The Screengrab : ozsploitation

Ozsploitation! The Best Australian Road Movies

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

The Guardian claims to take a look at Australia’s best road movies, but they don’t even mention Roadgames, so how seriously can we take them? And there’s another Australian movie that prominently features cars and driving…it’s on the tip of my tongue…Mel Gibson…dog…leather…oh yes, a little something called The Road Warrior. Seriously, The Guardian, what are you trying to pull here?

OK, in fairness, the accompanying slide show does feature The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as the Aussies insist on calling it), but still…no Roadgames. Instead writer Anneli Knight brings the love for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and its director Stephan Elliott, whose latest film is another road tripper, Easy Virtue. “The beauty of a road trip is that you get to pass through so many different stories. Your standard Australian films are set around the kitchen sink but in a road movie you can visit, cause chaos and then move on,” Elliott says.

Novelist Nikki Gemmell (Cleave) sees the pitfalls of the Outback road trip. “Always in Australia you've got to be careful because there is not only the Wolf Creek scenario, there is the Walkabout scenario - you get lost. You have engine trouble, your car breaks down, particularly as you head up into Coober Pedy and head into roads in the NT. It could be days before a car comes past."

There’s also the Roadgames scenario…but alas. No love for it here.

Ozsploitation! “Mad Dog Morgan” (1976)

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific documentary Not Quite Hollywood (now available on DVD in the UK, but sadly, not in the U.S.), the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

The bushranger movie is the Australian equivalent of the American western, and the earliest such films date back at least to 1906’s The Story of the Kelly Gang, which is considered by many to be the world’s first feature film. (It runs about 60 minutes, if you want to nitpick.) It’s true that there aren’t quite as many classic Australian bushranger movies as classic American westerns, and it’s also true that most of them turn out to be about Ned Kelly. But let’s at least give them credit for longevity.

Mad Dog Morgan is a bushranger movie from the Ozsploitation era that turns out not to be about Ned Kelly. Instead it’s about Dan Morgan, who was never known as Mad Dog Morgan and, as it happens, wasn’t even really named Dan Morgan. Born John Fuller in 1830, this Irish-Australian horse thief, mean drunk and all-around desperado would churn through such aliases as John Smith, Sydney Native and Down the River Jack before settling on the name that became legend. Or if not quite legend, at least a Dennis Hopper movie from the mid-70s.

Director Phillipe Mora, whose work I’ve encountered before in the form of Howling III: The Marsupials, brings a short attention span to the early scenes of Mad Dog Morgan, in which the titular character fails at gold mining, is arrested for armed robbery, serves hard time in chains, is released back into the wild and goes on a crime spree with the assistance of his Aboriginal sidekick Billy (David Gulpilil of Walkabout and The Last Wave). It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there’s a three-hour version of Mad Dog Morgan somewhere, and that Mora turned in this version under duress; the edits and scene transitions often seem abrupt and arbitrary to me, although it would be equally unsurprising to learn that this is a stylistic choice meant to convey an impressionistic, kaleidoscopic approach to Morgan’s story. Either way, it sure got on my nerves.

I could never quite get a handle on how the movie regards its central character, which may have something to do with the fact that Morgan is played by Dennis Hopper at the peak of his drug-fueled wild and crazy period. Boasting a now-you-hear-it, now-you-don’t Irish accent and an impressive array of weird beards, Hopper often comes across more like a crazed hippie on an extended LSD binge than an outlaw who could manage to keep himself alive in the bush, let alone terrorize half of Victoria and New South Wales. It’s not an uninteresting take on the material, to be sure, but overall I think Mad Dog Morgan is best viewed in 1976, which unfortunately is no longer an option.

Previously on Ozsploitation:
High Rolling in a Hot Corvette
Dead End Drive-In

Ozsploitation! “High Rolling in a Hot Corvette” (1977)

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

I’ve had pretty good luck with my Ozsploitation selections…until now, that is. Granted, I had no reason to believe High Rolling in a Hot Corvette was any sort of lost classic. The title promises good times, but I learned long ago that such promises are not always kept by the exploitation film complex. Otherwise The Great Texas Dynamite Chase would be the greatest time I ever had (whereas in fact it barely cracks the top twenty). The only people who might have any interest all in High Rolling would be Judy Davis completists, as the actress makes her motion picture debut in it. She may leave it off her resume these days, but that’s why we love IMDb.

The fun begins in a Queensland carnival, where Tex (played by obligatory American import Joseph Bottoms, least of the acting Bottoms brothers) operates the shooting gallery on the midway. On a whim, he and Aussie buddy Alby (Grigor Taylor) decide to take a road trip, hitching a ride with a fella named Arnold in his snazzy corvette. When the gang stops at a motel for the night, Arnold makes an unexpected pass at Alby and an unpleasant bout of gay-bashing ensues. Tex and Alby make off in the corvette, little realizing that the boot (that’s the trunk, my fellow Americans) is full of marijuana.

Judy Davis plays a wispy young hitchhiker who plans to become a prostitute until Tex informs her that this will entail sweaty fat men squatting over her, belching and farting. She never really thought of it that way, but Tex is such an incredibly repulsive individual, this sort of thinking is second nature to him. Fellow Screengrabber Andrew Osborne and I have a little game we call Long Car Trip. For instance, he’ll say: “Long car trip – Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh?” Then I’ll have to pick one and come up with some sort of rationale for preferring to spend many hours trapped in a vehicle with this individual. In this game, Tex will always be the wrong answer – and yet here is a whole movie about taking a long car trip with him. Amazing.

The gang eventually ends up in Surfers Paradise, which is a real place that looks like this. A better movie would have done something more interesting with this unusual location (this is the “paradise” the Road Warrior refugees were trying to find), but in High Rolling, it’s just a scenic spot for Tex to pass out on his face. Eventually the plot kicks in again as the pot goes missing from the boot, the boys decide to hold up a tour bus, and Arnold and his buddies catch up with Tex and Alby for the big showdown. Unfortunately, they do not beat Tex to death with his own feet, which is really the only ending that would justify sitting through this irritating snoozer.

Previously on Ozsploitation:
Dead-End Drive In
Roadgames

Ozsploitation! “Dead End Drive-In” (1986)

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

Our Australian friends sure love their post-apocalypses. Maybe this is because so much of their country already looks like the apocalypse has come and gone. (I mean this in the most admiring way, of course.) Or maybe it’s just because Mad Max made a shitload of money, paving the way for on-the-cheap end of the world scenarios. Ozsploitation titan Brian Trenchard-Smith is certainly a fan of what he calls “What if?” stories, and here’s another one that’s worth a look, depending on your tolerance for the sights and sounds of the mid-80s.

A quickie opening crawl advises us of a near-future in the throes of global economic crisis. (I know – crazy!) Society is breaking down, roving gangs of “carboys” are making the streets unsafe for law-abiding citizens, and the government is resorting to desperate measures to keep the peace. Our hero Crabs (Ned Manning) learns just how desperate when he takes his girl Carmen (Natalie McCurry) out for a romantic evening at the drive-in. He makes the mistake of purchasing two “unemployed” tickets, which sounds like a bargain until you realize this is a signal to law enforcement that you are not to be allowed to leave the drive-in – ever.

While Crabs is getting it on with Carmen in the backseat of the ’56 Chevy convertible he borrowed from his brother, two of his tires are stolen. He reports the incident to the theater manager, who informs him there are no spare parts, no phones and no way to leave the theater without an operational vehicle, since pedestrians are illegal on the freeway. Furthermore, Crabs and Carmen are not alone in the drive-in; indeed, it’s a veritable concentration camp of disenfranchised youth, albeit one with a fully stocked concession stand. Crabs soon learns he is virtually alone in wanting to leave the drive-in and get back to real life, which is understandable. The drive-in seems like a pretty fun place to me, although I reckon I’d get sick of the ongoing Brian Trenchard-Smith film festival eventually. (Turkey Shoot is among the features that can be glimpsed on the drive-in screen.)

Still, Dead End would make for a fun night at the drive-in, especially if the theater owners were willing to spring for replicas of the movie’s paddy wagons to patrol the grounds as the flick unspools. Sure, it’s made up of spare parts from Mad Max, The Warriors, A Clockwork Orange and Repo Man, but that’s a testament to Trenchard-Smith’s good taste. A testament to his bad taste is the incredibly dated look of the film, a mosh pit of punk and new wave styles, junkyard production design – heavy on the neon – and admittedly bargain-basement Casiontone score. Then again, if you spent your formative years in this era like me, you’re probably a sucker for this stuff. Trenchard-Smith lays the social commentary on too thick in the waning moments as the youth of the drive-in revolt against the influx of Asian immigrants, but there’s a reasonably entertaining car chase to cleanse the palate. I’ll give it three Foster’s.

Previously on Ozsploitation!
Roadgames
Long Weekend

Ozsploitation! “Roadgames” (1981)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

Richard Franklin’s Roadgames is like Rear Window on wheels. I wish I could take credit for that observation, but I cribbed it from the director himself. Franklin is a self-proclaimed Hitchcock buff; he directed Psycho II, but Roadgames is actually the more Hitchcockian achievement – a zesty soufflé of humor, action, suspense and a dollop of ambiguity. (I stole “soufflé” from Franklin, too – what can I say, the man is an astute appraiser of his own work.) It’s such a fun little flick, I have no idea why I’d never seen it before now.

Stacy Keach reveals a playful side that has eluded me until now as truck driver (or “truckie” as those whimsical Aussies call him) Patrick Quid. Driving a load of pork across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, Quid has no one to talk to except his dingo Boswell. He manages to amuse himself nonetheless, playing harmonica and inventing stories about his fellow travelers of the only highway around. (Because there’s no other route across the continent, he’s always catching up to the same vehicles he’s seen at diners and gas stations along the way.) He’s particular intrigued by a man driving a green van, who he spots poking around a motel garbage dumpster in the wee hours of the morning.

We know something Quid doesn’t, as we’ve already seen this man put on a pair of racing gloves and strangle a naked woman in his motel room. Quid’s suspicions are heightened by a radio broadcast warning of a serial killer in the area. Although regulations forbid him from picking up hitchhikers, he can’t resist. His first passenger, a chatty middle-aged woman, soon develops her own suspicions about Quid. His second, attractive young Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis), proves to be his match in the realm of serial killer theorizing. As they close in on the mystery man in the van, however, she may turn out to be his next victim.

The long road across the Nullarbor is marked by spectacular scenery, small pockets of civilization and a gaggle of oddball characters. Aside from a brief campfire interlude, Franklin keeps the pedal to the metal; memorable set pieces include a game of chicken between Quid and an inexplicably aggressive motorist hauling a boat trailer, as well as the finale in which truck, van and police car all converge in very tight quarters. Curtis, who was still the Queen of Scream at this point in her career, is fine in what turns out to be a fairly small part, but this is Keach’s show all the way – it may be his liveliest, most charismatic performance. As Hitchcock riffs go, I’ll take this one over most of the De Palma catalogue any day.

Previously on Ozsploitation!:
Long Weekend
Turkey Shoot

Ozsploitation! “Long Weekend” (1978)

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

This one surprised me. The tagline, as you can see on this poster, is “Their crime was against nature…and nature found them guilty!” This led me to expect a sort of Outback Day of the Animals, complete with vicious dingoes and bloodthirsty kookaburras. Long Weekend is something altogether different: an elliptical and unsettling creepshow that defies easy categorization.

Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets) are a suburban couple hoping to work out their marital difficulties with a camping trip. (Actually, Peter is the one set on the camping; Marcia would just as soon spend the long weekend in a luxury hotel.) From the beginning, director Colin Eggleston sprinkles ominous hints indicating that the trip is probably not such a great idea. We overhear a television news broadcast reporting an avian attack straight out of The Birds. We see Peter peering at Marcia through the telescopic sight of his rifle. The folks at the gas station claim they’ve never heard of the beach Peter and Marcia are looking for, even though it’s only five miles away.

All the while, as they make their way to their remote destination, Peter and Marcia bicker. He hits and runs over a kangaroo, the first episode in an emerging pattern of disrespect for the natural world. Later, he’ll toss his empty beer bottles on the beach or into the woods. She’ll shatter an eagle’s egg against a tree in anger. He’ll shoot and kill an innocent sea cow, thinking it’s a shark.

There’s a brief reconciliation, once they’ve finally reached their destination and set up camp. Still, nothing feels right, and it’s never clear where the threat is coming from. There’s a van parked down the beach. Unfamiliar animal cries pierce the night. Peter may be crazy – or maybe Marcia, or maybe both. The abstractions create a tension that pushes Long Weekend out of the realm of run-of-the-mill exploitation into unexpected, disturbing territory. The least satisfying reading of the film is a simple “nature strikes back” interpretation; although that’s one explanation for the fate that befalls Peter and Marcia, it doesn’t feel adequate when weighed against the movie’s enigmas. This is exactly the sort of buried treasure I’d hoped to dig up when I launched this foray into Ozsploitation, and that’s certainly worth four Foster’s.

Bonus attraction: Perhaps the best animal actor I’ve ever seen as the couple’s dog Cricket. This cute little fella can do both comedy and horror, and I hope he was well compensated with Snausages.

Postscript: Long Weekend was remade this year by director Jamie Blanks (Urban Legend). I haven’t seen it, but I’m given to understand it’s one of these “shot-for-shot” dealies. For your consideration, here are the trailers for both Long Weekends.

Previously on Ozsploitation!:
Turkey Shoot
Razorback

Ozsploitation! “Turkey Shoot” (1982)

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

In the U.S., it was released as Escape 2000. In the U.K., it had the provocative title Blood Camp Thatcher. The original Australian title is Turkey Shoot, but by any other name, it’s the eleventy-zillionth exploitation movie to be inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. What we seem to have here is a post-apocalyptic society, or at least a dark, dystopic future of some kind – it’s a little hard to tell, because the opening fifteen minutes that would have explained what’s going on were never shot due to budget cutbacks. I don’t suppose it matters much; suffice it to say that there’s an oppressive regime in place operating prison camps for “re-education and behavior modification.” So-called deviants are rounded up, stuffed into yellow jumpsuits and dumped into these camps to perform back-breaking labor, learn to conform and receive abuse at the hands of the guards.

Among the latest arrivals at Camp 47 are Paul Anders (Steve Railsback), Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey) and Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner), all of whom are selected to participate in the “turkey shoot.” They will be released from the camp (with no weapons) and given a three-hour head start, after which camp leader Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig) and his chief enforcer Ritter (Roger Ward, best known to U.S. audiences as Fifi from Mad Max, but perhaps more familiar to Aussies from the 80s TV series Professor Poopsnaggle) will hunt them. If the prisoners make it to dawn alive, they are free to go. If Thatcher and company catch up to them, they will die graphically violent deaths.

Turkey Shoot was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, a towering figure in the realm of Ozsploitation. (We’ll encounter more of his work later in this series.) You might even call him the Down Under Roger Corman, and if not for its Australian setting, Turkey Shoot could have been shipped straight out of the Corman factory. (It’s a cousin to the “sports of the future” genre that includes Corman’s Deathsport – a genre I wrote about in this High Hat piece.) The Aussie flavor is somewhat lacking, what with the major roles going to imported almost-stars Railsback and Hussey, and the overall production is rather uninspired (although Trenchard-Smith deserves at least some credit for pioneering the co-ed shower facilities later appropriated by Paul Verhoeven for Starship Troopers). The gore is graphic, if cartoonish: machetes split skulls, machine gun fire separates heads from bodies. The most fun part of the DVD is the making-of documentary, in which none of the participants (including the director) has anything good to say about the movie. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before.

Bonus Attraction: A mutant beastie in half-assed Planet of the Apes makeup is ripped in half by a bulldozer.

Rating: Two Foster’s

Previously on Ozsploitation!:
Dark Age
Razorback

Ozsploitation! “Razorback” (1984)

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

Last time we looked at Dark Age, about a giant crocodile on the loose Down Under. This week we’re looking at Razorback, which is about a giant wild boar on the loose Down Under. Totally different thing! I almost felt sorry for the big croc – he just wanted to be left alone. The razorback, on the other hand, just seems like kind of an asshole.

Plotwise, the movie is your basic Jaws in the Outback. It opens with grizzled Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr) watching in dismay as his house is ripped apart and his grandson dragged away by a big ol’ slobbery pig-thing. Shortly thereafter, American activist Beth Winters (Judy Morris) arrives in the tiny town of Granulla to fight for the rights of cute kangaroos. The locals don’t take kindly to her, particularly brothers Dicko and Benny, a near-feral pair who live in an industrial hellhole of a food cannery. When Beth disappears, her husband Carl (Gregory Harrison) sets out to find her, and crosses paths with not only Dicko and Benny, but the hideous hairy bundle of grunts and snorts known as the razorback.

Plot is a secondary consideration at best, however, when it comes to the supremely stylish Razorback, part of the first wave of MTV-influenced movies. I don’t mean “MTV-influenced” in the sense we use the term today, which is generally to disparage the incoherent slice-and-dice editing so many action movies use to simulate actual excitement. Razorback was directed by Russell Mulcahy, who was in on the ground floor of the music video age – indeed, he helmed the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first video ever aired on MTV, as well as a number of the early Duran Duran videos that put the network on the map.

Mulcahy brings those early ‘80s visuals to the big screen in Razorback, which is something of a candy store for the eyes. A brew of punk/new wave styles, Western motifs and post-Road Warrior junkyard aesthetics filtered through plenty of smoke machines, colored light gels and fisheye lenses, it’s certainly more stylistically adventurous than practically any contemporary American action/horror flick. In the Razorback world, it’s as if a Mad Max-like society exists in present-day Australia (which may have been a little insulting to those who actually lived in the remote Outback, but hell, they probably didn’t have movie theaters anyway). It all looks great (well, the pig may not be top-of-the-line), but it’s a classic case of style-over-substance; in other words, I really didn’t care who got eaten by the big, hairy boar. The lead actor contributes to this problem – it was common in those days for the Aussies to import an American star or two, but who ever went to see a movie because Gregory Harrison was in it? The revenge storyline is overplayed as well. Why is it that Jaws rip-offs never seem to remember that Jaws was not a revenge movie? Those guys in the boat were just doing their jobs, it was nothing personal. Make Jaws a revenge movie and what do you have? Jaws: The Revenge! So how is that a good idea?

Razorback is more fun to look at than it is to watch, if that makes any sense. And it’s even more fun to look at with four Foster’s.

Previously on Ozsploitation!: Dark Age

Ozsploitation! "Dark Age" (1987)

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation! For the next ten or twelve weeks, or however long it takes you or me to get sick of them, we'll be checking out classics from the golden age of Austrailian drive-in movies. As you may or may not know, Australia was one of the few countries outside the United States to develop a thriving drive-in culture. They love their cars as much as we do, and apparently they also share our fondness for bare breasts, dangerous beasties, exploding heads and good old-fashioned automotive mayhem. If any of our friends down under are reading this, please bear in mind that I'm seeing most of these films for the first time and feel free to weigh in with your own memories and expertise.

We begin with 1987's Dark Age, which was screened this week at Fantastic Fest as part of a mini-Ozploitation retrospective centered around Not Quite Hollywood. Our director is Arch Nicholson, who was given the job based on his work as second unit director on the hit Razorback (which we'll be checking out next week). As it turns out, none of the footage he shot was actually used in Razorback, but I'm sure he didn't mention that in his interview. John Jarratt, who much later played the very creepy Outback killer in Wolf Creek, stars as wildlife ranger Steve Harris. Steve is an advocate for the protection of the endangered saltwater crocodile, but his cause is undermined when a giant croc turns up in the river and starts eating people, including a small child.

Steve explains to his superiors that the croc had no way of knowing that eating children is considered a bad thing, but they won't hear of it. He is ordered to kill the croc, and if he doesn't do it, there are dozens of poachers along the river willing to take on the job for the reward money. Efforts to track down the croc, known to the natives as Numunwari, prove fruitless, although the poachers are happy to blow apart any number of regular-sized crocodiles along the way. Steve is forced to turn to Aboriginal chief Oondabund (a wonderfully named character played by the equally wonderfully named Burnham Burnham from Howling III: The Marsupials).

Oondanbund agrees to help as long as they agree not to kill Numunwari, but rather capture him and return him to his billabong. (Rest assured I will capitalize on any and all opportunities to use the word 'billabong' throughout this series.) This entails strapping the nearly 30-foot croc into the back of an 18-wheeler for a high-speed chase through the bush, with the poachers in hot pursuit.

Some would say a killer crocodile movie is only as good as its killer croc, and by those guidelines, Dark Age comes up a bit short. The croc looks fine at night in the water, and there are some great overhead shots that accentuate the size and girth of the thing, but when it's called upon to move on land in broad daylight, Numanwari isn't quite up to the task. The movie is also weighed down by an obligatory on-again, off-again romance between Steve and his ex Cathy (Nikki Coghill), but in the end, all the right people get eaten. And that's the important thing.

Bonus Attraction: In a stunt that couldn't possibly have been planned the way it turned out, Burnham Burnham is flung from the front of the 18-wheeler as it careens out of control. He turns out to be one resiliant white-bearded old man!

Rating: Three Foster's