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Category Archives: Ozsploitation
10 great Australian westerns

To mark the UK release of The True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), Justin Kurzel’s bold reimagining of the sage one of Australia’s most famous myths, bushranger Ned Kelly, the British Film Institute asked me to write about my ten favourite Australian westerns. Not only is Ned Kelly Australia’s most famous bushranger – the name given to convicts who had escaped and survived Australia’s harsh environment to become outlaws – his legend forms a mini industry in film and television. In addition to Kurzel’s, Kelly has been the subject of eight films. The Kelly filmography forms part of a larger of body of Australian westerns, made by overseas and local concerns. You can read my piece in full at the BFI site here.
Posted in Australian crime film, Australian noir, Australian popular culture, Australian television history, Bryan Brown, Crime fiction, Ozsploitation, Westerns
Tagged Australian westerns, Bryan Brown, Justin Kurzal, Ned kelly, Sweet Country (2019), The True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), Westerns
10 great Australian crime films
To mark the addition of Ivan Sen’s 2016 film, Goldstone, to BFI Player, I was asked to write on 10 great Australian crime films. The piece is live and can be read in full on the BFI site here.
Posted in 60s American crime films, Australian crime fiction, Australian crime film, Australian noir, Australian popular culture, Australian television history, Bryan Brown, Crime film, Ozsploitation, Peter Corris, True crime
Tagged Animal House (2010), Australian crime film, Blue Murder (1995), Chopper 2000, Goldstone (2016), Heatwave (1982), Ivan Sen, Money Movers (1977), Shame (1988), The Boys (1998), The Empty Beach (1985), Two Hands (1999)
Pulp Friday: Patrick
I am partial to a good paperback movie tie-in and this week’s Pulp Curry features a beauty, Patrick, which I found in an excellent second hand book shop during recent travels in rural Victoria.
Published by Sun Books in 1978, the novel is based on the original screenplay by Everett de Roche of the influential Ozploitation film of the same name about man in a coma after murdering his mother and her lover by electrocuting them in a bath. The man, Patrick (Robert Thomspon), who strange psychokinetic powers, falls in love with his nurse, Kathy (Susan Penhaligon) communicating with her via an electric typewriter. He also uses his powers to ward off other potential male suiters in Kathy’s life and battle the hospital staff, particularly the Nurse Ratched-like Matron, Cassidy (Julia Blake).
The book was written Australian writer Keith Hetherington, who we have featured previously on this site. Hetherington, who was born in 1929 and I believe is still alive, had a long career, including writing Westerns and Larry Kent crime thrillers for Cleveland Publishing, fiction for Man and Pocket Man magazine, radio plays, television scripts, and various stand alone thrillers and a paperback tie ins for films such as Snapshot (1979) and The Chain Reaction (1980).
I love the cover for this paperback tie in, Robert Thompson aka Patrick’s creepy, penetrating eyes, although the copy I have, from which the front and back cover scan is taken, is slightly askew, the product of a printing fault.… Read more
Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Horror, Ozsploitation, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Science fiction and fantasy
Tagged Julia Blake, Keith Hetherington, Man, Patrick (1978), Pocket Man, Robert Thomspon, Snapshot (1979), Sun Books, Susan Penhaligon, The Chain Reaction (1980
10 great biker films
This September, the living dead won’t be shuffling on to the screen, they’ll roar across it on the back of motorcycles, as the BFI releases its Blu-ray of Australian-born director Don Sharp’s 1973 cult film, Psychomania, a fusion of two obsessions of early 70s exploitation cinema: the occult and vicious motorcycle packs.
Motorcycle gangs first appeared on the big screen in the early 1950s. A trickle of motorcycle-themed film appeared until the mid-60s, but it wasn’t until the release of US gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s 1966 book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs and then the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway concert, at which Hells Angels working as bouncers killed an audience member, that popular culture’s preoccupation with criminal motorcycle gangs reached fever pitch.
Hollywood produced a deluge of outlaw biker movies and, while this has been the motorcycle’s most common screen manifestation, the machines have also symbolised the quest for freedom and self-discovery.
What are your favourite films featuring motorcycles?