Last night SBS screened an interesting program about the Australian film industry. I only caught the tail end of it unfortunately; they were looking at the glut of crappy low budget “genre” movies made in the 70s, which seemed to feature lots of car crashes and violence, heavy on the gore. They showed commentary from Australian film directors, producers, actors and other industry types and for some reason, the US film maker Quentin Tarantino who can’t seem to utter a sentence without a big effing superlative in it!
Looked at movies such as Mad Max which gloried in cars and revenge, and another classic, Turkey Shoot which was ridiculous for the amount of blood and smashed heads, chopped off limbs and general gore and violence. Haven’t seen Turkey Shoot, not likely to!
These “genre” movies are currently enjoying a resurgence apparently, following the hit movie Wolf Creek (couple of years ago now), about a psychopath who chops up backpackers in the outback.
When this program finished for some reason I still couldn’t sleep so I stayed up to watch the old Aussie comedy classic with Barrys Humphries and Crocker – Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Extremely cringeworthy (can’t stand Edna Everage! but at least this was the days before “hello possums!”). A very cheeky swipe at “old mother England”, and beer-guzzling stereotypes in Earl’s Court, the “Australian quarter” in London. Some of the jokes in there were quite subtle and funny and some great sources of strine including “hope your chickens turn into emus and kick your dunny down”.
Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the end of the movie, which means that I will now probably want to watch it again someday just to see how it ends!