, the seedy grindhouses, the tax breaks that helped to build a movie industry--all of it congealed and produced some pretty outrageous stuff.

Of the films featured in this documentary, Mad Max and Sky Pirates were the only ones that I'd seen, but that will probably change.  Not Quite Hollywood got me at least interested in catching up with some of these films like the artsy monster thriller Razorback that was directed by the guy who later helmed Highlander.  There's a lot of crap in there too, of course.  I've never been one who relishes sleazy movies or seeks out work that I know was made on the cheap, and with sub-par everything.  There's just too much to see and not enough time to spend on junk.  I grew up on the Cannon and Golan-Globus (Firewalker, Delta Force, American Ninja, Breakin 2, etc.) movies and I have some nostalgic good will towards them now, but I don't seek out trashy movies as a general rule. 

There are plenty of companies still making stuff like this and the films always go direct to video and the SyFy network.  I can't really feel the love for The Asylum (the production company that makes knock-off movies like Transmorphers and releases them around the time big budget movies hit the theater,) and that's basically a lot of what was going on with these Australian films.  On the other hand, these films helped to establish a movie industry in Australia in much the same way that Roger Corman helped give so many talents a crack at working on B-Movies before they had cut their teeth in Hollywood.  Not Quite Hollywood was an entertaining look at something I feel genuinely conflicted about, and it earned points for drawing out both sides of my feelings about exploitation movies.  At least now I know where Tarantino got some of the stuff he stuck in Kill Bill and Death Proof.