Alvin Purple
Alvin Purple is a 1973 film from Australia, directed by Tim Burstall, running 97 minutes. reelscum files it under Ozploitation and roughie.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- Australia
- Runtime
- 97 min
- Director
- Tim Burstall
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- obscure (72/100)
- Also known as
- The Sex Therapist
Defined in the glossary: Ozploitation, Roughie
The sex comedy that funded the entire boom. Historically important, hard going.
The sex comedy that funded the entire Australian film revival, and one of the highest-grossing local films of its era. An ordinary young man is irresistible to women, and the film strings together his misadventures in the broad, ribald ocker style of the period. It is historically enormous and, to modern eyes, hard going.
Its importance is commercial rather than artistic: its success proved a domestic industry could make money, which paid for everything better that followed. It is a document of a very specific moment in Australian taste.
Watch it for the history, not the laughs.
Trailer
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Where to watch
Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Cult films and the audiences that make them
Cult status arrives after release, through late-night television, midnight bookings and VHS trade, as The Brainiac, Walking Tall and Patrick each show.
- Ozploitation: the Australian genre boom, 1971 to 1986
An adults-only certificate, a tax loophole, and a Melbourne doctor who knew what happens to bodies at speed. Australia's fifteen years of cheap, mean, brilliant genre film.
The cycle in depth
- Wake in Fright is not an exploitation film
It was lost for thirty years, found in a bin marked 'for destruction', and it is the best thing on this site.
Filed alongside
Stunt Rock
No plot. A stuntman and a prog band. Exists purely so Grant Page can work.
Snapshot
A young model is stalked after a nude shoot. A slow-burn Australian thriller with a real sense of dread.
Bad Girls Go to Hell
The definitive Doris Wishman roughie: grimy, deranged, and edited by someone allergic to faces.
Next of Kin
A slow-burn gothic in a nursing home. Much better than its obscurity suggests.
Scum of the Earth
Herschell Gordon Lewis invents the roughie the same year he invents gore. Busy man.
Turkey Shoot
The budget vanished mid-shoot and they kept going. Chaotic, mean, fun.
Fair Game
A woman alone at an outback wildlife reserve is hunted by three kangaroo poachers. Lean and nasty.
Thirst
A secret society farms humans for blood. Ozploitation does vampires as corporate agribusiness.
The Curious Dr. Humpp
Argentine, insane, and re-cut by its US distributor into something stranger.
Dead End Drive-In
A drive-in turned into an internment camp. The satire is not subtle.
Stone
Australia's outlaw-biker scripture. Mad Max drank from this tank.
Long Weekend
A couple litter, and Australia decides to kill them. Excellent.