Australian distributor, Umbrella Entertainment, has stepped up their game over the last 18 months in their efforts to not only bring quality catalog titles to the market down under, but also be the first to release classic Aussie exploitation films in HD around the world. Classics like Road Games, Man From Hong Kong, Razorback (due for an upgrade soon), Body Melt, and more have found their first - and sometimes only - Blu-ray release through the speciality distributor.
We took a look at a couple of recent releases from Umbrella Entertainment and found them to be pretty decent overall, especially in a market that they have pretty much cornered at this point. Below you'll find our thoughts on early Mel Gibson actioner Attack Force Z, eco-horror killer croc film Dark Age, as well as a trio of documentaries from Australian film fanatic Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed, and Electric Boogaloo). All are worth your time, and I'd say worth your money as well.
Ozploitation veteran Tim Burstall (Alvin Purple, Stork, Petersen) directs a who's who of Australian actors in WWII action drama, Attack Force Z.
Mel Gibson leads the cast as the commander of an elite squad of commandos who've been sent to a Japanese occupied island in the South Pacific to rescue and return the survivors of a downed airplane. Along for the journey are his team, including John Waters (the actor), John Phillip Law (Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik), Chris Haywood, and a very young Sam Neill. Along the way the must make friends with the locals, who are wary of this intrusion, but even more scared of the Japanese interlopers who occupy their land.
One would imagine that with a title like Attack Force Z - apparently a real unit - that there would be action bursting from every scene, but strangely the film is rather subdued in that regard. There is the odd explosion or quick gunfight, but most of the film deals with espionage, building relationships with the locals, and even a bit of romance. The Attack Force only really gets it going in the final 10 minutes, at which point all hell breaks loose when they are on the verge of completing their mission.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the film, I definitely did, I just wish I'd had my head on straight before going in because it's not the kind of action extravaganza I'm used to seeing in early '80s Australian action.
The Disc:
Umbrella Entertainment's Blu-ray debut of Attack Force Z is decent, but not exactly a showstopper. One might be a bit put off by the first few minutes of footage, a lot of really grainy nature b-roll and what looks like stock footage, but it definitely gets better from there. Skin tones are decent, the color palette appears to be reasonable accurate, and the fine detail is about as good as one could expect without a massive restoration. The audio is similarly effective, Umbrella have included an original Stereo audio track that works just fine for me. Dialogue is clear and effects are well defined.
There is one significant extra on the disc and that is The Z-Men Debriefed, a half-hour featurette with interviews of Executive Producer John McCallum and actors John Waters and Chris Haywood. It's informative, if slight, though I suppose one could forgive them for not being able to round up some of the bigger names who've gone of to become megastars.
Attack Force Z is a fun film, and the Blu-ray is the best way to see it. If you can find it for a reasonable price and you're looking for some decent war action from a new angle, you could do a lot worse.
Another in the still ongoing wave of post-Jaws don't-go-in-the-water killer animals films, 1987's Dark Age is an Australian thriller about a killer salt water crocodile, one of the most fearsome animals on the planet.
When a conservationist in rural Australia comes across evidence of a massive croc things start to go pear-shaped as his goal to save the species from destruction collides with the need to protect human life when the big fella starts taking out the locals. Starring in the film is John Jarrett (Wolf Creek) as one of the most dogged defenders of the species who may also be the only one who can kill this out of control croc. He's aided by a pair of aboriginals played by legendary Burnham Burnham (Ground Zero) and David Gulpilil (The Tracker). With every day that passes, the body count rises, will the protector of the salt water crocodile be able to overcome his own conscience and a big fucking beast to save the day?
Dark Age is a lot of fun, and the mechanical croc they buitl for the film is actually pretty solid. They do a good job of hiding it so that it doesn't stick out too badly. The violence in the film is mostly offscreen, but there's one particular scene in which the croc attacks a child that is pretty brutal and definitely gets the job done. Australia has a love affair with giant killer animals, having made films like Razorback and going back to the crocodile well recently with Rogue, but this one defintely holds up well and is certainly the most grounded in reality of the bunch, which perhaps makes it even scarier.
The Disc:
Another Blu-ray debut from Umbrella and this new disc looks quite solid. This time around Umbrella puts together some quality extras like an audio commentary with John Jarrett and Executive Producer Antony Ginnane, along with some interview outtakes from Not Quite Hollywood with the same. Also included is a TV documentary called Living With Crocodiles featuring the author of the book that inspired Dark Age, Grahame Webb (Numunwari), which is a neat little artifact.
The best feature, bar none, is a panel discussion featuring four of Australia's most formidable film analysts, Lee Gambin, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Emma Westwood, and Sally Christie. The quartet discuss the film at length, giving plenty of background detail as well as assessing and analyzing the film and its cast in a way that is truly enlightening. If I'm not mistaken this feature was shot alongside a similar panel on the Blu-ray edition of Long Weekend, and if they recorded more of these panels I'd love to see the rest. These four experts are a lively interview and their discussions always go deeper than one might expect.
If you're a fan of animal attack films, you could do (and probably have done) a lot worse than Dark Age. It's a fun film that deserves to be rediscovered.
Speaking of Ozploitation, finally making it's Blu-ray debut is Mark Hartley's exceptional documentary on the subject, Not Quite Hollywood. Possibly one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made, NQH tracks the origins of Australian exploitation film going back to the sixties in this no holds barred tribute to a crazier time in cinema history.
Todd Brown reviewed the film upon its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival a decade ago and had this to say:
Not Quite Hollywood is a basic, talking heads sort of documentary elevated well above the pack by a trio of factors. First, the subject material is just delieriously fun. Hartley divides the film up into sections - giving the sexploitation films, horror and action titles each their own time to shine and each section does exactly that. The footage is brash and energetic, the people behind the footage equally so. Second, Hartley is an excellent interviewer, clearly adept at both putting his subjects at ease and landing the right subjects in the first place. You want to see Dennis Hopper chuckling away as he recalls spending most of a filming experience in a drunken stupor? That's in here, as is Jamie Lee Curtis talking about being resented for being the token American on set, George Lazenby denying punching his director after being lit on fire, a host of people talking about Jimmy Wang Yu being a dick, and key critics decrying the whole movement as being crap. Every one of these interviews is a gold mine. Third, Hartley is an absolutely masterful editor, intercutting the work both to get a range of opinions and also to subtly introduce larger underlying themes throughout.
Not Quite Hollywood is a worthy successor to the films it pays tribute to not only because it is an information goldmine about those films but because Not Quite Hollywood itself captures the same raw energy that draws people to cult film in the first place.
High praise that I share. I've sought out and purchased at least a dozen films featured in this documentary based solely on 2 minute clips and crazy interviews and I have yet to be disappointed. It's a great, exciting film that you absolutely must see if you haven't yet.
The Disc:
Unlike most cinema docs, NQH is a visual stunner as well as a fascinating watch. Exciting animation punctuates the talking heads and crazy clips from numerous films are all replicated with gusto here. I couldn't have asked for a better A/V experience.
In terms of extras, Umbrella goes all out. Interview outtakes from NQH have been making their way out on other related Umbrella releases for a few years now, but Not Quite Hollywood ups the ante with nine hours of bonus material for your perusal including an audio commentary featuing many of the featured filmmakers, deleted and extended scenes with commentary, even more outtakes from the film, a three hour trailer reel, and absolutely oodles of behind the scenes docs on the making of Barry McKenzie, Alvin Purple, Mad Dog Morgan, pitch sessions, a production gallery, Ozploitation panel discussions, red carpet footage, the list goes on and on. It's a bargain at twice the price!
Not Quite Hollywood is the kind of film I aspire to make someday, I find it endlessly entertaining and inspiring and if you're a fan, you definitely need this disc!
Last, but not least, is a double feature disc with two of Mark Hartley's other cinema documentaries, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, and Machete Maidens Unleashed! These films very much follow in the footsteps of Not Quite Hollywood by exploring the darker corners of exploitation cinema history in a visually engaging way, the former explores the madness spawned by Golan-Globus and the Cannon Group, the latter dissects the incredible and almost unbelievable story of the Filipino film boom of the '60s and '70s.
James Marsh reviewed Electric Boogaloo at its premiere at TIFF in 2014:
Australian documentarian Mark Hartley was the perfect choice to bring Cannon's story to the screen, after the one-two punch of Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed, which ripped the lid of the Ozploitation and Filipino genre filmmaking industries. Hartley's fast-paced MTV-style approach, stitched together through a myriad film clips, interviews and anecdotes from key collaborators, filmmakers and stars perfectly mirrors the Cannon ethos of high-energy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants filmmaking that saw Golan and Globus produce over 200 feature films in a single decade.
Electric Boogaloo brilliantly highlights the company's tactic of adopting the old studio star relationship, by bringing big name actors into the fold and churning out a multitude of projects for them. In the early days, Cannon worked with bona fide stars like Klaus Kinski and Franco Nero, to wildly fluctuating effect, as well attempting soft porn vehicles for a drug and booze-addled Sylvia Kristel. They created a multitude of roles for a veteran Charles Bronson, who was already well into his 60s when Golan resurrected his seminal role in Death Wish for a string of inferior and increasingly ludicrous sequels with Michael Winner.
While Charles Webb reviewed Machete Maidens Unleashed!
More than anything else, though, Machete Maidens stands as a document of the period of exploitation film driven by Roger Corman as witnessed by graduates of the "Roger Corman Film School." Some of the best parts of the doc feature directors like Landis, Dante, and Jonathan Demme detailing their time under Corman, and this is truly where the documentary's heart seems to lie. In interviews for the film, the former Corman proteges come off as boys who resent the old man while still carrying some affection for him. What I wouldn't give for a doc by Hartley charting these directors time under Corman's tutelage. As for the sly old fox himself, having reached the status of an elder statesman of film thanks to an honorary Oscar, he kind of rolls his eyes at the material he produced and distributed during this era, effectively wiping his hands of the movies featured here, although he never goes so far as to say the money wasn't good.
Hartley does very good work here, but Machete Maidens is disappointing because he did close-to-great work with Not Quite Hollywood, presenting what felt like a full picture of an era of film in that documentary. Here, over the hour and a half running time, it feels like we only get tantalizing bits and pieces of a larger story from one of the most electrifying periods of low-budget filmmaking in history. Still, I'd urge you to seek it out, simply to learn the bit that Hartley has documented here, and then for a good time, check out some of the low budget cheapies that the director lovingly documents here.
I find myself aligning pretty well with both of their opinions. While I really enjoy Electric Boogaloo, it does stand a half step below NQH, and Machete Maidens Unleashed perhaps a full step. Both are still endlessly entertaining, but there was a passion and the feeling the Hartley caught lightning in a bottle with Not Quite Hollywood. Still, with both on one Blu-ray disc, that's a hell of a bargain.
The Disc:
Umbrella presents this duo of cinema docs on a single, all-region Blu-ray disc (as are all of the discs reviewed today) and it looks great. The A/V is as good as one might expect from a talking head documentary and the HD upgrade does a good job of highlighting Hartley's flair for visuals.
The extras are plentiful, as with all of Umbrella's Ozploitation discs. The disc packs in plenty of interview outtakes from heavy hitters like Michael Dudikoff, crazy amazing trailer reels for each film, an audio commentary for Machete Maidens Unleashed, and just about everything a fan could wish for. These are definitely worth the upgrade!