Machete Maidens Unleashed! (ATOM Study Guide)

In 2008, director Mark Hartley gave us the fabulously entertaining study of Australian exploitation cinema, Not Quite Hollywood. Now he's back with Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), the first detailed examination and celebration of Filipino genre filmmaking. Hartley takes us on a trip back in time to a land where stuntmen came cheap, plot was obsolete, and the make-up guy was packin' heat!

From the early 1970s well into the 1990s, the Philippines was a backlot for a bevy of renegade B-movie makers and cinema visionaries. The country was utilised for its inexpensive labour, exotic locations and distinct lack of rules. A style of low budget, disreputable movie-making emerged that somehow managed to capture the raw, chaotic energy of contemporary Filipino culture. These productions (a cavalcade of monster movies, jungle prison movies, blaxploitation and kung fu hybrids) were made at a time when the country's political situation was repressive, to say the least. In 1972, President Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines and seized control of all facets of day-to-day life, including the media. But it would appear the B-movie phenomenon was a revolution that even the Marcos dictatorship couldn't crush!

Machete Maidens Unleashed! begins with the partnership of acclaimed local filmmakers Gerry de Leon and Eddie Romero, whose gore-drenched Blood Island trilogy found large and enthusiastic drive-in audiences across America, despite being derided by critics.

Legendary maverick producer Roger Corman met Romero and de Leon and discovered that the Philippines was an ideal site for low budget filming. Corman quickly set up camp and produced a number of highly successful 'Woman In Prison' films starring genre favourites Pam Grier and Sid Haig.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the appetites of thrill-hungry cinemagoers around the globe continued to be satisfied by prolific local auteurs, including Cirio H. Santiago (TNT Jackson [1974]). In the late 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola created a new epoch of filmmaking by choosing to shoot the infamously troubled production Apocalypse Now (1979) in the Philippines.

The Machete Maidens' journey climaxes in 1981 when the Philippines fights back and reclaims its own national identity via the inaugural Manila International Film Festival and accompanying Film Market. Conceived to showcase the Philippines' glorious screen culture, the market's biggest success was For Y'ur Height Only (Eddie Nicart, 1981), a low budget, homegrown James Bond spoof starring an 83cm primordial dwarf named Weng Weng. The film sold to countless international territories and is now arguably the most well known exemplar of the Filipino genre film abroad.

Machete Maidens Unleashed! is everything you ever wanted to know about drive-in filler from Manila! The ultimate insider's account of genre filmmaking in the Philippines, it boasts a roll call of local and international survivors from this period, including many visiting American B-movie starlets who were totally unprepared for the devil-may-care school of filmmaking that confronted them in south-east Asia. Alongside the talking heads, the documentary features a dazzling array of outrageous film clips from key productions.

Curriculum Links

Machete Maidens Unleashed! could be used in senior secondary Media, Film or Cultural Studies. It could also be used at a tertiary level in film courses focusing on Asian Film, Popular Cinema and Exploitation. The film provides an opportunity to hone student skills in critical cultural analysis. It also raises fascinating and important questions about taste, class and cultural identity. Secondary school teachers are advised the rating is MA15+. Unsurprisingly, given the topic, the film contains lavish amounts of nudity, sex, violence and coarse language. Parental consent forms may be required, depending on the context.