As a crash course in Australia’s “Ozploitation” genre films of the ’70s and ’80s, “Not Quite Hollywood” provides a fast paced soup to nuts catalog of the filmmakers, actors, and social factors that gave rise to spectacle, nudity, and gore-filled grindhouse fare like “Stork,” “Patrick,” and “Mad Max.”
Director Mark Hartley never lets up after establishing Australia’s 1971 “R-certificate” rating that encouraged a tidal wave of innovative filmmakers like Tim Burstall, John D. Lamond, and Brian Trenchard-Smith to pick up cameras to make uninhibited movies using guerrilla filmmaking methods that would burst open box offices and inspire generations of filmmakers.
Intercut with exhaustive film clips, and hilarious interview footage with critics, actors, stunt men, camera men, producers, directors, and excitable boy Quentin Tarantino as the genre’s principal cheerleader, “Not Quite Hollywood” is more than a few of banana splits’ worth of cinematic ice cream.
If there’s any complaint about the documentary, it’s that it could have been longer.
Rated R. 100 mins.
