Machete Maidens Unleashed

Wow, there were “Filipino exploitation movies?”

I was able to catch the Australian-made documentary on the era called Machete Maidens Unleashed at the SF Indie Fest tonight. And despite the sexist, racist, and humiliating content (or because of it) I found it funny and confusingly depressing at the same time.

“Filipino exploitation movies” were exactly that, films made in the Philippines during the 1970’s on the cheap and released in the United States for American enjoyment. Near the end of the era was a more “serious” movie called “Apocalypse Now” by Francis Ford Coppola. However the majority of the era was, as the movie put it, “blood, boobs, and beasts.” One commenter on this blog used the term “the Bomba Era” (Bomba = Tagalog for porn), which I assume also includes Philippine-made porn (unfortunately the comments seem to have been removed).

They not only exploited the cheap labor, but also women from both sides of the Pacific, African-Americans, Philippine actors, directors, and stunt doubles, in order to make money from the movies in America. On one account, $4 million dollars US was made on a movie released stateside that only cost $100,000 to make isle-side. Machete Maidens Unleashed was a one-sided yet fast-paced and humorous look into this era of American film making. Humorous in a sense that the American film makers AND the Philippine directors found their creations to be stupid and corny, but one-sided in that the Philippine directors and interviewees were few and far in between. I’m sure the film makers were conscious of this (otherwise they wouldn’t have called it “Machete Maidens Unleashed”) but after they pointed out the injuries, deaths, and corruption ever so briefly, I as well as probably most people in the room were left curious.

As for the rest of Philippine cinema, there are 2 particular kinds of movies I really want to watch and explore aside from the action and drama-based plots i’ve found dominant in mainstream Philippine movies: reflective and “deep” movies by directors like Lino Brocka back in the 70’s and creative indie films made today in the Philippines and featured in events like “Cinemalaya“.

As for Fil-exploitation films, despite the dark side of the era, there are a few movies by Weng-Weng I would still like to see.