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Machete Maidens Unleashed!
(2010)
Machete Maidens Unleashed! is a fast paced and very funny look at the way a group of US-based filmmakers found the perfect backlot for their low-rent, bloody, and sleazy action/horror pics in the Philippines. What made the location so perfect for these exploitation moviemakers was, in the words of one veteran, Human life was cheap. Film was cheap. It was a great place to make a picture. The well-known troubles of Apocalypse Now, some of whose survivors are interviewed here, may be the most famous of all US-Filipino runaway productions, but its saga of bad luck and weirdness is put into sharp relief. Maidens is also about the Filipino filmmaking pros who were willing cohorts in the mayhem. There are a lot of responsible filmmakers, intones a jocular John Landis, but sometimes what's fun are the irresponsible ones. The tone is buoyant but somewhat dark, with the occasional sobering fact. After all, many of these movies were ground out while Ferdinand Marcos was dictator of the Philippines. After World War II the Philippines had a strong, professional film industry that produced some 350 movies a year. No one saw them outside the Philippines. By the early '60s, local veterans like Gerry de Leon and Eddie Romero figured that they could exploit the potential in the US drive-in circuit, so they started making movies in the tradition of B movie king and schlockmeister Roger Corman and followed the rule of the three B's: Blood, breasts and beasts. These movies were hits, big ones. Made on budgets with $100,000 ceilings, they grossed millions. They look like they came from another planet, explains filmmaker Joe Dante, a genre movie veteran. The irony was that while Marcos was fighting rebels (and offering army equipment and men as extras in genre pics), Corman and co. were producing pics celebrating revolution, many of them starring Pam Grier - who is interviewed here to along with genre vet Jack Hill. Corman, also interviewed, started making movies in the Philippines soon after he formed New World Pictures in 1970. He already had a strong fan-base for his stateside nudie pics, like Fly Me (1973). The Filipino flicks The Big Doll House (1971), Women in Cages (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972) and The Hot Box 1972) combined the girls with gore, guns, whips and shower scenes.