News

John D. Lamond.

John D. Lamond, one of the pioneers of Australia’s Ozploitation film industry, died today in a nursing home on the Gold Coast, aged 71.

The producer-writer-director had been battling Parkinson’s disease for more than 20 years.

Mark Hartley’s documentary Not Quite Hollywood celebrated Lamond’s idiosyncratic contributions to the Ozploitation genre and featured his tongue-in-cheek quote, “I’m told I treat women like a sex object. I suppose it’s true because I ask for sex – and they object.”

Hartley tells If: “He was a lovely guy, funny, cheeky, warm and irreverent, and so supportive of me. John, Tony Ginnane, Brian Trenchard-Smith and Richard Franklin kept egging me on to make Not Quite Hollywood.

“He was always totally unapologetic about his films and he had no reason to be apologetic. It was only when he tried to make more commercial films that his finger wasn’t on the pulse.

Severin Films has been very busy over the last several months delivering one stunner after another. In an effort to catch up on the deluge of quality releases, we're offering our opinions in a gallery of their most recent Blu-ray releases. Continue reading below for reviews of Roman Polanski's What?, John Lamond's Felicity, Frank Henenlotter's That's Sexploitation!, and the compilation Kung Fu Trailers of Fury....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Severin Films, friends of TwitchFilm and longtime champions of the seedier side of cinema, have announced a trio of exciting Blu-ray releases for the next two months in the form of Australian skin flick Felicity,  obscure Polanski weirdness, What?, and Frank Henenlotter's new documentary That's Sexploitation! While Felicity has been available on DVD in the Us for a while from Severin, What? is making it's Us DVD premiere as far as I can tell. Felicity's Blu-ray release will also include a pair of Australian mondo style documentaries from director John Lamond, The ABCs of Love & Sex and Australia After Dark, previously available on DVD from Severin sister label Intervision Picture Corp. What? was previously available from Severin, but only on DVD in the UK. That's Sexploitation! is a new documentary that premiered in 2015. We've...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

The fascination with “Ozploitation” that arose among cult-movie buffs in the wake of Mark Hartley’s documentary Not Quite Hollywood continues to pay dividends with the DVD release of John D. Lamond’s 1975 mondo doc Australia After Dark and its oddball 1978 follow-up The ABCs Of Love And Sex—Australia Style!. Both mix a scholarly tone and some decent documentary footage with copious amounts of nudity and grotesquerie, much of which was staged for Lamond’s camera. In other words, these movies are classic post-Mondo Cane drive-in fare, viewed through a Down Under lens. In Australia After Dark ...

Intervision Picture Corp has only released about five films over the last year, but they've all been interesting experiences. They started out with a couple of unsung Jess Franco films and moved into the realm of Diy shot on video horror from the 80's. Now, a year later, they are finally fulfilling their promise to unleash a couple of Ozploitation mondo documentaries that they teased right from the very beginning, John Lamond's Australia After Dark and The ABCs of Love and Sex.  Both are due January 10th, 2012, here are the details.Australia After DARKFive years before he turned the world on with his schoolgirl sexploitation classic Felicity, producer/director John Lamond made his indelible debut with this mondo-style look at the depraved underbelly of a land...

Nightmares

Directed by John Lamond

Screenplay by Colin Eggleston

1980, USA

The Italians might have done it best but the Aussies sure did have a good time trying. As unstable as a one-legged pirate walking a tightrope, Nightmares (directed by Ozploitation guru John Lamond) isn’t shy about what it’s doing. From the opening scene we are bombarded with an erratic pace and a pulsating score which quickly informs us that we are in for one hell of a ride. The film opens with a set of flashbacks, where we see Hellen Selleck (Jenny Neumann) subject to two early childhood traumatic experiences. The first, which in some way causes the second, is of a young Helen discovering her mother and her lover having sex. Helen’s initial need for mommy to reinforce that there are no bogeymen under her bed is quickly put on the backburner by a more current and real fear,...

Like many cheapo slasher films in the wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween, the 1980 Ozploitation obscurity Nightmares follows the expected pattern: Two attractive young people steal away for a quickie, take off their clothes, fool around for a while, then get hacked to death by faceless killer. But just when the rinse-and-repeat formula is growing agonizingly stale, veteran director John Lamond does something truly audacious. As yet another topless nymphet flees from the killer, she emerges in a dark alleyway in the middle of a downpour, and along comes a shadowy figure with a shard of glass, stabbing her ...

There used to be a time when exploitation films ran amok in the world of cinema. They still appear today, in franchises like Hostel and the Saw. They can be tricky to slap an exact definition on, but you will know an exploitation film if you see one. And if you see one, you'll notice how difficult it is to determine whether or not the filmmaker accomplished his or her goal in making it. I.e., you might be disgusted by the violence in Hostel or Saw, but it's not as if the director accidentally filmed the guy getting his penis chopped off.

Back in 1980, Australian director John Lamond gave us Nightmares, a story about Helen Selleck (Jenny Neumann), a young actress who is struggling to get along in the world having been emotionally crippled as a child. When she was about seven or eight years old, she walked in on her mom doing it.

DVD Playhouse June 2011

By

Allen Gardner

Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion) Robert Aldrich’s 1955 reinvention of the film noir detective story is one of cinema’s great genre mash-ups: part hardboiled noir; part cold war paranoid thriller; and part science- fiction. Ralph Meeker plays Mickey Spillane’s fascist detective Mike Hammer as a narcissistic simian thug, a sadist who would rather smash a suspect’s fingers than make love to the bevvy of beautiful dames that cross his path. In fact, the only time you see a smile cross Meeker’s sneering mug is when he’s doling out pain, with a vengeance. When a terrified young woman (Cloris Leachman, film debut) literally crossed Hammer’s path one night, and later turns up dead, he vows to get to the bottom of her brutal demise. One of the most influential films ever made, and perhaps the most-cited film by the architects...

Three cult shockers from the ’70s and early ’80s—Ed Hunt’s killer-kids opus Bloody Birthday (pictured), Ted Post’s twisted family drama The Baby and Australian director John Lamond’s slasher flick Nightmares—are all coming to special-edition DVD June 28, and we got the scoop on the contents of all three discs. See ’em past the jump with the cover art.

Severin Films, good friends of fans of horror/exploitation/trash cinema, continue to add impressive titles to their already drool-inducing library. With releases such as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (which you can win a Blu-ray copy of via our contest) and Ozploitation auteur Brian Trenchard-Smith’s BMX Bandits right around the corner, a blog post appeared on the Severin site today announcing the future release of Bloody Birthday, John D. Lamond’s Nightmares (1980), and The Baby (1973). Check out some info about the films and the first hints of special features after the break!

Read more on Severin Films announces DVD releases of Bloody Birthday, Nightmares, and The Baby…...

Not Quite Hollywood is a documentary about the history of Australian cinema, but not quite the film history that most people would remember—or care to, anyway. Case in point, director Mark Hartley interviewed a couple of Aussie film critics and historians, who bitterly lamented the existence of these movies.

It’s a profile on “Ozploitation,” the wave of Australian exploitation movies popping up during the late 70’s and early 80’s. The most famous of the lot is of course Mad Max, but there are plenty of other far more obscure films that people not down under most likely won’t recognize. Not that it matters to the enjoyment of the doc. Not Quite Hollywood isn’t a nostalgia piece, but a celebration of what transpired and an encouragement for the current Aussie directors trying to jumpstart a revival. People like Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannel or Wolf Creek director Greg McLean,...

Magnolia Pictures sent over the DVDetails for Not Quite Hollywood, which have proven to be a lot more extensive than expected. The disc of Mark Hartley’s hugely entertaining documentary revealing “The wild, untold story of Ozploitation” arrives with a bang October 6 under the Magnet Releasing banner.

Spotlighting interviews with just about everyone involved in the horror, action and sexploitation fare that turned the Australian film scene upside down in the ’70s and early ’80s, and copious clips from the clips, Not Quite Hollywood (see our review here) will be presented in widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The special features are:

Audio commentary by Hartley and the Ozploitation auteurs Quentin Tarantino interview with director Brian Trenchard-Smith Audio interview with director Richard Franklin Deleted/extended scenes Funding pitches from Tarantino and filmmaker John D. Lamond Photo gallery You can see Magnet’s official site for the movie here.

Magnolia/Magnet also...