The discovery of ozploitation

Thanks to Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives (TOTWK), my urge to bask in everything exploitation film has been rekindled! Low and behold, I recently discovered this documentary called Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!.

Apparently the director, Mark Hartley, approached longtime "Ozploitation" and exploitation fan Quentin Tarantino to help get the project off the ground years ago:

(be pre-warned: lots o' nudity in the trailer!)


Thing is, I'd never even heard of Ozploitation before! From Wikipedia:

Ozploitation is a type of low budget horror, comedy and action films made in Australia after the introduction of the R rating in 1971. The year also marked the beginnings of the Australian New Wave movement, and the Ozploitation style peaked within the same time frame (early 1970s to late 1980s). Ozploitation is often considered a smaller wave within the New Wave, "a time when break-neck-action, schlock-horror, ocker comedy and frisky sex romps joined a uniquely antipodean wave in exploitation cinema"

I can't believe I'd never heard of this before. Everything exploitation I've been exposed to growing up has been from the United States primarily - all of those beloved grindhouse films that came rushing in after the anti-censorship liberation progress of the 60s-70s. Ignern't American, I've been!

One quote in particular from the film that I liked in reference to the country's crack-down on Ozploitation:

"We started making films about what we thought we wanted them to think we were. Suddenly Australia had to have an image. And there were those enemies of our image. Particularly those who do not depict Australia as nice girls in white dresses vanishing into rocks."

Replace "Australia" with "trannies" and the analogy is almost perfect.

Also, John Waters at long last threw in his two eloquent cents in an interview with Out magazine into this whole TOTWK mix.

I <3 John Waters.