AUSTRALIA’s film in dustry was practi cally nonexistent in the mid-1960s — until the government introduced generous tax incentives and dropped some of the most stringent censorship rules in the English-speaking world.
The production explosion that followed included not only Aussie new wave productions familiar to American art-house audiences — like “Breaker Morant,” “Walkabout” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” — but dozens of gonzo exploitation movies.
While a few — including “Mad Max” and “Razorback” — were hits in the United States, most of the movies chronicled in “Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story of Ozploitation” never made it farther than US grindhouses and home video, if that far.
There are clips from more than 80 movies crammed into 100 consistently hilarious and jaw-dropping minutes, from soft- and hard-core porn to cheesy, gory horror movies to biker and car chase movies that make “The Fast and the Furious” look positively tame.
The mildly annoying Quentin Tarantino turns up from time to time to sing the praises of these grindhouse gems, noting that he borrowed such baroque touches as turning a nude woman into a human hood ornament for “Death Proof.”
But most of the talking heads — such as comedian Barry Humphries, who wrote and played Dame Edna Everage in the soft-core romp “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie” — seem grateful they, and their careers, survived films with questionable taste and even more perilous working conditions.
Dennis Hopper, who cheerfully admits being stoned during virtually the entire making of “Mad Dog Morgan,” recalls how a stuntman nearly died in a flaming plunge off a cliff. Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacy Keach offer similarly hair-raising stories from “RoadGames,” one of several attempts to woo an international audience with Americans stars.
The stories are so funny and engrossing that you don’t mind that the film often seems like an extended DVD feature — indeed, writer-director Mark Hartley spent a decade collecting interviews for DVD releases of these films.
About the only indigenous performers he hasn’t interviewed are Mel Gibson (“Mad Max”) and Nicole Kidman, who unsuccessfully auditioned for the stunningly stupid “Howling 3: The Marsupials” as a teenager but did make her big-screen debut as the lead of “BMX Bandits,” which is not much better.
You might not want to watch all of “The ABC of Love and Sex Australian Style,” “Turkey Shoot” or “The True Story of Eskimo Nell,” but the clips on view in “Not Quite Hollywood” are a hoot.
And just watch George Lazenby struggling to escape from a burning jacket in a bungled stunt that was too good to leave out of “The Man From Hong Kong.”
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION Hilarious cheesefest. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (sex, nudity, graphic gore, profanity, drugs). At the Village East, Second Avenue and 12th Street.