"Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!" is a celebration of some of the worst films ever made...and unapologetically so. It seems that back in the 70s and 80s that Australia created a film industry dedicated to the most low-brow of films. Nudity, violence, blood and cheese--these films made the American equivalents seem like films from the Criterion Collection by comparison! The film explores the history of these crappy films and features tons of clips and interviews to tell the story. However, viewers might want to think twice--there is a lot of blood and even more full frontal nudity throughout the documentary. It is NOT for the faint-hearted nor prudish! For what it is, it is done reasonably well and is mildly interesting.By the way, Australians will no doubt enjoy the film. However, as an American, I would have loved captioning as the accents (mostly on the clips, not the interviews) were occasionally hard to understand and some of the Australian terms were lost on me.

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Excellent documentary from Mark Hartley takes a look at the Australian film industry with 99% of the detail devoted to the exploitation films that made enough money to where more "serious" filmmakers could have a career. The horrible thing about being a film buff is that you're constantly looking for new subjects to explore and if you're a fan of film like I am then it's highly recommended that you keep a pen and paper handy because this documentary is going to offer up dozens of recommendations. Of course, this is one of those documentaries that are so fun that it makes the films it's discussing seem more interesting but that's really not the point. The point of this documentary was to shine a spotlight on the cinema and I think it was a real home run. We start off taking a look at the early days of censorship and how the walls were broke down, which allowed all sorts of sleaze to enter the pictures. We start off taking a look at how nudity and sex because a booming business and then we see the slasher and horror pictures. From here we see the kung-fu and action pictures. Fans like Quentin Taratino are interviewed about their favorite scenes in various films and we also see the inspiration PATRICK had on his KILL BILL VOL. 1. We also hear from Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis and countless other people including many directly involved with a number of the productions that we see clips from.

Five years in the making, director Mark Hartley's documentary is his love-letter to the films he grew up with as a child. Like the majority of us film-lovers, we would occasionally stay up late and watch whatever crap late night television would show, whether it involved giant monsters, lesbian vampires, or gruesome horror. Hartley grew up in Australia, and he witnessed first hand the boom in Australia that saw their most prolific time in movie production, producing some of the most full-on B-movies of the time. Disappointed that writings on Australia cinema always failed to recognise this sub-genre, Hartley sent his synopsis to Quentin Tarantino, a long-time fan of 'ozploitation', who helped Hartley fund the project, and himself sitting in as the key interviewee.As much I love his work, minus the pretty shoddy Death Proof (2007), Tarantino is possibly the most annoying person on Earth. I appreciate his enthusiasm, but he's such a shameless dork that I just want to punch him. And seeing him for long periods of this pretty good documentary just brings the film down. More interesting, however, are the interviews with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Stacy Keach, Dennis Hopper, George Lazemby, and probably the most famous and prolific director of the period, Brian Trenchard-Smith. The film certainly opened my eyes to a sub-genre that I have until now neglected (apart from the globally popular Mad Max (1979)) and introduced me some films that actually look pretty good (namely psychokinetic thriller Patrick (1978), which I hope to watch very soon).The documentary itself is obviously designed to be as entertaining as possible. Images, interviews, effects and film-clips fly at you at a relentless speed. Trying to keep in tone with the fast paced enjoyment of the B-movies it is showing, it does this at the cost of allowing the audience to absorb all the information. I don't mean it's hard to keep up with, I would just have liked the pace to slow down a touch so I can differentiate between the films it shows, and the various anecdotes given about their production. At the end of the film I could barely remember any specific films, just a blur of scenes. But like I said, it's certainly fun, and some of the visuals are wonderfully designed, especially the title sequence. Overall, a must-see for exploitation fans - the film is very well researched and Hartley clearly knows his s**t - but nothing exactly ground-breaking for documentary fans.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

It's informative, all right, but after a very short while you realize that all you're watching is a bunch of clips of junk exploitation pix & mostly fatuous comments on them. OK, so Tarantino (we're not on a first name basis) was blown way by the outrageous idea of having an almost nude woman as a hood ornament on a car. So what? Some tastelessness is highly enjoyable (most of Tarrantino's work is) because of style, panache & great dialogue. With rare exceptions, the Ozploitation stuff shown in this pic is not. It's just juvenile & I'm old enough to be sorry I wasted my time watching this one. Most of the reviewers have disagreed or will disagree with this comment. Well, that's Show Biz.