What a great documentary this is!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have generally had my fill of documentaries. Most of them are just made by some opinionated blowhard doing everything possible to make it seem that complex, gray issues are either black or white. Just about every documentary is guilty of the selective presentation of facts. If they wanted to make Albert Schweitzer seem like a bad dude, they’d focus the entire film on the one time when he borrowed his neighbor’s tools without permission, and ignore his lifetime of altruism. Some documentarians do worse things, often basing their “conclusions” on staged incidents, deliberate misinterpretations, or even outright lies. For the most part, the guys who make documentaries are the same kinds of guys who write letters to the editor, except that they have enough money to buy a camera. In many cases, the documentaries are actually harmful in that they allow a completely false idea to take hold and become common wisdom.

The only way you can get me to watch a documentary is if it meets these criteria:

1) It is about a subject I’m interested in.

2) The subject matter is something better presented on screen than on paper.

3) The subject is presented by genuine experts in their field, who offer their insights with intelligence and humor, and present various contrasting points of view.

For this film: check, check, and check.

NQH is the story of Aussie exploitation cinema from 1970-85, and it reflects the similarities and differences between the way B-movies were made in Australia and in the USA. It mixes familiar films with lost cultural artifacts. Because it consists of plenty of actual footage from the films, it is a topic ideally suited to be covered in another film rather than in an essay or on a web page. Intercut with the clips are the reminiscences and insights of the creators and actors looking back at that era, all of whom seem to be filled with charm, self-deprecating wit and funny insider stories. In addition, there are droll comments from film critics, and bubbling enthusiasm from the ultimate genius of the exploitation film world, Mr. Quentin Tarantino himself, who can recite these films frame-by-frame as easily as Kenneth Branagh can recite Shakespearian monologues.

Oh, yeah, and it’s filled with nudity. In fact, the first third of the film is basically non-stop nudity, since it’s about sex films. The middle third is about horror films, and the final act is dedicated to specialty action pictures featuring Kung Fu, cars, and bikes.

If you were to see the actual films being discussed, you would not share Tarantino’s passion for them because almost every one of those 90-minute films probably contains 89 minutes worth of unwatchable dreck, but Tarantino is absolutely right in that they all seem to include a few spectacular and/or memorable moments. The documentary only has time for those moments, so the difference between watching those mediocre movies and watching this documentary is precisely the same as the difference between watching every minute of every major league baseball game in a day and watching Sports Center. In fact Sports Center is a perfect analogy, because Not Quite Hollywood is the highlight reel for Aussie B-movies of that era, spiced with funny commentary.

And, unlike Sports Center, it has the additional advantage of tits.

Given that it’s informative, sexy and funny, which is everything I try for here, I’d have to say I’d recommend this one to anyone who would be reading this page in the first place.

From the infinite resource of 28 years of Uncle Scoopy’s Fun House:

Here are all of my DVD-quality film clips.

Included are:

Susannah York and others in Eliza Fraser
Sigrid Thornton in Snapshot.
Rebecca Gilling in The Man From Hong Kong
Nina Landis in Nightmares
Imogen Annesley in Howling III – (Insider Trivia: this role almost went to Nicole Kidman.)
Glory Annen in Felicity
The women of Fantasm (not to mention the legendary John Holmes)
The women of Fantasm Comes Again
Cassandra Delaney in Fair Game
The women of Australia After Dark
Arna-Maria Winchester in The Chain Reaction
The women of the Alvin Purple movies.
“Abigail” in Eskimo Nell.
The women of ABC of Love and Sex
The women of 96.

Note: I did those DVD clips in 2010 or 2011, and there was no Region 1 DVD available, so I had to figure out how to view and capture a DVD from another region. Things have improved since then! Amazon now offers this film in Blu-Ray (two different regions available) as well as HD streaming.

Disclaimers: (1) I have not reviewed those recent versions; (2) I get no commission if you purchase them.

Tuna’s overview of Mia Kirshner in the L Word ended yesterday. The focus shifts to Leisha Hailey, beginning with s1e8:


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Leisha also did some nudity in the sequel series, Generation Q. Eighteen years separate these two scenes! Season one of The L Word, pictured above, came out in 2004. Season three of Generation Q, linked earlier in this paragraph, came out in 2022!

Johnny Moronic says: “The movie seems to be only available as a bootleg workprint. The version I have has no tail credits and a timecode. Better than nothing I guess.”

VHS captures.


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Unless you are Australian you have probably never heard of this film. Even if you are Australian, you may never have heard of it unless you are a major film buff, but it played a role in the history of Aussie filmmaking.

As Miles Ago points out, “Although it was a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release and has rarely been seen since, Two Thousand Weeks (aka 2000 Weeks) was a landmark for the Australian film industry, since it was the first all-Australian feature film to gain a mainstream cinema release in Australia since 1958.”

It represented the first film of Tim Burstall, who began his career with a dream of being a respected auteur. When this heartfelt artistic film bombed, he did a 180 and started to produce audience-pleasing junk films like Alvin Purple, a notorious sex farce.

You can learn everything you could possibly want to know about this film here

And you can see Johnny Moronic’s film clips here.

AKA “The Angel Maker”

The pitch:

“Detective Laura has been on sick leave after suffering from postpartum depression, but when she and her partner become involved in a case concerning a sadistic serial killer, it becomes increasingly clear that she herself is hiding a dark secret.”


Bella Norup

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Carla Marie Clausen

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Julie R Olgaard

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Linnea Olivia Belfrage

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AKA “Guardians of the Formula”

One reviewer noted:

“Filmmaker Dragan Bjelogrlic’s startling, intense and powerful new drama, Guardians of the Formula, could make for a companion piece to this year’s mega-hit, Oppenheimer. Alexis Manenti is the movie’s central star and the actor delivers a terrifically complex performance that helps drive Guardians of the Formula. Manenti portrays Dr. Georges Mathé, a knowledgeable man of character who is challenged immensely when three Yugoslav physicists and their distinguished professor, Dragoslav Popovic (Radivoje Bukvic) are exposed to lethal radiation while working on a top secret project involving nuclear weapons.”


Alise Radakovic

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Anne Serra

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Maja Campari

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(s4e4)

Depressing scene. She commits suicide by walking naked into the frozen ocean, ever farther from shore until the ice can no longer support her.

Warning: It could be a body double. When her face is in the frame, the camera goes no lower than her shoulders. When the nudity begins, she already has her back to the camera.

But for you completists:

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