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Movie:		7.0
Picture:		8.0
Sound:		8.0
Extras:		7.0
Score:		8.0

Director(s):	Mark Hartley
Writer(s):	Mark Hartley
Starring:	Dennis Hopper • George Lazenby • Jamie Lee Curtis • Quentin Tarantino • Stacy Keach
Genre:	Documentary
Website:	http://magnetreleasing.com/notquitehollywood/
Release Date:	October 06, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $26.98
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Not Quite Hollywood is a documentary about the history of Australian cinema, but not quite the film history that most people would remember—or care to, anyway. Case in point, director Mark Hartley interviewed a couple of Aussie film critics and historians, who bitterly lamented the existence of these movies.

It’s a profile on “Ozploitation,” the wave of Australian exploitation movies popping up during the late 70’s and early 80’s. The most famous of the lot is of course Mad Max, but there are plenty of other far more obscure films that people not down under most likely won’t recognize. Not that it matters to the enjoyment of the doc. Not Quite Hollywood isn’t a nostalgia piece, but a celebration of what transpired and an encouragement for the current Aussie directors trying to jumpstart a revival. People like Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannel or Wolf Creek director Greg McLean, who all showed up in the doc talking about the Ozploitation flicks that inspired their works.

Even better are the interviews with non-Australians—Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper and George Lazenby, to name a few—who starred in some of these movies, sharing their very interesting stories working on these gung-ho, reckless, dangerous and a lot of times illegal film productions. Stories like Lazenby catching on fire during a fight scene in The Man From Hong Kong or Dennis Hopper being perpetually drunk and causing enormous trouble while starring in Mad Dog Morgan.

Moving through the different B-movie genres, it claims that the entire Australian film industry owes its beginning to low-brow comedies like Alvin Purple, which was the first commercially successful Australian film—by being full of nudity and sex, of course. From there, the industry turned to action movies, biker movies, kung fu movies, and of course horror; before finally in the late 80’s, Australians grew concerned and protective of its country’s own image and effectively ended the B-interest.

(What Hartley doesn’t mention is that around the same time, just a few miles below, in the land called New Zealand, a young man by the name of Peter Jackson grabbed the dying torch and ignited his own exploitation renaissance.)

Watching Not Quite Hollywood stirs two emotions in me: 1) Joy and excitement from finding out about these fun gems. 2) Great jealousy of Quentin Tarantino’s knowledge of every one of them. Almost all of the people interviewed have something to do with Ozploitation; be it the people who were directly involved, the critics who witnessed its arrival, or the next generation of Aussies inspired by them. Tarantino is the lone exception. He’s merely a fan, and yet he appears in the film more times than anyone else, probably because he’s one of the few—if not the only—participants who had seen and loved all of these Ozploitation movies.

Not that I’m complaining. As usual, QT’s enthusiasm proves to be infectious. Show a brief clip of mayhem from a certain film you’ve never heard of and you might be intrigued, but follow it up with Quentin Tarantino bouncing in his seat like someone invisible is giving him a handjob, gushing about how cool said movie is, and you might just start browsing eBay before you even realize what you’re doing.

Hartley’s most accomplished feat here is editing the dozens of interviews and hundreds of films into a very brisk, very fun 100 minutes. Not Quite Hollywood may be too much of a checklist, more interested in recommending movies than reflecting on their historical importance sometimes, but at least it makes sure the recommendations themselves are fiercely entertaining to sit through.

DVD Bonus Features

A few of the extras are quite fun themselves. “Deleted & Extended Scenes” show more of the interviews. One of them is set aside by itself: “Quentin Tarantino interviews Brian Trenchard-Smith,” where the two directors—kindred spirits, though an ocean and a generation apart—sit together and discuss their movies and influences. Tarantino is such a big fan of Trenchard-Smith that back in 2003, he dedicated the Australian version of Kill Bill to him, to the horror of the Australian film community who never thought anything of Trenchard-Smith’s garish B-movies. Less interesting but still worth a listen is an old audio interview with Patrick and Roadgames director Richard Franklin.

There’s an audio commentary with Mark Hartley, giving him the chance to share his opinion on the movies, which he didn’t in the film, as well as the interviews.

There’s also the videos Hartley used to pitch Not Quite Hollywood to financiers many years ago, which are just short videos of Tarantino and sexploitation filmmaker John D. Lamond talking about why this era of Australian cinema deserves a documentary made about it. It's just too cool not to.