An Ozploitation Marathon

Sunday I had no plans, no one called me, and I had little or nothing to do.

In other words, a usual Sunday.

A friend had loaned me some DVDs of Australian films, and I had been meaning to watch them. He gave me just the discs, so there were no back-cover blurbs or other info for me. I looked up the particulars on the net just because I’m that way. I avoided reading the plot synopses, and just tried to get a minimum grasp of the films, which in one case (to be detailed) was not easy.

I decided to watch them one after the other, all in one go, as it were. I arranged them in chronological order for no reason other than it seemed logical to do so.

So, thanks to Tim Youngs, one of the Gang of Film, I spent a lazy Sunday trying to decipher Australian accents and watching more films from Down Under than I had seen in a long, long time.

The Cars that Ate Paris – (1974) Peter Weir has directed some of my favorite films, among them Gallipoli (1981) and  The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).

For that matter, he also directed Dead Poets Society (1989), The Truman Show (1998) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World(2003), so I’m not an unreserved fan.

The Cars that Ate Paris is an odd tale of a small town whose roads prove to be unswerv ingly (!) fatal to outsiders, or at least almost always. A survivor of one such wreck finds himself involuntarily drawn into a town (and community) whose veneer of perfection is tightly stretched over a simmering cauldron of anger, blood and derangement.

The film is slow, and a bit clumsy, but the constant lingering tension makes it almost unbearably creepy. Here’s some poor schlubwhose brother gets killed in an accident and the next day everyone is telling him how happy he’ll be now that he’s going to live there forever. Except no one ever asked him if he wanted to. It’s very Stepford Wives meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but instead of aliens you get Australiens(!).

The story requires a good dose of suspension of disbelief, but once you do, it takes you to a place you would never want to visit, much less live.

If the film’s reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, I really didn’t mind, because I felt it was addressing very weighty things like conformity, which is certainly not local to Australia, as well as more indigenous issues like Australian history.

I got a big kick out of seeing a young Bruce Spence in a small role. He played the Gyro Captain in The Road Warrior, a film which owes no small debt to The Cars that Ate Paris for obvious automotive reasons.

This was a good start to the marathon, and I can recommend the film to those who feel they might have an interest.

Long Weekend – (1978) An unhappily married couple (and their dog) head to the coast for a long weekend at a secluded beach.

They bicker, they argue, they litter, and they kill a kangaroo. And th at’s just on the ride there!

You’ve got to figure something’s going to happen when none of the locals know the place the tourists are looking for, and the man says “”It’s supposed to be just past the old abbatoir…”

Yeah, a nice secluded place near where they killed animals on an industrial basis. Where’s my suntan lotion?!?!?

They pitch camp, they argue, they bicker, and they start abusing nature. Insecticide, chopping down trees for no reason, and more littering.

That’s when things start to change.

The local wildlife starts earning its name. The trip turns bizarre, and then threatening.

This film also requires suspension of disbelief, if mostly because of the Dugong of the Undead, but if you allow yourself to get carried away with the film its still a lot of fun and a good movie in its own odd way.

I enjoyed the ending, and indeed the whole thing.

That made it 2/2.

This film was remade in 2008 with Jim “Passion of the Christ” Caveziel in the lead role.

Turkey Shoot – (1982) On the actual DVD (I mean the disc), the title was Escape 2000, which turned out to be the American title for the film.

When I looked it up before viewing, Escape 2000 was apparently an Italian film about bike gangs in a post-apocalyptic Bronx. Luckily, a little reading later, I discovered that it was also the re-titled Turkey Shoot. The DVD menus and the film itself called it by its original name.

Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith from a scrīpt that was cut short immediately after a large chunk of the budget vaporized, this shamelessly exploitative monstrosity made me feel guilty and dirty for watching it.

Probably because I enjoyed it so much.

My father would say this film has “no socially redeeming value,” and he would be spot-on correct. This film has no redeeming value whatsoever.

Mostly because Olivia Hussy had a body double. I sure wish she had lived up to her name.

Nudity, misogyny, cruely and boatloads of graphic violence are shoveled at you in steaming gobs, and it gets all over you.

There’s a werewolftoo.

In 1995 (which was the future back then), people who can’t adjust to society are sent to re-education camps and forced to dress in ugly yellow jumpsuits.

Of course, when you’re making a movie on a small budget, all that ends up looking like a summer camp for janitors.

Malcontents are told they can escape if they survive a day on the run; sundown means freedom, but only if you live that long.

Because the warden gets paid a lot of money by very rich people to hunt The Most Dangerous Game.

The violence in this film is not necessarily well-filmed. But its relentless nature and and unflinchingly graphic depic tions nevertheless make it quite powerful.

This movie is  nasty.

But I find such things frequently entertaining, in my own twisted way.  I’m not proud of watching this movie, but I’m glad I did.

It was good to see Steve Railsback, star of The Stuntman, a film from this era that I really should buy.

It was also great to see Roger Ward from Mad Max.

One of the best parts of the DVD was the collection of interviews where virtually everyone involved in the film who was interviewed conceded that this was unmitigated garbage that deserves not a scintilla of respect.

How awful is this film? Quentin Tarantino loves it. There’s your proof.

So, 3/3.

Dead End Drive In- (1986) A young man named Crabs (!) and his girlfriend take brother Frank’s 1956 Chevy to the Star Drive-In, where the police steal his rear wheels. C rabs doesn’t notice this because he and his girl are indulging in a little… horizontal refreshment.

It turns out that this isn’t really a drive-in at all… it’s a detention camp for social malcontents. No one ever leaves.

Directed by Brian Trenchard Smith (aha!) and continuing the themes of fast cars and government repression of difference, this film will never win awards for acting, cinematography, or scrīptwriting, not even in its native Australia.

But it exudes (oozes?) a certain charm and appeal if only because it at least tries to look at something a bit more substantive than your average kids-at-the-drive-in movie.

Consumerism, alienation, society, and behavīor are all worked over without much wit or subtlety. But at least they’re being looked at.

The film’s most remarkable segment comes when the government decides to unceremoniously dump a truckload of Asian prisoners into the drive-in, much to the white prisoner’s consternation.

Our protagonist of course refuses to be drawn into the racist upheaval which follows.

Like I said before, its not as if this film manages to treat its subject remarkably well. But it is remarkable simply for putting it there. I didn’t expect it, and it drew me in, fascinated to see where it was heading.

Only in an exploitation film does the issue of racism get reduced to one man defending another’s right to urinate in whatever urinal he wants in the rest room of a drive in that’s actually a prison.

That’s something we’ve all been through, right?

Okay, maybe not. But the film was still a lot of fun and even, dare I say it, thought-provoking, in its own sophomoric way.

4/4!!!

A special thanks to Tim Youngs for loaning me all these movies that turned out to be unfailingly entertaining and, in their own unique ways, edifying.