GIALLO, POST APOCALYPSE, and OZPLOITATION: a rich menu at the OFFSCREEN FILM FESTIVAL…

The Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels recently programmed a section on OZPLOITATION. (Sexy buzzword for Australian genre movies 1970-1986) Festival honcho Dirk Van Extergem invited Mark Hartley, creator of NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (trailer), Richard Brennan, producer of LONG WEEKEND (trailer), a classy Ozploitation example, and myself, your humble genre director and Hollywood’s best kept secret, who, I confess, also made the aforelinked LW trailer in my purple prose period of promo narration back in the Seventies. Trailers were too long in those days - nowadays they give too much away, like key images and surprises, diminishing dramatic impact for the customer in the quest for the best opening weekend box office. It is a difficult balance of responsibilities to maintain, I grant you, and my LW trailer is guilty too, though it was considered a grabber of a trailer in 1978. Today I would propel the structure at twice the speed and replace the narration with slick titles.

 

As was evidenced at the Festival screening, LONG WEEKEND, in a brand new Scope print, holds up very well today 32 years after it was shot. It still delivers ecology, suspense and a slow motion emotional train wreck, driven by a stellar performance from the late John Hargreaves. Sound Design professionals might also appreciate the complexity of the sound track, which adds greatly to mood and tension, a really sophisticated job from a fledgling film industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Offscreen is a great new offbeat Festival. Here’s a link to the website. Their manifesto: “to be a showcase for unusual and independent talent, highlighting the weird and the wonderful, including offbeat genre films, extraordinary documentaries and other hybrid, iconoclastic features from around the world.”

Works for me…

Among the genres they programmed this year were rare Giallo and Post Apocalyptic. So here follows a bit of a trailer park, distilled from their website, for fans of these genres who are currently at their computers; You don’t have to see them all at once on company time…

 

GIALLO

AUTOPSY is florid hi-octane Giallo with camera trickery, nudity and prosthetic gore effects ahead of the curve for 1975. American actress Mimsy Farmer is a delight.

 

 

 

 

Now retired from acting, she lives in France and is an accomplished sculptor and painter, providing art for such films as Troy and The Golden Compass, as well as her own creations. In its day, in countries where it did not get banned or cut to pieces, AUTOPSY more than satisfied an audience taste for forbidden fruit.

 

MILANO CALIBRO 9, is a violent Poliziottescho, a Giallo sub-genre, from Fernando De Leo. The opening sequence kick starts the robbery/betrayal/revenge plot with meticulous economy, building to a jaw droppingly over the top pay-off. And that’s just the first seven minutes! De Leo certainly knew how to get your attention. A great example of his Melville on Steroids style.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK. Mimsy Farmer once again (a year before AUTOPSY). Here she headlines a sex obsessed mood and shock piece, stylishly shot in the Bava style Equal parts Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and enigma; the ending causes you to re-evaluate everything that has gone before, and then maybe you are still scratching your head. But if you embrace the alternative universe the film offers, then it’s a real collector’s item.

Of all the Giallo that the Offscreen Festival presented, these were the ones I would most enjoy remaking in my own way.

 

 

 

 

POST APOCALYPSE

 

THREADS, was one of the best mini-series of the Eighties. Here’s a link to an earnest promo trying to attract American viewers to a searingly realistic, totally uncompromising depiction of nuclear war, and its consequences, namely the unraveling of the very threads of civilization. (Try selling Ads for soap powder and Cialis with that.)

Still powerful 25 years later, THREADS focuses on ordinary people who are unaware that an obscure conflict in Iran is mushrooming into global annihilation. (Yes, Iran. And now we have Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to worry about too. ) It is great that Offscreen gave this important film a platform to point to the continuing obscenity of nuclear weapons and the need to keep bellicose politicians of all stripes under control. It was a frightening film to see in the Reagan era. Viewed now, it is still very unsettling, but we feel the comforting presence of a recently installed safety net. President Obama certainly faces a challenge to unravel the Gordian Knot of Middle East peace, with its attendant nuclear trip wires, but, personally, call me crazy, I believe the world is going to be a less dangerous place after 8 years of his efforts.

OK, off my soapbox, back in my seat at Offscreen’s venue, the idiosyncratic Nova Theatre, funkily decorated in true underground style, and lubricated by a generous bar that expanded my knowledge of Belgian ales. Here’s a happy snap of Hartley, Brennan, and myself during the NQH Q&A.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m the bemused gnome in the corner with the glass of wheat beer.

The Post Apocalyse section concluded with MAD MAX, a new print of a rare version of this Australian classic. Why? Because it is the American dubbed dialogue version with French subtitles, created because the US distributor in 1979 was afraid of Australian vowels! Watching friends like Roger Ward’s Fifi, Hugh Keays-Bryne’s Toe Cutter, and Mel Gibson’s Max with tough guy American voices was a surreal screening experience. And seeing Max’s interceptor smash through the caravan at 90 mph, knowing Grant Page is driving with his freshly broken leg in plaster, is always a pleasure.

 

 

 

My contribution to the Post Apocalyptic genre was DEAD END DRIVE IN, my sociopolitical allegory of the retro future.

LA Times critic Michael Wilmington called it Exterminating Angel meets Mad Max. El Q singles it out for special mention in NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD. Like Mad Max, an American dubbed version of the soundtrack was prepared, but in our case thankfully, never used. Naturally all film makers love their celluloid children. (My family numbers 38, and hopefully still growing. And 35 step-children from short marriages. That’s how I view my episodic output. Others have fertilized the eggs, but I do look after them for a crucial gestation period.) So, I am particularly fond of DEAD END DRIVE IN, THE MAN FROM HONG KONG and STUNT ROCK, which were selected for this festival. The organizers made us most welcome throughout our stay. Great Euro Cuisine, and expeditions to Waterloo and Bruges. Not to mention El Guapo Stunt Team front man Captain Catastrophe setting himself on fire outside the theatre in our honor…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from the Offscreen Festival in the next blog.