Documenting exploitation

In the past couple of years there's been quite a bit of these documentaries about old exploitation movies. As I watched some of them recently I decided to gather them up here in one big post.













Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

Even though this one is almost 5 years old, I'll still include it here as it kind of started this new boom for documentaries about genre cinema. This one focuses on ozploitation, the Australian exploitation cinema. It starts from the goofy sex comedies, continuing through the bloody horror flicks and sleazy violence movies, ending to the high octane road rage movies. The genre in itself was quite unknown to me before I first saw this documentary. I mean sure I had seen the Mad Max movies and a few other, but most of them I didn't know even existed. It's a highly interesting look into the history of Australian cinema, or the lack of it in some cases, with plenty of weird, crazy and fascinating films you most likely have never heard of. But the great thing about this documentary is that it makes you want to see these movies, at least I searched through the DVD stores for ozploitation after I first saw this. There's a great selection of ozploitation film makers, actors, actresses, film critics, stuntmen, producers and fans voicing out their experiences and opinions. The talking heads are balanced with a plethora of scenes from these wicked and sometimes simply lunatic movies. Anyone who cares even a bit about movies should get something out of this documentary and exploitation film fans will just love it.
85%

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)

This one is from Mark Hartley as well, but instead of Australia this one focuses on those genre movies made in the Philippines. Just like the previous one this is highly entertaining look at these wild movies. It might not be the most in-depth look, but still there's some movies in it even I hadn't heard of before, so it's more than enough for a documentary like this. It covers the most notable and weird movies from the 60's to the early 80's. It goes from the early schlock horror flicks and the women-in-prison movies to the late 70's - early 80's kung-fu and war movies. Of course not forgetting Philippines biggest movie star, the tiny powerhouse Weng Weng. Again there's lots of talking heads, with a nice selection of actors, actresses, directors, producers, cinematographers and so on. For example Roger Corman, Sid Haig, Pam Grier, Eddie Romero and Cirio H. Santiago just to name a few. The talking heads are balanced with plenty of clips from various movies in question. This was a highly entertaining documentary about a weird time in the movie history, I warmly recommend it to all exploitation movie fans and even to people who know nothing about them just to see how crazy it was back then.
80%

American Grindhouse (2010)

This one is a general overview of the Grindhouse cinema and mostly the exploitation movies it involved. It starts all the way back in the invention of cinema and the silent exploitative films and ends up in the modern homages to the genre. Covering in between pretty much everything which was Grindhouse cinema, though quite notably it leaves out the European exploitation movies which were quite a big part of the genre. But it's called American Grindhouse after all, so that's where it focuses, the American exploitation cinema. Even though this one is missing some big American names as well like Roger Corman for example, it's still a great quick look on what the Grindhouse cinema was all about. As it tries to cover such a large variety of Grindhouse movies it of course left me wanting a bit more in-depth look at them, but I guess that would have made this documentary quite boring for everyone else except the Grindhouse fans. All in all quite an entertaining documentary.
75%

Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen Era (2011)

This movie focuses on three of the most notable horror B-movie scream queens; Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer. They weren't the first ones and definitely not the last ones, but I would say they are the most famous, at least to 80's horror B-movie fans, so it's a perfect selection. First this documentary gives a small introduction to drive-in cinema and the video boom which killed the drive-in venues. Then it focuses on the trio going from the late 70's to the golden age of the 80's and from there to the 90's when the genre kind of started to die and even to the 2000's where the video camera had become the number one tool of the B-movie makers. The quality of this documentary can't stand comparison to the previous three as it's clearly a smaller scale work and very narrowly focused on the three scream queens and their work. But that's actually not a bad thing, for me as a horror fan growing up with some of these movies it was quite a fun nostalgic trip down memory lane. Though I kind of doubt anyone else but horror fans get anything out of this one.
70%

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

As the title says, this movie is all about Roger Corman, the "King of the B's". The film starts off with Roger Corman on the set of some of his recent horrible movies for the Syfy channel. Then it goes back in time right to the start of his career and works itself back up again. Out of all of these documentaries this must have the most "prestigious" group of people having their say on Corman's life. With people like Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Peter Fonda you see that Corman's movies were the early playgrounds for some of the biggest stars. Funny thing I noticed is that Joe Dante seems to be the go-to guy when someone needs someone to talk about exploitation cinema as he's in three of these documentaries. Anyway when you are doing a quick documentary about a man who has produced almost 400 movies you are bound to leave some good ones out. Well saying good about a Roger Corman movie doesn't sound right, but you get the point, the ones which are so bad they are brilliant. But that didn't really matter, it still has most of the notable ones and plenty of the campy ones to keep you entertained. I actually learned quite a bit from this documentary, like that Corman almost produced Easy Rider (1969) and he wanted to make Mean Streets (1973) as blaxploitation, just to mention a few. Then again I have never really had the interest in digging into his movies that much, even though I do love some of the pre 80's ones. Lets face it, most of the movies in his filmography are crap and Jack Nicholson said it best; "By mistake he actually made a good picture every once and a while". In the end this was a very entertaining documentary which barely scratched the surface of the filmography of Roger Corman and might be a good watch for people who don't even know who Roger Corman is.
72%