MIFF 2010 Review: Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Machete Maidens Unleashed!
Dir. Mark Hartley
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: TBC
Running Time: 85mins

Have you heard of these movies? The Big Bird House? The Hot Box? Cleopatra Wong? How about Ebony, Ivory & Jade, Cover Girl Models, Night of the Cobra Woman, Beyond Atlantis, Dynamite Johnson, TNT Jackson, Savage! or Black Mama, White Mama? If not then you are in for a treat with Machete Maidens Unleashed!, an unofficial sequel to Mark Hartley's brilliant 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood that charted the history of Aussie genre films of the 1970s and '80s. All of those titles listed above, and others like The One-Armed Executioner and the Beast of Blood franchise, spawned out of the Filipino film industry with the help of American filmmakers like Roger Corman and now rank as near unknown and forgotten cult niche titles for the amusement of stoned college students.

The same crew that worked on Not Quite Hollywood - the opening night film of MIFF 2008 and my #6 film of that year - have again been assembled to craft this ode to Filipino action movies. Snappily edited, Machete Maidens Unleashed! is simply 85 minutes of clips from movies about nubile young actress firing rifles, karate chopping and waving machetes around in between bouts of baring their breasts while mud wrestling in jungle prisons and causing political uprisings through the backwater swamps of he Philippines.


Interspersed throughout all of this pan and scan insanity (most of the films have never been remastered for DVD release) are interviews with well-known directors like John Landis, Brian Trenchard-Smith and Joe Dante as well as notable behind the scenes figures like George Corman, Eddie Romero, Jack Hill and an assortment of actors that made a presence for themselves in this sub-genre of film. Names like Gloria Hendry, Margaret Markov, Colleen Camp, Judy Brown and Marlene Clark may not be familiar names, but they should be after you've heard their fascinating anecdotes about working in the jungles of the Philippines. Higher profile names like R Lee Ermy, Sid Haig and Chris Mitchum are also there for their own hilarious stories, but unfortunately Pam Grier, surely the biggest name to arise out of the Filipino genre films - she made The Big Doll House, Women in Cages, Twilight People, The Big Bird Cage and Black Mama, White Mama before blaxploitation hits Coffy and Foxy Brown made her a star - refused to be interviewed. While everyone seems at least partially ashamed of their contributions to cinema here, they are all open and admit to being willing participants. It's a shame that Grier didn't see it the same way.

"Rated R for Ridiculous", as the poster says, sums up Mark Hartley's second documentary feature perfectly. I haven't even got into titles such as For Y'ur Height Only that starred Filipino dwarf superstar Weng Weng as a James Bond spoof or Up from the Depths, which was made to cash in on the success of Piranha one year earlier. If movies such as Machete Maidens Unleashed! achieve anything substantial then it's making someone like me really want to seek out movies like Cleopatra Wong (nuns with assault rifles) and Dynamite Johnson (some undecipherable plot that involves a robotic dragon). Hopefully these titles get some sort of DVD release after this movie gets seen by the right people like many of the Ozploitation films did after Not Quite Hollywood.


Sadly, Machete Maidens doesn't achieve the levels of success that director Hartley had with Not Quite Hollywood. Whereas that film spanned various genres from sex comedies to horror and science fiction, this one is far more limited to the films it covers. It is easy to mistake many of the movie clips featured within as being all from the one movie about a group of sexy and sassy American women being held captive in a prison deep within the jungle wherein they must use their sexual force to break out of. There's also a distinct lack of passion compared to its predecessor. Perhaps its the fact that these films are even more obscure than Patrick or Dead-End Drive In of the so-called "Ozploitation" movement, but there's no effort made to show how the effects of these Filipino genre films are still being felt today. Perhaps the Filipino film industry is as closed tight as Imelda Marcos' box of secrets and umbrellas, but Machete Maidens Unleashed doesn't have quite the same insight. Nevertheless, it is still a wild and hilariously entertaining hour and a half of absurd insanity. B

Black & White Friday: GrindHouse

The Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double bill that made up Grindhouse seems like a natural fit for "Black & White Friday", in which we look at what films may have turned out like - for better or worse - if they'd been made in another era. Since Grindhouse took its inspiration from b-movies (specifically Rodriguez's Planet Terror) and exploitation (Tarantino's Death Proof) that were routinely filmed on cheap black and white film stock I thought it made a great subject matter.




Back when I took a look at Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation in black and white I wrote "Oh the things Russ Meyer could have done with Rose McGowen!" and nowhere is that more apt than here. I like the idea of a movie in which Rose McGowen leads a group of maniacal, big-breasted women who have just escaped from Prison who go on the run fucking and killing any man that dares get in their way. It would be incredible, yes?


Apologies if this entry just descends into me saying things like "OMG LOOK AT THAT!!!" and "AMAZING!!!!!!" but these two movies are incredible and that's basically the reaction I have each and every time I watch them. Doesn't this just looks awesome? The added grain, scratches and all 'round retro feel certainly helps in this feature, doesn't it?


I find it funny that Fergie has appeared in three movies that were throwbacks to classic cinema. She has had cameos in Grindhouse, Poseidon and Nine. Maybe there's more to Stacy Fergie Ferg Ferguson than meets the eye? Or perhaps there's less (she does voice a character in Marmaduke after all!)


I have nothing to say, I just like the shot.


This most definitely looks like something out of Them! or from something of that ilk. All we need is a big "NOOOOO!" and the scene would be complete.


There is nothing about Rose McGowen having a MACHINE GUN FOR A LEG!!!! that is not incredible and not even black and white can destroy that beautiful image. And while the idea of a character having a MACHINE GUN FOR A LEG!!!! sorta negates the retro vibe since it so clearly wouldn't have been doable "back in the day", Rodriguez does a far better job at keeping up the grindhouse feel for the longest. Quentin Tarantino all but forgets about it from an aesthetics point of view during the second half of Death Proof. And so while I think Planet Terror is the lesser of the two films, its dedication to its idea is so wonderful that I love it all the same.


Oh Death Proof. How I love thee.


Although, to be perfectly honest, I prefer the title "Thunder Bolt".


I know this scene cops a lot of flak from people, but I love every single second of it. Every word, every camera angle, every blemish on the reel. I haven't seen all that many of the kind of movies that Quentin Tarantino was riffing off of, but their whole talking-shit-and-not-much-else vibe comes through loud and clear. I could listen to these characters talk about shit for even longer!


Curiously - and I'm sure the farthest thing from Tarantino's mind - the movie that this shot reminds me of is Orson Welles' Touch of Evil with its US/Mexico bordertown and bubbling violence. All the other shots still feel like they're out of an exploitation movie, but this one is completely different. In colour it fits, but in black and white it has that film noir aesthetic with all those shadows.


I love how cheap and nasty this sequence looks, which is why it fits into the grand scheme of all things Grindhouse very nicely. Rose McGowen doesn't have a MACHINE GUN FOR A LEG!!!! in Death Proof, but despite the bat wig she slots in perfectly. She just has that look of an actress that wouldn't have been able to make it in the big leagues due to her BIG looks and overt sexuality and would've had to appear in these genre grindhouse titles that flaunted her sexuality. Come to think of it that is exactly what happened to Rose McGowen. She's not much of an actress when working outside of her indie/genre/indie genre comfort zone, but just try and remember how beguiling she was in her Black Dahlia cameo, or how much edge she had earlier in her career in movies such as The Doom Generation, Scream and Lewis & Clark & George and then think of projects like Jawbreaker, Phantoms and Charmed.


This is gorgeous.


Not much of Death Proof's second half suits itself to black and white since Tarantino all but ditched the visual component of it, but this shot is made for it. Basically because movies don't say "THE END" anymore, but it still looks great nonetheless.

Incident at Uluru and Other Undiscovered Aussie Films

I had never heard of The S.P.A.S.H. until today when Matt Riviera mentioned it on Twitter. They are "The Society for the Preservation of Australian Secret Histories, which is an independent organisation dedicated to the discovery and study of undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events that have occurred in Australia since becoming a federation on the 1st of January 1901." Basically they work in showing you things that have heretofore been unseen.

Thing is, it's all a big ruse. I love it!

The S.P.A.S.H., I take it, is essentially a new and interesting way for whoever it is that runs the joint to get their work out there. The first of their "undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events" to be uncovered is the work of cult leader Ray "Millennium Ray" Author" who ran a cult/film studio in the Australian outback. The studio was called Dreamtime 79 and they made many films as a way of getting the Dreamtime cult message to large audiences, an effort that ultimately failed. What we have left is this suspiciously well-preserved series of poster artwork for films such as Incident at Uluru, TasMANIA!, Cemetary Dogs and The Lair of the Lyre Bird.

Some of the absolutely stunning pieces of artwork are shown below, but click here to see the rest of them. If you're going to make up an entirely fictional cult movie studio as a method of showing off your poster designs (including an extensive history) then I think they deserve to be seen.



Is it bad that all of these posters are better than almost all of the posters made for real movies? And that all of these movies have such wonderful titles and delicious artwork that I instantly want someone to actually make them. They would have to be in the style of 1970s and '80s "ozploitation" flicks though. What a hoot!

Of course, the whole thing could be entirely real, in which case...