Hollywood Rated R (1996) 90m.
Something special for all of those interested in exploitation films, and an education for those who've never seen any. Appropriately exploitative documentary (there's nudity and coarse language) by directing team Doug Headline and Dominique Cazenave takes us through the fifties, sixties, and seventies and looks at the changes in non-Hollywood products, charting their evolution from nudity to violence to horror to drugs to blaxploitation. There aren't many film clips but plenty of trailers, which unfortunately are of a very poor photographic quality and give the impression that these films looked a lot worse than they actually were (I have yet to see THE CRAWLING HAND, but after seeing the promo I think it should be a priority). It should be pointed out however that the trailers were often more entertaining than the films themselves: nowhere today, for example, would you see a film advertised with the shrieking tagline (and possible solipsism) "See a human being murdered before your eyes!"
Mostly, though, HOLLYWOOD RATED R is a collection of talking heads - as the interviews are delivered with such affection and interest for the subject, the one and a half hour running time passes quickly. John Landis almost steals the show with his enthusiastic performance, but there are many other delights in store, often of the two-for-the-price-of-one variety: e.g. Charles Napier tells us about his career with Russ Meyer (and offers an interesting explanation for Meyer's use of remote locations); David Friedman talks of his collaboration with goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis; Barbara Steele gives a surprisingly animated interview about the role of women in film, referring to her work with Mario Bava and Jonathon Demme; and Forrest Ackerman and Joe Dante reminisce about the William Castle movies they saw as kids (how I envy those guys!). I wish Headline and Cazenave had cut a couple of the slower interviews - there's a labored one which is intercut with all kinds of gags and sound effects, but it still doesn't come across as particularly interesting - and gotten someone like Paul Bartel on screen instead. If you've never sampled this unique genre of films, then this may well whet your appetite. Most interesting line comes from director Larry Cohen - "All movies are exploitation".
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