"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.

Just watched this documentary of the Australian exploitation pictures of the '70s and '80s-known as "Ozploitation"-on Netflix Streaming. Quite fascinating to see scenes of various sex comedies (with all that full frontal nudity), horror films (with plenty of gore), and actioners (like the first Mad Max movie with Mel Gibson) represented here. Quentin Tarantino provides a fan perspective as we meet various producers, directors, stars, and many critics of Down Under provide many pro and con comments of those drive-in pictures. The only one-besides Mad Max-of them I've actually seen showcased here was one called Road Games starring two Americans-Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom are also interviewed. Many exciting scenes of that movie were shown but when I watched it as a kid on HBO, I didn't remember those but long boring stretches taking place on the road. Maybe I should watch it again to refresh my memory. Anyway, the way many of those "money shots" are presented are soooo quick cut edited that part of the time I found myself laughing especially whenever a particularly funny comment is said during them. So on that note, Not Quite Hollywood gets a recommendation from me.

Not Quite Hollywood isn't a great documentary - in some ways the quality of its editing and how the interviews and clips are put together resembles a longer DVD special feature 'making-of' history than a documentary. But it is really fantastic for someone like myself, who is always on the look-see for new and exciting (or just trashy) movies. I was aware of some of the Ozploitation films of the 70's and 80's, mostly through coming across some films of Philippe Mora (The Howling III, Mad Dog Morgan, Return of Captain Invincible, two of those three very good, one not so much), and of course Mad Max, which is like the creme-de-la-creme of the output. But there was more, much more, and if you're into crazy B-movie or just genre entertainment, it gives invaluable lots of new finds - it's like, to quote Superbad, a Ghostbusters Treasure-Trove of Aussie-movies! Not all of the movies look as appealing as they should. The one group that looked underwhelming just from the clips were the sex comedies, which, God bless em, looked like low-rent rip-offs of John Waters movies (i.e. Pink Flamingos), which is saying a lot. It's when the doc gets into the bloody, trashy and actually well-crafted stuff that it gets interesting. Better than that, filmmakers will come up on your radar you may have only heard in passing before. The big one here is Brian Trenchard Smith, who made a career out of just going to town with crazy car crashes, anything-goes horror, and intense action, and as his first film, kung-fu (The Man from Hong Kong, which provides one of the most entertaining sections of the film as *everyone* hates on the lead Asian star). By the time the doc ends, not only will you know Smith's name and how his films look so ballsy, but want to check out most of them as genuine articles of exploitation-fare.Other names are good to know too, like the man who makes Long Weekend, an animal-attack movie that has high production quality, or the movie Patrick by Richard Franklin (an intense admirer of Hitchcock), and written by multiple Ozsploitation writer Everett De Roche. Of course we get Quentin Tarantino expounding his love for so many of these films- and sometimes not so much (the "What is this s***" moment about one film in particular is very funny). But it's the actors and filmmakers and the critics, both the praising and the damning, that give the film a good boost as far as nuggets of the making-of the movies. As a documentary the best it does is to do what many good documentaries do: inform about a subject one doesn't know so much about, with a little history (like Decade Under the Influence early on it talks about the changing times in Australia), and as a guide for movie-geeks it's like Christmas has arrived.