My "HIdden Gem" DVD pick this week for CBC Radio is Not Quite Hollywood, director Mark Hartley's high-octane documentary about the golden age of Australian exploitation movies. I tend to recommend a lot of movies about movies in these segments, and I don't know if that's something listeners find a little tiresome, but Not Quite Hollywood contains so many amazing stories and captures such a wild-and-woolly period of filmmaking history that I couldn't resist. I don't know how interested I'd be in watching a steady diet of these movies — especially the sex comedies, which look pretty dire — but when they're all edited down to 30 seconds of highlights, they can't help but seem pretty exciting.And I do have a lot of fondness, personally, for one of the titles Not Quite Hollywood lingers over: Dead End Drive-In, which was the very last film to play the Hyland theatre in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. Some of my favourite teenage moviegoing memories take place there, from its days as an arthouse cinema (allowing me to see everything from Betty Blue to a revival showing of Brian De Palma's Sisters on the big screen) to its later years as an exploitation house, where I once saw Trancers on Christmas Eve, perhaps one of my favourite movie nights of all time. Dead End Drive-In seemed like a fitting farewell to the old place — of all the movies in Not Quite Hollywood, that's the one I wound up feeling most eager to rewatch.
Meanwhile, you can click here to listen to the CBC segment. Enjoy!
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