In terms of the brief post-MAD MAX wave of Australian movies, our Oz-ploitation guide gives the first of several dishonourable mentions: MIDNITE SPARES. A guys a cop he infiltrates a gang of choppers. You know when you get a car and you cut it together and you get a new car? he explains the automotive concept. The car chases are fairly good, fairly competent, but it suffers from bad acting. Bruce Spence is in it, he was the Gyro Pilot from MAD MAX 2, and David Argue, he was one of the hoodlums from RAZORBACK.* David Argue is a phenomenon in Australia, he made a movie about his family, THE ARGUES. But MIDNITE SPARES is just dull really. You may have car chases, explosions, etc, but cinematic gold its not, Im afraid. MAD MAX and MAD MAX 2 really put Australian filmmaking on the map, but when it came to car movies they really didnt capitalise on what theyre known for. Even today people see Australia as being a muscle-car film industry, but its really not. *Entertaining 1984 Oz monster movie about a giant wild boar. The year after Mad Mel Gibson took a final wander into the desert was a vintage one for post-MAD MAX exploitation movies. But our guide to the less salubrious side of cinema down under is dismissive of their cult status: FAIR GAME youve got in 1986 thats where the girl is strapped to the bonnet of a car by three sexist male pigs. Its awful! Yes, it has the cathartic punch: youve got the attractive woman, topless, tied to the bonnet of a V8. But its just horrible, and its a dull, boring film but it has a cult following, and I just dont know why. The very basic plot has three roo hunters, who make the drongos in WAKE IN FRIGHT look like squeamish liberals, terrorising a woman who runs an outback animal sanctuary. It even made the films director, Mario Andreacchio, decide that he could never make another exploitation film. I dont know if they rape her, though it verges on that, but theres a sexual charge running through the entire movie. Why does Tarantino rave about it? I just dont understand it really. But its a movie that has a reputation for its salacious graphicness and portrayal of violence. DEAD END DRIVE-IN was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Set in the near-future where the lowlifes and youngsters are basically trapped in a drive-in, they spend their days there. Its just dull, the actings appalling, theyre unlikeable characters although it does have some fantastic stunt work at the end, a car on fire jumping through the air. Is it an attempt to do another MAD MAX then? Well, kind of... its the breakdown of Australian society and culture. Leading itself into a similar theme, but is it any good? Not really. Im not selling these movies, am I? he laughs. Indeed. Why go to the lengths of writing a book about a vein of cinema which (excepting WAKE IN FRIGHT and MAD MAX 1&2) leaves you so jaded and dismissive? Slater explains that his first book, EATEN ALIVE! (for which I was his co-editor), was a completist work that covered every grungy Italian cannibal or zombie movie. Sometimes the phenomenon of the film genre itself is more interesting than the individual film. Thats what Im doing for my Australian book if a films not very good I talk about its history and why its so beloved. But the post-MAD MAX wave soon broke, and the Australian road movie persisted only in gentler, more conventional forms. It would have to follow a long road before the rage started to resurface decades long, in fact...
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
