Not Quite Hollywood is about the empowerment of a people — through exuberant if excruciatingly cheesy movies. Little did the world's art-house mavens know that the Australian boom of the late '70s that gave us Picnic at Hanging Rock had an underbelly: Ozploitation pictures embraced by the drive-in-going masses.
As recounted in Mark Hartley's entertaining documentary, twisted imaginations went wild after the post-'60s liberation from censorship and the introduction of tax breaks. We get a cornucopia of clips from sex romps, gory horror outings, and stuntman-crushing action blowouts. (Mad Max was but the tip of the iceberg.)
Interviewees, now long in the tooth, reminisce about breaking through the boundaries of blood and boobage. Barry Humphries, the man inside Dame Edna, boasts of co-creating the proudly tasteless Barry McKenzie comedies, and director Brian Trenchard-Smith admits that, in retrospect, his 1982 Turkey Shoot has "professional as well as moral shortcomings."
