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.
In the U.S., it was released as Escape 2000. In the U.K., it had the provocative title Blood Camp Thatcher. The original Australian title is Turkey Shoot, but by any other name, it’s the eleventy-zillionth exploitation movie to be inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. What we seem to have here is a post-apocalyptic society, or at least a dark, dystopic future of some kind – it’s a little hard to tell, because the opening fifteen minutes that would have explained what’s going on were never shot due to budget cutbacks. I don’t suppose it matters much; suffice it to say that there’s an oppressive regime in place operating prison camps for “re-education and behavior modification.” So-called deviants are rounded up, stuffed into yellow jumpsuits and dumped into these camps to perform back-breaking labor, learn to conform and receive abuse at the hands of the guards.
Among the latest arrivals at Camp 47 are Paul Anders (Steve Railsback), Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey) and Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner), all of whom are selected to participate in the “turkey shoot.” They will be released from the camp (with no weapons) and given a three-hour head start, after which camp leader Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig) and his chief enforcer Ritter (Roger Ward, best known to U.S. audiences as Fifi from Mad Max, but perhaps more familiar to Aussies from the 80s TV series Professor Poopsnaggle) will hunt them. If the prisoners make it to dawn alive, they are free to go. If Thatcher and company catch up to them, they will die graphically violent deaths.
Turkey Shoot was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, a towering figure in the realm of Ozsploitation. (We’ll encounter more of his work later in this series.) You might even call him the Down Under Roger Corman, and if not for its Australian setting, Turkey Shoot could have been shipped straight out of the Corman factory. (It’s a cousin to the “sports of the future” genre that includes Corman’s Deathsport – a genre I wrote about in this High Hat piece.) The Aussie flavor is somewhat lacking, what with the major roles going to imported almost-stars Railsback and Hussey, and the overall production is rather uninspired (although Trenchard-Smith deserves at least some credit for pioneering the co-ed shower facilities later appropriated by Paul Verhoeven for Starship Troopers). The gore is graphic, if cartoonish: machetes split skulls, machine gun fire separates heads from bodies. The most fun part of the DVD is the making-of documentary, in which none of the participants (including the director) has anything good to say about the movie. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before.
Bonus Attraction: A mutant beastie in half-assed Planet of the Apes makeup is ripped in half by a bulldozer.
Rating: Two Foster’s
Previously on Ozsploitation!:
Dark Age
Razorback