Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 12:21:56 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Aussie Genre/Exploitation films

Started by Sebastian Cobb, April 12, 2021, 09:00:34 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Sebastian Cobb

Yeah I enjoyed those mystery road films. Jackie Weaver plays a good evil politician (also I saw her doing the same in some Netflix docu about government surveillance).

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: studpuppet on April 13, 2021, 10:31:28 PM
How the fuck did this get so far down with no one mentioning The Castle?
Someone may have already replied to this, but the obvious answer is "because it's not a genre or exploitation film".

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: phantom_power on April 13, 2021, 09:14:43 AM
Turkey Shoot is dogshit

The bit where Thatcher explodes at the end is great though.

kaprisky

For those of you that have access to London Live then you will probably be aware of Centrespread and Felicity (sleazy trash but with catchy pop songs). Mad Dog Morgan has also played on there and should be seen alongside The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (also shown) for comparison.

My money would be on Money Movers (seen on Talking Pictures). Another of Beresford's films, The Getting of Wisdom (not exploitation) has been on LL and is one of the best films I've seen over the past year while The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is on there in a couple of weeks.

Also worth a watch is Summerfield (another shown on LL).


dissolute ocelot

I'll second zomgmouse's vote for The Loved One, even if it's more recent than some of these. I caught it by chance on the Horror Channel or SyFy or something like that, and it's a very entertaining, very bloody teen horror comedy with a good moral message. (Although there are a lot of people complaining on IMDb that it Americanizes the Australian high school formal dance into something closer to the cliched school Prom.)

I've had Dead End Drive In on DVD for about 3 years without ever watching it. If I do, I'll report back.

zomgmouse

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on April 14, 2021, 03:42:02 PM
That's a great film (I believe it's "available" online). The Mystery Road movies (especially the second one) are also decent (modern day) outback westerns, though the later TV series drags things out a bit.

Upgrade is a solid Aussie SF thriller - they don't specifically mention which futuristic city it's set in and the main cast are all either Americans or bunging on a US accent, but the use of Melbourne's "futuristic" (not futuristic at all) Bolte Bridge as the back drop was a good laugh for the locals.

Upgrade is quite good pulpy stuff! If we're talking of genre films with Melbourne locations, Predestination would be my pick. Also just realised the Spierig brothers are Australian.

I much preferred the first Mystery Road to be honest. If you'd like another (less genrey) film by the same director I can recommend Toomelah.

Quote from: samadriel on April 14, 2021, 06:33:54 AM
A recent genre film I mistakenly mentioned in the non-new films thread is High Ground, a western about the aftermath of an Aboriginal massacre. Not gory, but certainly genre, with gunfights and a spearing or two. I recommend it, although I don't know how you'd get a hold of it in the UK.

Didn't mind this but it felt a little too white-centric for the tale it was telling for me to fully like it. Shot well though. As for how to get a hold of it, through "the usual channels" is my answer.

Jennifer Kent's The Babadook and The Nightingale would probably fit this thread for latter-day incarnations, too.

samadriel

Quote from: zomgmouse on April 16, 2021, 12:56:22 AM

Didn't mind this but it felt a little too white-centric for the tale it was telling for me to fully like it. Shot well though. As for how to get a hold of it, through "the usual channels" is my answer.

That's often my position on films and TV which purport to discuss race relations in Australia, (*samadriel mentions he's indigenous again*), but I felt like High Ground didn't claim to make its main focus the indigenous cast, so it was okay to focus on whitey, particularly as it also looked at Aboriginal massacres -- if you're going to talk about them, you've got to give some focus to the white men who did it. I thought Gutjuk and Baywara and the old man were quality characters who got a fairer amount of screen time than one might normally expect of a "white" Australian movie, so I didn't mind that Simon Baker was the star.

zomgmouse

Quote from: samadriel on April 16, 2021, 03:42:19 AM
That's often my position on films and TV which purport to discuss race relations in Australia, (*samadriel mentions he's indigenous again*), but I felt like High Ground didn't claim to make its main focus the indigenous cast, so it was okay to focus on whitey, particularly as it also looked at Aboriginal massacres -- if you're going to talk about them, you've got to give some focus to the white men who did it. I thought Gutjuk and Baywara and the old man were quality characters who got a fairer amount of screen time than one might normally expect of a "white" Australian movie, so I didn't mind that Simon Baker was the star.

I get where you're coming from but I still think "didn't claim to make its main focus the indigenous cast" is the film's primary problem. Some focus on the white people is surely okay but it felt overwhelmingly told from their perspective. But yes as you say perhaps we do get to see a little more of the indigenous characters than usual.

13 schoolyards

I was slightly surprised that High Ground was as much of a traditional western (well, an Aussie spin on one) as it was - the publicity really played up the indigenous angle, so much so that I also felt a bit let down that the focus was so firmly on the white characters. But thinking about it, that was probably more my problem than the films, as - as Samadriel says - it never presented itself as anything but an ensemble western with Baker as the nominal lead.

Speaking of decent Aussie westerns, has anyone here mentioned the extremely sweaty The Proposition? And if you want an Aussie western only set (slightly) in the future, The Rover has its moments despite basically being "what if we did Mad Max but left out all the car stuff?"

phantom_power

Wyrmwood is a good Aussie zombie film with some interesting ideas

Sebastian Cobb

By the way if anyone is after some of these it seems quite a few aren't well seeded on the usual sources but spookyflix has links for a lot of them (and you can filter by ozploitation genre). Capped download speed though so it requires patience.

Sebastian Cobb

I watched Roadgames last night which was excellent. Also started watching The Long Weekend but dozed off a bit, what I saw was alright though.

Sebastian Cobb

I watched Mad Dog Morgan last night. It was pretty good but also all over the shop, would recommend.

George White

Has anyone else ever seen Les Patterson Saves the World?
It's  a weird film - because it has Madge Allsop as a central character, but she talks, and is played by a different actress, as Emily Perry hadn't taken over, and the previous Madge, Madeleine Orr had died.
Set in an Arab state full of actors browned up - including Hugh Keays-Byrne in nipple tassels as a transvestite military captain, and Aussie/US soap actor Thaoo Penghlis.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9777730/?ref_=nm_knf_i4 Tyrone Zollo's short the Desperate is a nice Aussie horror.

Shaky

Quote from: George White on April 26, 2021, 09:42:08 PM
Has anyone else ever seen Les Patterson Saves the World?
It's  a weird film - because it has Madge Allsop as a central character, but she talks, and is played by a different actress, as Emily Perry hadn't taken over, and the previous Madge, Madeleine Orr had died.
Set in an Arab state full of actors browned up - including Hugh Keays-Byrne in nipple tassels as a transvestite military captain, and Aussie/US soap actor Thaoo Penghlis.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9777730/?ref_=nm_knf_i4 Tyrone Zollo's short the Desperate is a nice Aussie horror.

Unwatchable, although I've tried.

George White

It's the Aussie equivalent of Boys in Blue or Bloodbath at House of Death.
Or Carry on Emmannuelle

Shaky

Quote from: George White on May 01, 2021, 10:36:34 AM
It's the Aussie equivalent of Boys in Blue or Bloodbath at House of Death.
Or Carry on Emmannuelle

They're all psychotically laugh-free and sort of make your head hurt just being near them.

George White

Exactly.
On the other hand, JW this. Brilliant if  overlong PI flick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Paradise#Cast