The Ozploitation movement, given its name by the popular 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!, spawned a range of very colourful characters who contributed to film history by making bat shit crazy genre films.
One of them was John D. Lamond, who passed away this week age 71. He had Parkinson’s Disease for more than two decades.
Lamond started out working in distribution before becoming a filmmaker, assisting with the release of classics The Naked Bunyip, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple. His first film credit was as a producer was for the 1974 short The Devil in Evening Dress, directed by George Miller in his pre-Mad Max days.
In the 1970s Lamond directed two very popular documentaries, The ABC of Love and Sex and Australia After Dark. His other directorial credits include soft porn Felicity, thriller Nightmares, sex comedy Pacific Banana and the romantic comedy Breakfast in Paris.
Known for his cheeky sense of humour, Lamond delivered the following quote in Not Quite Hollywood: “I’m told I treat women like a sex object. I suppose it’s true because I ask for sex, and they object.”
Pacific Banana, released in 1981, was recently named by The Guardian as one of the most outrageous Australian sex comedies ever made. It is about a man (Graeme Blundell) who loses his erection every time he sneezes. The film even had its own theme song, which went like this:
It wants to come up, up, up
It always goes down, down, down
You don’t want to stop, stop, stop
No fun when you’re around
Your love life, it’s in a fix
Your love life, it has no kicks
But Candy may do the trick
Pacific banana
Lamond was a very colourful character. He will be missed. Vale.
