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Cinema Scope with Andy Nelson takes you on a captivating journey through the ever-evolving landscape of film. Moreover, it offers a unique and engaging perspective on the art of cinema.
Welcome back to CinemaScope, where we rev up our engines and kick up some dust in this month's exploration. I'm your host, Andy Nelson. And today, we're diving into the gritty, raw, and unapologetically Australian realm of Ozploitation. Born from the country's cinematic renaissance in the 19 seventies eighties, Ozploitation burst onto the scene with a brash, no holds barred attitude that challenged conventions and pushed boundaries. Join us as we explore the key themes, motifs, and audacious spirit that define Ozploitation and consider its place in the broader context of Australian and world cinema.
Andy:Joining me today, I have professor Mark Ryan from Queensland University of Technology and the leading international expert on the Australian horror movie industry. Hello, Mark.
Mark:Good, Andy. How are you? Thanks for having me today.
Andy:Yes. I am thrilled to have you joining to have this discussion about Ausploitation. It's it's such an interesting new, we'll say, movement that has been somewhat defined by, I suppose you could say, Quentin Tarantino and the documentary, not quite Hollywood, but that Mark Hartley put together and, kind of this portmanteau that, that was kind of created from there, but certainly has grown from that point on.
Mark:Yeah. Absolutely.
Andy:Yeah. And I I wanna talk about just the term, mausploitation, because, I mean, it really did spark this renewed interest in Australian genre cinema. And, it's, I mean, it's a very catchy label, you know. And to that end, it's like, is it in some capacity not helping? On the other hand, it's it is bringing attention to a lot of films, some very bold, audacious films, but it does raise these questions about the implications of grouping a very diverse group of films, lots from many different genres under a very sensationalistic banner.
Andy:What are your thoughts on the term hozploitation and kind of the impact on, I I guess, you could say kind of the the perception of all of these films.
Mark:Yeah. It's a great question, and I've got a very personal story that's connected to this. I I was finishing my PhD, roughly around the time that not Hollywood documentary was released. So I had started researching the Australian horror movie industry in roughly about 2,005, and then I finished in 2,009, and the documentary was released in 2,008. And so at the time when I was doing the research, in the context of Australian cinema and scholarship and film criticism and histories of Australian cinema, Australian genre movies were largely ignored.
Mark:Like, there was no detailed account of having a tradition of genre filmmaking. And where scholars or critics would talk about these genre films that existed in the seventies eighties and, you know, in the nineties and 2000. They were kinda really dismissed or denigrated, and they were not viewed as valued as mainstream Australian cinema, which was largely independent art film movies that represent the national character or or have this this kind of projection cultural identity on screen that were often, you know, in the seventies and eighties, 70 Outback, my brilliant career, Crocodile Dundee, all these types of movies, and then in the nineties and 2000, more kind of suburban urban movies, but all about these the Australian character, cultural movies, and so on, which tended to be dramas, comedies, art movies, and so on. So at the time when not quite Hollywood came out, it really was a lot of people and a lot of generations were hearing about these kind of exploitation movies for the first time. And to be to be honest, even though I was researching horror movies, a lot of the other movies I had never discovered either.
Mark:So, particularly, you know, the man from Hong Kong, you know, the, some of the action based movies, the sexploitation movies. So, the documentary was absolutely instrumental in kind of shining the spotlight on a heritage of genre filmmaking that had perhaps been forgotten or passed over or ignored, and it introduced those films to a whole new generation of people. And at the time, I was teaching at a university, so I started playing not quite Hollywood, in my film courses at university, and so all these students were coming through and just, you know, experiencing Barry McKenzie for the first time and and and Patrick and Roadgames and all these movies, and, you know, the thing that struck me was everybody here was like, wow. We didn't realize that Australia made these type of movies. Because if you read the mainstream accounts of Australian cinema, it's picnic at hanging rock, which, you know, is is a great film, but it's kind of a more artistic film, and movies, you know, like The Piano, you know, quirky Crocodile Dundee, these movies that really deal with cultural cultural expression.
Mark:Australia's long been like a national cinema about cinema has been tied to this idea of, reflecting cultural identity, and anything that hasn't done that has kind of been seen as secondary or or perverse or or something like that. So when not quite Hollywood came out, all these people who had in Australia who loved genre cinema, like, oh, wow. You know, we actually do have a heritage of genre cinema. And so going back in Umbrella Umbrella started re re releasing all these movies, a lot of these movies were not available at the time until the documentary came out, and so all these movies were given a second life. And so people kinda rediscovered them, and they've it's really kind of gone from there.
Andy:Obviously, it wasn't called Ausploitation until that documentary. And before that, it really was just kind of all these genre films that were kind of all scattered, and people likely didn't group them together in as much a way that they did now. But can you speak at all to like, I I don't know. In your research, have you can you speak at all to the reputation of these films critically and commercially at their heyday? Like, when they were being released, were they were they looked at as something that were very popular, or were they also kind of looked at as like, oh, that goes into the b movie house?
Mark:It's it's a great question. The kind of the complication with this term, ausploitation, is the fact that Hartley you know, he's done a great job in creating this this category, ousploitation, but he's kinda pulled upon all these different areas of Australian cinema and then lump them under this this category of ousploitation. So some of the films and some of the genres that he's included, I've, like, I'm not even really regarded as genre filmmaking per se, and that's why Ozfloitation's kind of got this really quirky characteristics is because he's lumped all these different areas together. So the the three areas he looks at in Knock High Hollywood is, and and and pubes, which is essentially a a gravel category for awkward comedy Yeah. Awkward comedy and, sexploitation films.
Mark:And so awkward comedy and these sexploitation movies were emerging in the early seventies. So, in Australia, the film industry's underwritten by government funding, government subsidy. Without government support, the film industry has kind of ceased you know, it's it's really struggled at various points in history. So before the seventies, the local film industry wasn't making a lot of feature films.
Andy:Gotcha.
Mark:And so government regulation comes in, they start pumping money into, you know, grants for filmmakers, funding a national film school, creating institutions to support filmmaking. So the first films that started being made were these awkward comedies, and a lot of them were based on local stage plays, local books, and they they were really popularist. They were just popular kind of crass comedies, which were intended to be commercial, and they were. They were really low budget. They, did really well in the domestic market.
Mark:They didn't do so well overseas. And a key reason for that is Australian movies, even though they're English language, the broad OCA accent, the broad Australian accent can be difficult to translate to the American market. Yeah. So, you know, classic the whole bunch of Australian movies have been dubbed for the American market. So they've dubbed an American accent over Australian movies to make it, you know
Andy:Oh my gosh.
Mark:Was mad nuts? I I think maybe mad max was 1, but there's there's there's a whole bunch of movies where that's happened.
Andy:Yeah. I think mad max was originally, but I think since since kind of the growth the real kind of expansion of the Mad Max universe, I think that they did go back and and re release it with the original, the original link speakers speaking.
Mark:Right. So in the early days, those ochre comedies, they were just yeah. They were category of Australian cinema which weren't related to exploitation for making at all. They were just the Australian version of a comedy, but they were really crass, they were really crude, they celebrated the Australian vernacular, and it was all about Bushmen behaving badly and and drinking beer and making fun of the British and all those type of things. And so, the Barry McKenzie movies and, you know, and then into the kind of the slight sex sexploitation movies like the Elven purple movies, it it was a combination of kind of the fact that the r 18 plus classification had just come in so filmmakers could be more risky, but the these movies weren't necessarily regarded as exploitation at all.
Mark:They were just regarded as popular genre movies when when they first came out.
Andy:Yeah. Fun films to watch. Right?
Mark:Yeah. Fun films. Exactly. Yeah. And they they were popular in Australia, but they didn't travel that well overseas, and they they didn't get wide releases overseas.
Mark:The second category that the documentary looks at is is horror thrillers, and they started emerging in the early seventies as well, and they were part of this this push to create popular movies. But what really changed in the Australian, landscape was that in 1975, the Australian Film Commission was introduced, And so they kind of axed the previous government organization, which was the Australian Film Development Commission or or Corporation. I can't quite remember what that last One
Andy:of those. Yeah. One of those acronyms. Yep.
Mark:One of those. But that organization was purposefully supporting popular genre movies. There wasn't necessarily a sense that there were exploitation. They were just making, you know, the strain equivalent to to genre movies. But when 1975 came around, the AFC came into, being, that organization saw those movies as a disgrace, and they wanted to kind of really create more valued higher brow or or or what scholars regard as middle middle brow, a combination between American indie movies and European art movies.
Mark:And so they started supporting, you know, landscape based movies, historical movies, what's become known as the period film or the ASC genre film. So my brilliant career, pick me up at Hanging Rock, these movies were lyrical. They were they were about, you know, periods of strained history, they they were they were slow, they were artistic. And so these genre movies became, seen as, you know, debased or or or kind of, you know, not appropriate for a government supported national cinema.
Andy:Mhmm.
Mark:And this is where this dualism really kind of, like, starts developing. And then the 3rd category that not quite Hollywood looks at is, I think, action. It's kind of like a broad category that anything that's action based, which includes kung fu movies, action movies, sci fi movies. Right. Dystopian future.
Mark:Right. Exactly. Exactly. Anything that's kind of like an action based narrative. Yep.
Mark:And they really kick off at the end of seventies and then into the eighties when the 10 b a period comes into being. And so the 10 b a, and they talk about a lot of North Hollywood, was quite notorious because the government started stepping away from directly funding, movies, and instead, they had this tax shelter, this tax mechanism where they would pay a 150% recruitment on investment for investors, so you get, you know, not only 100% of your money back, you get a 150% of your money back. And it it was just a really lucrative, why why wouldn't you invest in a film that you're gonna get more than what you're investing it back? Yeah. Right.
Mark:Get tax shelters. Yeah. So it really supercharged the industry, and then all these fly by night producers who who had a commercial sense started just pumping out, you know, low budget genre movies, and then this is where I believe ausploitation really starts kicking off. So we really do start making a lot of exploitation movies in this, you know, late seventies through into the mid 19 eighties into the late eighties.
Andy:Gotcha.
Mark:Yeah. And and they really start doing it cheap. They start kind of, like, really targeting the American market to try and get film sales to to recoup their budget and to go into profit, and, you know, that's when when you start getting your turkey shoots and your fair games, and, and I think if you think about genre as a continuum from, you know, highbrow, you know, if you go more art horror, highbrow horror, and imagined middle where where it's just like a straight genre movie, and then down into your cult exploitation, schlock type movies. I think eighties, you know, the seventies, Australian filmmakers were just trying to make genre movies, but they were very much influenced by the American market and American circles.
Andy:Yeah. Because there definitely is, this feel that these films you know, American exploitation cinema had been kind of always kind of running under the American film industry, especially through, like, this you know, the sixties really into the seventies. And it did feel like as I was watching some of these films that there was this sense of influence that the Australians likely pulled from some of these American filmmakers and that they drew some inspiration from their American counterparts. But they're different. And I guess that's the thing is, like, these Australian filmmakers were still trying to do something uniquely Australian, putting a spin on them, I it felt.
Mark:Yeah. Absolutely. And, yeah, an important point is that, you know, before the seventies, we didn't have any traditions of our own genre of filmmaking at all. So filmmakers were looking to America, and to an extent Britain, but largely America, to kind of what are we making here? So, you know, if if they weren't looking to make horror movies, they were looking overseas.
Mark:But, yeah, filmmakers during that period in particular, you know, they were quite hybrid. You know, John Rookley, your filmmakers were were were stitching a whole bunch of influences together. Interesting about, you know, the dam or something like that. It's this crazy cowboy movie set in the Australian Outback with with gothic ins, and, you know, literally an American cowboy bounty hunter looking for this, you know, trying to solve the mystery of these these people killing travelers coming through gothic. Like, none of that has any cultural resonance in Australia or or anything.
Mark:It was just this weird mishmash of kind of genre, you know, hammer horror and, American cowboy movies and so on, all mushed together to create this genre film. And so some of the films, in the seventies eighties were quite quirky. You know, a lot of them, they either tried to deemphasize the strangeness or they really amped up the strangeness. And if they amped up the strangeness, they were often set in the Outback. They featured all manner of Australian animals.
Mark:You know, they really celebrated the oca accent. Do you know that, mate, how you going? You know, shrimp on the barbie type type, you know, language. And so they they definitely developed their own flavor. And, you know, and and stuff like the awkward comedies and so on, that's just the Australian sense of humor, the the Australian sensibility, you know, shining through.
Mark:And that's why those movies in particular was was so distinct, and and there was a strong reaction against our British heritage. You know, Australian culture is always caught being caught between being a a colony of of Great Britain, but also being heavily influenced by popular culture from America. So those movies in particular were, like, you know, making fun of Britain and also trying to say, look, we are we have our own identity, and so on. So all of these these three categories that Hartley looks at, there's a lot of cultural dynamics going on that that influence the genre conventions that are evident in these movies.
Andy:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just to clarify, something that you had mentioned, the rating, but it's kind of the equivalent of whatever our our rating is. Right?
Andy:Did that come into being at that time? And that's why some of these films were, like, more allowed to be a little more, risque?
Mark:Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I I did throw that in there and that's just everything else. In in 1971, Australia introduced for the first time the r 18 plus category.
Mark:And before that, we had a really draconian censorship system where movies that were deemed unsavory or or whatever, however you wanna phrase it, would be individually assessed by, you know, these sensors, these people. And they had these these strong kind of mandates around what's morally right for people and, you know, not wanting to influence society with and so horror films would often come up against seeing about them being deemed unsavory, and and and the state that I'm in, Queensland, believe it or not, horror movies some horror movies were banned in Queensland into the 19 eighties Wow. Which just seems ridiculous. Yeah. And and so what people would do, they would just import horror movies from other states, but then there would be a little symbol on the front of the VHS tape that said, banding Queensland,
Andy:and
Mark:it was kind of like a badge of one night if you're living in Queensland, watching these movies in Queensland. But so sorry. In in 1971, before that, movies couldn't really push that boundary of of sex, violence, gore, you know, breaking the taboo in terms of content matter because more or less, you would fall on the sword of censorship. And, the censorship was was really strict, but when that came into being and it kind of correlated with the social change that was going on in seventies as well, sexual liberation, all all those type of things, so filmmakers were like, yeah. Hell, yeah.
Mark:And so Still. They started making sex movies, horror movies that that had never really been made by the domestic production industry here before.
Andy:Well, it's it's just so fascinating. And it's it is interesting to hear, like, the comparisons between the way that our kind of films evolved in our rating sports and everything and yours. Mhmm. So we're we're actually gonna talk about 6 films in this, over the course of this conversation instead of the normal 5. We're gonna look at the adventures of Barry McKenzie, Patrick, Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, Razorback, and Wolf Creek 2.
Andy:So we've got a nice variety of, films to talk about, which should be a lot of fun. Before we get into that, I just want to in in the scope of all of this, you know, Ozploitation is kind of based on the portmanteau going all the way back to blaxploitation, which was a portmanteau in the created in 1972 as far as creating, black films that were exploitation films. But how do you feel about just the the label of exploitation for all of this? Is I I know the portmanteau kind of becomes its own thing, but is do you feel like exploitation is there an impact on the perception of these films as far as their merits when that's added in?
Mark:I think it's good historically to some extent, but, yeah, it is problematic because I I think a lot of the films included in the term are not exploitation films. They're just genre films, and so the documentary in particular really tried to emphasize the exploitation aspects of some of these movies. But, yeah, I mean, they're not all exploitation films, and looking forward and in scholarship, I try and do this. I distinguish between movies that are actually, in fact, exploitation movies and movies that are just strange genre films because they're not all 1 and the same. And it is so it is a problematic term because a lot of the movies included under the banner of are not, are not exploitation.
Mark:The the genre films, some of them are non genreic, like, they're just they don't have a genreic identity at all, but they're all included under this banner. But I think, historically, it now refers to, like, a heritage. So I think that that is that works. Well, so when you hear ousploitation, you're thinking genre heritage, but in terms of contemporary cinema, it doesn't quite work just to label everything asploitation because genre filmmaking in Australia at the moment is so diverse. You know, movies like Talk to Me, Late Night with the Devil, You know, these these are Aussie horror movies which are doing really well around the world, The Babadook.
Mark:Now, you know, The Babadook is clearly not exploitation. It's more art horror, and it, you know, talks to me as well. That's I would not regard those as exploitation films. So you can't just label all contemporary strange drama filmmaking, but but like a movie we we might talk about later, Wolfred 2, that's clearly exploitation. So, yeah, I think it it is a problematic term, and I think historically, you just have to acknowledge that it is an umbrella term, and under that term, there are a range of genres that get lumped into it, which not necessarily exploitation, but it it is a good term to refer to a heritage of genre filmmaking in the seventies eighties, which which we now kind of accept and and celebrate.
Mark:But there are a number of caveats that have to go when when go with the term when you use it.
Andy:Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's dive into some of these films, that, fit under this moniker, Ozploitation. Let's start with this comedy, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.
Andy:It was directed by Bruce Beresford, released in 1972. Very funny watching this and seeing Bruce Beresford's name pop up in front because I certainly think of him as much more kind of like the Oscar nominated, dramas that he will do later.
Mark:What he's doing.
Andy:I was like, no. This is where he got his start, I see. It's like the Roger Corman journey for, like, seeing Jonathan Demme or Ron Howard having made these movies with Corman before they started their more quote, unquote, serious careers.
Mark:Mhmm.
Andy:Barry McKenzie, the story of this, he's a naive and, yes, you could just safely say fairly uncouth Australian. He and his aunt, Edna, who we'll certainly talk about, traveled to England where they encounter cultural misunderstandings and humorous situations. The film is known for its crass and crude humor, which may be particularly offensive by today's standards. It does satirize both British and Australian stereotypes with Barry and his aunt Edna becoming iconic figures that have endured in popular culture. Edna's character played, by a cross dressing Barry Humphries went on to become a beloved and enduring part of Australian comedy.
Andy:I had heard of Dame Edna before this film, and I had seen Barry Humphries dressed as her, like I think Barry Humphries may still continue to perform this, but
Mark:He has actually passed away, unfortunately.
Andy:Oh, okay. Okay.
Mark:Just recently, last year or so. Yeah.
Andy:Gotcha. But I I feel like this was a character that he was kind of performing throughout his life. Right?
Mark:Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Dane Edmond became an iconic kind of Australian comedy character, to the point where, like, quite recently, people almost forgot Barry Humphreys, and Dame Edna was just like this this this character in its own right. You know?
Andy:Right. Like, he wrote he wrote a biography as Edna. Right? Isn't that, like, how far he went down that road? Again.
Andy:That's so funny.
Mark:And and Dame Edna would pop up and everything. She'd comment on on, you know, political events, social events, comedy sketches. She she just became, like, this, public figure that that was comedic, and everyone just embraced her.
Andy:So funny. So funny. Well, stepping back to the film, I mean, what do you think of the film as far as how it's portraying Australians, its use of kind of crass, boundary pushing humor, certainly influenced, development of comedy style, lots of beer drinking. That's something that they really emphasize that the Australians love to do. What do you think of this film, and what what kind of how it's fitting into all of this?
Mark:It's it's an oddball. It's an it's it's an odd one. I I love it, but it it's really coming from this kind of this dualism between, you know, to some extent, the bush and the city, and then this Australian and this British kind of dualisms. And so in the early seventies in particular, there was this big question that everyone was facing in the cultural industries about what is the national character? Like, what is cultural identity in Australia?
Mark:And so there has been a long tradition of, you know, Bush set plays, Bush, like, literature, and stories. And so this this character that Barry Humphreys made up of Barry McKenzie is kind of really playing upon this idea of the stereotype of the bushman or or, you know, the bush larrikin. So the larrikin is this idea in Australian culture where there are people from the bush who don't like authority, They're easygoing. They can't take anything seriously, and and it's this this stereotype of the typical Australian who is said to exemplify what it means to be Australian. This movie really picks up on this character, and at the time, we were still questioning, are we are we a British based culture or we do we have our own unique culture?
Mark:Wow. And so Barry McKenzie, was this vehicle to kind of really question, to to kind of make fun of the British and say and to kind of show, well, actually, we do have our own culture. And so it was rooted in this idea about, you know, we're just easygoing bush skies, and we love our beer, we don't take anything too seriously. And so that's kind of a bit of an underlying kind of philosophy underpinning this movie, and the idea that they go to Britain and it's just, you know, a big fiasco, and then they're making fun of everything, and the the vomit projectile, yeah, that that scene where he's just vomiting, like, all over the over this British doctor or whatever it was. It was just making fun of our British heritage
Andy:Yeah.
Mark:Trying to draw distinctions between Australians and the British and show that we have a unique kind of cultural identity, I guess, but as you suggest, you know, it's not a realistic, accurate reflection at all. Right. Even by the seventies, you know, in in Australia, I I can't remember what the exact figure is, but the vast majority of us live on the coastline. Right? On the east coast of Australia, I think it's like 80% of the population live on the east coast of Australia.
Mark:And so this outback, you know, the rural landscapes, it's we've got a it's a big country, but very few a small proportion of the population live in the outback or or rural, locations, and so in national culture, this idea of the bushmen has an outsized kind of weight in defining who we are as as people when most of us actually live in cities, suburbs, urban landscapes, or, you know, all that type of stuff. And yeah. So even back then in the seventies, it wasn't an accurate depiction, but it was kind of just making fun of our British heritage and trying to put a flag in the sand saying, look, no. We we do we're we're Australian, and, you know, this is who we are. But it wasn't it wasn't necessarily trying to be political, it was trying to be popular, so it really was appealing to, you know, toilet humor, drinking culture, you know, macho sense sensibilities and stuff, prevalent in Australian culture at the time.
Andy:I think that's something that I I definitely enjoy is it feels like it's tapping into a lot of what Australia was like likely in the in that early seventies when it was made and kind of giving us a sense of it, but like a comedy does. I mean, it's you could say the same thing about what you're seeing in, like, you know, you what you'd call, like, lowbrow Adam Sandler sort of humor or something like that. It's like Right. We're not portraying, like, people in a realistic way. It's it's amping up all of these silly aspects of it to really make a comedy out of it.
Andy:And and to that end, I thought that they did a pretty good job of making fun of a lot of those little, those quirks about Australian these Australian characters like him, but also the Brits. But also in a way where I enjoyed all of these characters. It wasn't, it I never felt it was done in, like, a kind of a hateful way looking down on anybody. And so I I I I found that to be kind of, really interesting about this film that I wasn't expecting.
Mark:Yeah. Look at the likable Larragon is kind of a common phrase referring to yeah. You kinda like them, but they're silly and, you know, hard to like. It's this character type that's that's very popular, but my favorite scene in that movie is is the game show. I think it's the first one, the game show at the end where, the British citizens are trying to compete in the game show to get citizenship to come to Australia.
Mark:And so the whole game show is just making fun of how cold England is and how prim and proper and how all British wanna come to Australia for the sun, you know, the beach, the, you know, all that type of stuff. And to me, that that scene is just like a really nice microcosm of what that movie is trying to do. It is vulgar at at points, and and, you know, a lot of cultural critics didn't like it at the time here in Australia because they thought it was giving this sense that we're vulgar, simple, boorish, all all these type of, things when, you know, not all of Australians were like that at all. It was really playing on this bullshit ideal. But, yeah, that that game show at the end was just like, yeah.
Mark:Look. Stray is great. British people wanna come here. And it was just like this fun little, satire or poking fun of English culture, and I I I love I love that scene.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. It I mean, it's a very fun film. It's it's worth checking out. I mean, I I, it I did have to turn the subtitles on for that one because it is very Australian in the way that they speak to a point where and, you know, my mother's Australian.
Andy:I've kind of had Australian ringing through my ears. But even for me, like, some of this was was pushing to a point where I'm just like, I don't know anything that they're saying. Because it's also a lot of slang that gets thrown out, like Lara Ken and stuff that I'm just like, I'm not sure I understood anything in that sentence. So
Mark:So a big character a big feature of the opera comedies in particular was celebrating the local vernacular, so which which was all just slang. So it was trying to pack in as much slang as possible, and that to an extent was kind of seen as defining us as being different. So, yeah, like, even when I watch it, I'm like, woah. I've really gotta, you know, I I've gotta really struggle to kinda follow what they're saying.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right. I it'd be comparable to, like, I don't know, Valley Girl, kind of a different like, it's your own lang like, your own country's dialect, but it's a group of people that somehow have created all sorts of slang and stuff that you're like, I I need a translation because I'm just not understanding everything you're saying.
Mark:Yeah. It was big in the seventies eighties, that real strong Aukus slang, but it's not quite as common these days. So, yeah, my my father and his generation were very well versed in it, but, yeah, I struggled with it a little bit.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right. Well, let's shift our attention to Patrick. Patrick is a great example of horror.
Andy:1978, directed by Richard Franklin. This film follows the story of Patrick, a young man who, after killing his, mother and stepfather, goes comatose. He's lying in a Melbourne hospital who also happens to possess powerful psychic abilities. The story largely focuses on Kathy, a nurse who is assigned to care for him. As she spends more time with him, it becomes apparent that Patrick has developed an attachment to her using his powers to cause harm to anyone he perceives as a threat to their relationship, which includes Kathy's boyfriend and other hospital staff members who come between them.
Andy:Considering its unique premise and its place in, within this, kind of the Ozploitation horror genre, what do you think sets it apart from other films, like the horror films? You talked about kind of the growth of the horror films in the seventies. What sets it apart from others, at the same time?
Mark:The strength of the premise is 1, but the other is that it's not set in the Outback. Like, by by the time you get to the eighties, a lot of Australian horror movies are set in the Outback, and you're being chased by crocodiles, pigs, madmen, cars, you know, all that type of stuff. But Patrick Patrick was more like a horror thriller, and the idea of, you know, telekinesis being, you know, his his weapon was quite unique. It was quite pared back, like more an, atmospheric horror thriller. Other examples of that had been done, in in exploitation, but but probably not as well.
Mark:And I think it it was the quality of of the direction from from Richard Franklin, and and his combination with Everett Daroach who who was a great, genre genre film writer here in Australia. But, yeah, I think more the tone and the mood of that film being a little bit more, paired back, suggestive, atmospheric, and it's one of my favorite ausploitation films. And and really, the intrigue of Patrick, the character, the the the eponymous character, I think he is really what kind of made that film so successful.
Andy:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's creepy with him lying there with his eyes open all the time.
Mark:Yeah. And and that original movie, I think the representation of Patrick as being kind of open eyed, you know, bug eyed, intense, and catatonic, the whole movie, is so much more effective than the remake that that that was recently done.
Andy:Oh, really?
Mark:Yeah. So so Mark Hartley who made not quite Hollywood made a remake of Patrick in 2013.
Andy:Oh, no.
Mark:But the Patrick character is like a pretty boy kind of, you know, like, something you'd expect out of a a teen movie or something. Whereas, the original Patrick, there's something unnerving about him lying eyes awake comatose with threatening characters around him with with telekinesis. So I think, you know, Patrick as a character really is what drove the narrative, tension and and and was really the success of that film on top of, you know, Richard Franklin's direction. Because, like, you know, you you would have watched it recently, Andy. Yeah.
Mark:The way they do special effects is so simple but effective. Right?
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Mark:Just things moving, and and and it's part of the reason why Mark Hartley wanted to remake it. He was like, wow. Like, we could do so much more with the telekinesis now because they're really using simple editing techniques and so on to to represent the, telekinesis, but I think there's something fascinating about Patrick as a character, and because they didn't provide a little bit of backstory as well, I think there's a scene in the original movie where he kills his mother, and then before you know it, he's in this hospital comatose.
Andy:Right. Yeah. It's like he falls like, he he throws the, I don't know, electric heater into the bathtub where she and and her and his stepfather are bathing together and electrocutes them both. And then and at that point, he just kind of falls over comatose is my recollection.
Mark:Right. Right. Exactly. And then, you know, there's no explanation for conviction or or if anything's happened or, you know, there's no explanation, like, it's all implied. So there's a lot of intrigue there about Patrick and then, you know, his desire to kind of court Kathy, but at the same time, you know, kill anyone around her, to make sure that nobody else can have her.
Mark:But at the same time, he's being abused by the doctor. The main doctor that's caring for him are is doing all these, you know, unethical experiments on Patrick without his consent. So it is quite a complex, morally complex story, and there's not a lot of backstory, so there's a lot of intrigue to it. So Yeah. For me, personally, that's quite different to the average exploitation movie because a lot of exploitation movies, you know, they're not as complicated psychologically or or thematically.
Mark:They're they're kind of, you know, more about action or or, you know, using the landscape in in unique ways and and and so on. But Patrick was one that was just it had a little bit more to it on on different aesthetic registers that that some of the others didn't have, I think.
Andy:Well, and, you know, we haven't really talked about this, but it it would be an interesting point to bring up with each of these, especially since, you know, in your as you talked about in your studies as you were describing the films that you talked about, you broke down. Is this one exploitation or not? I mean, from the 2 we've talked about so far, I mean, how did you label them? Are is there exploitation? Is that a good, tag for both of those so far?
Mark:No. I I I don't I don't think, Barry McKenzie was necessarily it it was, like, done in bad taste for sure.
Andy:Yeah. But it doesn't feel like it didn't feel exploitive. It just didn't feel like it fit that No. Term for me. Yeah.
Mark:No. It was just a lowbrow popular genre movie. And Patrick as well was was a horror thriller. They they were really trying to just make, you know, a Hitchcock inspired thriller with, you know, the direct director Richard Franklin was was a met, Hitchcock was was his mentor. He he was enamored with his direction style, and so he he really trying to pay homage to him.
Mark:So, yeah, he was trying to direct, like, a classy horror thriller. So I think where the exploitation kicks in is when the Italians did an unauthorized sequel of it, right, called, yeah, called Patrick Lives or something like that, and that was a pure exploitation film. And, you know, the producer of Patrick Anthony Iguineain, he he made a lot of exploitation films, so I think Patrick gets kind of painted with the exploitation brush sometimes. But, yeah, I I think it's not really an exploitation film. It's it's it's a, you know, an attempt at a solid, you know, b grade horror thriller.
Andy:Yeah. I mean, if there's anything that felt like it's they're they're pushing trying to get into the exploitation genre. It would be that opening bathtub scene because, I mean, you're seeing some nudity and stuff, but it's like that still is a little bit of a stretch to call it, exploitation for me.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Because it's kind of, like, true to the narrative as well, you know, like, you know, you can read into it that he's he's killing his mother because of, you know, Oedipus complex or or whatever it is.
Andy:Something going on there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's, let's jump, a year later to, 1979 talking about George Miller's Mad Max, jumping into the action realm. This is, I don't know, perhaps the most well known Ozploitation film.
Andy:It's massive impact on the action genre as a whole. I mean, how do you think it and others like it helped put Australian cinema on the map internationally?
Mark:Oh, massive. Massive. It was the first real Australian genre movie, I think, that kind of broke out internationally and and probably had the most wides well, I I think, you know, the story of Mad Max is both Mad Max 1 and Mad Max 2. Sure.
Andy:Yeah.
Mark:So when Mad Max 2 comes out, that cements it as, like, this global phenomenon. Whereas, I think number 1 was was popular in Australia, and it it had a massive impact in Australia. And I think it was popular overseas, but not quite as popular as number number 2 was.
Andy:Yeah. I I think number 2 was just released in the states as the road warrior. It became a massive hit, and that's when they're like, oh, well, let's let's rerelease Mad Max, and then we'll, you know, make sure that people know that they're actually a pair. And I think that's kind of how they both became very popular.
Mark:Right. Right. But in in Australia, you know, the the popular appeal was one thing. A lot of, you know, viewers at the time who were not getting local genre movies saw this as what we should be striving for. You know?
Mark:And I've talked to so many genre filmmakers over over the years, and they've all said, you know, like, growing up in Australia, you basically had to watch American genre movies because Australians weren't really making genre movies, and there's only so many times you can watch Mad Max. You know? So a lot of us who'd liked genre pictures would have watched, you know, watched Mad Max over and over again because it was Australian, but it it really kind of met all those John Rick kind of touch points where some of the earlier exploitation movies were mishmashes. They didn't get wide releases, so not wide stream audiences were watching them in Australia, but mad max really broke through. And so that's the reception side, but in terms of production, it was really unique because George Miller had been a medical doctor
Andy:Right. Yeah.
Mark:And decided to yeah. You know, from the money he made from that, he decided to become an independent filmmaker. And that style of filmmaking, and there's been tons of documentaries about it, was quite different for what was going on in in the period films that were being made, which were really slow, lyrical, you know, long shots, long takes, all this type of stuff. And you went to this, you know, frenetic action style, which because being an independent film wasn't really regulated. So if you watch the film now, every time I watch it, I'm like, how did people not die making this movie?
Andy:Yeah. Right? Especially with stories today, you're like, oh, man. I they were lucky.
Mark:Absolutely. There's certain scenes in Mad Max where in the original Mad Max where motorcyclists come off their motorbikes, and you see their heads hit the ground and bounce Yeah. On the highway. And that's not special effects. That's an actual stunt double coming off hitting the road in an action sequence, and I'm I just mind boggles that people didn't die making that movie.
Andy:Ugh.
Mark:So No. For a stranger at the time, it was really different type of making a movie, and if and and that really kind of stood out amongst what was being made at the time.
Andy:Yeah. And I haven't I haven't really said yet, but just in case people, aren't familiar with Mad Max, the movie follows Max, Max Rockatansky, who is a police officer in kind of this dystopian future Australia where society is falling apart. There's a vicious biker gang that he is kind of coming up with and and the other police. They kill his wife and child, and and he becomes a vigilante seeking revenge. Car chases, are intense throughout the film, and I think that's one of the things that really stands out.
Andy:But, also, it's just, like, there is this core story of humanity, of this of this family trying to survive in these dangerous times and how it kind of breaks this person that, you know, we'll kind of get to see over a number of films, but it is nice to go back to the beginning and just remember how it all started. And I think that's what's so fascinating about it. But the action sequences, I think what George Miller did I mean, it's you've already talked about kind of some of the danger and everything, but also it's just decisions like having the cameraman on the back of a bike filming as they're racing along the highway or putting the camera incredibly low to the ground as they're driving. So you get this this shot of driving that is just incredibly fast, and it's just it it's very exciting. And I think that's what I don't know.
Andy:As I as I rewatched this again, it just it reminded me of how exciting this sort of filmmaking can be. And, I mean, you we've got great car chases before this. I mean, Steve McQueen did plenty of stuff in Bulleit, and, like, there's been all sorts of great stuff, but just the way that he shifted things a little bit here really did feel like kind of a a pivot point for action cinema.
Mark:And the story is interesting because as you summarized very nicely, it's really in those last days of society collapsing. So I think people are more familiar with the road warrior where society has collapsed. Yeah. And so everyone's living in the wilderness. There's no resources.
Mark:You're fighting over scarce resources. It's gone to this crazy dog eat dog survival world. But Mad Max is at the end where there's still some semblance of society there, and he's part of this police force trying to hold it all together, you know, trying to reign in the road gangs who are becoming more and more prevalent on the highways, and then, you know, eventually his wife dies.
Andy:Yeah.
Mark:And that that's what tips in, and his child, and they're violently killed in the on the, you know, the hand of this gang. And that's what starts this kind of journey for him to become the person in the road warrior because, you know, in the road warrior, he's this antihero. He's he just doesn't care about anything, and so that it's a very interesting kind of backstory to the road warrior, and I think that's why it works so well that the action itself is exciting, and and the car chase is a thrilling, but the story itself, it really gives that insight into how Max became the character he became. And then over the movies, it's this big arc of him continuing to develop or he'll fall further down the rabbit hole type, into delusion or or whatever it is, but it's, interesting.
Andy:No. It's very interesting, and it's, it's just it's a strong film. I mean, I think it's really interesting to kind of see where it's evolved to in its own franchise, but also just how it has shaped so much of action cinema. Like, I don't feel like we'd be getting the Fast and Furious franchise the way we are if it wasn't for this film. You know?
Mark:No. That's very true.
Andy:Yeah. Our next film that we're gonna talk about, I is, Turkey Shoot, which was a fun film I had not seen before. Brian, Trentard Smith directed this, in 1982, And I did, just as a as a a strange connection between the two films, Roger Ward is, like, the police captain in Mad Max. And then and and like that had been, I think, the only film I had seen him in. And then watching this, I'm like, hey.
Andy:There's the police captain here, and now he's a a much more vicious, man here as the guard, guarding these prisoners in again, we have this, another dystopian future. This film blends action and horror. It's set in this dystopian future where it follows a group of prisoners called deviants, and you can be picked up as a deviant for the smallest of things, which is, I think frightening in all, honesty. And they are then selected by the wealthy essentially 1 percenters is what we're looking at here, to be hunted for sport on a remote island. And, I mean, this is a film we've seen.
Andy:I mean, there's the famous story long before this, most dangerous game, which kind of goes down this road. And even up to much more recent films like The Hunt. It's it's a story that people like to tell and that we've seen it, but this was a really fun one to watch in in the way that it was portrayed. And this was one that I think is is one that's one of your favorites. So what is it about this film that stands out for you?
Mark:How how bizarre it is? It it's kind of, you know, there's no real backstory. It's all quite flimsy in terms of why the society is the way it is. But in terms of the broader, you know, body of of exploitations, this was one of the most, you know, hated films by critics. It had a real backlash here in Australia from cultural critics who just despised the movie.
Andy:Really?
Mark:So it it created a real notoriety to it. Did you know that, Andy? Or
Andy:No. Why was there such a a reaction to it?
Mark:I think because a lot of the strange genre movies in the seventies eighties are actually quite, you know, they're not that extreme. They're they're quite, you know, they're not that gory. They're not that over the top, in comparison to American, you know, exploitation, grind house cinema coming out at the same time. Some of it was quite mild, but Turkey Shoot was really a film that was more gory and more violent and kind of pushed boundaries for local filmmakers that probably hadn't been pushed. And so critics there there was a famous quote, I think Philip Adams, talking about, you know, the film revolved around hands being chopped off, people being crushed by, you know, heads being blown up, people being eaten, you know, or, you know, lesbians kind of
Andy:Clearly mutants also.
Mark:Mutants. Yeah. It was just it it it was pure exploitation cinema, and I think it was more extreme than the average Australian exploitation film and and quite returitus in certain areas that pushed a lot of buttons for cultural critics who were who were really advocating for this quality Australian cinema movement, which was our mainstream cinema at the time, which was trying to reflect positive view of the cultural identity, that they wanted taken seriously. And then you get a movie like Turkey Shoot where, you know, people being hunted and blown up and and, you know, this kind of splatter gore film, around this really thin plot just drove people crazy.
Andy:At the time when this came out, you know, The Hunt, which was a a recent film that came out over here, it certainly felt timely with kind of this whole story of the 1% and everything. Mhmm. In Australia, at the time, did it feel like there was this kind of unrest because of, like, disparate, classes or anything like that? Like, did it feel like the class warfare element of the film kind of pulled from that?
Mark:No. No.
Andy:Oh, it's okay.
Mark:So a big part of the the story behind the film was, you know, Brian Trenchard Smith, and I forget who the writer was, but they had envisioned this as being a more solid kind of action film that had some social commentary about authoritarianism. And so the script had a much longer first act that set up this society and the way it functions.
Andy:Okay.
Mark:But Anthony Ghanane being, you know, a very commercially minded producer, he couldn't raise the amount of production budget that they had originally intended. And so Brian Trenchard Smith tells this great story about how the buzzer got slashed by 1,500,000, which was a huge amount at the time. And so, basically, they just cut out the first entire act and just had this tiny little voice over, like, narration at the beginning say saying, authoritarian, this society, whatever it was.
Andy:Right.
Mark:So they they essentially cut out all the bit that established the social problems in society that gave it a more of a serious tone that that put it in the, you know, the general action category. And then because of the other budget cuts, Brian Trenchard Smith said, look, we didn't have budgets enough budget for all the extras and everything that we wanted, so we had to go with Gore. Because Gorr, at the time, blood, and Gorr was cheap. So he just patched the rest of the script together. So the introduction got cut, but large swathes of the of of this of the rest of the script also got cut.
Mark:And so he just patched it together with action sequences and and and and dodgy, physical effects. So it's not quite scanner's level, but there's there's, you know, scenes with heads being blown up and stuff like that, which is just classic kind of, like, schlock horror. Yeah. Right. So the story got derailed, and then what could have been a, you know, a solid action movie starring Steve Railsback became this kind of, yeah, schlocky, gore action movie, which had a bit of everything because of all the budget restraints.
Andy:Yeah. Well and they're also clearly kind of falling under the George Miller style of independent filmmaking where they're not necessarily being as responsible with their stunts and everything. I I just remember from the documentary Steve Railsback, and, oh, I think Olivia Hussey also talked about some of the situations that felt a little too dangerous. Like, are they shooting real bullets at us? Yeah.
Andy:Scary stuff.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there were some scenes in that that were were really violent, for Australian drama for making at the time. So this this the scene where more what what what was the actor that you mentioned before that was also in George, Miller's Madame Max?
Andy:Roger Ward. Yeah. He's the chief chief writer here.
Mark:Scene where he's kind of humiliating the, the prisoner, like, he's he's he's he's boxing the prisoner.
Andy:Yeah. Right. We're like toward the beginning when they first come into camp, that one?
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. And then sets lets him on fire in front of everyone, you know. You know, at the time, you know, that that was, you know, really, you know, exclusive and and and sadistic and violent for an Australian genre film, so it was really kind of pushing beyond what what other genre filmmakers had done. And because filmmakers were still they were getting a lot of money from this 10 b a tax scheme, You know, critics were like, wow, you know, what is our government doing putting money into movies like Turkey Shoot?
Mark:And it just became a really notorious movie, which, you know, drove its popularity. It did quite well in Australia, and I think it did okay in the grindhouse circuit in in in the US.
Andy:Well, you know, in in the end, it is it is a fun film still. It does fit into that dystopian future where they're hunting humans. You know? And so to that end, it it was a fun film to watch, and I I did enjoy that, the way that it all played out. And it's just it's fun seeing some of these faces.
Andy:And, you know, it also speaks to, I suppose, something else that Australian cinema was was doing. And, you know, in our member bonus, one of the films we'll talk about is road games, But casting Americans to play some of the parts and and bringing them into the film to, perhaps, and not just Americans, I should say, but, people from overseas to make their films seem perhaps a little more bigger than they are or more important, etcetera?
Mark:That became a very important strategy for genre filmmakers because, in in the seventies, Australian movies weren't really selling well overseas. They in part because of the Australian accent, they weren't getting access to the American market. So filmmakers really started turning towards, you know, hiring American actors and mixing them with Australian actors to to not piss off the the local actor equity guilds too much. But it became a feature to try and, you know, create all audience recognition and and to to penetrate the American market.
Andy:Well, I mean, it it worked in this case. I did enjoy I mean, Steve Rills back is a good genre actor anyway. He's always fun to see pop up in things. Yeah. Olivia Hussey was the one who seemed a little surprising, but, you know, I guess she did Black, Christmas a few years before.
Andy:So it it maybe it fits into kind of some of the films that she was doing. True. True. Well, I mean, Turkish Shoot is a a fun blend of kind of action horror, lots of gore like you said. And I think that's a a good way to shift to the next film we're gonna talk about, which is Russell Mulcahy's 1984 horror film, Razorback.
Andy:This story is set in the outback where a massive and terrifying wild boar is terrorizing the local population. The film follows Carl Winters, an American hunter who arrives after his wife has disappeared, but we know she was killed by the boar. He joins forces with a local farmer to track down and kill the beast. And, of course, they uncover dark secrets within the community that add an extra layer of mystery and danger to their hunt. So this film is, it's notable for some stunning Outback landscapes and cinematography.
Andy:Definitely very visually striking film, a beautiful backdrop for the horror that unfolds. How do you think that this film, the use in this film of the Outback setting and the use of the creature feature formula kind of contributed to its place within the horror genre?
Mark:This is one of my favorites as well. So Patrick and Razorback are up there for my my favorite Ozploitation movies or strange genre movies.
Andy:This is a very fun film. I had a great time with it. Yeah.
Mark:And it's it's a little bit bizarre, isn't it? And and that's what kinda makes it different to to the American genre films at the time. It kind of, you know, like, it doesn't really have a proper act structure. You know, you're following one character, then you then you suddenly following another character. It it's kind of all the characters are bizarre, caricatures, and
Andy:then Oh, especially those 2 brothers? Yeah. By far, yeah.
Mark:It's yeah. Benny and Dicko Baker. Yeah. And the the scary pet factory or the
Andy:Pet food. Yeah. The the Yeah.
Mark:Pet food abattoir.
Andy:Oh, jeez.
Mark:It's it's a bizarre film, and it it's quite an iconic Australian horror movie because of the visual style, that use of, you know, the red Outback and the way that Russell McKay ended up filming the Outback for the time was really quite unique because the period films that I talked about, the the more quality middlebrow Australian movies that were being made, a lot of those were shot in the Outback, but it was kind of long takes, long shots, kind of slow contemplated, paces much more akin to to art cinema. In this film, Russell McKay kinda depicts the Outback as this weird netherworld. It's a little bit more like a Mad Max movie in the you know, there's there's cars hanging from dead trees. There's there's smoke there's smoke at nighttime. You go into the Outback and it's kind of there's big cracks in the salt, and it's almost fantastical in its representation.
Mark:It's not a realistic or an artistic depiction of the Outback, and and so it's one of these films that where the landscape itself, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, is the character in its own right, and the landscape itself is this scary kind of entity that is capable of producing a monster like Razorback. So Razorback is this giant pig that is abnormal. It's a monster. It's it's mutated beast that that craves human flesh, And so, you know, it's just like the the the monster came from this weird ethereal outback that's unlike anything that's seen anywhere else around the world. So I think that's why looking back at it, it's quite an iconic piece.
Mark:It's visually quite distinct. At the time, it was billed as as like a major genre picture. It was gonna be the biggest genre picture since Mad Max. Wow. And it didn't quite live up to that standard.
Mark:The the marketing didn't quite catch. It kind of was originally promoted as a serious horror film. And then in test screenings, people were laughing, and they realized that perhaps because it is so bizarre, it people would see comedy, so they started promoting it as a horror comedy, and they started promoting as jaws on trotters or or something like that, jaws from the outback or or something like that. So they started playing into this idea about it being a bit of a horror comedy. So at the time, it it didn't do quite as well in Australia as it as it as they had intended it to, but over time, it's definitely become, you know, a cult horror film here in in Australian cinema, and and it's one of those if you look back at it in comparison to other films, it's visually, it's iconic, but it's got it's got a lot of the characteristics of exploitation movies, so, you know, you mentioned Ben and Dicco Baker.
Mark:Those characters are, you know, these eccentric miners living in holes in the ground who essentially shooting kangaroos and raping women on the highway. It's just
Andy:Right. They're horrible, but they are so funny. Like, it was like that's what it was they were enjoyable in their disgustingness. Like, they were just vile people to just love.
Mark:Exactly. Vile. And it's it became this this trope across many movies that, you know, people living in the outback were these these masculine, eccentrics, mayhem on the highway, and Razorback's got all of that. It's got it's got, you know, car chases, and it's got giant animals attacking cars, and, you know, it's it's got gore. It's yeah.
Mark:It's definitely one of my faves.
Andy:Yeah. And and the hunter too. Right? I mean, the the farmer that he's working with may as well just be called the hunter because he is a very effective like, he he is what you picture of, like, the the outback hunter. Right?
Andy:He just looks like the guy who was born with that rifle on his arm. He just is, very intense. And and and he's there you know, talk about kind of exploitation. Like, the film begins with him at home taking care of his, grandson, and the razorback rips through his house, grabs the the the infant out of the crib, like, runs off of it. I'm like, wow.
Andy:Okay. That's that's a way to start the film.
Mark:Exactly. Exactly. And it at the time, that was viewed as, like, a satirical take on the Lindy Chamberlain case Mhmm. Where, you know, she she was a lady who the her baby was taken by a dingo. Yeah.
Mark:Right. Right. And at the time, the the the media didn't believe her. And so that scene is kind of like seen as like a like a parody of that, you know, like a pig stole my baby.
Andy:That's very funny.
Mark:And and and because at the time, Russell MacKay was best known for being a music video director, and so some of those scenes, particularly in the outback when the character is kind of lost, stumbling through the outback, it's almost shot like like a music video with all the smoke machines and all that type of stuff, but I think it's a fun watch. It's definitely not a typical 3 act structure genre movie by any stretch of imagination, and, Well,
Andy:and it also, you know, you know, we can, we'll move on here in a sec, but it just there is this element that we you know, you've mentioned the stories that take place in the outback. And, you know, one of the films that we'll talk about in our member bonus, content is wake and fright, which definitely ties into this. But this film also explores kind of those small town secrets, And things are happening out here and, you know, you have the quirky characters, but you also have this sense of, like, this this small town where I mean, you know, as soon as they say, hey. We think we saw it. Like, everybody goes out and jumps onto their vehicles to go go track down the pig.
Andy:It's like it's like they are a hardcore bunch who are just drinking in bars and ready to go, go out and kill pigs and stuff. So it's that's an interesting element in this film for sure.
Mark:That's something a lot of those films share. You know, it it's got that kind of bush myth kind of underwriting a lot of those characters, you know, that that was prevalent in the Barry McKenzie movies as well. You know? Like, hard drinkers, anti authoritarian, but pulled together, makeship pulls them all together and those type of things. So, yeah, you know, Razorback is is an interesting film that has a lot of the characteristics across a lot of the Ozploitation movies.
Andy:From there, I mean, Ozploitation, it did, as we've kind of talked about, the the the official. I mean, it's all kind of, you know, however you wanna define it, but it did kind of die. These genre films kind of died in the eighties. However, people, you know, was it changing audience tastes, Hollywood competition, the way that the Australian film industry was shifting. But genre films did continue and have been very, strong there, especially rising in re recent times.
Andy:How would you describe kind of the evolution Ozploitation had from its beginning all the way to this decline, specifically focusing on now and how it's this lasting legacy has kind of grown. Because, the next film we're gonna talk about, Wolf Creek 2, certainly exemplifies where it's gone from its time in the seventies eighties.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So the 19 nineties marked a massive shift in how films were supported publicly by the government. So they wound back that 10 b a scheme that was funding a lot of the films in the eighties.
Mark:And the government agencies, the Australian Film Commission, and another agency called the Film Finance Commission became direct funders or financiers of Australian movies. So a lot of the exploitation movies that were being made, kind of dried up during the nineties. Action movies, kung fu movies, you know, sci fi movies, they kind of really died off because the government agencies were were much more active in saying, this is the type of movie that that we want to be made. Essentially, government control impacted the types of genres that that were being, supported, but, also, it impacted the investment the filmmakers could raise. They felt like they were probably less able to raise money for a high budget action film under this this funding arrangement.
Mark:So, a lot of those genres really died off until late 2000 and tens. Horror continued because it you know, horror being a low budget genre, it continued through the nineties into the 2000, but, you know, your awkward comedies kind of evolved from being, you know, really vulgar and, distasteful to being, you know, just more regular comedies. Right? So occocomedy kept going, but became more mainstream less, yeah, less less kind of distasteful. And sexploitation had died off in the the kind of the early seventies, and that that was really just a a market cycle in reaction to the introduction of the, censorship scheme.
Mark:And all those action films probably became too expensive to make under this new financing regime in the nineties, but horror films got really low budget. They got very independent, and they they weren't as high budget as they were in the eighties. So some of these movies in the eighties were being made for, like, $5,000,000, which for the time in the Australian film industry was a lot of money. In the nineties, they were, you know, barely scraping over $1,000,000. They they were they were very low budget.
Mark:So you had a handful of movies like Body Melt, which was, you know, exploitation, trash, cinematography.
Andy:Free title. Yeah.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a handful of others. And then in the 2000, you really have this massive boom in horror movie production. You have a few horror movies emerging in the early 2000, like the Spirit Brothers undead, which was a ultra low budget indie movie.
Andy:And Saw?
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Saw could have been an Australian movie. They couldn't get it up in the Australian film industry, so that was kind of representative of what was happening at the time. So the the funding agencies were not funding, horror movies, so to get it funded, you had to privately finance a horror movie.
Mark:And so, Saw didn't get funded by the government system, and they couldn't get producer interest in Australia, and they went overseas. So 3 movies really kind of marked the turning point. It was undead, Saw, and then Wolf Creek. So Gotcha. Those 3 movies came out in the space of 3 years, and Wolf Creek was really the turning point.
Mark:And after Wolf Creek was made and on the back of Saw, you know, everybody was like, wow, these guys just made a $100,000,000 from a $1,000,000 budget. We can so do that in Australia.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right.
Mark:And then Wolf Creek really kinda solidified that. And so after that, you know, horror has never looked back.
Andy:Gotcha.
Mark:In the late 2000, a new funding model came in called the producer offset, and so that's like a revamp of the 10 b a. It's it's a it's a tax offset where you get 40% of your budget back on whatever you raise, and there's no cap. So if you raise $30,000,000 to make a movie, you will get 40% of that money back at the end of the process from the government. So it's a really lucrative kind of incentive to make films.
Andy:Right. It's it's kinda like the tax incentives across, America in different states. Like, New Mexico has such huge tax incentives these days and drawing filmmakers there to make movies.
Mark:Right. And there's there's no kinda limits on the types of movies you can make. There's no limits on the budgets. So when that was instigated in 2,007, by the 2,000 tens, Australia is making a ton of genre movies again, and we continue to make them. So a lot of those kind of genres that were being made back in the ausploitation period are now being made again here in Australia, but it was really a long kind of hiatus where most of them were not being made even though horror continued to be made across all of those decades.
Andy:Yeah. Alright. Kind of a nice rebirth of it. Yeah. To that end, let's talk about Wolf Creek 2.
Andy:Specifically, you picked the sequel, as opposed to the first one because you said it it, to a certain extent, represents Ozploitation, more than the first film. What is it about this one that that, fits more, as you would say, into Ozploitation than the first one?
Mark:I think if you watch the film side by side, the first movie was really you know, it it it was a violent movie. It was exquis graphically explicit, and it was a very visceral film, but it was very much true to the story. 2 thirds of the movie, Greg McLean is building this tension about these young backpackers going deeper and deeper into the outback. He's building their relationships, and they meet this hunter and, you know, things go south from there. And so there's a lot of explicit sexual, violence in it and and and and so on.
Mark:So it is graphic, it is visceral, but it's very much true to the story. It's it's just a solid genre picture which, you know, some people have argued is gratuitous because of how graphic some of the violence is, like a head on a stick and so on. I don't agree with all of those criticisms, but it it it's a solid genre picture.
Andy:Right.
Mark:And when when when you look at Wolf Creek 2, and you've got to, understand that this movie is well and truly in the wake of the not quite Hollywood documentary, and so that documentary really solidified all these characteristics of what Ozploitation is. And then Wolf Creek 2, the opening so 2 thirds of Wolf Creek, nothing happens. It's like a road trip movie. Right? Where these characters, they're they're tripping through the outback, and it's it's it builds a little bit of suspense.
Andy:Right. They go to Wolf Creek to see this crater and, right. Then their car breaks down. Right. There's a lot of buildup to the story before we really find out exactly what Mick Taylor is up to.
Mark:Exactly. And then the first sequence of wolf grid 2 revolves around these cops pulling over Mick Taylor on a highway on a trumped up charge. They're just bored, so they're like, oh, let's give this guy a ticket. They don't realize he's a serial killer. And so once they pull away, he obviously he shoots 1 in the head, pulls the other one out, service his spine, the whole head on a stick scene, which was the notorious violent scene in the original, and then throws him back into a burning car.
Mark:And so that's the first sequence of the movie, and then within about 5 minutes of screen time, he's cutting off the penis of a of a German backpacker. He's, like, dismembering the the body for a dog, and the whole movie is an action sequence, just chasing this survivor through the outback, and Mick Taylor just slaughtering everybody in in his way, and it's the action sequences are over the top. The violence is just in bad taste, and then there's the famous scene at the end of the movie where he he has the backpacker that he's he's run across the desert. He's finally caught him, taken him back to his lair, and he's doing this jilted kind of cultural quiz to see, you know, he he he offers the guy his freedom if he can beat Mick Taylor in this cultural quiz because, the second one, he's he's way more xenophobic. He hates any, you know, any foreigner, and basically, it's implied he's just out there killing foreigners in the outback, essentially.
Mark:And so the quiz is just, you know, famous cricketers, cultural songs, you know, cultural knowledge, and it's just this weird kind of satirization of of national culturalism and the Barry McKenzie kind of, game show at the end for the British to kind of test their citizenship. The whole thing is just tongue in cheek, bad taste, kind of there's there's kind of knowing nod to the audience that this is kind of over the top, you're gonna get a lot of gore. And so, if you watch those 2 films side by side, you can see that Greg McLean is really aware of the ospoitation heritage, and he's kind of giving a nod to a lot of these films. There's a scene where there's a there's a big pack of kangaroos on the highway, and Mick Taylor's in a in a Mack truck, and he just mows them all over. He runs them all over, and and they're, like, bouncing off the bonnet of the car, and it's kind of like almost this this, homage to road games or and, you know, the action sequences are homages to Mad Max and all all these things.
Mark:So that movie is pure exploitation. It's over the top. It's, exploitative. It's it's lowest common denominator. It's bad taste.
Mark:It's, you know, all these type of things where I think you can make the argument that Wolf Creek is trying to be a solid genre pitcher, and so in the in the Hartley documentary, he's trying to say that Wolf Creek marks this renaissance of exploitation, but before the documentary came out, there wasn't a strong sense of what exploitation was because there were all these disparate films.
Andy:Yeah.
Mark:So no one identified as making an exploitation film because the category didn't exist until that documentary.
Andy:Right. Right. Right. So
Mark:it was this false claim almost. Whereas now, once you get to Wolf Creek 2, you can see the filmmakers embrace it. They're they're playing up to it. They're trying to be an exploitation film. They're they're throwing back to the eighties seventies and trying to outdo films from the seventies eighties.
Andy:Well and they're having a lot of fun doing it. I mean, it is over the top violent, crazy, John Jarratt, who, is it's funny, like, watching, like, all of these Australian films. I had this was my first experience with him, as an actor. And so I had so burned Mick Taylor into my head that by the time I'm watching, like, dark age and and some of these other films like next of kin that he's in, I'm just like, oh, wait. That's that's that crazy serial killer guy.
Mark:Yeah.
Andy:He is he seems like the nicest guy in those other movies, and he's just he is perfect as this very sadistic, serial killer who's just you know, he once he's kind of got you in his sights, he just never looks back. And it's a lot of fun to see what they're doing with the second film, and they do. I mean, to your point about, like, how it's even expanding the auto exploitation, I mean, it's like we're going across the Outback with it with it on this road trip journey as he's chasing this guy. I mean, you know, on in cars when he's, you know, fleeing in the car, but then his car dies. And now our our one backpacker, he's on foot.
Andy:And he after he goes down the side of the the mountain, Mick Taylor, like, drives the semi down at him. Like, now they're on foot, and he's running. And it's just it just kept going. And it was really fun to watch how they really took it. You know, in in the scope of, like, you know, sequels, you know, that's often the story anyway.
Andy:Like, what can we do to expand the world? And they're certainly doing that here, but it does feel like they're amping up that kind of Australian energy. It, like, even singing, like, tie me kangaroo down, you know, as Yeah. As they're singing at one point.
Mark:It's so bizarre that scene, isn't it? Like, they're just singing this cultural song in the end, you know, We're we're tortured just around the corner.
Andy:Right. He's trying to figure out what can what else do I know that's Australian that I can use in my favor to keep this guy from killing me. Yeah.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah.
Andy:Yeah. It is it's so much fun. I you know, let's start wrapping up the conversation. It's been, really interesting talking about all of these different movies and just Ozploitation in general. For our members, we are gonna look at a few other films afterward.
Andy:We're gonna talk about Wake and Fright, Long Weekend, Road Games, BMX bandits, and dark age. As we're kind of wrapping up, there's been just kind of talking about what Ozploitation has gone on to influence and everything. I mean, it's obviously, there's been an impact on Australian and international cinema, especially kind of since that documentary has kind of, like, created this this, lump sum, we'll just say. But it's, it's definitely kind of contributed to global recognition of Australian film. Filmmakers have been influenced, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez.
Andy:What do you think are some of these key elements of we'll just keep saying this Ozploitation, umbrella that all of these on are under that's really resonated with international audiences and filmmakers? And and as far as it's the spirit of it, what do you see in that spirit to kind of continue shaping Australian cinema, moving forward in the future?
Mark:I think a a reckless abandoned in terms of both, you know, action sequences, particularly on the road, but also, you you know, a flamboyant type of filmmaking that that is that makes these action sequences possible. I think a lot of filmmakers still strive for that. So that's more a process production process element, but I think quirky characters, is a big one. You know, eccentrics is kind of a a discourse in Australian cinema, but characters who are just bizarre that are more character show than character. But so when you combine eccentrics with road rage and action sequences on, you know, desert highways.
Mark:I think those those couple of elements have have become quite prominent in in this, exploitation movies, and I think bizarre plots, plots that kind of are atypical. So something that's non conventional to, perhaps, American standards that the character behaviors are strange. It doesn't follow a typical narrative pattern that that we've seen before. Odd instances happen, and and somehow, you know, landscapes get brought into it and and so on. So I think that that kind of mix of elements have have become common for exploitation, but it's just a bit of an Australian flavor as well.
Mark:So I think when you have Australian characters, Australian accents, Australian landscapes, and you throw all those elements into the mix, you get this Aussie sensibility within the broader context of an exploitation genre picture, which is different to to what you're getting in British cinema or or American cinema and so on. So I think that's something that that people kind of enjoy and and has become characteristic. So these days, like in seventies and eighties, some exploitation filmmakers tried to hide the strangeness. They tried to pretend to be American movies, and that that got a lot of critical backlash. But these days, I think ausploitation filmmakers are really kind of like embracing the Aussiness and Aussie sensibility, whether it's, you know, big, broad accents, the the weird Aussie unique quirky characters, Aussie landscapes, those type of things, I think, are really kind of at the center of what exploitation filmmaking is now.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. The have you seen, Relic? The I think it came out, like, 2020.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. That's another film, like, an Australian film that it goes down such a strange road by the time we get to the end as far as its depiction of, like, Alzheimer's or whatever it's kind of describing that it was it was an interesting glimpse into, like, the way that that film handled a lot of the horrific elements in it that I I found to be fascinating.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. A little bit more elevated that one, isn't it? Sure. Yeah.
Mark:It's like yeah. Yeah. And Babadook is another one. Right? Like Yeah.
Mark:You feel like there's parts of it, you feel like you're watching, like, a lynchian nightmare or something like that. But it's Yeah. It's kind of like this slow unfolding, you know, nightmare about this woman who doesn't like a child, and maybe there's a monster, but maybe the monster's her Yeah. So, and that that's the thing with exploitation, right? I think those movies are probably more elevated, and and it speaks to the diversity of Australian genre filmmaking at the moment, but also quotation is definitely a distinct part of what we make here, but it's not the only thing that we make here.
Andy:Yeah. And it that's that's the key thing to remember is, like, it it's it it is now kind of this handy umbrella to put things under, but there still is a wide variety under that. And it's all, it's all interesting to kind of look at in its own right.
Mark:Yeah. For sure.
Andy:Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining me, today. It's been a thrill talking to you about Ausploitation and all of these films and just getting a better, a better grasp on all of this.
Mark:No worries. Thanks for having me, Andy. It's been great to talk to you about it all. I I I love talking about exploitation films, so it's been great to be able to talk to you about it, in all honesty.
Andy:No. It's been fun. Mark, any any socials or any anything you're working on right now that, you wanna tell people?
Mark:I am working on a comprehensive history of Australian horror movies from silent cinema to now, and that will hopefully be done at the end of this year.
Andy:Fantastic.
Mark:And my main social is just my LinkedIn profile, which is Mark David Ryan slash Mark David Ryan.
Andy:Great. Okay. Well, this is so much fun. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me.
Andy:Before we close, members, don't forget about our special bonus segment. After all of this, we're gonna talk about 5 more Ozploitation films to further deepen our understanding of this wild and unruly movement. If you're not a member yet but you, would like to join us on this extended exploration, visit the next real dot com slash membership to access the exclusive content. Next month, we will be diving into the vibrant world of anime, examining its diverse genres, styles, and cultural significance. Join us as we uncover the captivating stories and visuals that have made anime a global phenomenon.
Andy:Thank you for joining us on CinemaScope, part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network. Music by Orcus and Tarante Groove Machine. Find us in the entire NextReel family of film podcast at true story dot f m. Follow us on social media at the next reel, and please rate and review us if your podcast app allows. As we part ways, remember your cinematic journey never ends.
Andy:Stay curious.