One of the real pleasures of running this site is it provides an easy excuse for me to continue searching out Ozploitation films. Ozploitation (a shorter, cooler term for the huge amount of films that fall under the umbrella of Australian exploitation cinema) is unique among exploitation film making for two primary reasons. The first is the sheer length of time in which Ozploitation were popular.

Starting in 1971, when Australia first introduced the R ratings, Ozploitation films quickly caught on and were made well into the 80’s. And while the “genre” took a brief rest during the 90’s, in recent years Ozploitation has once again reared its stylistic head to become one of the driving forces behind current Australian film making. While exploitation cinema was big for a time in the 70’s in the US, and various countries have dipped in the New Wave pool, that Australia has produced nearly two and a half decades of exploitation cinema is impressive to say the least. But what might be even more impressive, and surprising considering the quality, is that barely anyone has noticed. Which brings me to my second point.

Barely anyone knows anything about these films. Oh sure everyone and their mother knows Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman, all three of which got their careers jump started by Ozploitation films. Directors like Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford have dabbled in the American mainstream with success, but outside of that small lot the exposure of Australian film making is surprisingly light. Let alone heralded.

Oh sure the occasional Mad Max film would catch the general publics eye, but compared to the now iconic look of blaxploitation films, Ozploitation isn’t even given a first thought, let alone a second. The same can be said when Ozploitation is compared to other 70’s exploitation genres like women revenge flicks, or women in prison flicks, or Nazi women prison revenge flicks. Or heaven forbid these Australian films had to go up against Mexican midget wrestling pictures. They simply weren’t even a blip on the public’s radar, which is a low down dirty shame.

As I’ve been researching Ozploitation films I frequently ran across the usual band of lauded suspects; George Miller, Philippe Mora and Brian Trenchard-Smith are all frequently mentioned as the best known filmmakers operating within the genre. But time and again I ran across a name who, despite his relative lack of notoriety, was routinely referred to as the best filmmaker in the genre. This man was considered so talented that he was even frequently compared to his more “artistic” contemporaries like Weir and Fred Schepisi. He is even referred to as the Australian Alfred Hitchcock, due in no small part to this director’s obsession with Hitchcock films, though for the purpose of this review I shall call him a poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock. The director’s name? Richard Franklin.

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I’m not quite sure how I pulled it off, but I became a Ralph Bakshi fan at a fairly young age. My first introduction to him, as it probably was for most kids, was Bakshi’s failed children’s film Wizards. And by failed I mean totally awesome!

You see Bakshi was a bit of a novelty amongst American cartoonists in that he didn’t make animated films that pandered to children and their parents. He wasn’t much of a fan of Disney so when he made a children’s film about warring wizards in a post-apocalyptic world he made sure to include plenty of bloody violence, authentic Nazi war propaganda films and an assassin named Peace. Needless to say critics and parents were a bit bewildered by the film and it was soon relegated to obscurity.

From there I moved on next to Street Fight (aka Coonskin). Unlike Wizards, Street Fight was made specifically for adults as it was a parody of blaxploitation films and satirizes racist stereotypes. And as it was made for adults it came with an R rating attached. Now at the time I was around 13 years old, and the idea of an R rated cartoon seemed positively unthinkable, if not impossible to me. (Little did I know that Bakshi had already topped that rating with his first feature film Fritz the Cat, which had garnered an X rating.) Sure enough, like any blaxploitation film Street Fight was filled with violence, rampant cursing and even the occasional bit of nudity. Nudity in a cartoon? That’s unpossible!
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I was seriously considering writing a little poem to announce next week’s review, but since I can’t find a trailer for the film at all I figured I would just leave the rhyming up to the star, Rudy Ray Moore. Now I know what you must be thinking, and no, the film will not be Dolemite or any of its sequels, but rather a slightly less well known blaxploitation film. This one involves a kung-fu wielding stand-up comedian who just so happens to be engaged to Satan’s daughter.

That’s right, next week’s film is Petey Wheatstraw.