Machete Maidens Unleashed

Documentary

Umbrella Entertainment

R4 DVD

Mark Hartley, producer of Not Quite Hollywood, has followed up his examination of the early Australian film industry by looking at the film industry in the Philippines. Unlike Australia the Philippines had a thriving industry producing cheap schlock films for local consumption During the late 60s to the 80s the Philippines was producing over 350 films per year. It was only natural that the American industry should move in and exploit the low wages, jungle scenery and complete lack of unions and safety requirements. Producers like Roger Corman moved their production across the Pacific where they produced their schlock even more cheaply. The content didn’t change much, though.

Karate-kicking midgets! Paper-mache monsters! Busty babes with blades!

The films soon flooded U.S. driveins with cheap Filipino filler, although their origin was rarely published. They were sold simply as “jungle action”.

We get some hilarious interviews with schlock moviemakers like Roger Corman, John Landis, Sid Haig, Joe Dante, and Eddie Romero. There are a lot of great background anecdotes from cast, crew and even critics. Their stories of filmmaking in the Philippines makes it sound more like making a war film. Everything was done quickly and on the cheap. Dialogue was kept to a minimum as “these weren’t first rate actors and they might get it wrong”. Each scene was done in one shot in the best Corman style. If something went wrong the cameras just kept rolling. The directors relied on the editors to sort it out later. If a scene was particularly good it would be used again and again in other films. Corman went further, recycling entire films under new names until they finally sold. One interviewee remembers with glee seeing two late-night films that turned out to be the same film, with only the name changed.

“We did not have stars so we had to exploit the subject matter” - Roger Corman

The genres were the standard clichés – women in prison, war films, monsters wanting beautiful virgin sacrifices and so on. Even nurse films managed to be placed in exotic jungle surroundings. All had one thing in common – girls who were “overdeveloped and overexposed”.

“If we’re selling sex it’s the girl with the biggest breasts ….” – John Landis

The titles were as lurid as the posters, as you would expect. Brides of Blood,

Mad Doctor of Blood Island, Beast of the Yellow Knight, Women In Cages. The trailers were as schlock as the films. Covergirl Models : “It’s one of the best trailers we ever made – it doesn’t reflect the movie at all”. The trailer for Jackson County Jail used a helicopter explosion made years before for another film. The same clip was also used in other films. Corman still does this as an economy measure.

Surprisingly the films also featured strong women in masterful roles, a sign of the growing Women’s Lib movement. No matter how strong the female characters, though, they were all unencumbered by excess clothing.

It was a tough job making these films in the jungle. Facilities were often non-existent, filming hours were long, there were no dressing rooms or toilets. There were, however, bugs, snakes and anything that crawled, wriggled or stung. “Just like any snake I’ve ever known – can’t leave my tits alone”. There were some advantages for the viewer. In The Big Doll House, a women in prison film that was rewritten for the Philippines. “The women only got two showers a week and the lucky viewers got to see both of them. “.

For the actresses who could survive the discomfort there was a career to be forged. Some, like Pam Grier, went on to a long life in films.

Bobbie Romero tended to make better quality films with a decent plot. Corman just wanted cheap exploitation films, but the two worked together for some years..

After a while, though, the films all started to look the same. Instead of making original films they just kept making the same film over and over. The industry even started spoofing its own films. The Big Birdcage was a takeoff of The Big Dollhouse. It flopped, proving that even the audiences had their limits. Corman changed to the Black Superheroine style with director Cirio Santiago and films like Savage, with Jeanne Bell starring as TNT Jackson. Firecracker (the screen’s first erotic king fu classic) broke the mold with a white girl in the lead, but otherwise it was all the same. Karate-kicking women became the new feature, although they were still largely bereft of clothing.

“They Don’t Need Clothes To Strike A Pose” as one film poster so eloquently put it.

Martial law under President Ferdinand Marcos caused some problems at first. Films based on plots of revolution against a cruel government had to be hastily rewritten. President Marcos appreciated the value of the film industry to his country. For the right film (for which the right people had been bribed) army units and weapons could be provided as needed. This made battle scenes more spectacular.

Other genres got the schlock treatment too.

Pirates: “Out of the steaming slave markets come the ravening sea savages …”

Monsters: a papier-mache sea monster that was so noseheavy that it dived to the bottom every time it went into the water.

Supermen: Bionic Boy versus a sort of mechanised fire-breathing dragon.

Sort-of martial arts / swordmanship films like The One-Armed Executioner, made for Corman by Bobby Suarez, another Filipino director.

Bikers: The Losers (1970) – bikers in Cambodia rescuing CIA men.

Occasionally a big-budget mainstream film managed to surmount the schlock. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now was the biggest film ever made in the Philippines.

Local viewers were still catered for. The most popular actor was the 3 foot 6 inches high Weng Weng, who usually played a secret agent in films for home consumption. He did everything James Bond did including getting the girls. He was really a parody of Hollywood heroes. For Your Height Only was not a great film, but Weng Weng was hugely popular in his own country.

It was fortunate that the local market still remained. In the face of pressure from the unions much filming and production work was moving back to the U.S. This also avoided the growing political unrest in the Philippines.

The set includes a range of interviews, reminiscences and background that is a great piece of entertainment in itself. The chapter of trailers for the films is unforgettable, as are the interviews with some of the producers. There seems to be no love lost between some of the producers. We even get a bonus of the feature film Muthers, perhaps an ideal example of the schlock. In spite of the exploitational bosom-loaded nature of the films they were still FUN.

“Never before have you seen material so right for masturbation” – John Landis

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