Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.
I’ve had pretty good luck with my Ozsploitation selections…until now, that is. Granted, I had no reason to believe High Rolling in a Hot Corvette was any sort of lost classic. The title promises good times, but I learned long ago that such promises are not always kept by the exploitation film complex. Otherwise The Great Texas Dynamite Chase would be the greatest time I ever had (whereas in fact it barely cracks the top twenty). The only people who might have any interest all in High Rolling would be Judy Davis completists, as the actress makes her motion picture debut in it. She may leave it off her resume these days, but that’s why we love IMDb.
The fun begins in a Queensland carnival, where Tex (played by obligatory American import Joseph Bottoms, least of the acting Bottoms brothers) operates the shooting gallery on the midway. On a whim, he and Aussie buddy Alby (Grigor Taylor) decide to take a road trip, hitching a ride with a fella named Arnold in his snazzy corvette. When the gang stops at a motel for the night, Arnold makes an unexpected pass at Alby and an unpleasant bout of gay-bashing ensues. Tex and Alby make off in the corvette, little realizing that the boot (that’s the trunk, my fellow Americans) is full of marijuana.
Judy Davis plays a wispy young hitchhiker who plans to become a prostitute until Tex informs her that this will entail sweaty fat men squatting over her, belching and farting. She never really thought of it that way, but Tex is such an incredibly repulsive individual, this sort of thinking is second nature to him. Fellow Screengrabber Andrew Osborne and I have a little game we call Long Car Trip. For instance, he’ll say: “Long car trip – Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh?” Then I’ll have to pick one and come up with some sort of rationale for preferring to spend many hours trapped in a vehicle with this individual. In this game, Tex will always be the wrong answer – and yet here is a whole movie about taking a long car trip with him. Amazing.
The gang eventually ends up in Surfers Paradise, which is a real place that looks like this. A better movie would have done something more interesting with this unusual location (this is the “paradise” the Road Warrior refugees were trying to find), but in High Rolling, it’s just a scenic spot for Tex to pass out on his face. Eventually the plot kicks in again as the pot goes missing from the boot, the boys decide to hold up a tour bus, and Arnold and his buddies catch up with Tex and Alby for the big showdown. Unfortunately, they do not beat Tex to death with his own feet, which is really the only ending that would justify sitting through this irritating snoozer.
Previously on Ozsploitation:
Dead-End Drive In
Roadgames
