Seeing a very young Sigrid Thornton scream in terror at the mere sight of a Mr Whippy van may not only worth the price of admission but will also give you some idea as to the quality of movies that writer/director Mark Hartley is covering in his documentary, Not Quite Hollywood. The second hint comes with the secondary tag line: “full of boobs, tubes and pubes… and a bit of kung fu”.

Barry Humphries considers that we built the Sydney Opera House so that we had “something to put on the stamps” because he “never thought that Australia needed culture of any description”. No surprises then that he personally made the creamed corn chunder that Barry McKenzie throws up during The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.

Perhaps vomit concocting was slightly better than the career options available for any Australian female actress wanting work during the ‘70s. Most were required to not only flash us their maps of Tassie but also their Olgas as well. Even Wendy Hughes, perhaps better known to most of us for more high brow work such Careful he might hear you, admits that she stripped off, but wryly notes that her breasts got better reviews than her acting did.

With a rollicking guest list that includes George Miller, Graeme Blundell, John Michael Howson, Phillip Adams and Brian Trenchard-Smith, it is the US-movie geek Quentin Tarantino who reveals an encyclopedic knowledge – and fanboy love – of the very worst that Aussie cinema produced before being killed off by home video rentals. It is an exhausting and confronting trip down memory lane and it is a wonder that most of the writers, directors, stuntmen and actors survived the maverick movie-making ideas of the time. Perhaps this is best suited to several half-hour segments on SBS’s 10pm Friday night nudey-rudey doco timeslot to digest properly.