Boner presents: Ozploitation

[Boner M]

http://www.theredset.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/notquitehollywood.jpg

Following the release of the 'Ozploitation' doco Not Quite Hollywood, I've decided to devote my energies over the Summer to the little-known & inevitably Tarantino-approved antipodean addition to the countless 'sploitation subgenres, as well as a (willfully?) forgotten branch of the New Australian Cinema explosion in the 70's (and early 80's). As well as being a fertile period for fun, T&A/gore/action-packed films, it becomes clear to anyone who's seen the doco that there were some real visionaries among the hoard that, with the exception of George Miller, seem to have slipped through the cracks and are waiting for cinephile reappraisal, which aim to aid. Sporadic updates to follow!

[Boner M]

THE LONG WEEKEND (dir. Colin Eggleston, 1978)

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/images/08/48/long-weekend.jpg

Just a brief frame of reference - I threw Long Weekend on tonight at my empty store in the hope of some hokey, heavy-handed eco-horror to enliven a lonely evening, expectations that were thwarted almost as violently as the main characters' during their holiday in which the natural environment becomes an enemy as result of their careless eco-abuse... or at least that's where the source of nature's wrath seems to come from. Yes, the film’s allegory is roughly as nuanced as The Happening's, but that’s almost irrelevant, since the ‘mother nature’ that turns against the film's humans is merely a thinly-veiled surrogate for the borderline-sociopathic attitudes of the film’s creators. The central unhappily married couple aren't simply put there for the purposes of a conventional reconciliation through survival battle, but are actually punished by nature for their self-absorption and screaming unlikeability, and never once redeemed.

The whole film functions as a colossally rude awakening; relentlessly nihilistic and misanthropic as it basically takes two flawed characters and torments them to a crescendo for 90 minutes, with the empty, desolate beaches serving as an elemental/unsubtle Antonioni-esque metaphor for the emotional distance between them – or the distance between their behaviour, and what the film’s creators consider not worth cruelly punishing. Any film that manages to make its successor Wolf Creek look like a humanist fable in comparison is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Apparently there's a director's commentary on the disc, and I’m keen to find out where the source of all this angst came from.

[Sven]

Awesome thread idea (I dare predict its inevitable petering out... don't let it happen!), particularly in light of the Aussie/Kiwi film class I'm taking next semester. TLW sounds pretty interesting.

[D_Davis]

This is fantastic. I'll be taking copious notes and venturing to Scarecrow Video in search of these films.

[Russ]

Well, I really enjoy pre-Hollywood (read: before Driving Miss Daisy) Bruce Beresford films, so here's hoping for a 'Breaker' Morant or Don's Party namecheck.

[Sven]

Well, I really enjoy pre-Hollywood (read: before Driving Miss Daisy) Bruce Beresford films, so here's hoping for a 'Breaker' Morant or Don's Party namecheck.

Have you seen Puberty Blues?

[Russ]

Have you seen Puberty Blues?

I have not, but I remember its release. Worthwhile?

[Raiders]

Besides Driving Miss Daisy, I think the only Beresford film I have seen is Tender Mercies, but it was wonderful. It was also not Australian.

[Boner M]

(I dare predict its inevitable petering out... don't let it happen!)
I just hope all the films I see are as interesting as TLW; ie, more John Carpenter than HG Lewis. I started watching Fantasm but quickly realised writing about softcore porn was a fighting a losing battle, no matter how many fancypants Ford/Welles homages were thrown in to pander to the film snob contingent.


This is fantastic. I'll be taking copious notes and venturing to Scarecrow Video in search of these films.
I assume you've seen/know of this one...

http://www.britposters.com/images/the%20man%20from%20hong%20kong %20320x240.jpg

[Bosco B Thug]

The Long Weekend was alright. Definitely grim and definitely heavy-handed. You wouldn't argue, right, if I said that the best thing about the film was that

dead manatee thing?
A-class concept with that prop. Very freaky!

[Boner M]

The Long Weekend was alright. Definitely grim and definitely heavy-handed. You wouldn't argue if I said that the best thing about the film was that

dead manatee thing.
A-class concept with that prop. Very freaky!
Hmm. Thought you might've liked the film more. I kinda overplayed the misanthropy in my review in the hopes that mainly you'd check it out, LOL.

That scene in question was definitely a gem. Also the masturbation/surfing crosscutting worked much better than it had any right to.

[Bosco B Thug]

Hmm. Thought you might've liked the film more. I kinda overplayed the misanthropy in my review in the hopes that mainly you'd check it out, LOL. Oh, and it would've worked, alright.

Don't worry, I do acknowledge it is a much better film than The Happening.

As different as the two films are, of course. I do like my films more colorful... TLE is not colorful.

Just generally, though, The Happening def could've done with a dollop of TLE's abortion-isms.

[D_Davis]

I assume you've seen/know of this one...

http://www.britposters.com/images/the%20man%20from%20hong%20kong %20320x240.jpg

Oh yes.

Haven't seen it, but it is on my list.

[Qrazy]

I want to hear more about the manatee please.

[Boner M]

RAZORBACK (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1984)

http://wherethelongtailends.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/razorback.jpg

Russell Mulcahy... best known as the man who made nearly every music video in the 80's (for The Vapors, Culture Club, Elton John, Bonnie Tyler, Duran Duran, etc etc), as well as a modestly successful Hollywood genre director, formerly the man behind Highlander and now slumming with straight-to-the-bottom-shelf dreck like The Scorpion King 2. On the basis of Razorback, it's no surprise that he was rushed to Hollywood immediately; you might say he's part of the first wave of MTV filmmakers who're more concerned with smoke machines and forlorn desert photography than with boring stuff like storytelling and characterisation. Mulcahy certainly fits the 'visionary' part of this thread's opening paragraph, but he's more a visionary-by-will than anything - the kind who demands that status by bombarding us with one pornographically picturesque image after another until we're beaten into submission. To borrow Manny Farber's disctinctions, Razorback is the kind of film that takes a 'white elephant' approach to a genre normally reserved for 'termites', and the result would likely have Farber spinning in his grave.

We begin with a series of establishing shots of the sun-scorched Australian outback, that looks more like a post-apocalyptic setting than any Australia I've ever seen, followed by a mildly rousing prelude in which a man's family is attacked and killed by the titular boar. The man is tried for murder on account of hardy har har, a pig? hardy har, and for no apparent reason other than because them kids today get bored with being in the same location for more than 10 minutes, the action cuts to NYC, where a female reporter is rushed to Australia to investigate the grisly scene of the crime, only to go the Janet Leigh route in Psycho (not really a spoiler, since the opening credits inform us of the film's lead being a dude), from which an utterly wayward and uncompelling revenge story ensues. Mulcahy's disinterest in this narrative is palpable, especially in a sequence in which our bland hero decides to hide from the ravenous blade-hind by climbing to the top of a rickety old windmill; a decision less motivated by his common sense than by Mulcahy's need to give us a moody shot of him seated atop the windmill, silhouetted against the moon at night.

All things said, the film is watchable. Overdetermined as it is, Mulcahy's imagery is cool in a vapid, meaningless kind of way, and his ostentatious style doesn't intrude with the action scenes, which are well-staged and involving, even if the beast's FX expose the film's budget limitations. Still, while watching it I couldn't help but feel my appreciation for The Long Weekend's stylistic economy increase - I lost count of the number of times I thought "well that's a nice shot... huh? Oh yeah, this is about a killer pig."

[Wryan]

RAZORBACK (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1984)

http://wherethelongtailends.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/razorback.jpg

Nice Great Gatsby monster poster though.

[Bosco B Thug]

RAZORBACK (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1984) Yes, smoke machines and multicolored shafts of light. Give it a rest!

My feelings about the film pretty much reflect yours, although I thought the reporter's death was pretty disturbing and well done (if I recall correctly, the scene involves car windows...). I have always been a sucker for killer swine, so all the early glimpses of the boar I also thought were appropriately freaky. The film does get uninteresting real fast, though.

[Boner M]

Hmm... just realised there's so many Australian New Wave films in general that I've neglected (any John Duigan, Fred Schepisi, most early Phillip Noyce and Peter Weir, etc); maybe I should just focus on the entire era in general.

Frankly there's only so much you write about tits, head explosions and shoehorned Hitchcock homages before every film of this ilk sounds the same.

[Raiders]

Frankly there's only so much you write about tits, head explosions and shoehorned Hitchcock homages before every film of this ilk sounds the same.

Perfect boner films.

[Boner M]

Perfect boner films.
I'm getting kinda bored of them though.

NOT!

[Sven]

Hey, believe it or not, this thread actually helped me with the paper I'm currently working on! More, Bone-daddy, more I say. I don't know if you missed my comment to Winston or not, but I've been having a blast with these Aussie/Kiwi films we've been watching.

So far, my favorite Aussie film has been The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. At first I was pretty opposed to the way it treated its victims with derision (I've always hated the liberal trend in cinema to somehow blame murder victims on the victims), but the film ultimately subverts that cliche. Subtly, but with a grace I've rarely seen.

[Boner M]

Thx Sven. I haven't actually seen Jimmie Blacksmith yet. Or The Devil's Playground, Breaker Morant, Newfront, The Last Wave and a few others, I'm sure. Criminal.

I will watch & review the classic biker flick Stone this week, just cos you remembered this thread!