Andrew Leavold

Singapore International Film Festival 2017!

2018-05-02T19:06:00.003-07:00

In November 2017 I was invited to the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) to take part in their Asian Bonds program. SGIFF flew me from and back to Manila, put me up for three night in a swanky hotel near the National Museum, while I spoke on a discussion panel about the Filipino James Bonds and showed a five minute trailer reel, and introduced a restored print of Bobby Suarez’s The One-Armed Executioner (1983). The panel went half an hour overtime as all four of us speakers had a lot to say about our respective fields, but no-one seemed to mind, and for me it was well worth the trip. For the remainder of those glorious three days I caught up with friends, attended Cleopatra Wong’s birthday party, and overdosed on vintage Asian spy flicks (Shaw Brothers, Singapore’s Jeffrey Zain etc) before flying back to the chaos of the aborted MOST BEAUTIFUL CREATURES shoot! Sadly Brian Trenchard-Smith was unable to attend his The Man From Hong Kong screening - you were sorely missed, Brian, but the 35mm print never looked better!

PANEL DISCUSSION: SECRET SPIES NEVER DIE!

26 NOV, SUN / 4:30PM

90MIN

THE SALON, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SINGAPORE

SPEAKERS:

Tan See-Kam (Associate Professor, University of Macau)

Lisa Funnel (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma)*

Andrew Leavold (author / filmmaker)

Lee Sang Joon (Assistant Professor, Nanyang Tecnhnological University)

* replaced by Yew Kong Leong (National University of Singapore)

Accompanying the Classics programme, this panel discussion with co-curator Lee Sang-joon brings together a group of Bond scholar experts. Approaching the programme’s thematic threads with a transnational context, the discussion will touch on Asian Cinema’s appropriation of the Western spy genre. Considering the transmission of Cold War ideology into Asia, its creative upheaval of genre conventions and blending of local forms of popular culture have resulted in various genre offshoots. With anecdotes from interesting personalities, events and cross cultural exchanges which circulate within the vibrant world of the Asian spy film, the panel will offer insights into the films featured in the programme, and serve as a primer for anyone planning a stopover in this unique fringe history of cinema.

Left to right: Me, Tan See-Kam, Leong Yew, Lee Sang Joon

Actor Michael Chua (my co-star in CERTIFIED DEAD) and drinking buddy Shane Gavin

THE ONE-ARMED EXECUTIONER

From one of grindhouse cinema’s greats, comes a revenge tale replete with firepower, sensationalism and a surprising dose of melancholia.

Screening

26 Nov, Sun / 9:30 PM / National Museum of Singapore

Singapore Premiere

Philippines / 1981 / 88MIN / English / NC16: Scene of Intimacy and Some Violence

With a wink at Chang Cheh’s seminal wuxia flick One-Armed Swordsman (1967), director Bobby A. Suarez’s 1983 “actionsploitation” film sets an Interpol agent on a punishing path of vengeance after both his arm and newlywed are eliminated by a drug syndicate.

The film’s richness and popularity as a B-movie classic teeters on Suarez’s wild fusion of recognisable local and global political references with elements from Hong Kong wuxia and kungfu genre films and Hollywood spy chronicles, including archetypal characters like an orientalised mentor figure and bumbling henchmen with witty comebacks. Subjecting its lead through action scenes probably too madcap for today’s production and safety standards, this incredibly fun film works to enter its internationalised hybrid hero with a one-armed mastery of kungfu and guns into the historical canon of agents in service of justice.

Organised with the support of the National Film Archives of the Philippines.

Cleopatra Wong/Marrie Lee's birthday party!

Final night drinks with Shane and cinematographer extraordinaire Chris Doyle

The Two Degrees of Weng Weng

2017-02-14T04:28:00.001-08:00

SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON? PFFFFFT! WELCOME TO THE TWO DEGREES OF WENG WENG

Everyone - and I mean EVERYone - in the Philippine film industry is just two degrees away from being connected to Weng Weng. This ultimate guide to Who's Who in Weng Weng's filmography will prove it!

ASSEMBLED FROM THE FOLLOWING FILMS:

1. Silakbo (1975) *bit player only

2. Silang Matatapang/"They The Brave" (1976) *supporting role

3. Sila… Sa Bawat Bangketa/"They… On Every Sidewalk" (1976) *supporting role

4. Chop Suey Meets Big Time Papa (1978)

5. The Quick Brown Fox (1980) *supporting role

6. Stariray (1981) *supporting role

7. Agent 00 (1981)

8. Da Best In Da West (1981) *supporting role

9. Legs… Katawan… Babae!/“Legs...Body...Girl!” (1981) *cameo only

10. For Y’ur Height Only (1981)

11. D’Wild Wild Weng (1982)

12. The Impossible Kid (1982)

13. The Cute…The Sexy n’The Tiny (1982)

14. Tatak: Magnum/Caliber 357 (1984) *scenes deleted

TWO DEGREES: CAST

Steve Alcarado

Jing Abalos - The Quick Brown Fox

Ray Abella - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng [as Ray Albella]; The Impossible Kid [as Rey Abella]

Patrick Abide - The Quick Brown Fox (Ugandan Assassin)

Steve Alcarado - Da Best In Da West (Bandit)

Max Alvarado - Da Best In Da West (Tito Tango); Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Fat Hagibis); For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus); D’Wild Wild Weng (Lupo the Mute)

Max Alvarado

Dan Alvaro - Caliber 357

Pamela Amor – Stariray

Bebeng Amora – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Pete Andal - Da Best In Da West

David Anderson - The Impossible Kid (American in Pool)

Nelson Anderson - Caliber 357 (Nelson Grant)

Nelson Anderson

Josie Andico - Da Best In Da West

Joe Andrade - The Impossible Kid; Caliber 357

Jane Andrew - Caliber 357

Marie Antoinette – Silakbo; Silang Matatapang

Roy Aoyama - The Quick Brown Fox (Japanese Assassin)

Mel Arca - Da Best In Da West; Legs… Katawan… Babae!; D’Wild Wild Weng (Senor Sebastian's Goon); Caliber 357

Gil Arceo – Silang Matatapang; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Boyet Argame – Da Best In Da West (Tribesman)

Nelson Armiza - D’Wild Wild Weng

Dely Atay-Atayan

Dely Atay-Atayan - Da Best In Da West (Fat Woman in Credits)

Telly Babasa - Da Best In Da West; Caliber 357

Ramon "Boy" Bagatsing Jr – Silang Matatapang; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Joe Baltazar – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Balut – Stariray

Gil Bandong - D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid

Boy Banes - The Impossible Kid (Agent 1)

Barusio Stuntmen - D’Wild Wild Weng

Frank Bautista - Caliber 357

Paquito Bautista - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray

Malou Bendigo - Caliber 357 (Malou)

Bentot – Stariray (Stella's "Aunt" #1)

Vivian Betty – Silakbo

Amay Bisaya (front left)

Amay Bisaya - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa; Stariray (Boxing Commentator); Da Best In Da West (Jailer)

Nida Blanca - The Quick Brown Fox

Romy Blanco – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Alex Bolado – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Tony Bongat - The Impossible Kid

Jess Bonzo - The Impossible Kid

Belo Borja - Caliber 357

Victor Bravo - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Rod Valdez)

Nestor Brilliantes - Caliber 357

Azenith Briones - Caliber 357 (Mrs Verlosa)

Monica Brocka - Legs…Katawan…Babae!

Peter Caballes (middle)

Peter M. Caballes - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa; Da Best In Da West (Jailer); For Y’ur Height Only (Aires Force)

Mario Cabero - Caliber 357

Lito Calzado – Stariray (Gagamba)

Lito Calzado’s Body Machine – Stariray; Da Best In Da West

Jing Caparas - Da Best In Da West

Boy Carceres - Caliber 357

Yony Carreon

Tony Carreon - Da Best In Da West (Don Oligareon) [as Antonio Carrion]; The Impossible Kid (Don Simeon)

Florence Carvajal - Da Best In Da West (Large Native Princess)

Myrna Castillo - Legs…Katawan…Babae! (Sahlee)

Linda Castro - Sila...Sa Bawat Bangketa; Agent 00; For Y’ur Height Only (Aires Force)

Yehlen Catral - Da Best In Da West (Jane); For Y’ur Height Only (Lola); D’Wild Wild Weng (Elsa)

Manding Claro – Silang Matatapang

Mike Cohen

Mike Cohen - Chop Suey Meets Big Time Papa (Crime Boss); Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Stan Masterson); For Y’ur Height Only (Professor Von Kohler)

Angel Confiado - Sila...Sa Bawat Bangketa

Tony Jay Consunji - The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny

Laura Cooper-Nurse – Stariray

Rez Cortez - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Sauro Cotoco – Stariray

Jim Crumrine - The Impossible Kid (American)

Jimmy Cruz - Caliber 357

Matimtiman Cruz – Stariray

Joe Cunanan

Joe Cunanan - Da Best In Da West (Diablo’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Villager on Ground); The Impossible Kid (Joe)

Joe Curray - Caliber 357

Jimy Custodio - The Impossible Kid

Ben Dato – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ernie David – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Tim Davis - The Quick Brown Fox (El Salvadorian Assassin)

Nonong de Andres

Nonong de Andres - The Quick Brown Fox; Da Best In Da West (Undertaker); For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Kaiser’s Goon)

Boy de Castro - The Quick Brown Fox

Protacio Dee - The Quick Brown Fox (Chinese Assassin)

Jun de Guia - Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon); For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon)

Jun de Guia

Lito de Guzman - For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng; Caliber 357

Nonoy de Guzman - Caliber 357

Teroy de Guzman - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Stella's "Aunt" #2); Da Best In Da West (Barman)

Bonnie “Mong” de Jesus - The Cute…The Sexy n’The Tiny

Rudy de la Pena - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Nini dela Rama - The Impossible Kid (INP Chief)

Marissa Delgado – Stariray (Serafica's Mother)

Romy Diaz

Marissa del Mar - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Marissa)

Liza de Vera - The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny

Paquito Diaz - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Frank); Da Best In Da West (Diablo)

Romy Diaz – Silakbo; Da Best In Da West (Facundo); D’Wild Wild Weng (Senor Sebastian); The Impossible Kid (Senor Manolo Cervantes); Caliber 357 (Rodrigo Santos)

Dinah Dominguez – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Dolphy

Dolphy - The Quick Brown Fox (The Quick Brown Fox); Stariray (Serafica Parakikay); Da Best In Da West (Wild Bill Hika); Agent 00 ("The Quick Brown Fox")

Lea Dominguez - The Quick Brown Fox

Danolo D'Oro - The Quick Brown Fox (Spanish Assassin)

Jose Dura - The Impossible Kid (Chief of Staff)

Neils Elcehorn - The Impossible Kid (American)

Laarnie Enriquez – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Larry Esguerra – Silang Matatapang; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Rey Esguerra - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon)

Rio Esguerra - D’Wild Wild Weng

Fred Esplana

Fred Esplana - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Gagamba); Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon); Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Tony Falcon's Agent); For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Senor Sebastian's Henchman); The Impossible Kid; Caliber 357

Rolly Esteban - The Impossible Kid (Agent 3 [listed in opening credits as “Rowy” Esteban])

Joe Estrada - The Impossible Kid

George Estregan – Silang Matatapang

Vangie Evangelista - The Impossible Kid (Agent 4)

Rodrigo Faculto - The Impossible Kid

Joaquin Fajardo - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Fat Hagibis)

Rolan Falcis

Rolan Falcis – Stariray (Gagamba); Legs… Katawan… Babae!; For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon); The Impossible Kid [as Roland Falces]

Boni Fernandez – Silang Matatapang

Ading Fernando – Stariray

Lilian Fernando - Silakbo

Ferrarie Models – Stariray

Tony Ferrer - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Tony Falcon, Agent X-44 [uncredited]); For Y’ur Height Only (Chief)

Bernie Fineza - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Hagibis member)

Lauro Flores

Lauro Flores – Legs… Katawan… Babae!; For Y’ur Height Only (Turbaned Assassin); Caliber 357

Eric Fresnido – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

[?] Fullosa - D’Wild Wild Weng [Mat Fuloso?]

Mat Fuloso – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

James Gaines Jr - The Quick Brown Fox (American Assassin)

Misty Gallardo - Silakbo

Bert Gamboa - D’Wild Wild Weng

Philip Gamboa

Philip Gamboa - Agent 00 (Agent 002/“Diego Salvador”)

Rey Garces - The Impossible Kid

Triumpo Garces - The Impossible Kid

Allan Garcia - Caliber 357

Edgar Garcia - Caliber 357

Joji Garcia - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Hagibis member)

Edna Gatchalian – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Bert Giron - Caliber 357

Rodolfo "Boy" Garcia

Rodolfo “Boy” Garcia – Stariray (Boy); Da Best In Da West (Vic Tango); For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Kaiser)

Danny Glenmore - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Goliath - For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Giant); D’Wild Wild Weng (Apo Lawin the Indian Chief)

Big Boy Gomez – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Kent Gonzales - Da Best In Da West; Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Jay Grama

Jay Grama - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Gagamba); Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon); For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Senor Sebastian's Henchman); The Impossible Kid; Caliber 357 (Mancini's Goon)

Ernie Gubaton - D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid

Franco Guerrero - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Tony Falcon's Agent [uncredited])

Sarah Gumaboa - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Anna Marie Gutierrez

Anna Marie Gutierrez – The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Mother's Moll); For Y’ur Height Only (Anna)

Eddie Gutierrez – Silakbo

George Gyenes - The Impossible Kid (Fat Man in Pool)

Usman Hassim - D’Wild Wild Weng (Senor Sebastian's Goon)

George Henry Jr - Da Best In Da West

Peter Henzelmann - Caliber 357

Lito Hermosa – Silang Matatapang

Santy Hermosa – Silang Matatapang

Jack Holltz - The Impossible Kid (American)

Lieli Hurstler - Caliber 357

Cesar Iglesia – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Val Iglesia – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Joey Infante - Caliber 357

Dick Israel – Silang Matatapang

Dante Javier - Da Best In Da West; Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ramon Jimenez - Caliber 357

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson – Stariray (Mother's Driver); Da Best In Da West (Mayor); The Impossible Kid (Chief)

Sim Jorge – Stariray

Mark Joseph – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Lotis Key - Silakbo

Odette Khan – Silakbo; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Rene Kiefer - Caliber 357

Kiti-Kiti – Silakbo

Franz Kung - Caliber 357

Jimmy Labarro - D’Wild Wild Weng

Lito Labarro

Lito Labarro - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon)

Berting Labra - The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny (The Cute)

Efred Lapid - Da Best In Da West; The Impossible Kid (Guest 1)

Frank Lapid – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Jess Lapid Jr - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Jessie)

Lito Lapid

Lito Lapid - Da Best In Da West (Dalton); Agent 00 ("Brusko")

Max Laurel - D’Wild Wild Weng (Gordon)

Lawin Stuntmen - D’Wild Wild Weng

Jessie Lee - The Impossible Kid (Minister)

Linda Lee - Agent 00

Robert Lee - Caliber 357 (Interpol Agent)

David Light

David Light - Caliber 357 (Mancini)

Arthur Liobon - For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Kaiser’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng

Sam Lombardo - Caliber 357

Leo Longalong – Silang Matatapang; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa [as Leo Langalong]

Laura Lopez - Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ike Lozada

Ike Lozada - D’Wild Wild Weng (Grateful Villager)

Benny Mack - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray

Johnny Madrid - Da Best In Da West

Ben Manalo - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray

Mando Manarang - The Impossible Kid

Mike Manarang - The Impossible Kid

Barbara Manipol - The Impossible Kid

Mario Marasigan - Caliber 357

Cathy March - Caliber 357

Elena Marie - Caliber 357

Carmi Martin

Carmi Martin - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Stella); For Y’ur Height Only (Marilyn)

Atong Maximo - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray

Rod Maximo – Stariray

Karola Mayer - Caliber 357

Romie Medalla – Silang Matatapang

Tirso Mediavillo - Caliber 357

Kruse Michel - Caliber 357

Jimmy Milallos - The Impossible Kid (Hagad)

Robert Miller

Robert Miller - D’Wild Wild Weng (Gaspar); Caliber 357 (Rodrigo's Henchman)

Rolan Montes – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Avel Morado - Da Best In Da West; The Impossible Kid (Guest); Caliber 357

Renato Morado - The Impossible Kid (Agent 2)

Arturo "Bomber" Moran - The Quick Brown Fox

Chicklet Moreno

Pia Moran - The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny (The Sexy)

Chicklet Moreno - The Impossible Kid (Secretary)

Ben Morro - The Impossible Kid (Morro)

Abraham Muhamid - The Quick Brown Fox (Somalian Assassin)

Erich Muller - Caliber 357

Romy Nario

Romy Nario - Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon); For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra); The Impossible Kid (Mr X; also appears as one of Abdul’s nameless goons)

Brando Navarro - D’Wild Wild Weng

Joy Navarro - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Lito Navarro - D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid

Rod Navarro – Stariray (Rod)

Elpidio Navillon - D’Wild Wild Weng

Eddie Nicart

Eddie Nicart - Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon)

Remy Nocum - Da Best In Da West; For Y’ur Height Only (Goon); The Impossible Kid

Tony Orbeta - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Bobby Oreo - For Y’ur Height Only (Bobby, Mr Kaiser’s Goon)

Danny Ortega – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ernie Ortega

Ernie Ortega - D’Wild Wild Weng (Ku Manchu); Caliber 357 (Tomao)

Gody Pacrem - D’Wild Wild Weng

Dencio Padilla - D’Wild Wild Weng (Mr Dencio, Clara’s Father); The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny

Panchito - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Police Captain); Da Best In Da West (Inkong Gaspar)

Panchito Jr - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray (Gagamba)

Mando Pangilinan

Mando Pangilinan - Da Best In Da West; For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Armando the Concerned Villager)

Sonny Parsons - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Hagibis leader)

Alex Pascual - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng

Don Pepot – Stariray (Boxing Referee); Da Best In Da West (Tribe Spokesman)

Mon Picazo - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Hagibis member)

Boy Pineda - The Quick Brown Fox

Henry Pineda – Silakbo

Porso Boys [Stuntmen] - D’Wild Wild Weng

Angela Prestel - Caliber 357

D’Professional Stuntman - D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid

Edgar Quizon – Stariray

Georgie Quizon – Stariray; Da Best In Da West (Tribal Witchdoctor)

Manuel "Boy" Quizon - The Quick Brown Fox

Alberta “Peaches” Rainge - Silakbo

Daria Ramirez – Silang Matatapang

Jess "Og" Ramos - The Impossible Kid (General de Vera)

Ruben Ramos

Ruben Ramos - Da Best In Da West (Thug with Sword); For Y’ur Height Only (Jack); The Impossible Kid (Abdul)

Boy Ranay – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Mike Respall - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Hagibis member)

Doming Reyes - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng [as Domeng Reyes]; Caliber 357

Erning Reyes - D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid; Caliber 357

Jimmy Reyes - D’Wild Wild Weng (Goon in Cowboy Hat)

Oscar "Oca" Reyes

Oscar “Oca” Reyes - Da Best In Da West; For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Kaiser’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Running Villager); Caliber 357

Renarto Ricarte - For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon)

Danny Riel – Legs… Katawan… Babae!; Caliber 357

Robert Rivera - Da Best In Da West; Caliber 357

Freddie Robles – Silakbo; Silang Matatapang

Irene Robles - The Impossible Kid

Renato Robles – Stariray; Legs… Katawan… Babae!; Caliber 357

Steve Rogers - Caliber 357 (Verlosa's White Goon) [as Steven Rogers]

Rago Apollo Roman - For Y’ur Height Only (Baldo's Goon)

Nick Romano - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Nick Serbos)

Ruel Romano - Sila...Sa Bawat Bangketa

Rene Romero

Rene Romero - For Y’ur Height Only (Cobra’s Goon); D’Wild Wild Weng (Acosta); The Impossible Kid (Sgt Romero); Caliber 357

Tommy Romulo Jr – Stariray

Veen Rosette – Silakbo

Damela Rubi - Caliber 357

Jean Saburit - Caliber 357 (Marlene)

Rey Sagum – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ric Sagum – Legs… Katawan… Babae!

Ingrid Salas - Sila...Sa Bawat Bangketa

Er "Canton" Salazar

Er "Canton" Salazar - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray; Da Best In Da West (Don Oligareon’s Chinese Henchman)

Eddie Samonte - For Y’ur Height Only (Mr Kaiser’s Goon); The Impossible Kid

Gina Samonte - The Impossible Kid

Manny Samson – Stariray (Gagamba)

Ben Sanchez – Silang Matatapang; Da Best In Da West; D’Wild Wild Weng

Beth Sandoval

Beth Sandoval - For Y’ur Height Only (Irma); The Cute… The Sexy n’The Tiny; Caliber 357 (Lorna Rodriguez)

Lita Sandoval – Silakbo

Luis San Juan - Da Best In Da West (Diego)

Boy Sta. Maria - Caliber 357

Naty Santiago - Da Best In Da West (Estralita’s Aunt)

Jimmy Santos - Caliber 357

Jun Santos – Silakbo

Marie Grace Santos - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Nery Santos – Stariray; Da Best In Da West [as Neri Santos]

Roger Santos – Legs… Katawan… Babae!; The Impossible Kid

Rusty Santos - Legs… Katawan… Babae! (Biker)

Vic Santos – Stariray; Da Best In Da West

Nina Sara

Nina Sara - Da Best In Da West (Estralita); D’Wild Wild Weng (Clara); The Impossible Kid (Lolita)

Boy Sarmiento - Caliber 357

Roger Saulog – Stariray; Da Best In Da West

Greg Sayo – Silang Matatapang

Raquel Sayson - Da Best In Da West (Tribesman)

Sidney Schneider – Silang Matatapang

Mike Schrichter - Caliber 357

Lee Scott

Lee Scott - For Y'ur Height Only (American Samurai); The Impossible Kid (American in Pool)

Evelyn Shenna – Silakbo

Ailice Siron - The Impossible Kid

Alma Siron - The Impossible Kid

Amor Siron - The Impossible Kid (Guest)

SOS Daredevils [Stuntmen] – Silang Matatapang; Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa; Stariray; Da Best In Da West; D’Wild Wild Weng; The Impossible Kid

Tony Tacorda - Caliber 357

Robert Talby – Stariray; Da Best In Da West (Facundo’s Goon) [as Robert Talvy]

Totoy Tan – Silang Matatapang

Sheba “Mor” Tatad – Silakbo

Sancho Tesalona - Da Best In Da West

Thumblers [Stuntmen] - D’Wild Wild Weng

Thunder Stuntmen - The Impossible Kid

Ramon Tiangco - The Impossible Kid

Manny Tibayan - Da Best In Da West

Tintoy – Silang Matatapang

Mario Tobin - Caliber 357

Angelo "Lito" Tomenes - For Y’ur Height Only (Columbus’ Goon)

Tsing Tong Tsai - The Quick Brown Fox

Walter Tschopp - Caliber 357

Rene Tupaz - Da Best In Da West (Tribesman)

Ulysses Tzan

Ulysses Tzan - Caliber 357 (Interpol Agent) [listed on local ads as "Ulysses Santiago"]

Conde Ubaldo - The Quick Brown Fox; Stariray; Da Best In Da West

Francis Ubaldo – Stariray

Adul Ugad – Silang Matatapang

Rey Valenzuela - D’Wild Wild Weng

Michael Vallar - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Dante Varona

Dante Varona – Silakbo; Silang Matatapang; Agent 00 (Agent 003/“Ermitanyo”)

Vic Varrion – Legs… Katawan… Babae!; Caliber 357

Lita Vasquez – Silang Matatapang; The Impossible Kid (Guest 2)

Vivian Velez - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Max Vera - The Quick Brown Fox; Da Best In Da West (Joey Tango)

Joe Villafranca – Silakbo

Yoyoy Villame - Sila... Sa Bawat Bangketa

Eddie Villamor - Da Best In Da West

Ramon Zamora

George Weber Jr - The Quick Brown Fox

Johnny Wilson - Caliber 357 (Senor Verlosa)

Ramon Zamora - Chop Suey Meets Big Time Papa (Chop-Suey); Agent 00 (Agent 001/“Dragon”)

Zandro Zamora – Silakbo

Philippe Mora Q and A (2013)

2017-01-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

2013 - I introduced Philippe Mora’s "70s Guerrilla Filmmaking" presentation and Q and A at the You Don't Have To Be Jewish! Film Festival, State Library, South Brisbane 16/02/13

Philippe Mora’s Facebook update from 17/02/13: “Had great kickoff events yesterday with my talk on the early film days here, making Mad Dog Morgan, its history, the spirit of those times, then a lengthy Q&A chaired by the knowledgeable Andrew Leavold, which went into many of my films. Some Brisbane film buffs were very keen on the genre movies (The Beast Within, Howling 3 et al), even bringing out well worn video boxes for me to sign. The reactive audience very much enjoyed the whole thing including a clip of Hopper saying making Mad Dog was one his greatest life experiences. Andrew, it turns out, is also very interested in history and has a collection of films made in the Third Reich. This event stretched from 2 hours to 3, then we all went next door for a fine opening reception of the festival with excellent food, wine and live music.”

Farewell To Trash (2010)

2017-01-17T21:15:00.002-08:00

Farewell To Trash

[Interview with Lachlan Huddy August 2010, published in the first issue of Michael Adams' online magazine Wordy Mofo]

It was almost “Titfuck!”—exclamation mark mandatory. “Schlockbuster” was another title jockeying for the prize. “Blackbastard Video”, “I Spit On Your Video” and “Video Sleazy” were all in contention, too. In the end, though, simplicity carried the day, and Brisbane’s first, finest and filthiest alternative video store was baptised Trash Video.

“It’s a good filter,” says owner-manager Andrew Leavold of the evocative moniker. “That kind of passive, mindless consumption that categorises most movie-watchers. It’s a good filter to scare them off.”

Since 1995, Trash has been the proud purveyor of everything beyond the flow of cinema’s mainstream. Shock, schlock, art, grunge, indie, cult, foreign, rare, grotesque or sublime—if it exists outside the realm of casual moviegoing, Trash is the place to find it. Burning to take in Microwave Massacre, the self-declared worst horror movie ever made? It’s in the Trash stash. Can’t track down Leni Reifenstahl’s 1930s Nazi propaganda Triumph of the Will for that modern history essay? Pick it out of the Trash. And while you’re there, why not indulge some nostalgia and plump for the Twin Peaks Season Three double-VHS pack? Yes indeed, Trash is everything the modern video shop isn’t: cluttered with obscurity, disorganised, and bursting with character.

But to speak of Trash is to speak of Leavold, its indefatigable founder; the store is but an extension of the man himself, for whom the creation and consumption of culture—popular and otherwise—is more than a business or pleasure: it is a way of life. And has been for a long, long while.

“Basically this was an idea that I had when I was ten,” Leavold says. It’s a July afternoon and we’re talking over the counter of Trash’s current store in Brisbane’s West End. To the left sit neat piles of rental DVDs stacked thirty and forty high; to the right the store computer is near-buried under posters and VHS and other bric-a-brac your local Civic would’ve sold off by now. There’s a touch of gloom in the air, but we’ll get to that later—for now there’s only Leavold in a Coney Island T-shirt, with his errant blonde hair framing a wild-eyed face, telling Trash’s tale. It is, he says, “a story of childhood obsession taken to ludicrous extremes.”

The son of a civil engineer, Leavold spent his early years globetrotting with a father who tended to accept “filthy overseas jobs” throughout the Middle East. Starved of pop culture care of the slim pickings on Arabic television, Leavold took his first step along the road to Trashy treasure with the advent of Betamax (a videotape format, for all you post-Gen X-ers). Late-night gems like “old fucking Vincent Price films” and “the most grotesque horror films that were just coming out as part of the Italian New Wave” infiltrated the Middle East through pirate video networks, the “Betamax Grapevine”—and found a spellbound audience in ten-year-old Leavold.

“The Indian guys who used to run the local video store used to wait for me to come in,” he recalls fondly. “I’d pedal up on my bicycle and they’d go, ‘Ah! We have a new zombie film for you. But don’t tell your mother!’ And they would feed me fucking vile garbage… It got to the point where my mother had written to every one of the video shops I was a member of saying, ‘Do not give my son any more horror films’.”

But it was too late for little Andrew: an idea had taken root. “All the time, I kept dreaming about having a video shop that had all these movies that I loved in it. This kind of anal obsession as a ten-year-old to control culture.”

It was an obsession anal enough to persist throughout high school and into his first job, during which he was “blowing every fucking paycheck on a pile of VHS.” When his trove hit critical mass—at somewhere around 2000 tapes—Leavold went public and Trash Video was born, its first home a little walk-up over indie music club The Zoo in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. It was a fine neighbourhood to raise an alternative video store: grungy, unpretentious and not quite suitable for the under-twelve set. But time waits for no cult film fan, and after five years, when Trash’s stock had more than tripled, the Valley had mutated.

“Trendy fuckheads on bad drugs,” Leavold laments. “When all of a sudden you find yourself surrounded by stores that sell $80 fucking can openers, it’s time to go. The lease was up; we thought it was either sink or swim time. We either try to do this somewhere else on a larger scale or give up. And luckily one of our readers on our email said, ‘Why don’t we try West End?’ That was ten years ago.”

And what a decade it’s been. Trash’s stock has swollen to a horde of more than 16,000; a silent partner has come on-board as co-owner; a 2003 documentary — Escape From the Planet of the Tapes — has been made about the store and about Leavold; and a loyal, close-knit community of renters has entered Trash’s orbit. In the few hours I’m here, Leavold greets every walk-in with a smile, easy conversation or a few flicks reserved just for them: “Have I got something for you?” is a regular refrain. No clinical efficiency here; just a shared love of the movies, a gentle reminder of how unifying a force cinema can be.

Still, this is retail. It can’t all have been sugar and spice and everything nice. Can it? “I’ve seen you rip up someone’s membership,” a friend and regular customer says to Leavold, smirking, before quoting, “‘Just get out! No! No, I don’t care what you say! Just get out!’”

Leavold is reflective. “Yeah. There have been a number of those public meltdowns...I hate a lot of people for years. I carry grudges. Anyone who transgresses the rules of politeness here.”

And what are those, I wonder?

“It’s based on ever-changing brain chemistry,” Leavold grins, with a good-natured twitch of the nostril.

There’s one particular memory, of course, that stands at the top of the Trash heap. “Worst customer experience,” says Leavold, “was probably having an elderly gentleman ask for rape-themed videos, specifically rape between a father and a daughter.” I guess we’ve all been there.

Outside Trash’s hallowed aisles, meanwhile, the past decade saw Leavold cement both himself and his store as cult cinema icons with Film Club, weekly screening nights across Brisbane that ran until 2006 showcasing the best, worst and weirdest of Trash’s back catalogue. He also launched Schlock Treatment, his weekly cult film TV show on Brisbane’s Channel 31—and added his own cult curios to the world of cinema.

2003’s Lesbo-A-Go-Go, Leavold’s no-budget homage to 60s sexploitation icon Doris Wishman (a woman oft-referred to as the female Ed Wood) is “porn without porn”, a cheap, tawdry faux-morality play that propels hapless heroine Sugar from one hideous travail—cemetery rape, drug addiction, rape-during-abortion—to the next before having her stabbed with a syringe and condemned by a priest as she’s dying on the footpath. Shot in grainy black and white and featuring no sync sound, Lesbo is as trashy in its delivery as it is vile in its content, and leaves you in need of a shower and a good stiff drink—right on the money, in other words. It’s elevated by a soundtrack just this side of kick-ass and a frankly awesome psychadelic colour sequence, and is a tremendously fun, sustained in-joke for Wishman fans.

Like any cult film worth its salt, Lesbo offended audience sensibilities and ignited a riot of ire amongst the moral majority—particularly when a drunken interview that Leavold gave to Brisbane newspaper The Courier Mail left the mistaken impression that there’d been more than just simulated sex going on during a shoot at Toowong Cemetery.

“The article basically said we were filming gang-bangs on open graves,” Leavold deadpans. “And immediately there was a shitstorm.” Quite sensational for a film which, Leavold thinks, could have scraped in with a PG-rating. “None of what you see on the screen is explicit. There’s no profanity whatsoever. There’s no onscreen salaciousness. It’s all implied.”

After three years the shitstorm had slackened enough to allow Leavold back behind the camera for 2006’s Bluebirds of Peace and Destruction, a fictionalisation of the lesbian vampire killing in Brisbane’s Orleigh Park in 1989. With $2000 from a generous Trash customer, Leavold set about crafting the tale of three damaged women who abduct a family man and murder him to drink of his blood.

“I thought, right, the only way to do this is to totally improvise it,” Leavold says. “Get two genuine…” He pauses, selecting his words.

“Crack whores?” offers the teenage work experience girl, familiar with the story. “I wouldn’t say crack whores,” Leavold replies. “No, I would say two girls who are no strangers to the sex industry.” He cackles infectiously.

The girls may be no strangers to the sex industry, but they’re no strangers to credible emotion, either; Bluebirds’ documentary aesthetic is complimented by engaging naturalistic performances from its lead actresses—friends of Leavold’s then and still—and a fantastically foreboding score. Assembled with taut editing, it’s a snappy, authentic and brutally effective ride into Brisbane’s seamy underworld.

Then there’s the upcoming The Search For Weng Weng. If there’s a magnum opus in Leavold’s life so far, this is it: a guerilla doco about Weng Weng, star of For Y’ur Height Only, a Filipino spy thriller about a kung fu-kicking midget James Bond.

“Weng Weng was, I think, was one of those catalytic moments where cinema changes forever,” Leavold says. “Literally a bolt from the sky. I’d never come across a film that was so inadvertantly a masterpiece… Somehow that absurd image of a kung fu-kicking midget had a weird kind of humanity about it and I wanted to know where he came from, what his real name was, I wondered if there were other Weng Weng films.”

Filmed over four years and as many trips to the Philippines, The Search... is now in post-production, Leavold struggling to, “get across the surreal nature of the Philippines and the bizarre way that things just literally fell out of the sky during the search for Weng Weng in order to piece that story together… that layer of weirdness and serendipity that covers everything.”

In the meantime, his work on Search gave birth to Machete Maidens Unleashed!, the new documentary from Not Quite Hollywood’s Mark Hartley, which had its premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival on July 24.

“I signed [Search] over to a producer here,” Leavold explains. “She approached ABC. ABC went, ‘We’d rather have a more conventional, essay-based documentary on B-filmmaking in the Philippines, like Not Quite Hollywood, so why don’t we get that nice chap who made Not Quite Hollywood to make it?’ And I went, [sighs] ‘Fine’, graciously stepped aside, and Mark came onboard.”

Leavold’s time in the Philippines also seeded the idea for a fittingly spun-out feature film, which is now at second draft stage and has secured partial funding. “It’s about an Australian who goes to the Philippines to try and make a dwarf kung fu remake of The Harder They Come, the Jamaican Spaghetti Western. Ends up losing his fucking shit, you know, Francis Ford Coppola-style.”

And is there any better way to lose one’s shit?

Amid it all, his exhaustive research into Weng Weng caught the eye of Brisbane academia, and landed him a place in—of all things—a doctorate. “Griffith University said, ‘Why don’t you just turn it into a thesis? You’ve done all your research. Now just write the damn thing.’” So the directorial credit for The Search for Weng Weng just might read Dr Andrew Leavold…

With so many balls to juggle, it’s a miracle that Leavold can keep them all in the air and still have time for the store that started it all. But can he?

“You know,” he says, gesturing around the shop, “you spend seven to ten hours here, you have very little enthusiasm for anything else.”

Ah. Remember the touch of gloom in the air we were speaking about earlier? Here it is. According to Andrew Leavold, digital’s killed the video shop. After fifteen years as Brisbane’s—and Australia’s—largest cult video store, Trash Video is closing its doors against the harsh light of a changing media landscape, in which the likes of Foxtel IQ, Netflix and Bigpond Movies are rendering quaint local video stores, with their physical constraints and limited stock, all but obsolete.

“The idea of an old-fashioned video shop has well and truly had its day,” Leavold says, and it isn’t the voice of bitterness, nor defeat, but the voice of a man content to move on. “The onus now is on ownership. It just means that we’re consuming culture in a different way now. Much more immediate. And, I think, with the switchover of technology, that’s our cue to exit as gracefully as we can.”

With the day winding down, I finally take my leave from Trash. I’ve stayed far longer than I’d planned, but it’s an easy place to get lost in. I pause, peering down the aisles at the rows and rows of VHS and DVD, thinking of the films inside each, the weird, the enchanting, the scandalous. Somewhere here is the mutant fish baby from Corman’s Humanoids from the Deep; the mad, murderous, Buddhist Jew-burner from the nutso Czechoslovakian horror The Cremator; the prehistoric stop-motion wonders from dino-western The Valley Of Gwangi. Soon they’ll need to find new shelves from which to ply their strange nightmares and stranger dreams—and perhaps no-one will take them in. It’s a mournful thought, and I almost feel that words should be said, some goodbye prayer.

“Titfuck!” Leavold chirps to me in parting.

Says it all, really, doesn’t it?

Human Centipede 2/Lawrence Harvey Q and A (2011)

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HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2: THE LAWRENCE HARVEY Q&A

Hosted by Andrew Leavold 23/11/11

From the Trash Video Emailout November 2011: “Join Tribal Theatre on November 23rd for an evening of UNCUT Centipede Madness on Wednesday, November 23 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm. Screening is the briefly banned (in the UK) and very much uncut Human Centipede 2 with a Q&A session with the Centipede himself, actor Laurence R. Harvey. Join us for a discussion on film censorship, new horror, and well what ever else you like! Tickets $16 for Adults and $13.50 for Concession are available from Tribal.”

Weeks before the BIFF premiere of Human Centipede 2, I was quoted in the Brisbane Times and Sydney Morning Herald about the film:

“Brisbane genre film director and cult movie expert Andrew Leavold said the inclusion of Tom Six's movie was a worrying sign that ultra-violence had penetrated the mainstream.

“Leavold, whose 2003 short film Lesbo-A-Go-Go chronicled the ‘degradation, drug addiction, delirium and ultimately damnation’ of a sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman [it doess???], said the Human Centipede films were part of a disturbing new genre trend.

“‘There's a new movement in horror where it's so far over the top it becomes abstract,’ he said. “Human Centipede is just an exercise in the grim, new nihilism that began with Saw and careered off into Hostel territory and other really out-there stuff like Irreversible.’”

Then I actually SAW the film, and this is what I wrote for the Monster Pictures newsletter:

Scanning around Tribal's seedy opulence the BIFF crowd are a vocal lot, similar to The Room groupies but without the bags of plastic spoons. Opening comments by BIFF's Richard Moore and Lars Nilsen from Fantastic Film Fest are greeted with whoops from the shock jocks who had clearly shot their loads over the manipulative, mean-spirited nature of HC1 and are ready to party.

Ten minutes in: guffaws and cheering. Laurence R. Harvey as Martin, the balding, paunched and crowbar-weilding amateur surgeon, is irredeemably compelling to watch.

Half hour mark: nervous titters. Martin is already down to his Reg Grundies and racking up a sizable menagerie. One walkout midway through the film during a fecal-related moment.

After an hour: silence, punctuated with the odd "eeeewww!!!" There is no escape from the film's downward sucking motion into its grey and godless, rain-streaked, shit-caked universe.

End credits: the crowd shuffles out without a word. In the men's, six guys pee avoiding eye contact or comment. Far from the party film the shock jocks were hoping for, you can just tell, for better or worse, the film's a genuinely affecting experience. For me at least, in this cynical post-modern dog's breakfast we call film culture these days, this is the greatest shock of all.

After HC1 I called Tom Six an artless Dutch c***. I now stand corrected: you, sir, are a madman and a poet, and while still a c***, your film is a work of bloated, misguided genius. For the rest of you, you have been warned.

Nollywood Boulevard lecture in Dunedin (2011)

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Nollywood Boulevard lecture at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand 28/05/11

Sydney Underground Film Festival 2014

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07/09/14 - The Search For Weng Weng screening at the Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF), Treasury Theatre, Marrickville. The rowdy post-screening Q and A compered by Jaimie Leonarder (Mu Meson Archives) was filmed by Jarret Gahan and released on the DVD bonus features in all territories except Sweden.

The Great DEADbate at BIFF (2009)

2017-01-16T23:39:00.003-08:00

"The Great DEADbate"

Discussion on zombie films with UNDEAD's Peter and Michael Spierig, Andrew Leavold and chair Coreen Haddad, Brisbane International Film Festival 08/08/09

Lucid Being (2002)

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LUCID BEING (Short Film, 2003) Actor Only

Student zombie film directed by Josh Long. I play "Hungry Zombie" along with my very naked European co-star in brief flashbacks. I remember being slightly nonplussed at having to eat real meat during the zombie chowdown. "Ever heard of special effects?"

The Last Pinoy Action King reviews

2017-01-16T22:30:00.001-08:00

THE LAST PINOY ACTION KING REVIEWS

Cinema Crazed (Emilie Black) “...a very informative piece on a beloved actor… This film might just make every viewer a fan of Daboy.”

Cinemadrome (Robert Monell) “...another highly entertaining, informative, ultimately moving chronicle of a kind of cinema which existed at a certain time and in a specific culture which is now long gone, but not forgotten…. This is the rare film which leaves you wanting more, you don't want it to end.”

Coolman0304’s My Movie World “Overall this documentary film is a remarkable way of knowing a film icon.” (3.5/5)

Critic After Dark (Noel Vera) “What Leavold gives us is an affectionate portrait of a basically decent man; if the end result is unadventurous it's also surprisingly moving...”

Die Danger Die Die Kill (Todd Stadtman) “...while perhaps a less ‘gonzo’ film than The Search For Weng Weng, is arguably a more mature one. Whether you prefer that or not is up to you. To me, it’s a symptom of versatility that bodes well for the future of both men as filmmakers worth watching.”

The Film Geek Guy (Matthew Escosia) “This is a lovely tribute to Daboy. Directors Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa managed to garner interviews of his family members and friends in the industry whose love and passion on the actor was evident in the entire film.” (9/10)

Filmink (Travis Johnson) “...an engaging journey through that country’s fascinating and often turbulent political and cultural history… Occasionally the film gets a little too ‘inside baseball’ as it delves into some of the more obscure elements of Filipino film without leaving enough breadcrumbs for a less knowledgeable viewer to follow, but nonetheless this is a fascinating portrait.”

Film Police (Armando dela Cruz) “The result is in the whole effective—insights from colleagues, relatives and friends (Chanda Romero, Robin Padilla, and Phillip Salvador among others) almost make for an entire oral history of studio filmmaking in the Philippines...” (3.5/5)

Glitter (Nonoy L. Lauzon) “The docu worthy of wide theatrical release also regales audiences with a precious plethora of tidbits, trivia and anecdotes that may be cherished not for their nostalgia value alone. More than anything else, they serve as enduring testimonials to an industry that never lacked for glory days and the means to actually relive and recoup them someday.”

Pcheng Photography (Ica Hontiveros-Cheng) “An unexpected treat… The Last Pinoy Action King is a rare gem, which looks which should not be missed by movie fans and history buffs, especially if they are big fans of Daboy.”

The Last Pinoy Action King (2015) interviews

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THE LAST PINOY ACTION KING INTERVIEWS

2016 - The Last Pinoy Action King interview with Miguel Rodriguez, Horrible Imaginings Film Festival catalogue, September 2016 [never published]

The Last Pinoy Action King interview for HIFF (2016)

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"The Last Pinoy Action King"

[Interview with Miguel Rodriguez for the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival catalogue, September 2016]

Miguel: I know we have talked about this on the podcast, but since this is a new venue for your second Filipino film doc in the same number of years, talk about your love affair with Pinoy cinema.

Andrew: Jesus, Miguel, where do we begin? I suspect it started way back in the late Seventies, when Betamax started throwing up some of the weirder, more obscure genre titles, and without me knowing it at the time, many of them happened to to be filmed in the Philippines by Filipinos. Later came Apocalypse Now and Platoon, and a conscious notion of watching a film actually shot in this (for me) almost mythical landscape of the Philippines – and then For Y’ur Height Only, starring a two foot nine Filipino James Bond, and suddenly the dots started to join together! After seeing Weng Weng in action, I started to to recognize his co-stars in other kung fu movies, and the names Bobby A. Suarez and Eddie Romero and Cirio H. Santiago appeared everywhere on my peripheral vision. Twenty years later and I’m watching everything from Filipino arthouse, indies, vintage musicals, lowbrow comedies, costume classics, Mad Max ripoffs, parodies, superhero movies...it just doesn’t stop. The obsession is well and truly out of control. And not only do I make movies about their film history and write about it (The Search For Weng Weng book is only months away from release), I’m also teaching that history to Filipino kids at universities. It all started with Weng Weng, and I can’t imagine the journey ever ending!

Miguel: Anecdotally, I know more than a few people know who Weng Weng is specifically because of your documentary The Search for Weng Weng. Do you think the same thing will happen for Rudy “Daboy” Fernandez? What made you choose him as your next subject?

Andrew: It was more a case of Rudy finding us! Dani (Palisa, The Search For Weng Weng’s co-writer/co-producer) and I were busy pitching a different project altogether in Manila at the time, a documentary on erotic cinema under the Marcos family. As Imelda’s son BongBong was beginning his campaign for Vice President, we were told quietly that now was not a good time to be talking porn and dictators, and I suspect they were right. Instead I received a Facebook message from Rudy’s son Rap - “If you’re not busy, can you make a film about my dad?” - and so began a manic seven months from that message to an opening night at Q-Cinema film festival premiere in Manila, complete with an actual Red Carpet, celebrities and paparazzi! Rap wanted a tribute during the seventh year of Rudy’s passing, and because Rudy is still adored – I mean, really worshipped, like the Philippines’ King of Action before him, Fernando Poe Jr – the film hits a chord with its Filipino audience. Rudy is very much a part of the nation’s DNA, and there’s a sadness over his untimely death that seems will never go away. It’s impossible for those layers of meaning to be transferred to an audience outside the Philippines, which probably makes this film more for a local audience than an international one. But I do think the story of Rudy’s personal trials and tribulations, as well as the history of action films in the Philippines, and the need for an action hero in the lives of those who have no voice, is a universal one. There’s no irresistible hook of a two foot nine James Bond, so you have to be realistic - I can’t imagine the film travelling as far as Weng Weng, but hopefully it will find its audience.

Miguel: The Last Pinoy Action King is quite different in tone and structure from your last doc. What did you know going into making this documentary after your previous experiences? Was there anything specific that dictated the feel of this documentary?

Andrew: Last Pinoy… is most definitely a more conventional talking-heads documentary, much more linear and chronologically structured. First and foremost I wanted the film to be about Rudy, his family, his extended clan of co-workers, and the film culture from which they sprang. It couldn’t be another “personal journey” film, so Dani and I immediately took back seats and let the subjects do the narrating. And because Rudy had obsessively archived his and his wife Lorna’s careers in a four storey building in Quezon City, we literally had a mountain of material to piece the film together with – home movies, photos, posters, clippings, and more than a hundred feature films and TV shows. Once the fifty interviews were filmed, our editing team under Lawrence Ang pieced the film together as if it were an archaeological dig! The other factor to keep in mind was its Filipino audience. Rap wanted to sell the project to local TV, and you really can’t be too experimental for a TV audience in the Philippines. So we tried to tell Rudy’s story along with the bigger picture concepts in an uncomplicated fashion. I have a feeling that the next doco will be radically different again, and yet thematically will form a perfect trilogy on Philippine cinema history.

Miguel: Do you think it is an inevitability that the exploitative nature of film industries (Hollywood just being on such industry) will lead to sad endings for many of our film heroes?

Andrew: For the little guys like Weng Weng, definitely. And in a Philippines context, the yawning chasm between the haves and the have-nots is immense. Rudy’s story, however, is markedly different to Weng Weng’s. He was born into film royalty and a political dynasty, and despite his father’s failing fortunes towards the end of his life, he was able to become a superstar and remain so until his early passing from cancer. One of the incredible things about Rudy’s life, I think, is that he gave so much of himself and his wealth to those less fortunate around him, in stark contrast to the majority of local producers who DID exploit the little guys – figuratively or literally, in the case of Weng Weng. Ultimately, Rudy’s story is one of a real life hero, much like his own hero and mentor, Fernando Poe Jr. Hence the title The Last Pinoy Action King – if FPJ was the Action King, then Rudy would have been his logical heir if he’d survived and the action genre hadn’t died with him.

Miguel: Do you think there is still some push back from the Filipino community about bringing attention to the genre cinema of the Philippines? How do you overcome the perception that people enjoy these films sincerely, rather than pejoratively?

Andrew: In the Philippines, “genre” will always be a dirty word in certain circles. It’s changing slowly – when I started delivering university lectures on Pinoy B films in 2008, you could hear the snorts of derision! Last year the crowds were bigger and the snorting less obvious. It’s the KIDS who are embracing their past glories and action heroes, and to them, “genre” - specifically, action, horror and exploitation - means a world of opportunity (see Erik Matti’s global success with On The Job [2014]). Sadly the Cool Kids haven’t embraced Rudy as a cultural hero in the same way they did Weng Weng. I guess Rudy is less of an underdog, more representative to them of the Superstar Machine, and I can see where they’re coming from. As an outsider I don’t have the same cultural baggage, and can appreciate Rudy’s films for what they are – well-acted, well-crafted if at times formulaic actioners.

Miguel: Do you firmly see yourself as a documentarian now? Would you ever attempt narrative film? Name some other topics you'd like to shine a light on.

Andrew: I think of myself first and foremost as a film obsessive; I watch them, write about them, research them, and filmmaking is a logical extension of that obsession, and documentaries are just one form of the filmmaking process. I’m happy to say Dani and I are finally prepping for that Marcos/porn doco, and we’re also shooting one on iconic Melbourne punk rocker/cartoonist Fred Negro (real name). But there’s an Aussie horror script I’m attached to right now as director, a gory throwback to early Eighties slashers, and Dani and I are writing a black, black horror-action-comedy called Parables Of Piss And Blood, to be directed by us in the Deeeeep South of the Philippines. Ideally I’d like to make one documentary, then one narrative feature. Narratives are fun to make and have greater audience appeal, but documentaries are lie jazz – there’s a free form to them, trying to capture lightning in a bottle, which I find exhilarating.

Miguel: Give readers a quick watch list for Daboy.

Andrew: Given the state of film preservation in the Philippines, general lack of subtitling and distribution on DVD, and Filipino cinema’s abysmal export record, it’s hard to see any of Daboy’s films, let alone be able to understand their Tagalog dialogue, outside of the Philippines. Back in the Eighties, when randomly selected Pinoy action films were being dubbed into English for overseas territories, several Rudy titles appeared on VHS - Operation Get Victor Corpus (1987), Raging Vendetta (1983), The Day They Robbed America (1985), all good solid gun actioners – and can be found on Ebay or torrent sites if you look hard enough. Some Tagalog ones pop up on Youtube from time to time, and if you can bribe a Filipino friend into translating for you, I’d recommend Somewhere (1984) with his wife Lorna Tolentino, the Hong Kong-inspired, hyper-violent Palaban (2000), the Shakespearian revenge thriller Pepeng Shotgun (1981), Danny Ziacita’s thinking man’s goon masterpiece Pretty Boy Segovia (1978), and the real-life gangster biopic that kickstarted his career, Baby Ama (1976). Rudy’s films exist in a whole other universe which takes a while getting used to, but once you do...watch out, the obsession could last a lifetime.

The Last Pinoy Action King screenings

2017-01-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

THE LAST PINOY ACTION KING SCREENINGS

23/10/15 – Opening night at Q Cinema Film Festival, Gateway 1 [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

28/10/15 – Q Cinema Film Festival, Trinoma 1

30/10/15 - Q Cinema Film Festival, Galleria 7

08/04/16 to 15/04/16 - a week-long season at Cinema 76, San Juan

15/07/16 - Festival NITS de Cinema Oriental de Vic

08/09/16 – Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, San Diego

18/10/16 – STUFF, Mexico City

02/12/16 – Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival, Palace Barracks Cinemas [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

Ten Commandments of Pinoy Westerns paper (2015)

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"The Ten Commandments of Pinoy Westerns" paper at the Digital Divide conference, University of the Philippines Film Institute, Quezon City, Philippines 11/06/15

Post-talk drinks with film academics Teddy Co, Ed Lejano and Ed Cabagnot

Oteki Sinema interview (2014)

2017-01-10T16:30:00.000-08:00

"Andrew Leavold’la The Search For Weng Weng Hakkında"

[Interview with Can Yalçınkaya on the Turkish website Oteki Sinema, published 26/09/14. The original Turkish introduction and text is here]

Can: How did you first become aware of Weng Weng's work and decide to make a documentary about him?

Andrew: It was back in the dark days before the Internet when I first stumbled upon a ninth-generation bootleg of For Y’ur Height Only and I think my mind exploded the moment I saw a karate-kicking midget Bond in a pageboy haircut and white flared suit taking on an army of goons dressed in Hawaiian shirts and Seventies porn mustaches. It was transcendent, beyond absurd! At the same time there was something intangible about its star which I instantly connected with, and decided it may be my life's mission to find out everything there is to know about him. That was the early 90s and here we are more than twenty years later, and I'm STILL learning about the enigmatic Weng Weng!

Can: How did Weng Weng, a 2.9-foot Filipino man, become an internationally recognised action star?

Andrew: We can thank Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, for becoming a global phenomenon, if small-scale and short-lived (literally!). Her 1982 Manila International Film Festival was designed to sell Filipino films to the world - ironically, it was the Philippines' most idiot of films, For Y’ur Height Only, that actually sold. I mean, the film went everywhere - I even have a reproduction of a Turkish poster as well as advertising materials from Pakistan, Finland, the Middle East, etc etc... It may be the main reason why I tracked down Imelda to film her for the documentary. Other than being the most notorious character in Philippines' history, her DNA is forever linked with Weng Weng's - their fates are now forever intertwined, thanks to our movie!

Can: Do you think the political and cultural climate of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Philippines was influential in his success?

Andrew: Most definitely. Much of the Philippines' movie output from the 60s to 90s were action-based, stunt-centric action or action-comedies. They call them "Goon" films, after the armies of apes in suits who are employed by the Contrabida ("Super-Villain") to beat up the hero. There are literally THOUSANDS of these Goon flicks in the Philippines, many of them lost forever, mostly following the same simple-minded, gloriously dumb formula. Weng Weng is the hero of these thousands of films, but miniaturized, and at the same time is able to perform all his own stunts and, thanks to the Marcos family making him a real-life secret agent, use his own custom-made .25 calibre pistol as a movie prop! Where else in the world other than the Philippines would these elements conspire together to create a character such as Weng Weng? ONLY in the Philippines! Also, when you really look at the period of Weng Weng, the Philippines was starting to emerge from a ten year period of Martial Law. They desperately needed to laugh, and Weng Weng was an accessable target of mirth. Freakishly tall or short, fat, anorexic, ugly, buck-toothed, all make ideal Filipino comic superstars.

Can: Do we know anything about Weng Weng's actual spy work?

Andrew: Only second-hand stories from Weng Weng's brother, and his directors Eddie Nicart and Dante "Boy" Pangilinan. But they all agree that his spy work was not just a novelty act or promotional gag...he was indeed trained by General Olivas, head of Manila's dreaded Metrocom, and relative of both Weng's producer Cora Caballes and President Marcos himself. Firearms, parachute training, the whole bit. As far as actual missions...well, that's still classified!

Can: What brought his downfall?

Andrew: Diminishing returns from his films - unfortunately for him he was indeed a novelty act rather than a long-term prospect - and his producer Cora Caballes entering politics. Weng Weng was sent back to his neighbourhood and languished in poverty and obscurity before becoming ill and passing away at an early age. I don't want to give away too many details from the documentary, but his final days are quite heartbreaking, particularly in light of his incredible achievements during his glory days of stardom, and the last known photo of Weng Weng when he's fat, balding and obviously in poor health, will haunt you.

Can: From the documentary (and the Q&A that took place after the SUFF screening) it sounded like you've become personally attached to Weng Weng and his surviving family's story. How did this affect the course of the film over the years?

Andrew: Of course you try to maintain a sense of objectivity, but it's difficult not to be personally affected by Weng Weng's plight. When you go deep into the story, become almost adopted by his family, and end up godfather to his great-great nephew, things can never return to normality! Ultimately it took all seven years to nail the details in the film which makes it such an affecting experience, those details which make Weng Weng come to life in the hearts and minds of the viewer. I always maintain that if the film didn't take seven years to complete, to become Machete Maidens Unleashed! and then morph back into The Search..., then the film would be a much more superficial exercise.

Can: You definitely created a picture of Weng Weng as a human being, rather than a mere novelty act in a few films. What has been your favourite moment during the time you spent filming?

Andrew: Favourite moment, singular? Impossible to choose! Top three? The eight years of visiting the Philippines is an ever-changing process of immersion.

Can: OK, top three...

Andrew: First visit to Weng Weng's grave. Second: being locked in a compound full of religious lunatics preaching the Second Coming of dead action star Fernando Poe Jr...the cameras weren't rolling that night! Third: screening the film outside the house Weng Weng was born in, to his family and relatives, then getting drunk with them afterwards and hearing stories from Unida Street. Every other moment spent in the Philippines come a close fourth.

Can: Emotional aspects of it aside I know this film was part of your PhD thesis. Did you start a PhD after you started filming, or did this project come about during your candidature? What are the reactions to your topic in the academia? Are you thinking of publishing the exegesis?

Andrew: The PhD's still going through the system, so I can't really comment on it right at this moment, sorry. [NOTE: My PhD submission was rejected around the same time as the interview and is yet to be resubmitted]

Can: Can you tell us a bit about your next project?

Andrew: It's in the pitch stage right now, so I can't give away too much. I can tell you it will be another documentary on fringe cinema, but with a much wider scope, and will go deeper into the dark hearts of the cultures it will explore. I CAN tell you that Turkey will be on its radar! [NOTE: Dani and I were pitching the aborted TV series Film Safari at the time]

Can: Looking forward to that! Lastly, where can people in Turkey watch The Search for Weng Weng? Will you be taking the film to any of the festivals there?

Andrew: The film will be on DVD before the end of the year, and if I receive an invitation to screen in Turkey before or after its release I'd be more than happy to accept. I can't wait to visit the land of Kilink.

2000 Maniacos interview (2015)

2017-01-10T15:28:00.003-08:00

"El Asombroso Coloso Filipino Con Licencia Para Molar!"

[Interview with Domingo Lopez, published in 2000 Maniacos #48 (November 2015), Spain]

Domingo: What’s your first contact with Filipino movies?

Andrew: Like most of us, watching VHS tapes of Mad Max ripoffs, The Big Bird Cage and a thousand Rambo and Platoon clones. Most of them, I had no idea they were made in the Philippines until I saw Weng Weng in For Y'ur Height Only - that was my first conscious glimpse into the Filipino B Film universe. Then I opened a cult video store here in Brisbane called Trash Video and was able to join the dots to make up a much grander picture - the Cleopatra Wong films, Eddie Romero, Cirio Santiago, Enter The Ninja, Silip, Ramon Zamora, Dolphy and Chiquito, Palito - and hundreds and hundreds of Filipino films later, I don't believe the obsession will ever end.

Domingo: From where comes the idea to shoot a documentary film about Weng Weng?

Andrew: From a dream, believe it or not! I dreamt I was in Manila with a camera in hand, calling the Cultural Centre for information: "My name is Andrew Leavold, I'm an Australian filmmaker here in Manila to make a documentary about Weng Weng…" I forgot all about the dream until I was actually IN Manila with a camera in hand! Then I kept shooting until I discovered his real story…and kept shooting…and after seven long years, I had enough footage to be able to piece a narrative together.

Domingo: To somebody who don’t know him, how do you describe Weng Weng and his importance in popular Filipino cinema?

Andrew: For starters, he is an incredible person - a poor kid from the slums who, through a combination of hard work and pure luck, became one of the most famous Filipino faces at home and abroad. He performed his own dangerous stunts, was trained as a real-life secret agent, and in his home town was even considered a living Saint. As far as his importance to Filipino cinema goes, it's harder to argue, however his film For Y'ur Height Only was the single biggest film export at the time, which definitely paved the way for other Filipino producers to sell their films abroad. And if you look at the broader canvas of Filipino film, he sits somewhere near the middle, connected to many important figures such as Dolphy, Lito Lapid, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos.

Domingo: How fits Weng Weng into the Pinoy cinema? Is it still famous these after all these years?

Andrew: Anyone between the ages of 35 and 50 will no doubt remember him from their childhood, even if they need a little nudge. The younger generations of Filipinos are now starting to rediscover him via Youtube as a little hero - someone who took on the might of Hollywood with a film one-hundredth of the budget of a James Bond film. More than a national embarrassment, these days he's looked at as more of a subversive figure, certainly worth of Pinoy Pride.

Domingo: Before Jackie Chan, Weng Weng was doing his own stunts with little to none security. Was it the usual way to shoot action in Philippines?

Andrew: Back in the Sixties, the Filipino stuntman was the best in the world. They didn't need safety nets or wires. I remember Danny Rojo, one of the top stunt coordinators, telling me he used to do leap from a two-storey building onto two banana leaves! I said, "Did you ever worry about getting hurt?" "No, he replied, "we were professionals." Accidents were, because the stunt guys were so well trained. Eddie Nicart's group SOS Daredevils were the greatest stunt guys of all, they moved together like a basketball team. Like Danny Rojo, these guys didn't need nets or wires. Eddie and his stunt guys trained Weng Weng to be a professional stuntman and blackbelter, and from all accounts, he became a phenomenally good performer. His tight rope walk between two buildings in The Impossible Kid? No net beneath him. He was that good.

Domingo: In how many movies did Weng Weng star? I think only 2 or 3 made it internationally...

Andrew: So far I have discovered fourteen films with Weng Weng as lead star or cameo. As lead, six films. There are two westerns (Da Best In Da West, D'Wild Wild Weng), four Agent 00 films, cameos in three Dolphy comedies (Stariray, The Quick Brown Fox), and some early films with Ramon Zamora and Dante Varona. Half of those fourteen films have vanished without trace. I guess that means the Search will possibly go on forever!

Domingo: Legend says (at least here in Spain) Weng Weng was a sex machine but the real thing was quite different, is it?

Andrew: From what I understand, very different. Weng Weng was very shy in general, and self-conscious about his size. He would fall in love with his leading ladies, and they would go along with his flirtatious behaviour as if it was a joke; to Weng Weng, however, it was far from a joke. His biggest crush was on Nina Sara, his co-star in The Impossible Kid - you can see them during the end credits kissing and cuddling. From what I've been told, he never got over Nina. The spirit was willing, but there was an equipment malfunction, if you get my drift.

Domingo: Is it true that Weng Weng worked as a secret agent?

Andrew: He certainly TRAINED as a secret agent - we verified that mystery via Eddie Nicart, Dante "Boy" Pangilinan and Weng Weng's brother. And the training was more than a publicity stunt, as he was properly trained in firearms, parachuting, infiltration missions etc. What's not certain is whether he went on actual missions or not. But he was definitely issued a blue paratroopers' uniform, custom made 25mm handgun, and a tiny machine gun - you can see them in For Y'ur Height Only.

Domingo: How’s possible an actor so profitable ended his days in misery?

Andrew: You should ask his producer Cora and Peter Caballes that question. It appears they earned more than a million dollars from their films starring Weng Weng, but he never saw more than pocket money for his efforts. Some people will say that's the nature of show business, but their treatment of Weng Weng was deplorable. You'll need to see the documentary to find out exactly what happened to him, and it will break your heart.

Domingo: Any funny thing that happened shooting The Search for Weng Weng?

Andrew: My co-producer Daniel Palisa and I would sit down at breakfast every morning and write down the weird events from the day before. Funny, strange shit never STOPPED happening. There was one time Dani and I were trapped inside a fortified compound with Weng Weng's fellow stunt guys, listening to their boss preaching the second coming of dead action star Fernando Poe Jr. To break the tension we decided to sing a karaoke version of Scorpions' "Wind Of Change" immediately afterwards. The CEO then decided we were the Two Apostles, here to spread the Word of Fernando Poe Jr to the rest of the world…

Domingo: What’s the strangest movie you’ve seen from Philippines? And your favourite?

Andrew: One of the weirdest was a film featuring Weng Weng in a brief appearance, in a disco kung fu spy biker western called Legs... Katawan... Babae (1981), starring the Filipino Village People, and directed by Weng Weng's boss in For Y'ur Height Only, Tony Ferrer (the original Filipino James Bond from the Sixties!). Seriously, it's as amazingly bizarre as it sounds! Favourite was, is, and always will be For Y'ur Height Only. You can't beat that film for sheer joy.

Domingo: After The Search for Weng Weng, what’s next for you as a director?

Andrew: Maybe another documentary on Filipino film weirdness, then hopefully some narrative features. Dani and I are planning some real balls-out action and horror films set in the Philippines - homages in a way to our favourite Filipino B genres, but with a very 21st Century attitude. I can't say any more at the moment, as we're still in the pitching stage, and funding is yet to materialize. However I can safely say that all roads seem to be leading back to Manilawood!

Di Ingon 'Nato (2011) Review and Interview

2017-01-09T23:49:00.002-08:00

Di Ingon 'Nato: Zombies In Our Backyard

[My essay and and interview with director Ivan Zaldarriaga, published in Sinekultura Film Journal (University of San Carlos, Cebu) Issue #4, late 2012, and reprinted in Film International 63-4 (Sweden), August 2013]

A jaundiced zombie subgenre is given fresh bleeding eyes in Cebuano filmmaker Ivan Zaldarriaga's debut feature Di Ingon 'Nato ("Not Like Us", 2011), in which 28 Days Later tears screaming through the heart of a remote jungle barrio in the Visayas with a newsreel-like ferocity. Less of a calling card than a double-barrelled shotgun blast to the face, Di Ingon 'Nato introduces a dangerous new talent to Philippine cinema's landscape, and sends out a very clear signal that there are rumblings in the former regional filmmaking centre of Cebu. "Can the Visayan film industry return from the dead?" Ivan Zaldarriaga is asked by Australian writer and filmmaker Andrew Leavold.

With the exception of the recent Zombadings (2010), the living dead have been criminally underrepresented in Filipino cinema, appearing almost as an afterthought as supporting ghouls or comic relief. [1] And for the first half hour of Di Ingon 'Nato you'd be forgiven for thinking a zombie apocalypse had bypassed its sleepy barrio, as farmers till their fields in real time, and life crawls along at a languid provincial pace. The film suddenly lurches into fourth gear with the arrival of unnamed illness which causes the by-now familiar residents to vomit blood and what looks like milk, before their reanimated bodies start howling for human flesh, turning the barrio into a charnel house even before the gore can crust over. The voices of order and logic, in the guise of the Barangay Captain (Rez Cortez) and his medic daughter, are quickly drowned out by cries of "demonic possession" by the Catholic priest - his exorcism of a presumably possessed victim, in one of the film's many memorable set-pieces, goes tragically and bloodcurdingly wrong - and "restless spirits" by the profoundly pagan faith healer and his followers.

Although Zaldarriaga doesn't flinch from delivering genre's necessary meat and red, red sauce, the film becomes more interesting as it examines the effects of a plague and pestilence of Biblical proportions on its tightly-knit Visayan community, with the crisp and often stunning hand-held digital cinematography giving its undead apocalypse a palpable immediacy and velocity. The relative lack of blood (relative, of course, to most of zombiedom's post-Night Of The Living Dead gorefests) may be due more to Zaldarriaga's severe financial constraints than aesthetic or generic imperatives, but it gives the characters breathing space to contemplate the film's wider philosophical concerns: is this Judgment Day, and are the bodies being brought back to life to punish us? Are the restless spirits "evil" by Christian standards, or much older and more deeply-rooted in the province's animistic beliefs? To his credit, Zaldarriaga never reveals his hand, leaving science and logic to battle the forces of chaos on their own.

The no-budget nature of Zaldarriaga's film also raises some interesting issues about how one defines the term "indie" in a Filipino context. Historically the term "indie", when applied to cinema, referred to lower-budgeted fare made outside a country's studio system, and thus suggested, if not promised, a more idiosyncratic, artistic and less commercially-oriented film comparatively free from studio control. Until recently in the Philippines, the distinction was primarily an economic one. In the Fifties and Sixties, independent producers were notably wealthy businessmen, film stars or directors who pitted themselves against the Big Three studios of Sampaguita, LVN and Premiere until there was no longer a viable studio system left standing. Theirs' was blatantly commercial material whose primary purpose was to make money, and whose artistic worth was secondary or purely accidental. Art films generally lost money for producers; actors and genres dictated a movie's success. It must be remembered that Ishmael Bernal made a kung fu film early in his career for the export market, and that Lino Brocka also made a living crafting romantic weepies, star vehicles for the country's top box office earners, and even horror and bold films.

A key player in independent production these days is Di Ingon 'Nato's funder Cinema One Originals, the "indie" wing of powerful media conglomerate ABS-CBN. Their output certainly ape the poverty-level budgets of most indies, and Di Ingon 'Nato's one million peso (approximately US$25,000) price tag is no exception. Which begs the question, are the films commissioned, bankrolled and distributed by Cinema One Originals part of a deliberate and quite arrogant move into the increasingly lucrative indie market? Is it possible that ABS-CBN's cheapies are the latest incarnation of "pito-pito" films (seven days to shoot, seven to edit), and that Cinema One Originals are merely the no-budget wing of a major studio, akin to Regal Films' subsidiary Good Harvest Productions in the late Eighties and Nineties?

For the parent studios, indie features promise a reasonable profit margin for their modest investment. Audience expectations, on the other hand, are geared towards artistic, personal, auteur-driven and distinctly anti-commercial product. Genre films muddy the dialogue somewhat between producers and the indie crowd, particularly with a blatantly commercial genre such as horror. Di Ingon 'Nato, with its rough-and-ready digital realism and genre savvy, is a perfect example of an indie straddling the personal and commercial, and almost screams for cross-over success in the mainstream. Add the fact the first-time filmmaker is from Cebu, the former film capital of the Visayas, and the possibilities of not just erecting a digital outpost of the Manila-centric studios, but actually resurrecting the Visayan commercial film industry, are very real indeed. And if there is any single talent to watch in the reborn Cebuano cinema, it's Zaldarriaga, the Visayan Zombie King himself.

[1] A shortlist of Filipino zombies: Supergirl (1973), Fernando Poe Jr's first Ang Panday (1980), the early Shake Rattle And Roll anthologies, Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes' Magic Temple (1996), and as comic relief in films such as Chiquito's Estong Tutong (1982) and Mang Kepweng's Final Conflict (1983). Then there's Celso Ad. Castillo's Night Of The Zombies, Huwag Mong Buhayin Ang Bangkay ("Don't Bring The Dead Back To Life", 1987) and from overseas companies, The Thirsty Dead (1975), Italian directors Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei's Zombie 3 (1988), and Claudio Fragasso's After Death: Zombie 4 (1989).

Interview with Ivan Zaldarriaga August 2012

Andrew: What got you excited about film?

Ivan: The fact that I can fool people, make stuff up. I get to build my own realty and show it. Making films also excites me, the planning - it's like a con game, looking for the best way to make people believe in what you want them to believe. I like the fact that its all media mixed together. I studied painting; film is like painting only it moves and makes sounds. How fucking crazy is that?? Blows my mind away, hehe…

Andrew: How did you set out to construct a distinctly Filipino zombie film?

Ivan: I've been a big zombie fan since I was born. I actually just wanted to make a zombie movie. When I made my story I thought about how I'm going to be able to make it into a film. Budget was a big thing, so to make it cheap I decided that the only way I was going to make it was to set it in the province. Less people, less zombies. Next problem was how to get the budget, so I had to make it relevant, and it was a lot easier for me to make the dialogue in my own language. Story-wise too, it was the easiest and cheapest.

Andrew: When you were writing the film, what was your starting point for the back story? Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Days Later?

Ivan: More World War Z, the book. And Zombie Survival Guide from the same author.

Andrew: Were there any zombie cliches you deliberately wanted to avoid or exploit?

Ivan: We try to be original but its a genre film. I think mixing the cliches with the Filipino setting was what we wanted to do. Some, not all.

Andrew: With the glut of zombie films on the market, what do you think makes DIN stand out? What did you deliberately do in the movie to make it original?

Ivan: Filipino farmers hacking the undead.

Andrew: Simple as that?

Ivan: Not really. The psychology of this farmers not knowing what a zombie is. We made sure to point out that to them they weren't zombies but some spirit that captured a human body, controlling it to do its bidding for no apparent reason whatsoever. It can be out of mischief or an act of punishment, like the old Roman Gods.

Andrew: But really, the "plague" is never explained away?

Ivan: Better that way I think. Someday I'm gonna try and explain it, if I make another zombie movie.

Andrew: But the farmers could actually be correct!

Ivan: It's possible. Don't know yet. Needs more investigating.

Andrew: It's ambiguous, and that's what I love about the film. So who knows? It could be the angry Mountain Gods, or demons possessing dead bodies!

Ivan: That shit happens here in the Philippines regularly, you'd read of demon possessions in newspapers.

Andrew: Aswangs?

Ivan: That too. I remember when I was younger, it came out on the national news.

Andrew: Your cinematographer, by the way, is amazing!

Ivan: Thanks. But in Cebu we don't have enough equipment. We make do with what we have.

Andrew: What kind of camera?

Ivan: We used an af100. Panasonic.

Andrew: Good for guerrilla-style shoots?

Ivan: It's too big and too camera-looking if you ask me. There were no guerrilla shoots on my film.

Andrew: How would you describe the way you shot, then?

Ivan: It was my first movie so I can say I was fumbling myself out of a maze. I made it out with my knees all banged up, shoulder busted and a black eye! I want to get on that ride again! hehehe

Andrew: Of course! So you'd mapped out the whole film in advance?

Ivan: Yup, did all the planning, schedules etc.. It's hard to go guerrilla on a tight schedule.

Andrew: How tight are we talking?

Ivan: Really tight. We did everything, if I'm not mistaken, in seven months, not including the writing. That's from post till the screening, excluding the writing.

Andrew: What about the actual shoot?

Ivan: Thirteen days shooting, two weeks editing, three days for sound. Sound didn't make it on the first screening. Tight, huh?

Andrew: Have you consciously thought of courting an international audience for your films?

Ivan: Yeah, just haven't found the right way to do it yet. Still learning about marketing. It's hard to do both creative and marketing at the same time.

Andrew: Cinema One aren't thinking of taking their films abroad? I would imagine that's their job!

Ivan: They already did one festival in Brazil. But I guess I need to do something too. I want to be more in control of where my films go.

Andrew: How was your experience with Cinema One?

Ivan: It was great - they gave me a million pesos! Didn't really have any problems with them, surprisingly. I heard that the other directors were in constant communication with them. They just left us alone, which is what we wanted. We were the wild cards of the group too.

Andrew: One million was enough?

Ivan: One million is not enough. I want more!!

Andrew: How did you scale the film to fit the budget?

Ivan: We had to cut some scenes. Some are crucial ones too - most are zombie attacks. Too bad !

Andrew: I guess that meant cutting back on effects as well

Ivan: Yeah, a lot!! The gore.

Andrew: How did you manage the effects you did on such a low budget?

Ivan: DIY. We bought some pro prosthetics stuff from Singapore for our main actors, but for the extras I think we used household latex and food coloring. CGI helped a lot too with the blood splatters and gunshots. It was also part of our plan to shoot it out in barangay nowhere, so we don't need a lot of zombies compared to shooting it in an urban setting.

Andrew: It's also quite jarring to see a zombie apocalypse in such a tranquil setting, and in such a tightly-knit community.

Ivan: Yeah, we made sure to slow down the pace at the beginning to show how quite it is in the province. I spent a lot of time in places like those in my movie. It's really creepy, deafening silence and all.

Andrew: Where did you grow up?

Ivan: Outskirts of Cebu. Cebu is mixed mountains and beaches, so that's where I grew up. Didn't really spend time much in Cebu City until recently, but I would always travel to Samar and other less developed islands in the Philippines. I'm 100% probinsyano! I like seeing trees when I wake up in the morning

Andrew: What about old beliefs and superstitions? There are references in the film to the "Mountain Gods" - they sound very pagan, pre-Christian, pre-Muslim…

Ivan: I've heard a lot of those growing up. I grew up in the world without cable and internet. It's the normal belief of people in the province. People believe in both the church and the mountain, sea, cave spirits. I was taught to say "tabi" ("excuse me") every time I piss in the woods. You have to do this otherwise you might piss on some spirit! I did that all my childhood up till my teens.

Andrew: Did you personally experience anything out of the ordinary?

Ivan: I did! But with the pot I smoke, I'm never sure, hehe… Of course nothing happened! Now I piss everywhere without asking no-one's permission!

Andrew: Let's talk about audience reaction - you had a number of full houses. What gets them pumped?

Ivan: Yeah its funny how they reacted to it. They'd be laughing at one point then screaming! I like the mixed emotion. That's how I react to most movies that I like. I constantly discover new things in the movie whenever I'm at a screening. Some scenes that I think are weak would work for the audience. They all loved the fat kid!

Andrew: …with his dirty shirt!

Ivan: Yeah! But there are no fat kids in the mountains, we cheated on that part.

Andrew: I called that early part of the film "provincial pace" - sleepy, languid. Then the film suddenly changes gears very quickly.

Ivan: A lot of city folks don't get it. They say its slow and boring - we made sure that it's slow and boring! we wanted to show something and not say it in dialogue like most Filipino movies.

Andrew: Ah good point. You really do get a very solid sense of time and place in the opening half hour.

Ivan: I also wanted it to look like it's poverty porn at the beginning.

Andrew: Why so?

Ivan: 'Cause everybody's doing it.

Andrew: Then the film switches tone, and the audience is like "huh?"

Ivan: Yeah! Hehe…surprise! I should've marketed it as that, as poverty porn.

Andrew: Poverty gore?

Ivan: Nice!!

Andrew: Let's talk about casting...mostly local actors? Semi-professionals? Friends and family?

Ivan: We held an audition. Mostly local TV actors, amateurs and radio voice talents. We had two real actors from Manila who didn't speak a word of Visayan, and one Cebuano rockstar. Tons of people from the local barangay as zombies.

Andrew: Real actors - Rez Cortez and who?

Ivan: Rez and Mercedes Cabral

Andrew: They had to speak their lines in Visayan?

Ivan: Yes, they didn't understand a word they were saying. And sometimes the Visayan actors would ad lib - hehehe, funny shit…

Andrew: Rez is GREAT in the film. How would you describe his place in the film world to a non-Filipino?

Ivan: He was always bad guy, so we made him good guy. Bad guy/good guy! I asked him a bit about his career - turns out he started as a dancer. Then he built a career doing villains in old movies. One of his best was Lino Brocka's film Insiang.

Andrew: With his huge afro! He was a motherfucker in that film.

Ivan: Yeah, afro Rez! Well yeah, he fucked Insiang's mom so technically… He's the national rapist of the Philippines.

Andrew: His presence obviously has helped the film?

Ivan: It helped a lot. His part was the hardest part to cast. We tried local actors - they just don't have enough presence, malevolent and kind at the same time. Like most local politicians.

Andrew: How much of the budget did his presence chew up?

Ivan: A lot!! But he helped out when we were running out of cash by giving us a discount. Good guy!

Andrew: Did you ever think "Shit, we don't have enough cash to finish this film?"

Ivan: All the fucking time!!!! I thought I was going to have to go to jail for it.

Andrew: How did you manage to get out of those close calls?

Ivan: Just by working around whatever was in our way. A lot of times we pulled it off. Some we really fucked up. Most were behind the scenes, like cars getting stuck in the mud to actors not showing up on time. It's a mix of big and small stuff. Sometimes it's the small stuff that kills you. One time we had to stop shooting because our location up in the mountains became too dangerous - people getting hypothermia, fogs coming in so there no way to get home.

Andrew: Can you picture a revival in regional filmmaking?

Ivan: Maybe but not in the near future. I don't know. The thing is whenever somebody from out of Manila makes something, they often go to Manila for more work. Like me for example. I made a Visayan movie, now I'm in Manila hustling for work. There's nothing for me in Cebu. It's kind of a regional brain drain.

Andrew: What needs to change, in your opinion?

Ivan: Hard question. I think its the attitude towards regionalism that has to be changed. Everything is concentrated in the Metro that other regions are ignored.

Andrew: But it's so ingrained!

Ivan: That's why it's hard for me to see the revival of regional filmmaking that's fully sustainable. We need Manila money to make our movies. The good news is some of my director friends are getting grants from producers abroad. So there is a small chance of it happening.

Andrew: What's the plan for the next film?

Ivan: Still writing it. Want to shoot it all guerrilla. I've got some friends hooking me up with producers so cross fingers. It's going to be completely opposite with my first film. I'll try and kill people without showing blood. Going the subtle approach!

Andrew: To make it really different, everyone must live!

Ivan: Nah!! They all die, hehe…

The Search For Weng Weng Timeline

2017-01-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG TIMELINE

May 1998 ‑ my article "The Wild And Wacky World Of Filipino Exploitation" was published in the University Of Qld student magazine Semper #3. It represents my first fumbling attempts at defining a Pinoy B Film sub‑genre, reviewing For Y'ur Height Only, two Bobby A. Suarez films, Nino Muhlach as Stone Boy, and Alyas Batman En Robin.

31/08/01 ‑ first screening of "Mondo Bizarro", a 90 minute compilation featuring Weng Weng clips which I toured Australia with for the following ten years. "…the most mind‑bending genre cinema from around the world! Narrated live by Trash Video's Andrew Leavold, a feature‑length collection of the wildest moments from over 50 international genre anti‑classics! This is the Twilight Zone of the film world, a warped vision of Hollywood that only an exploitation genius in Manila or Istanbul would have the tenacity to launch on an unsuspecting public. Here we travel the globe leaving no grindhouse untouched, no fleapit unbitten. We bring you the most bizarre films of all time. We give you...MONDO BIZARRO! SEE Mexican wrestling monster movies like Santo & Blue Demon vs Dracula & The Wolfman! SEE amputee kung fu action from Crippled Masters! SEE Filipino midget spies in For Y'ur Height Only! SEE the Turkish Star Wars! The Turkish Exorcist! The Japanese Planet Of The Apes! The Indian James Bond! SEE the hallucinatory Brazilian horror of Coffin Joe!"

2002 to 2003 ‑ I revoiced a French‑language VHS copy of The Impossible Kid live over five screenings. It was just myself and Lesbo-A-Go-Go actress and co‑writer Pauline Bell for three of the shows (25/09/02 and 09/04/03 at The Windery, West End). Our Woodford Folk Festival appearance (29/12/02) was in a circus tent filled with ferals, stoners, yippies, yuppies and the politically correct. Pauline and I practically threw away the literal translation on our script and cracked midget jokes for ninety minutes. In Sydney (11/01/03) we were joined by Jack Sargeant (Deathtripping author), Jaime and Aspa Leonarder from Mu Mesons Archives, where I did most of my Sydney screenings in those days, and Dr Verne Pullen (a senior Sydney Wengologist, and the person responsible for most of the misinformation on the web til now). It was a free‑for‑all! No practice, just straight into the deep end. The penultimate show in Melbourne (25/02/03) was just me and Fred Negro at F4, a swanky bar in Little Collins St during the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, getting drunker by the minute! Of course, I always got to be the voice of Weng Weng.

18/06/03 ‑ Escape From The Planet Of The Tapes, a half hour TV documentary on me and Trash Video for Australia's SBS channel, was first screened. In footage shot in late 2000, I foam at the mouth describing my favourite film "For Y'ur Height Only".

July 2005 - Pitched an idea to Big Island Pictures, the company behind the Trash documentary, for a TV series: "It involves me running around the world with a camera doing six 24 minute episodes on the weirdest film genres. Imagine David Stratton and John Saffran vs God combined...Some proposed episodes: The Search For Weng Weng. Heading to the Philippines to get the definitive story of the three foot star of For Your Height Only, and uncovering the wild and unknown story of Filipino exploitation cinema. (I've already tracked down Weng Weng's director and mentor Eddie Nicart)."

January 2006 ‑ first contacted Frech cultural attache to Singapore, Rafael Millet, via email, who then introduced me to Bobby Suarez and Marrie Lee (aka Cleopatra Wong). I interviewed both Bobby and Marrie over the phone in February 2006.

August 2006 ‑ Marrie Lee flew herself to the Brisbane International Film Festival at which I introduced two Cleopatra Wong screenings (05/08/06, 06/08/06) and hosted a "Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys" compilation of Filipino B film clips (08/08/06). Filipino director and BIFF jury member Tikoy Aguiluz subsequently invites me to screen "Bamboo Gods" at his Cinemanila International Film Festival.

September to October 2006 ‑ I began to plan what would ultimately become The Search For Weng Weng. Applying for grant money from a Sunshine Coast funding body, I wrote: "My ultimate plan is to combine my reviews, film database and interviews into a multi‑media research project ‑ website, book, and film documentary ‑ called 'Bamboo Gods and Bionic Boys'. To my knowledge, no‑one has undertaken a research project in this area before, and I am applying to do a PhD at Griffith University this month to consolidate my research. The raw footage from my Manila trip will provide the basis for my half‑hour documentary, which I plan to sell to ABC or SBS TV." Little did I know how long the road to completion would be.

07/11/06 to 16/11/06 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #1

During my first ever manic visit to Manila, I introduced "Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys" and "Cleopatra Wong" screenings at Tikoy's Cinemanila International Film Festival 08/11/06 (filmed by audience member Danny Castillones on a borrowed three‑chip Sony Mini‑DV camera).

Manila newspaper Sunstar covered the program in its 08/11/06 issue: "Bamboo Gods is sure to bring the house down the moment it begins playing onscreen its comprehensive overview of the most outrageous moments from the Philippines' prolific B‑film industry; a mutant stew of Hollywood genres, crazed local fold tales, and just plain bizarre ideas about what constitutes 'entertainment.'"

Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao

Over the nine days of wide‑eyed chaos I somehow managed to capture Marrie Lee's interview in her office on an initial swing through Singapore, Bobby Suarez's house visit and interview, and stumbling upon Weng Weng's editor Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao outside the Mowelfund film museum in Quezon City.

07/11/06 - Marrie Lee interview in her office, Singapore

08/11/06 - “Bamboo Gods” seminar in Manila

09/11/06 - Drive to Quezon City with Richard Suarez; Espiridon Laxa interview; Boy Vinarao conversation outside Mowelfund; Mowelfund tour; first Hobbit House visit

10/11/06 - Lav Diaz and Celso de Guzman interview - Lav and Celso then turn the camera on me; Boy Vinarao interview

11/11/06 - Drive to Bobby Suarez's home through Bulacan (never used); Bobby A. Suarez interview

13/11/06 - Quezon City's former cinema exteriors, LRT trip to Santa Cruz, pedicab ride from Recto to Santa Cruz (all never used); Bobby Suarez's office, Plaza Santa Cruz exteriors (also never used); James Gaines Jr's first interview at his Imagine Nation office in Makati (never used); Khavn's lounge in Quezon City watching movies, Khavn interview (also never used)

14/11/06 - Khavn's friends – Alexis, Kiko etc (never used); Elwood Perez first interview in Greenhills (never used)

15/11/06 - Eddie Romero (first interview) at his home in Cubao, Quezon City

16/11/06 - Tropical Hut – Steve Alcarado, Vic Balero, Roberto Gonzalez (never used); filmed part of Lav Diaz's screening at Cinemanila(also never used)

Early 2007 ‑ French B film website Nanarland published my "White Guerrilla In Manila, Or: One Man's Insane Search For The Truth Behind The Philippines B Film" in both English and French

Phone interview for Sydney radio, 03/03/07

18/02/07 to 03/03/07 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #2

The second and, in terms of uncovering the Weng Weng story, the most important visit of all.

19/02/07 - GMA TV studios (never used); Joyce Bernal interview at ABS-CBN (never used)

20/02/07 - watching Da Best In Da West at ABS-CBN TV Archives; first Goon Convention at National Bookstore, Quezon City with Eddie Nicart (first meeting), Roland Dantes, Franco Guerrero, Romy Suzara, Rusty Santos, and Rene the Leg Man.

21/02/07 - amidst the Smokey Mountain of footage not used in the finished cut includes Bruno Mattei on the set of Zombies: The Beginning at RS Video and Film Studios, Paranaque; Chito Rono and Vhong Navarro at ABS-CBN (not used); Joey Gosiengfiao at Lav Diaz's house, Quezon City (also never used); and Henry Strzalkowski at Handle Bar, Makati (his interview was reshot in 2013).

22/02/07 - Bobby Suarez's assistant director Pepito Diaz interview at Bobbys office for the Vengeance Of Cleopatra Wong bonus features (never used)

23/02/07 - Intramuros Golf Club shoot with Rusty Santos and Roland Dantes (never used), and Franco Guerrero and sons; also Franco's drive to Bobby's office (in the final cut), and footage of Franco and Jim Gaines with Bobby (never used).

24/02/07 - Peque Gallaga interview outside the Cultural Center of the Philippines; drive with Tikoy Aguiluz to Eddie Nicart's house in Taytay (used in the teaser only); and Eddie Nicart's first solo interview in Taytay.

25/02/07 - Eric Matti interview at his studio in Ortigas (never used)

26/02/07 - Bobby Suarez's cinematographers Arnold Alvaro and Jun Pereira interviewed at Bobbys office for the Vengeance Of Cleopatra Wong bonus features (never used)

27/02/07 - Weng Weng's brother Celing de la Cruz interview at his home in Pasay City, the drive to Weng Weng's family home in Baclaran, interview with Weng Weng's neighbour Rey Reloso, and Weng Weng's grave in Pasay City Cemetery; footage of Nino Muhlach dubbing his new movie in Ortigas (never used); and second Elwood Perez interview at Shangrila (later used on Mondo Macabro's Silip DVD release)

28/02/07 - Mura interview in Tondo (never used); Vengeance Of Cleopatra Wong production meeting at Bobby Suarez's office

01/03/07 - filmed cutaways (using a chair with wheels as a dolly!) at ABS-CBN Archives

02/03/07 - Willy Milan interview at his home in Quezon City (never used); Cirio H. Santiago interview at his Premiere offices, Ortigas (never used); Joseph Zucchero interview, Makati (never used)

03/03/07 - Sydney radio interview via mobile phone from Khavn's house, Quezon City (used in the rough cut only)

02/07/07 to 14/07/07 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #3

I filmed a single shot of me opening the curtains in my Brunei hotel room. After spending 24 hours each way in Brunei, at least I managed to extract one thing of value from that particularly hideous ordeal.

03/07/07 - Conrad Poe interview at the Film Academy of the Philippines (never used)

04/07/07 - Nick Deocampo interview at Mowelfund

05/07/07 - Maria Isabel Lopez interview at her home in Quezon City (also used on Mondo Macabro's Silip DVD release; Silip's production manager Alfred Santos at Mag:Net Gallery, Quezon City (Silip DVD only)

06/07/07 - Jim Gaines' second interview at his Imagine Nation studios, Makati (never used); walk through Escolta and Aveninda with Jim (also never used)

09/07/07 - Nick Nicholson interview at his Calooacan home (never used); Palito interview at National Bookstore along with Steve Alcarado and Franco Guerrero (used in The Search For Weng Weng bonus features only)

10/07/07 - Jo Mari Avellana interview at Handle Bar, Makati (never used)

11/07/07 - Dolphy interview in his favourite coffee shop in Manila; Tony Maharaj interview in Makati

12/07/07 - Eddie Garcia interview at GMA TV studios, Quezon City

13/07/07 - Imee Marcos interview, White Plains

Late July 2007 ‑ a cut‑down and revised "White Guerrilla In Manila" article was published in British magazine Firecracker Magazine #4. The Brisbane International Film Festival catalogue also published my review for Squatterpunk (Khavn de la Cruz, 2007)

21/07/07: I screened For Y'ur Height Only on my weekly cult movie show on Brisbane Community TV station Briz 31. At last count, it was the highest‑rating show on Briz 31 EVER. I then screened The Impossible Kid the following week (28/07/07) and D'Wild Wild Weng (07/07/07).

AUGUST 2007 - BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

05/08/07 - An hour‑long "Work In Progress" composite screened at the Brisbane International Film Festival: "It's part detective story, part forgotten B‑film history, and part surreal Quest for the Holy Grail ‑ that is, if the Grail is a two‑foot‑nine superstar called Weng Weng."

One audience member sent me a five page critique, and ended with: "At the end of your long and convoluted journey, you have created a little (rough‑cut) gem of cinema history that we audience members were privileged to experience for a mere $15. I believe that if Weng Weng could peer out from that abject grave, he would feel gratified by your delight in his work, and your treatment of him with a dignity that many apparently denied him during his lifetime."

Future SFWW co‑writer and co‑producer Daniel Palisa and I perform in The Brockas (me on drums, Dani on bass), accompanying director Khavn de la Cruz as we improvised a score for Khavn's film Squatterpunk. Our performance receives a standing ovation!

Khavn, Dani and I also collaborated on an experimental short film, Zombie Mariachi (eventually completed 2011) during Khavn's stay in Brisbane. "Boy meets great white zombie hunter, boy becomes zombie. Zombie meets girl, zombie loses girl, girl finds zombie. A Pinoy guerrilla musical love story - with zombies." Stars Migs Aguilizan as the Zombie Mariachi, Lesha Pavlis as the Eggnog Girl, myself as the White Supremacist (also production manager and additional camera), Scott Black, Terry Coker, Daniel Palisa (also zombie makeup), and Khavn.

21/10/07 ‑ the BIFF Rough Cut screened at Mu Meson Archives in Sydney

20/11/07 ‑ UK DVD label Mondo Macabro releases Silip (1985) with my bonus features: interviews with director Elwood Perez, actress Maria Isabel Lopez, and art director Alfred Santos.

29/11/07 ‑ officially admitted to the Masters program at Brisbane's Griffith University, Nathan Campus. The proposed thesis is entitled "BAMBOO GODS AND BIONIC BOYS: The Interplay of National Cinemas in Filipino Pulp Movies".

15/01/08 to 29/01/08 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #4

The Rez Cortez interview emerges from this batch of interviews but little else. First Philippines trip with Daniel Palisa, my future co‑writer, co‑producer, and co‑founder of our production company Death Rides A Red Horse. We screen the BIFF Rough Cut at Mogwai Cinemateque, Cubao 28/01/08

In The Search For Weng Weng book I tell of our adventures in a compound full of religious stuntmen preaching the Second Coming of Fernando Poe Jr.

28/02/08 ‑ met with Veronica Fury of Brisbane's Fury Productions to discuss coming onboard as co‑producer.

19/03/08 ‑ meeting with Anthony Mullins (Escape From The Planet Of The Tapes) for a possible collaboration as co‑writer or co‑editor. Mullins then became busy on an on‑line TV project and graciously declined.

24/03/08 ‑ will.i.am asked Dani and I to fly to Sydney and meet him in his Marriott Sydney Harbor room to discuss obtaining the rights to For Y'ur Height Only. It signaled a new direction for the Blackeyed Peas, who would perform a live soundtrack to a newly‑dubbed version by Jack Black and co, saying "it ain't about pretty girls singin' choruses anymore!" When we arrived in LA in May, the Blackeyed Peas were busy recording their new album, with Fergie providing the choruses.

May 2008 ‑ Veronica Fury officially signed on as co‑producer. The rights to The Search For Weng Weng were transferred to Brisbane's Fury Productions for a dollar. On 23/05/08, Veronica and the project's transitional editor Jane Franken uploaded a teaser to Youtube.

27/05/08 to JUNE 2008 - FAILED USA SHOOT

Daniel Palisa and I travelled all the way to California to interview Cora Caballes, at her invitation. She never picked up the phone once. There was a priceless shot of me sitting in a Cajuanco Street gutter, Hollwood sign in the background, as I dialled Cora on my final day in the US and left a pitiful message on her answering machine. Interviewed Jack Hill, Sam Sherman and Brian Trenchard‑Smith, the footage of which ended up in the vault.

I later wrote about our doomed bus trip from LA to Las Vegas, where found the soiled remains of the American Dream on a Greyhound.

24/10/08 ‑ Sydney filmmaker Brendan Young assigned by ABC to come aboard as co‑director. Veronica, Brendan and I applied to Screen Australia for time‑critical funds in time for my fifth visit. Brendan's vision for the film was close to mind, though he favoured the "personal journey" angle over Weng Weng's story itself. From Brendan's Director Statement: "The Search For Weng Weng aims to work on three levels: It chronicles and charts the impact obsession has on the life of a well‑intentioned but very compulsive individual; the subject of the obsession, Weng Weng, unveils as an intimate first person narrative quest û a kind of quasi detective story which also reveals often startling, intriguing and at times, a disturbing perspective on the show business of exploitation in the third world, and finally, while on the journey to uncover the truth behind Weng Weng, Andrew triggers off a sweeping and dynamic overview on the history of genre filmmaking in the one of the world's most prolific and active productive film industries: The Philippines."

Brendan Young films me in Quezon City, November 2008

My rationale to Screen Australia: "Out of my five visits to the Philippines researching and shooting The Search For Weng Weng, this November trip is perhaps the most important, as it's the only logical coda to the film, and perfectly illustrates an essential theme and narrative arc: a bizarre Coming of Age saga, in which I complete the journey from enthusiastic outsider and amateur filmmaker to recognized authority, visiting academic, cultural commentator and B film revisionist.

"The Pinoy B film was understandably ghettoized by its own academics, filmmakers and audiences alike as an entirely disposable and nutritionally empty confection. I must admit I sensed a certain degree of resistance and puzzlement to my initial burst of blissfully innocent and self‑absorbed enthusiasm for Weng Weng and his fellow B‑film contemporaries; this, I discovered after immersing myself more fully in their collective consciousness, is akin to our own 'cultural cringe', borne out of a post‑colonial nation's need for serious currency in high art filmic dialogue. Lo and behold: Weng Weng was under their very nose, a two foot nine time capsule who reveals far more about their own pop cinema history than they ever imagined.

"The Search For Weng Weng has taken me to some very strange places, but none as unexpected as a cinema conference and film school, delivering a revisionist interpretation of B filmmaking in the Philippines. Now I'm able to take Weng Weng with me as my avatar, and through the documentary, chart his own elevation from poster child for the Philippines' cultural cringe to pride of place in Pinoy post‑modernism, and from novelty act and forgotten denizen of the smoking rubbish pile of Pinoy pop culture, to a metaphoric giant killer with a swing far greater than his kung fu antics combined."

Sharing a joke with Nick Nicholson

12/11/08 to 29/11/08 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #5

Delivered "Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys" paper at the Annual South East Asian Cinema Conference at Ataneo University, Quezon City, November 2008; also delivered lectures on Filipino B film history at University Of The Philippines, Quezon City, and at the Asia Pacific Film Institute.

Brendan Young arrived in Manila soon after, and filmed over ten hours of footage, including the Tikoy Aguiluz and Tilman Baumgaertel interviews for the final cut. Sequences filmed but never used include Nick Nicholson's house and final visit with Henry Strzalkowski, me at Hobbit House and at Mura's karaoke playhouse, and my UP talk. The Nicholson and Hobbit House footage was cobbled together into a ten‑minute Time Critical edit for ABC and Screen Australia.

December 2008 ‑ "21 Greatest Pinoy B‑Movies" article co‑written with Lourd de Veyra appears in FHM Magazine Philippines

2009 to 2010 - FROM "WENG WENG" TO "MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED!"

February 2009 ‑ ABC TV tentatively commissions "The Search For Weng Weng"

15/03/09 ‑ "Your Story" podcast interview with Ian Kath, conducted immediately after the ABC issued the tentative letter of commission. "Now Andrew has funding for the completion of the documentary film that has been started and can look forward to returning to the Philippines to tie all the story line together for release for all of us to see. Hopefully sometime in 2010. This is a story of someone having a dream with no comprehension of how to do it and being able to manage to pull it off."

19/06/09 ‑ Confirmation of MPhil candidature session at Griffith University, Nathan Campus, approved by Griffith 29/10/09. Albert recommended to the panel that the Masters be upgraded to a PhD, and was approved 11/03/10.

04/07/09 ‑ mentioned in Eric S. Caruncho's article "Pinoy Cult Films: The Cinema that Won't Die", published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer

Roy Frumkes and I

07/07/09 ‑ lecture on Filipino Horror for Roy Frumkes' horror course, School of Visual Arts, New York City

Late 2009 ‑ ABC requested a more essay‑based documentary and "requested" Not Quite Hollywood director Mark Hartley take over the project.

16/08/09 ‑ Veronica and I flew Mark to Brisbane to pitch the project to him. Much to my horror and disappointment, Hartley decided to ditch the Weng Weng story in favour of a much broader history of Americans making B films in the Philippines. I was subsequently asked by Veronica to step down from co‑director and co‑writer to Associate Producer. After I hand over my footage and research to Hartley, my involvement is diminished dramatically. With Hartley as director, writer and Associate Producer, additional funding appears via Screen Victoria, Screen Queensland and the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund.

February 2010 ‑ Bobby Suarez passed away. Mark Hartley's team filmed interviews in the US, Europe, Manila and Singapore.

10/02/10 ‑ mentioned in Bernice Bautista's "Pinoy B Movies For Beginners" article, Juice magazine: "According to Pinoy B‑movie junkie and film critic/historian Andrew Leavold... even an A‑list filmmaker can join the fray by dipping into a disreputable genre like softcore porn."

30/06/10 ‑ interview on "Conversations With Richard Fidler", ABC Local Radio, in which I tell stories from Manila.

24/07/10 ‑ Machete Maidens Unleashed! world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Mark Hartley and I attended the Queensland premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival 11/11/10

September 2010 ‑ US DVD label Dark Sky/MPI released two Bobby A. Surez features, "They Call Her Cleopatra Wong" and "The One‑Armed Executioner", and included my interviews with Bobby and Nigel Hogge as bonus features.

18/10/10 to 05/11/10 - PHILIPPINES VISIT #6

No footage shot. Instead I concentrated on the academic side of things, delivering my "Pinoy Grindhouse" lectures at Ateneo University, Quezon City 20/10/10 and University of the Philippines Film Centre (UPFI), Quezon City 04/11/10. I also introduced "Pinoy Halloween" screenings at Asia Pacific Film Institute, Manila 30/10/10 and at Fully Booked, Fort Bonifacio 31/10/10

04/11/10 ‑ "Pinoy Grindhouse" Lecture and sneak preview of "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" at UP Film Center. One attendee later wrote about the evening on their Sinepatrol blog; another on their "Persistence Of Vision" blog

January 2011 ‑ I wrote about the trip as the "Pop Culture Postcard: Philippines" article in Issue 3 of Sydney online magazine Wordy Mofo

Early 2011 ‑ Filipino artist Ronald Tan published "For Your Height Only", a comic "based on the research by Andrew Leavold". Ronald's drawings later appear in TSFWW finished cut.

16/02/11 ‑ Delivered my "Last Tangos In Manila" paper on Filipino bomba and bold cinema at the Erotic Screen Conference at the Griffith University QCA campus, Brisbane

May 2011 ‑ interview in Status Magazine article "A Man, A Plan, An Archipelago"

17/06/11 to 01/07/11 ‑ PHILIPPINES VISIT #7

Once again, no footage shot. Caught in a typhoon, went to Jo Mari Avellana's funeral.

Delivered "Last Tangos In Manila" paper at the UP College Of Mass Communication, Quezon City 23/06/11

26/07/11 ‑ mentioned in Filipino blog The Ayson Chronicles' article "Reliving the Cult of Weng Weng: For Your Height Only". "Hardcore Aussie Weng Weng fan Andrew Leavold (of the late lamented Brisbane‑based Trash Video store TrashVideo.com.au) may still end up releasing his long awaited 'The Search for Weng Weng' documentary, which has been in the works for years."

13/11/11 ‑ programmed and introduced "ASWANG! FILIPINO NEW BLOOD" double bill of Richard Somes' Yanggaw and Rico Ilarde's Altar at Monster Pictures' Fantastic Asian Film Festival, Melbourne. Bayani San Diego wrote about the program in the Philippine Daily Inquirer 03/11/11

25/04/12 ‑ "The Tanduay Rum Diaries: The Most Famous Cross‑Dressing Midget In The Philippines (At This Present Moment)", a piece on my July 2007 encounter with Mura, is published on the Mondo Macabro blog

22/06/12 ‑ I wrote a brief article titled "Weng Weng And My Love Affair With Pinoy B Films" for the GMA News website: "All lifelong obsessions have to start somewhere. Mine? Seeing a two‑foot nine James Bond use a three‑foot villain named Mr Giant as a punching bag."

25/06/12 to 16/07/12 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #8

Lecture Tour of the Philippines: "Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys" lecture/screening at UP Diliman 11/07/12, University Of San Carlos in Cebu 04/07/12, and UP Baguio 13/07/12; "Search For Weng Weng" talk at UP Diliman 27/06/12; "James Batman" screening and intro in Baguio 12/07/12; and "Bruceploitation" talk/Game Of Death screening at JIV Manila Art Gallery 11/07/12

The Imelda Marcos interview, along with the footage from our visit to the Marcos' home province of Ilocos Norte, prompted Daniel and I to consider resurrecting the original idea of the Weng Weng documentary. An interview with us, entitled "You, Me and Imelda: BrisbaneFilmmakers' Unexpected Philippines Adventure" by Dan Nancarrow, was published in the Brisbane Times and Sydney Morning Herald 01/09/12

21/07/12 ‑ "Sex, Blood, And Betamax Tapes" interview by Don Jaucian published in The Philippine Star

Late 2012 ‑ my bonus features appear on Germany's FilmArt DVD release of "For Y'ur Height Only": "The Story Of Weng" featurette, (actually the three Schlock Treatment intos edited together) and a truncated version of "The Story Of Weng Weng" essay. Edwin Sallan interviews me for Manila news website InterAksyon about the release: "Long Time Weng Weng Fan Announces DVD Release Of 'For Your Height Only', Documentary To Follow"

Late 2012 ‑ my extended article "The Story Of Weng Weng" is published in UK journal Filmrage, Volume 2 #11

October 2012 ‑ my essay "The Great Manila Cinema Heist! A Brief History of Philippine Parody and Outright Thievery In The Country That Copyright Forgot, Part One", which includes Weng Weng's spy and western parodies, is published in Mike White's US film journal Cashiers Du Cinemart #17

December 2012 ‑ A friend of mine, Drew White, mentions crowdfunding via Kickstarter as a viable means of completing the film. Fury Productions gave back the rights to the "Search For Weng Weng" project.

MARCH to MAY 2013 - KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

06/03/13 ‑ "The Wild, Wild Weng Weng" interview by Bob Baker Fish on the Monster Pictures website

08/03/13 ‑ "The Gentlemen's Guide To Midnight Cinema" podcast interview with Tim Merrill. "Tune in as Andrew does his best to bring our listeners up to size on his infatuation with Weng Weng, a tale that has grown to epic proportions!!!"

09/03/13 ‑ the Kickstarter campaign is officially launched at the Luwow Tiki Bar in Melbourne's Fitroy district, to a small but appreciative audience who get to see two extended sequences, plus "D'Wild Wild Weng" in its entirety. Red Horse beer and rum cocktails made Daniel and I feel like we'd never left Manila.

12/03/13 ‑ "The Projection Booth" podcast interview with Mike White and Robert St Mar

15/03/13 ‑ Screening of three sequences at the Queensland State Library theatre, South Brisbane

07/04/13 ‑ THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG was the featured project‑in‑progress at Film Pulse. A Film Pulse Podcast interview followed on 15/04/13

17/04/13 ‑ 3RRR Radio interview

17/04/13 ‑ "Obsessed Movie Buff Makes Weng Weng Docu" interview with Bayani San Diego in the Philippine Daily Inquirer

19/04/13 ‑ "The Search For Weng Weng" gets a mention on the Fangoria website thanks to Lee Gambin

22/04/13 ‑ Skype interview screened on GMA‑7 TV's current affairs show "Brigada", in a story on Weng Weng. Also interviewed were Celing de la Cruz, and Weng Weng's co‑star in "For Y'ur Height Only", Carmi Martin.

23/04/13 ‑ "Andrew Leavold stops by The Momus Report to talk about the Kickstarter campaign behind his film The Search For Weng Weng, as well as tell some tales involving religious cults, a birthday party for Imelda Marcos and the poignant life of Weng Weng himself. Also possibly the only time you'll hear Brooke Shields and David Lean in the same sentence."

23/04/13 ‑ " Ladies and gentlemen: I woke this morning to discover our Kickstarter campaign had jumped from 52% of our $30,000 goal to 85%, thanks to ONE mystery benefactor and their magnificent $10,000 pledge!!! I LITERALLY wept for joy, to think that our film is now within reach! Please keep the support coming, as it means so much to me on a personal level as well as professionally, and to everyone who has pledged so far: THANK YOU, THANK YOU!"

29/04/13 ‑ I did live narration over a longer composite cut (just over 90 minutes) screened at the Chauvel Cinema's Cinemateque, Sydney; Jack Sargeant hosted the Q&A, and despite the disappointing turnout, it was a fun night.

29/04/13 ‑ "THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG KICKSTARTER ‑ ONLY 7 DAYS TO GO and we'd love you all to be a part of our movie on the two‑foot‑nine Filipino James Bond! Just make a Kickstarter pledge no matter how large or small, snap a shot with an "I Heart Weng Weng" message, friend me and and tag me, and we'll add your photo to The Search For Weng Weng's end credits..."

30/04/13 ‑ Fundraising evening at The End (the former Trash Video) in West End, Brisbane. "With less than three weeks til the finish line, its Brisbane creators are throwing a party to show how much THEY love Weng Weng. Please join Andrew Leavold, former proprietor of Trash Video, and co‑writer/co‑producer Daniel Palisa, as they rattle the fundraising can, serve up some Weng Weng cocktails, auction off some goodies, tell Manila war stories, and oversee the I Heart WengWeng photo booth, the images appearing in the movie's closing credits."

May 2013 ‑ ABC Radio's "Movieland" interview with CJ Johnson

07/05/13 ‑ "It Ended Badly For Weng Weng": interview in Sunshine Coast Daily

07/05/13 ‑ "WE MADE IT TO OUR $30,000 GOAL! A million thanks to everyone who pledged, this has been a monumental group effort akin to a global Amish barnraising. Please keep those pledges and photos coming in, because the more we raise, the more polished a film we can produce. Once again, thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!"

09/05/13 ‑ Even longer cut (105 minutes) screened at The Time Machine, Nambour, Sunshine Coast guests are also invited to contribute "I Heart Weng Weng" shots.

12/05/13 ‑ "WE DID IT!!!" Kickstarter campaign successfully completed. Pledges from 333 individuals totalling $34,073 help funded the final shoot and post‑production.

28/05/13 ‑ Eddie Romero passed away. Bayani San Diego Jr quotes me in his "Stories about a master storyteller" article, Philippine Daily Inquirer 30/05/13: "Leavold remembered Romero's 'dry humor, self‑deprecating wit, generosity [and] fearless command of the cinematic language.' They would talk for hours, he said. 'He humored me about his trashy B movies, which he knew I adored. In his home, I had the best coffee, imported from South America.'"

With the late Jim Turner (centre) and his Hobbit House staff

31/05/13 to 21/06/13 - PHILIPPINES SHOOT #9, FINAL

Kristine "Kints" Kitana officially signed on as our Philippines' Line Producer, and Jordan Arabejo as Director of Photography. The Kickstarter pledges funded rentals of a Canon C300 camera and a smaller DSLR camera.

Day #1 (13/06/13) ‑ Henry Strzalkowki interview, and screened a two‑hour "Rough As Weng's Guts" cut ‑ at two hours, the longest version to date! ‑ at H&J Bar, Makati. Jordan filmed the audience watched my opening and closing speeches for the final version's wraparound sequences.

Day #2 (14/06/13) ‑ A day full of profound surprises and revelations. From filming sequences at Our Mother Of Perpetual Help, the Baclaran shrine where Weng Weng's mother constantly prayed during pregnancy, to filming a second extended interview with Weng's family, to finally recording Weng's first director Dante Boy Pangilinan filling in the missing pieces of the early films and relationship with his producers, it was a dream day, and I can safely say THIS FILM IS GOING TO BE FANTASTIC!

Day #3 (15/06/13) ‑ Interviews with Ed Lejano and Teddy Co, and Don Gordon Bell.

Pick‑Up Shoots, mid-June ‑ follow‑up interviews with Eddie Nicart, and Daniel and I visiting Hobbit House

AUGUST to SEPTEMBER 2013 - THE FINAL SPRINT TO THE FINISH LINE

August to September 2013 ‑ second unit by Jet Leyco and Kristine Kintana ‑ segues, street scenes, traffic chaos, Cultural Center of the Philippines, and the very last two interviews ‑ John Kater and Pia Moran (both shot by Kristine).

03/08/13 ‑ The "Cinemalaya Cut" (a 90 minute cut‑down version of the H&J Cut) screened as a work‑in‑progress at Cinemalaya: Philippine Independent Film Festival, Manila, with a filmed introduction by Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa. Edwin P. Sallan at Interaksyon (03/08/13) helps promote the film: "Rough Cut Of Weng Weng Docu To Be Screened At Cinemalaya"

10/08/13 ‑ ABC Radio National interview in which Daniel Palisa and I waxed poetic with Sarah Kanowski about Manila adventures and our 2'9" avatar...

September 2013 ‑ The film I made my local acting debut in, OTSO by Elwood Perez, screened from September 11th as part of the FDCP's Sineng Pambansa All‑Masters National Film Festival. I play the main character's American father, and get to utter the immortal words "Wow...you really like ponies, don't you?" The reviews came in soon after: "What film can combine diverse characters and issues such as Anita Linda (playing herself), a pair of porn stars, a fresh, young scriptwriter, B‑film fanatic Andrew Leavold, and the issue of pork barrel and pull it off?"

03/09/13 ‑ "Weng Weng, The Secret Agent Who Punched Above His Weight" - A thoughtful and beautifully written love letter to Ernesto by Sydney writer and culture vulture Lucia Elliott, and not just because she mentions TSFWW, or was kind enough to ask for some quotes on the little guy!

September 2013 ‑ First Monster Pictures blog entry, on the Imelda Marcos visit: "Stuck In Ilocos Norte With The Weng Weng Blues Again"

11/09/13 ‑ in conversation with Steve Saragossi at The Fox Hotel, South Brisbane, discussing low‑ to no‑budget filmmaking and screening clips from my projects Lesbo A‑Go‑Go, Bluebirds of Peace And Destruction, Apocalypse Mao, Zombie Mariachi (Daniel Palisa and I collaborating with Filipino filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz), and of course, the Baclaran neighbourhood and cemetery sequence from "Search For Weng Weng".

October 2013 ‑ 200+ page WENG'S CHOP #4 published in the US featuring, among its myriad of dubious delights, a "Search For Weng Weng: Final Shoot Diary" with a special SFWW commemorative cover (artwork by Matt O'Neill)

08/11/13 to 03/12/13 - POST-PRODUCTION, MANILA PREMIERE

November 2013 ‑ Jim's finished cut on hard drive arrives in Manila, for colour grading at Outpost Visual Frontier in San Juan, while the sound mix was completed by by Corinne de San Jose (On The Job).

09/11/13 ‑ introduced Gerry de Leon's gothic horror masterpiece LILET (1971), a free screening at 4pm at the CCP as part of the 100th Anniversary of Gerry de Leon, and hosted a Q&A with its stars Celia Rodriguez and Ronaldo Valdez.

28/11/13 ‑ InterAksyo's Edwin P. Sallan promoted the SFWW premiere in "TheSearch for Weng Weng to have world premiere at UP Film Center"

29/11/13 ‑ World Premiere at the University of the Philippines Cine Adarna, UP Film Center. Present were the main creative team: me, co‑writer/producer Daniel Palisa and soundtrack star Roy Arabejo (Australia), editor Jim Scott (UK), line producer Kristine Kintana, cinematographer Jordan Arabejo, cartoonist Ronald Tan, Weng Weng's family, Eddie Nicart, Weng Weng's co‑stars Pia Moran, Jim Gaines Jr, Franco Guerrero, SFWW interviewees, and many more. Special Effects Queen Cecille Baun presents me with a life‑size bust of Weng Weng's head...cast from an actual life‑mask she took in the early 80s! I can quite safely say: greatest gift EVER.

02/12/13 ‑ Interviewed for a GMA‑7 TV profile on Weng Weng. Filmed outside Weng Weng's Baclaran home, at brother Celing's house in Malibay, and at Weng Weng's grave in Pasay City Cemetery. The sense of the past seven years coming full circle was overwhelming!

December 2013 ‑ Ren Aguila's review "The Search for Weng Weng tells untold stories" on GMA website: "a tight weave of film clips, interviews, and the story of de la Cruz, told in part in pencil sketches by illustrator Ronald Tan. There are moments of light humor and unintentional surrealism, especially in the Ilocos Norte sequence where Leavold and crew visit the former First Lady. The story ends on a note that is as abrupt as the end of de la Cruz's career, avoiding a sentimentalism that would have otherwise ruined the moment."

05/12/13 ‑ "The Search For Weng Weng" received a worthy mention in Lilit Reyes' "The Year of Filipino‑Themed Foreign Films" article on the Philippines through the lens of foreigners: "The heartstring it pulled was how others make money on a misfit, but the exploited ended up with nothing and died poor."

07/12/13 ‑ "8 Things To Dig In The Search For Weng Weng" article by Tzaddi Salazar, on the 8 List website: "While Leavold's voice and obsession with the midget from Baclaran fuels this docu, it is ultimately his good intentions and love for Pinoy movies that both guides and protects him on his journey to discovery and catharsis."

10/12/13 ‑ Weng Weng profile on Manila's GMA7 TV show "Tunay Na Buhay" featured "The Search For Weng Weng" premiere and clips, interviews with me, Weng's brother Celing and Eddie Nicart, co‑star (and SFWW inviewee) Pia Moran, and me and sister‑in‑law Editha going to the grave. In the words of host Rhea Santos, "Pinoy James Bond Weng Weng has been forgotten but these Australian filmmakers will make us remember him ... Hoping that extras, sidekicks, etc will never be taken for granted."

11/12/13 ‑ Private cast and crew screening at The Box, West End. Kellie Lloyd: "I am immensely proud of my friend (and former boss) Andrew Leavold for his soaring talent and staggering determination to make his doco Search For Weng Weng, it's a triumph on so many levels."

12/12/13 ‑ Radio interview on Brisbane's 612 ABC Local talking all things small and Filipino!

13/12/13 ‑ First screening for Melbourne's Monster Pictures, Australian distributor and international sales agent. The response was unanimously positive.

21/12/13 ‑ Screening at Cinemanila International Film Festival, SM Cinema Aura Premier, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. Ours was the third highest attendance at the festival.

Late December 2013 ‑ Listed as one of the Philippines' top films of 2013 by Adrian Mendizabal

January 2014 ‑ NCCA approves funds to tour the Philippines in April

04/01/14 ‑ "Weng Weng Lives!" interview and profile by Eric S. Caruncho in the Sunday Inquirer

January 2014 ‑ "The Search For Weng Weng" named one of the best films of 2013 by critic Noel Vera, who lists our film in US magazine Businessworld alongside Scorsese, Malick, Wong Kar Wai, American Hustle and Lav Diaz's "Norte": "...what Leavold reveals in his prodigiously affectionate piece of cinejournalism is that there are arcane pleasures to be found in this more disreputable branch of Philippine cinema..."

28/03/14 - PERTH, AUSTRALIA, Monster Fest Perth at the Luna Palace Outdoor cinema, Leederville [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

MAY to APRIL 2014 - EUROPEAN TOUR

01/05/14 - UDINE, ITALY, Udine Far East Film Festival [Andrew Leavold in attendance]. My introduction is on Youtube here; I was later interviewed by the festival about the film here.

20/05/2014 - CANNES, FRANCE, Marche du Film screening at Gray Cinema 3 [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

24/05/16 - The Cannes Market screening sparked an interview with Edwin Sallan on the InterAksyon website: "After 32 Years, Weng Weng Returns To Cannes With Documentary"

27/05/14 - LONDON, UK, closing night film of the Terracotta Far East Film Festival's Focus on Philippines program, ICA [Andrew Leavold and Jim Scott in attendance] *WINNER Audience Award, Focus on Philippines

05/06/14 - MANCHESTER, UK, The Cornerhouse [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

10/06/14 - SHEFFIELD, UK, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Odeon [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/06/14 - BERLIN, GERMANY, Mobile Kino outdoor screening at an industrial park in Griessmühle, Neukölln [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

17/06/14 - BERLIN, GERMANY, Z-Bar [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

19/06/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, Pas de Pitié Pour Les Navets screening (first 20 mins only), La Cantada II, plus The Impossible Kid in its original French dubbing [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

26/06/14 - COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, Husets Biograf [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

17/07/14 - VIC, SPAIN, Festival Nits de Cinema Orientale (Asian Summer Film Festival), Espai ETC, followed by Filipino B Film Masterclass [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

18/07/14 - BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY, Cinestrange Film Festival, C1 Cinema

29/07/14 - MONTREAL, CANADA, Fantasia International Film Festival, J.A. de Sève

Kristine "Kints" Kintana and I, Ilo-Ilo Airport

AUGUST 2014 - PHILIPPINES FILM TOUR

01/08/14 - BAGUIO, PHILIPPINES, Baguio Cinemateque [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

04/08/14 - DUMAGUETE, PHILIPPINES, Siliman University [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance] plus lecture

04/08/14 - MONTREAL, CANADA, Fantasia International Film Festival, J.A. de Sève

05/08/14 - CEBU, PHILIPPINES, University of San Carlos [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

07/08/14 - ILOILO, PHILIPPINES, FDCP Cinemateque, Iloilo City [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

10/08/14 - MANILA, PHILIPPINES, private screening and street party in Weng Weng's neighbourhood, Baclaran [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

11/08/14 - MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Heckle and Jeckle Bar, Makati [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

14/08/14 - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), ACMI 2 [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance] "In Search Of Weng Weng, The Pint-Sized James Bond Of Filipino Film” interview with Jake Wilson appeared a week before in Melbourne newspaper The Age (07/08/14)

16/08/14 - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), Treasury Theatre [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

01/09/14 - HOLLYWOOD, USA, Everything Is Festival at Cinefamily, Silent Movie Theatre

04/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

06/09/14 - BREDA, NETHERLANDS, BUT (B-Grade Underground and Trash) Film Festival

07/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

07/09/14 - SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF), Treasury Theatre, Marrickville [Andrew Leavold in attendance]. The rowdy post-screening Q and A compered by Jaimie Leonarder (Mu Meson Archives) was filmed by Jarret Gahan and released on The Search For Weng Weng's DVD bonus features in all territories except Sweden.

10/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

12/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

13/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

14/09/14 - PARIS, FRANCE, L'Etrange Festival, Forum des Images

26/09/14 - "Andrew Leavold’la The Search For Weng Weng Hakkında" Interview with Can Yalçınkaya on the Turkish website Oteki Sinema (English translation here)

17/10/14 - LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND, Lausanne Underground Film Festival at Le Capitole

24/10/14 - SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Mu Meson Archives, Annandale [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

30/10/14 - VIENNA, AUSTRIA, Vienna International Film Festival, Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus

01/11/14 - VIENNA, AUSTRIA, Vienna International Film Festival, Metro, Großer Saal

08/11/14 - SAN DIEGO, USA, San Diego Asian Film Festival, UltraStar Mission Valley

08/11/14 - BRUGES, BELGIUM, Razorreel Flanders Film Festival, Cinema Liberty

13/11/14 - BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Zinema Zombie Fest, Cinemateca Distrital

15/11/14 - SAN DIEGO, USA, San Diego Asian Film Festival, La Paloma Theatre

27/11/14 - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, DVD Launch at Monster Fest, Yah Yah's, Collingwood [Andrew Leavold in attendance] *WINNER: Monster Spirit Award

04/12/14 - BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival, Palace Barracks, Petrie Terrace [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

Me with the Chuds (Weng Weng Rap), Toronto

DECEMBER 2014 - US/CANADA TOUR

06/12/14 - SAN DIEGO, USA, Ken Cinema [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

08/12/14 - PHOENIX, USA, FilmBar [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/12/14 - SAN FRANCISCO, USA, opening film of FACINE/21: 21st Annual Filipino International Cina Festival at the Roxie [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

12/12/14 - CHICAGO, USA, Chicago Filmmakers, presented by the Chicago Cinema Society [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

13/12/14 - BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival, Palace Barracks, Petrie Terrace

13/12/14 - NEW YORK, USA, midnight session at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

14/12/14 - YONKERS, USA, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

15/12/14 - PHILADELPHIA, USA, Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art (PhilaMOCA) [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

17/12/14 - DETROIT, USA, Cinema Detroit [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

18/12/14 - TORONTO, CANADA, The Royal, with an afternoon in-store appearance at Eyesore Cinema [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

19/12/14 - OTTOWA, CANADA, Mayfair Theatre [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

21/12/14 - HOLLYWOOD, USA, Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

December 2014 - Australian DVD release via Monster Pictures, followed by its UK release in February 2015 via Monster Pictures UK

09/01/15 - SASKATOON, CANADA, The Broadway Theatre [Jim Scott in attendance]

22/01/15 - ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, LantarenVenster

27/01/15 - ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Cinerama

31/01/15 - ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Cinerama

07/02/15 - NAMBOUR, AUSTRALIA, The Time Machine [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

19/02/15 - "Film of dwarf ‘James Bond’ a global smash" Interview with Scott Sawyer in the Sunshine Coast Daily

08/02/15 - SAN FRANCISCO, USA, SF Indie Fest at the Roxie

21/02/15 - WILMINGTON, USA, Fringe Wilmington Festival, Nemours, Wilmington, Delaware

22/02/15 - WILMINGTON, USA, Fringe Wilmington Festival, Nemours, Wilmington, Delaware

06/03/15 - TOOWOOMBA, AUSTRALIA, The Australian Cultural Library [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/04/15 - SINGAPORE, South East Asian Film Festival, Singapore Art Museum [Andrew Leavold in attendance] The lively post-screening Q&A conducted by fellow filmmaker Chew Tze Chuan is on Youtube in its entirety here.

Earlier in the day, Marrie Lee filmed my small role as funeral mourner for her debut feature as director, Certified Dead (released 2016).

11/04/15 - BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, Titanic Film Festival, Toldi Cinema

13/04/15 - BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, Titanic Film Festival, Toldi Cinema

17/04/15 - DAVAO, PHILIPPINES three screenings at UP [University of the Philippines] Salida

20/06/15 - DETROIT, USA, Cinema Detroit, on a double bill with For Y'ur Height Only [Andrew Leavold Q and A via Skype from Manila]

30/06/15 - MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Archivo 1985 Gallery, Makati [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

16/07/15 - MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Heckle and Jeckle Bar, Makati [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

02/09/15 - MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Pinapple Lab, Makatu [Daniel Palisa in attendance]

13/09/15 - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), Backlot Studios [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

November 2015 - "El Asombroso Coloso Filipino Con Licencia Para Molar!" Interview with Domingo Lopez published in Spanish magazine 2000 Maniacos #48

04/11/15 - ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

06/12/15 - LUANG PRABANG, LAOS, Luang Prabang Film Festival

31/01/16 - MADRID, SPAIN, CutreCon film festival, Palacio de la Prensa Cinema

08/04/16 – GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA, “Cinefiend” Art Exhibition at Hillier and Skuse Gallery, Bundall [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

07/09/16 – SUNSHINE COAST, AUSTRALIA, Caloundra Film Festival screening at the Bison Bar, Nambour [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

19/10/16 – MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Alamat Bar, Makati [Andrew Leavold and Daniel Palisa in attendance]

October 2014 - Swedish DVD release (as "De Kallar Mig Minibond") via Studio S Entertainment

CANCELLED 04/11/16 – KAMPOT, CAMBODIA, Kampot Writers and Readers Festival [the whole film program collapsed due to poor planning]

December 2016 - North American DVD release via US company Wild Eye Releasing

20/03/17 - PORTLAND, USA, Hollywood Theatre

BOOK LAUNCH AND SCREENING TOUR, AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND March and April 2017

29/03/17 - BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, New Globe Theatre, Fortitude Valley [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

POSTPONED 30/03/17 - SUNSHINE COAST, AUSTRALIA, the Bison Bar in Nambour [Cyclone Debbie closed down the whole of South East Queensland]

03/04/17 – MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, Astor Cinema, St Kilda [Andrew Leavold in attendance; Q and A hosted by Fatal Visions' Michael Helms] Filmed talk is on the Cult of Monster website here;

05/04/17 – SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Ritz Cinema, Randwick [Andrew Leavold in attendance; Q and A hosted by Filmink's Travis Johnson] Photos of the event are on the SBS Filipino Radio website here

07/04/17 – ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA, Mercury Cinema [Andrew Leavold in attendance; Q and A hosted by Dick Dale]

09/04/17 – DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND, Dunedin Public Art Gallery [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

12/04/17 – WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND, Roxy Cinema, Miramar [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

03/05/17 - BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, "Wine, Women And Weng Weng" book reading at the Junk Bar in Annerley, with musical backing by Syke Staniford and Hannah Jane [Andrew Leavold in attendance] First filmed half of the performance is on Youtube here

20/05/17 - TOOWOOMBA, AUSTRALIA, book launch and screening for the Australian Cultural Library's fifth birthday celebrations [Andrew Leavold in attendance]

12/06/17 – SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Rooty Hill RSL [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A - Andrew Leavold in attendance]

13/06/17 – SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Jaimie and Aspasia Leonarder's Cult Sinema Obscura Public House Petersham [clips and talk only – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

BOOK LAUNCH AND SCREENING TOUR, EUROPE/PHILIPPINES July and August 2017

21/07/17 - VIC, SPAIN Festival Nits de cinema oriental de Vic [Filipino B Film Masterclass & clip show only – Andrew Leavold in attendance] Not only do I get to talk and launch the book...I’m also on this year’s Jury!

29/07/17 - COPENHAGEN, DENMARK Husets Biograf [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A - Andrew Leavold in attendance]

03/08/17 – LONDON, UK Brew Club [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A - Andrew Leavold in attendance] Hosted by Cigarette Burns Cinema, the venue made their own Weng-inspired beer for the evening called (what else?) For Y’ur Pint Only!

05/08/17 – GLASGOW, UK Glasgow Film Theatre [The Search for Weng Weng screening plus Q&A hosted by Graham Rae and co-hosted by Matchbox Cineclub - Andrew Leavold in attendance]

07/08/17- MANCHESTER, UK Home [talk, clip show and reading co-hosted by HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 himself, Laurence Harvey - Andrew Leavold in attendance]

08/08/17- BRISTOL, UK Bristol Improv Theatre [The Search for Weng Weng screening plus Q&A, hosted by the Bristol Bad Film Club’s Ti Singh – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

09/08/17 - CARDIFF, UK The Tramshed Cardiff [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/08/17 – LONDON, UK (afternoon) University of London’s SOAS [Filipino B Film Masterclass & clip show – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/08/17 - LONDON, UK (evening) The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury [The Search for Weng Weng screening plus Q&A hosted by Mondo Macabro’s Pete Tombs – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

12/08/17 – AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Vondelbunker [The Search For Weng Weng plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

15/08/17 - PARIS, FRANCE La Cantada [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

16/08/17 - PARIS, FRANCE Metaluna Bookstore [talk and book reading only – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

18/08/17 - BERLIN, GERMANY Z-Bar, Mitte (The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance)

19/08/17 – BERLIN, GERMANY Babylon Cinema [The Search For Weng Weng plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

23/08/17 – MANILA, PHILIPPINES Archivo 1984 Gallery, Malate [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance)

BOOK LAUNCH AND SCREENING TOUR, NORTH AMERICA/CAMBODIA October and November 2017

03/10/17 - SEATTLE, USA Grand Illusion Cinema [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

04/10/17 - VERNON, CANADA Record City [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

05/10/17 - VANCOUVER, CANADA 8th Dimension Comics [Reading and signing only, co-hosted by Cinema Sewer Magazine’s Robin Bougie – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

06/10/17 - TORONTO, CANADA Eyesore Cinema [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

07/10/17 - MONTREAL, CANADA Broue Pub Brouhaha Rosemont [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng and The Search For Weng Weng screenings plus Q&A, co-hosted by Douteaux's Tommy Gaudet – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

10/10/17 - BALTIMORE, USA The Windup Space [The Search For Weng Weng and The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screenings plus Q&A co-hosted by Mondo Baltimore's Shawn Jones – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

11/10/17 - PHILADELPHIA, USA PhilaMOCA [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

13/10/17 – NEW YORK CITY, USA (afternoon) School of Visual Arts, Manhattan [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus lecture on Filipino Comedy – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

13/10/17 – NEW YORK CITY, USA (evening) Forbidden Planet NYC, Manhattan [talk, reading and book signing only – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

15/10/17 - YONKERS, USA Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A, co-hosted by Horror Boobs – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

16/10/17 - DETROIT, USA Cinema Detroit [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A, co-hosted by The Projection Booth's Robert St. Mary – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

17/10/17 - CHICAGO, USA The Nightingale [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening, reading and signing, co-presented by The Chicago Cinema Society – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

18/10/17 - SAN FRANCISCO, USA Bayanihan Center [“The Secret History of Philippine Cinema” talk, reading and signing – Andrew Leavold in attendance] Part of Facine: 24th Annual Filipino International Cine Festival.

22/10/17 - HOLLYWOOD, USA Barkada Tapas Bar & Restaurant [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A with special guest, Weng Weng’s co-star from CALIBER .357, Nelson Anderson – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

25/10/17 - PHOENIX, USA FilmBar Phoenix, 815 N 2nd St, Phoenix, 7-10pm [The Lost Films Of Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

26/10/17 - MEXICO CITY, MEXICO Pulqueria Insurgentes [Book Launch and talk only – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

27/10/17 - MEXICO CITY, MEXICO Terminal Coyoacan [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

05/11/17 – KAMPOT, CAMBODIA Kampot Readers & Writers Festival, KAMA Cafe [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

07/11/17 – PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA Metahouse [The Search For Weng Weng screening plus Q&A – Andrew Leavold in attendance]

Five Pinoy Comedies

2017-01-09T02:25:00.000-08:00

NOEL "UNGGA" AYALA

FIVE PINOY COMEDY “CLASSICS” with JOEY DE LEON (mini-reviews by Andrew Leavold)

[See also my other Joey de Leon reviews for Alyas Batman En Robin (1991) and Little Boy Blue: Tiny Terrestrial (1991)]

Smith & Wesson (dir. Tony Y. Reyes, 1988) It's Eighties buddy cop flicks - with Joey de Leon and Vic Sotto as "Mayumi Vice" tracking down a drug ring led by Paquito Diaz and his head goons Rene Requiestas (as Don Johnson Wacks!) and Tsing Tong Tsai. Tito Sotto has a cameo on the Hong Kong set spouting pigeon Chinese, and brother Val Sotto operates a Bloodsport tournament in which Vic must fight to the death. The verdict: NUTS, in a good way! Also stars Beverly Vergel, Panchito, Paquito Diaz, Mon Alvir and Jaime Fabregas.

Elvis And James (dir. Tony Y. Reyes, 1989) takes on Fifties music icons via Eighties high school comedies, with Joey de Leon playing Elvis Presto with stick-on Brillo sideburns and Rene Requiestas as the almost Dean-alike James Ducuycoy, two delusional thirty-something delinquents in leather jackets and Brylcream smoking, preening and mocking their way through some classic rock'n'roll evergreens. Whether on a beach or in the cold in Baguio, the two don't seem to fit anywhere, but still manage to woo their girls, Long Tall Sally and Marilyn Monroy, via a recreation of the competition in Dirty Dancing - this time with Rene sniffing armpits and dry-humping his companion's leg. To demonstrate just how self-referential Regal's series had become, dwarf sidekick Noel "Ungga" Ayala appears as a diminutive customer in a music shop called Sek's Organs. First he complains loudly that he can't reach a paino's keyboard, then turns to Joey de Leon and complains about his disappointing rate of pay for acting in Starzan!

SuperMouse And The Robo-Rats (dir. Tony Y. Reyes, 1989) Orphaned baby is left at a fair and grows into a carnival barker (Joey de Leon) who transforms via a magic amulet into a mouse-eared, whiskered superhero and saves his carnie friends from Paquito Diaz's goons, bank robbers, and a spaceship full of Robo-Rats. Gap-toothed Rene Requiestas is at his best playing hapless Doro the Magician, and Joey and Rene's bug-eyed dwarf sidekick from Starzan (Noel “Ungga” Ayala) performs a karaoke love song FROM HELL. The best bit, however, is the Star Wars moment when the lead Robo-Rat (a furry and bewhiskered Ruel Vernal) takes off his Darth Vader helmet and announces to Joey in a helium voice "I am your father…"! With Manilyn Reynes, Carmina Villaroel and Lucita Soriano.

Small Medium Large: Fits All Sizes (dir. Joey de Leon & Tony Y. Reyes, 1990) Amiable, if ultimately pointless, Starzan spinoff features Rene (Cheeta-eh) Requiestas as a penniless probinsyano, his usual dwarf sidekick Noel “Ungga” Ayala as a cigarette and sweepstake ticket vendor, and child-like giant Jimmy Santos as the titular trio “Fernando, Paul, Junior” (Fernando Poe Jr, geddit?). Also stars Panchito, and with a brief cameo by Joey de Leon. Written by Joey and frequent collaborator Reyes, the ostensibly plotless Small Medium Large exists solely to showcase each comic’s pecularities, which include mangling pop songs, randomly throwing insults and in-jokes, hurling the poached egg-eyed, mulleted Ungga through the air like an errant Cabbage Patch Doll, and bursting into a spontaneous chorus of Prince’s “Kiss” whenever the action flags.

Goosebusters (onscreen title Mumu? Anong Malay Ko!/"Monster? What Do I Know!" dir. Tony Y. Reyes, 1991) Comedian/co-writer Joey de Leon and director Reyes continue their winning streak of Hollywood lampoons, this time Ghost AND Ghostbusters, and with a sideswipe at Silence Of The Lambs! Joey plays Patrick Sisi, a gallery owner falling in love with striking Demi Amore, aka Angel (Racel Tuazon), while accidentally eating the favourite pet goose of his neighbourhood serial killer (called "Father", apparently, judging from his knuckle tatts). With his bug-eyed, magnificently mulletted dwarf sidekick Charlie Sheng (Noel "Ungga" Ayala), he attempts to contact Father's first victim, but batty clairvoyant Groovy Goldberg - Whoopi she ain't! - instead conjures up the ghost of Mahal the Goose and it enters Angel's body, leaving her a honking simpleton to the horror of her father (Panchito). Meanwhile Ungga and the next door kids don the Goosebuster overalls and ecto-backpacks to battle a twenty-foot goose skeleton spitting laser beams from its eye sockets. Huh? As truly insane as it sounds, with regulation musical numbers (The Sound Of Music's "Do Re Mi" is now a ditty about cooking seafood), and a disturbing level of dwarf abuse, in which Ungga is kicked, beaten, slapped, caught in a sun roof and thrown upside down against a chair, all in the name of Comedy Gold.

Cannibal Mercenary (Thai Action Horror, 1983)

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Cannibal Mercenary

Thailand 1983

aka Mercenary, Mercenary Cannibal, Mercenary Cannibals, Jungle Killers: The Jaguar Project, The Jaguar Project

Director Hong Lu Wong

Cast Lek Songphon, Sugud Namchan, Rom Rachan, Sormud Charekchema

Review by Andrew Leavold

"This story is told... by a man who can not forget a brutal war!"

Around the time Antonio Margheriti was engaged in the unholy work of wedding the Vietnam War film with the cannibal genre in Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) and splicing the best bits of Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Deer Hunter (1978) into his blood soaked, shot-in-the-Philippines actioner The Last Hunter (1981), Thai filmmakers were also busy making their own demented backyard redux of Coppola's bloated paean to man's inhumanity. And oh, the inhumanity!

The film signposts its intentions early, through the overhead ceiling fan denoting "instant Vietnam flashback". Our hero - Namchoke? Prompit? Let's call him Wilson - has returned from a tour of duty and almost immediately is cajoled by his former commander to accept a mercenary job deep in the Vietnam jungle. It's not clear if the Vietnam War has ended, and even more unclear what a Sergeant in the Thai Army was doing there in the first place; nevertheless he needs the money for his daughter's polio operation and, since his wife was killed (cue blood-streaked flashback), they're both dependent on each other. So much for the sentiment. Onward, Buddhist Soldiers.

Wilson hits the Vietnam jungle running with a Mercenary squad under his command, a group of ugly Thai misfits with more than their share of chips on their shoulder. It's a treacherous trip up the figurative river, with the ever-present Viet Cong and their bamboo spiked traps executed in graphic, close-to-the-bone style, yet their most dangerous enemy, it's soon apparent amidst the spiralling paranoia, is themselves. After slashing and mutilating their way through a VC village they stumble on a pregnant Thai woman begging for their protection. With a cold, mean glare and a radio up her skirt, it seems she's leading them into an ambush, and succeeds with surprising ease in turning the men against each other. One private had riddled his wife and her lover with bullets, and thus wants to save the girl; another private, a relentless would-be-rapist, has his way with her - only to find his cock almost severed. Exit pregnant Thai in a hail of Wilson's pistol fire, and they carry off their mutilated buddy. Miraculously, he's cured twenty minutes later into the film, only to try the old "involuntary surprise sex" routine once more.

Wilson finally reaches his jungle contact, a glamorous commando named Choompah, but not before the rest of the squad are captured by Choompah's men, staked to the ground, and urinated on while her 2IC, an almost hairless, toothless and practically eyeless circus freak with a frotting fetish, rubs himself against one of his piss-stained victims. His disturbing bubble-head looked familiar; the actor turns out to be famous comedian Santhong Sisai - which translates to "ugly as sin"! - who was also a country singer and jailed in the Seventies for attempted murder. Which certainly didn't hurt his career, before his untimely death in a car accident around 1982. It's not the first pissing scene, either - but in a Thai film that throws in kung fu, cannibalism, outrageous gore and every conceivable 'Nam and post-'Nam cliches while making up a few of their own, a few bubble-headed toilet antics certainly aren't out of place.

Choompah fills in Wilson's remaining squad on their mission: to bring down a crazed VC Colonel (and it's at this moment when the Heart Of Darkness references tear though the grass roof) operating a drug empire - known as The Empire - out of a fortified camp guarded by flesh-eating aborigines - known as The Draculas! Once Wilson's men are captured, the film kicks into top gear and its previous scenes of graphic mutilation and dismemberment are washed away in a river of gore. There's maggot licking, eyeball squishing, a knife through skull followed by a regulation cannibal chow-down on its contents, and seemingly endless rounds of ammunition tearing through flesh and bone: It's the ending you secretly dreamed of for Apocalypse Now, delivered by the trailer-load, yet somehow redeemed by its main offender's daughter wrapping her arms around him and gushing, "I wuv you daddy!" Awwww....

In addition to the Thai original and export versions, there's a THIRD titled Jungle Killers, edited by Hong Kong producer-hack Thomas Tang with much of the gore trimmed, but with the added bonus of three Euro-Trash actors slashing their way though an entirely different jungle looking for treasure. Looking for the Temple of Doom, perhaps? Move on, assholes. Make no mistake, Tang's Mercenary is to be avoided like the Plague, in favour of its longer, infinitely more excessive version. And yet, at over 1 hour 40 minutes, Mercenary is a fat-free exercise in cinematic brutality - a simpleminded one but not without its own dumb, animalistic, bludgeon-carrying charms. Its camera flourishes and manic montage leave little time between grotesque set-pieces, thus allowing little time to contemplate just how primitive the soundtrack is. And I'm not just talking dialogue, with those regulation Hong Kong dubbing-booth Brits trying American accents and exaggerated Orientals (and Choompah's real voice replaced by Pam Ayres'). Even the foley and atmos tracks are poorly stitched, and the music a hodgepodge of library music and Goblin's Euro-score for Dawn Of The Dead (1978). No, we forgive its shortcomings because of the film's sheer onslaught of mind-bending imagery. The mud-daubed ghouls in denim, the Deer Hunter atrocities punted into Cannibal Holocaust (1978) territory, and above all, the blinking, puckering, rubbing form of Santhong Sisai frotting his way into our hearts and minds.

Ozploitation Retrospective BIFF 2008

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Mark Hartley and I introduce the BIFF premiere screening of NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, August 2008

2008 was the year I programmed the “Ozploitation” Retrospective at the Brisbane International Film Festival, to coincide with the release of Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood. Little did we know we’d end up working together on Machete Maidens Unleashed! the following year. My catalogue notes and mini-reviews appeared in the BIFF 2008 program.

OZPLOITATION! Knockers, Shockers and the Coming (And Coming Again) Of The R Certificate

The Australian film industry in the Seventies was like Janus, the two headed Hell Hound emerging out of the barren, Menzies-stained cultural wastleland. One shiny, perfectly manicured head was called Art - everyone said they loved Art, forever patting his head and saying "What a good boy. Have another bowl of Chabilis." The second head was called Artless, who smelt like damp carpet and was forever licking his balls in public. Yet despite his appalling lack of social grace, you can't help but fall in love with Artless. It just takes a while to get his unique fragrance out of the cushions.

Quentin Tarantino loves Artless too. During his 2003 publicity tour for Kill Bill, his love letter to Seventies kung fu movies, Quentin raved to blank-faced Australian journalists about his favourite Aussie filmmaker Brian Trenchard-Smith. Blank. The director of The Man From Hong Kong? Still blank. "But he's made a lot of films..."

In Not Quite Hollywood, Tarantino is finally given the floor to enthuse at length on what he coins "Ozploitation", a cathartic squall of cinematic excesses reflecting the drive-in explosion in America from a few years before. For a good decade following the early Seventies our screens saw sex and blood, druggery and thuggery, kung fu kicks, music, more sex and vicarious thrills nestling uncomfortably next to pinafores and period prattling. For every Hanging Rock there was a Hanging Cock, and during that brief, seemingly forgotten and arguably Golden Age we were a miniature colonial outpost version of B-king Roger Corman's genre sausage factory New World, until the demise of the drive ins and rise of home video changed the B film market worldwide.

And good riddance, some would say. For those fascist aesthetes who pass judgement on a film's cultural importance with bourgeois buzzwords like "significant" and "profound", Ozploitation is the steady drip that won't go away. Gleefully un-PC and revelling in their own shock tactics and gratuitous, cartoonish nudity and violence, the most despised of all genres - sex, horror, action, biker and kung fu movies - were also among the top-grossing Australian films of the decade. One could argue sex films helped bankroll a bonafide film industry: Tim Burstall's success of fourwalling his first commercial feature Stork in 1971 led Roadshow to bankroll Burstall's Hexagon Productions and Alvin Purple (1971), the first homegrown sex comedy under the new R certificate, and the first legitimate hit for the emerging "New Australian Cinema". It's like the Mafia underwriting cheques for the Kennedy campaigns, but with less gunfire. And yet the debt to Alvin Purple is hardly mentioned, and never in polite company. In a country which canonizes its pioneers, cinema strangely pays little heed to its own trailblazers.

Only a few years before, it was considered a joke to call yourself an Australian filmmaker. The Lucky Ones could make a fortune in advertising rather than slave in our version of Poverty Row making formulaic product for television's unblinking Third Eye. Suddenly it seemed most of us woke up from our sanitized Anglophile daydream: to the naked ear there was an instant audience more than willing to pay to hear Sailor Talk with an "Orstraylian" accent. Then there was (is?) our primordial fixation on SMUT. Senator Don Chipp's aggressive campaign to introduce the R Certificate coincided with the tide of cultural and sexual liberation washing over the dry continent, and within a year the brittle, oppressive wowserism of the Menzies-era thought police was becoming a glaring anachronism. Which is not to say it atrophied and blew away. Richard Franklin's filmmaking career was almost crushed by a well-orchestrated campaign by the Festival of Light objecting to his R-rated yet thoroughly innocuous comedy The True Story Of Eskimo Nell (1975), and he resorted to a nom-de-plume for his second, more salacious offering Fantasm (1976). Franklin's producer Anthony Ginnane was to become a pariah himself amongst the cultural elite, whose oddly parochial protectionist attitudes towards importing actors or exporting Australian films overseas were in stark contrast with Ginnane's foaming-at-the-mouth internationalist approach. To this day, Ginnane's ability to second-guess audience trends and to sell his "despicable" genre films to the world makes him one of the country's most victorious Sleazy Riders.

Predictably, too much of a good thing left Aussie audiences bloated and jaded, and looking for new thrills. Between Alvin and its 1974 sequel Alvin Rides Again, the public's fascination for seeing sex on screen faded, only to be replaced by action and horror. Exit Alvin and Petersen; enter Stone, Mad Max, and a slew of cheap and nasties inspired by the success of cheap, nasty horror hits from overseas. Genre movies followed the Corman model, reflecting the simple carnal desires of their drive-in demographic: there were car films (High Rolling, FJ Holden, Oz) and biker films (Stone, Cozy Cool, Mad Max), all with blaring Oz Rock soundtracks. Some films even straddled the arbitrary divide between art and exploitation (the brilliant Hitchcock-inspired Long Weekend, for example) and, not surprisingly, do it with style and chutzpah. A few filmmakers like Burstall and Franklin were able to able to scale the walls out of the Exploitation Ghetto, but only just. On the other side of the wall, there existed master showmen with no pretenses towards making "art" - John D. Lamond, Australia's own Russ Meyer, had earlier devised the ad campaigns for Roadshow's controversial hits like A Clockwork Orange and Emmanuelle, then used his canny ballyhoo skills for his own nefarious ends: Felicity, Australia After Dark, The ABC Of Love And Sex Australia Style...

And yet, even at their most repellent and exploitative, Australian B-films are well-crafted, belying their pitifully low budgets, and have an exceedingly liberal dose of self-awareness that's irresistible. Remember Janus the two headed Wonder Dog? It's still the same creature; the two heads are merely that arbitrary divide between Art and Artless, and ultimately are both needed for the creature to exist. Please keep this in mind when the Artless part is dry humping your leg and his breath smells like the death of fun itself.

Daniel Palisa, myself, Brian Trenchard-Smith and Antony Ginnane outside their TURKEY SHOOT screening

ALVIN PURPLE (1971) A knowing satire on the Swinging Seventies and the Permissive Society, Alvin Purple uses the classic English sex comedy model of a hapless, clumsy innocent who becomes an inadvertent sex symbol, gigolo and porn star! Despite its "sex film" tag it was a smash and has an enduring popularity due to its good-natured humour and Burstall's quirky direction, Brian Cadd's hit film score, and an assured supporting cast loaded with familiar TV and film faces. Then there's the endearing Alvin himself, Graeme Blundell, whose portrayal as the Vegemite-smeared Candide is as iconic as the brown stuff itself. Friday 1st August 2008 9:10pm, The Regent 1

PATRICK (1977) Australia's response to the ESP horrors of Carrie and The Fury has a glass-eyed patient, shocked into a coma by the death of his mother, unleashing a Pandora's Box of destruction from his hospital bed. A sympathetic nurse and Patrick's doctor (Sir Robert Helpmann) uncover Patrick's traumatic past, and suspect there's an endless well of evil behind the vacant stare. Australian horror's first international breakthrough is a suprisingly effective and highly stylized exercise in tension, due to to Richard Franklin's sure hand and a layered script by Everett de Roche. Saturday 2nd August 2008 8:30pm, The Regent 1

THE MAN FROM HONG KONG (1975) The unlikely pairing of Village Roadshow and martial arts studio Golden Harvest produced Australia's only true blue kung fu flick. Imported kung fu superstar "Jimmy" Wang Yu plays a Hong Kong cop out to bust Bondian supervillain (and former James Bond) George Lazenby in a flurry of flying fists and tough guy theatrics. From the film's opening chopathon atop Ayers Rock to its window-shattering finale, expatriate action specialist Brian Trenchard-Smith keeps tongue firmly in cheek whilst wringing remarkably straight-faced performances from Rebecca Gilling, Frank Thring, a young Sammo Hung and Mad Max's Roger Ward and Hugh Keays-Byrne. Sunday 3rd August 2008 9:00pm, The Regent 1

TURKEY SHOOT (1982) Purist, trashy, joyously exploitative drive-in fodder set in a "futuristic" jungle prison where detainees slated for brainwashing are subjected to endless all-girl showers and torture sequences, then forced to participate in a deadly man-hunt in the North Queensland jungle. Trenchard-Smith's hyper-ludicrous hybrid of The Big Doll House, 1984 and The Most Dangerous Game was blasted by critics as the lowpoint of Australian cinema to date. Which is true, and proudly so; only now can its bleak, jet-black humour, prolific gore and imaginative genre-splicing place this disreputable chancre of a film as a true classic of Australian B cinema. Sunday 3rd August 2008 11:10pm, The Regent 1

STONE (1975) One-shot auteur Sandy Harbutt wrote, directed and starred in Aussie bikerdom's uncompromising counter culture classic. An idealistic young cop dons the denims of biker gang the Gravediggers to uncover a serial killer in their midst; as Stone descends deeper into their culture he finds, between the knife fights, skinny-dipping and psychedelics, the meaning of the term Honour Among Thieves. Harbutt's sympathies clearly lie with the outlaws, a stance at odds with the biker genre's usual conservatism and faux morality. Stripped of Mad Max's futurist trappings, Stone thus stands alone as a compelling, not to mention career-killing mix of kitsch and conviction. Wednesday 6th August 2008 9:30pm, The Regent 1

ADVENTURES OF BARRY McKENZIE (1972) Bruce Beresford's technically rough, hilarious bad-taste ode to the wide-eyed and obnoxious Fosters-soaked Aussie abroad rips Barry Humphries' character from the pages of Private Eye and brings him to life in all his technicolour triumph, as he tears a swathe through English politeness along with his pre-Dame Auntie Edna (Humphries again, in one of three roles). As Bazza, Barry Crocker - yes, THE Barry Crocker - has the big chin, the potty mouth and glaring anachronistic "Strine" lingo, and the blissful lack of self-awareness that nail the script's satiric swipes at all and sundry. With cameos from Spike Milligan, Peter Cook, and various other "pommie bastards". Thursday 7th August 2008 9:30pm, The Regent 1

LONG WEEKEND (1978) Nature turns nasty in an underrated and, until recently, forgotten masterpiece of terror. Everett de Roche's remarkable two-character script pits a self-absorbed and relentlessly bickering city couple on a relationship-repairing beach retreat against an increasingly hostile, almost supernatural environment: birds swoop, the usually docile kangaroos slash and claw, and the reappearance of a dugong shot by Hardgreaves as target practice is harbinger of a fate which, to de Roche's credit, is never explained. Dark, suspenseful, ambiguous, and utterly enthralling, and hardly suprisingly, is due for a remake. Friday 8th August 2008 10:50pm, The Regent 1

OZPLOITATION SEMINAR In conjunction with our retrospective focus, this panel will explore the history of Australian genre cinema and the industrial conditions which led to cult classics like Alvin Purple, Patrick and Turkey Shoot making it to the big screen. Guests: Andrew Leavold, Alan Finney (actor/producer, Alvin Purple), Mark Hartley (director, Not Quite Hollywood), Antony Ginnane (producer, Patrick & Turkey Shoot), Brian Trenchard-Smith (director, The Man From Hong Kong & Turkey Shoot), and academic Catherine Lumby. Saturday 2nd August 2008, 12pm GoMA Cinema A. Youtube highlights are here

My Published Work

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MY PUBLISHED WORK

2017 - The Search For Weng Weng book version (LedaTape, Melbourne) Order here

2016 - "Bionic Guts And Exploding Huts! The Filipino Pulp Factory of Bobby A. Suarez Part Two" in Weng's Chop #9 (USA), October 2015, pp.84-103

2015 - "Bionic Guts And Exploding Huts! The Filipino Pulp Factory of Bobby A. Suarez Part One" in Weng's Chop #8 (USA), October 2015, pp.25-38

2015 - "Balut Westerns: The Filipino Cowboy as King, and the Rise And Fall of The Goon Action Film" in Domingo Lopez (ed.), Wild Wild East: The Curry Western And The Noodle Western (Tyrannosaurus Books, Barcelona), pp.186-237

2014 - "Strong Coffee With A National Treasure: An Interview with Eddie Romero", Cashiers Du Cinemart #18 (USA), March 2014

2014 - "On Lady Terminator: Interview with Barbara Anne Constable" in Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society (University of the Philippines, Quezon City) Vol. 11 No. 2, August 2014, pp.178-196

2014 - "Mananangaal Queen of Quezon City: The Life and Bloodlines of Cecille Baun" catalogue notes for a Cecille Baun exhibition, Quezon City International Film Festival, October 2014

2014 - "Bamboo Gods and Bionic Boys: A Brief History of the Philippines’ B Films" in Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society (University of the Philippines, Quezon City) Vol. 11 No. 1, 2014, pp.128-172

2013 - Mark IV Productions interview in Weng's Chop #3 (USA), April 2013

2013 - "TheTanduay Rum Diaries: Stuck In Ilocos Norte With The Weng Weng Blues Again" on my Death Rides A Red Horse blog, Monster Pictures website, September 2013

2013 - "The Search For Weng Weng: Final Shoot Diary" in Weng's Chop #4 (USA), August 2013

2013 - "Farewell Uncle Chop-Chop" on my Death Rides A Red Horse blog, Monster Pictures website, September 2013

2012 - "The Tanduay Rum Diaries: The Most Famous Cross-Dressing Midget In The Philippines (At This Present Moment) on the Mondo Macabro blog, 25/04/12

2012 - "The Story Of Weng" essay on the German For Y'ur Height Only DVD released by FilmArt

2012 - "The Story Of Weng Weng" in Filmrage (UK) Vol 2 #11

2012 - "DiIngon 'Nato: Zombies In Our Backyard" essay and director Ivan Zaldarriaga interview, Sinekultura Film Journal (University of San Carlos, Cebu) Issue #4, Second Semester 2012, pp. 14-21; reprinted in Film International 63-4 (Sweden), August 2013

2012 - "The Great Manila Cinema Heist! A Brief History of Philippine Parody and Outright Thievery In The Country That Copyright Forgot, Part One", Cashiers Du Cinemart #17 (USA), October 2012

2011 - Jon Hewitt interview on "X" in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 22/11/11

2011 - "Pop Culture Postcard: Philippines" article in Wordy Mofo online magazine Issue 3 (Sydney), January 2011

2011 - "Monster talks to Chad Ferrin" intro and interview, Monster Pictures website 26/05/11

2011 - "Aswang! Filipino New Blood" notes, Fantastic Asia Film Festival catalogue, Melbourne November 2011

2010 - Lady Terminator/Barbara Anne Constable interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 03/08/10

2009 - Wings Hauser Restrospective reviews in Melbourne Underground Film Festival catalogue, August 2009

2009 - Pure Shit article and Bert Deling interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 12/05/09

2008 - Women In Prison DVD box set review in Empire Magazine (Sydney), March 2008

2008 - Witches' Hammer Melbourne Cinematheque Annotations review in Senses Of Cinema Issue 48 (Melbourne, August 2008

2008 - Ozploitation essay and reviews in Brisbane International Film Festival catalogue, July 2008

2008 - Ozploitation and Marjoe Gortner Retrospectives reviews in Melbourne Underground Film Festival catalogue, September 2008

2008 - Grindhouse article in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 01/04/08

2008 - Alejandro Jodorowsky interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 12/06/08

2008 - "The Dolemite Collection" review in Empire Magazine (Sydney), May 2008

2008 - "21 Greatest Pinoy B-Movies" article (co-written with Lourd de Veyra) in FHM Magazine (Philippines), December 2008

2007 - “White Guerrilla In Manila” article [2000 word version] in Firecracker Magazine #4 (London, UK) July 2007

2007 - Squatterpunk review in Brisbane International Film Festival program, July 2007

2006 - They Call Her Cleopatra Wong review in Brisbane International Film Festival program, July 2006 (reprinted in the Cinemanila Film Festival program, November 2006)

2005 - Volcano High Melbourne Cinematheque Annotations review published online at Senses of Cinema Issue 35 (Melbourne), April 2005

2005 - Visitor Q DVD review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 24/05/05

2005 - Violent Femmes live review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 29/03/05

2005 - Trouble Every Day DVD review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 31/05/05

2005 - Southern Culture On The Skids live review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 14/06/05

2005 - Southern Culture On The Skids interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 31/05/05

2005 - Ring 2 review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 29/03/05

2005 - Ong-Bak review and Prachya Pinkaew interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 08/03/05

2005 - Jack Sargeant interview in Rave magazine (Brisbane) 26/07/05

2005 - Hard-Ons live review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 28/06/05

2005 - Hanussen Melbourne Cinematheque Annotations review for Melbourne Cinemateque Annotations, published online at Senses of Cinema Issue 36 (Melbourne) July 2005

2005 - Dwarves live review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 22/02/05

2005 - Bubba Ho-Tep review and Bruce Campbell interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 22/02/05

2005 - Bride And Prejudice review/Gurinder Chadha interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 15/02/05

2005 - Bollywood article/Rohan Sippy interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 15/02/05

2005 - Blood Feast/2000 Maniacs review in Tsunami magazine (Caloundra, Australia) April 2005

2005 - Baadasssss review/Mario Van Peebles interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 15/03/05

2005 - Assault On Precinct 13 review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 29/03/05

2005 - Alfie review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 25/01/05

2004 - “Nine Things I Discovered Making Fake Sixties Porn” essay and the unedited Richard Franklin interview in Damian Kringas (ed), Tales Of The Cinematic Experience (Independence Jones Guerilla Press Division, Sydney)

2004 - “Grim Fairy Tales For Adults: Czech Gothic Retrospective” article in Rave magazine (Brisbane), 28/07/04

2004 - Zatoichi review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 07/09/04

2004 - The Grudge review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 23/11/04

2004 - Shaun Of The Dead review/Simon Pegg interview in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 12/10/04

2004 - Saw review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 07/12/04

2004 - Bad Santa review in Rave Magazine (Brisbane), 30/11/04

2003 - “Richard Franklin and Eskimo Nell” interview and article in Eros magazine Vol 3 #1 (Canberra)

2003 - “PLO: Centuries Of Blood” and “Bring Me The Head Of Ulrike Meinhoff” chapters in Guns! Death! Terror! 1960s and 1970s Revolutionaries, Urban Guerrillas and Terrorists edited by Jack Sargeant (Creation Books, UK, 2003)

2003 - Undead review in Brisbane International Film Festival program, July 2003

2003 - The Devil Rides Out Melbourne Cinematheque Annotations review in Melbourne Cinemateque CTEQ Annotations, also published online in Senses Of Cinema Issue 25 (Melbourne), March 2003

2002 - “Keep It Up Mate: Tim Burstall And The Birth Of The Ocker Sex Comedy” article in Semper magazine #2 (University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia) March 2002

2002 - “Black Japan: The Ring & Battle Royale” article co-written with Jack Sargeant in Black Ice magazine (London)

2002 - “Apocalypse Om: The Doomsday Gas Squads of Aum Shin-Rikyo” and “The West End Lesbian Vampires” chapters in Blood Cults edited by Jack Sargeant (Virgin Books, UK, 2002)

2002 - "That's Ozploitation!" introduction and reviews in Melbourne Underground Film Festival catalogue

2002 - "Bad Girls Go To Dildo Heaven: Ann All-Nude Tribute To Doris Wishman" article in Senses Of Cinema online magazine Issue 23 (Melbourne), December 2002

2001- “The Truth According To Errol Morris” article in Semper magazine #1 (University Of Qld, St Lucia, Australia) February 2001

2001 - “Giallo: Euro Death A Go Go” article in Obscene fanzine #15 (Sunshine Coast, Australia) early 2001

2000 - Interview with American Movie's Chris Smith & Sarah Price in Macabre #2 (University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia) Autumn 2000

1998 - “The Wild & Wacky World Of Filipino Exploitation” review article in Semper magazine #3 (University Of Qld, St Lucia, Australia) May 1998

1998 - “Porno Chic, Or How America Turned Blue In 1972” article in Semper magazine #2 (University Of Qld, St Lucia, Australia) March 1998; reprinted in Adult Industry Review [later EROS] magazine Vol 2 #3 (Canberra) mid 1999

1998 - “Blaxploitation Superchicks” article in Semper magazine #6 (University Of Qld, St Lucia, Australia) July 1998

1998 - Plugg review in More Tales From The Idiot Box fanzine (Townsville, Australia) October 1998

1998 - Paul Verhoeven interview & article, reviews of Hard Eight, Perdita Durango, The Truman Show, Cannibal The Musical in Plastic magazine #4 (Brisbane) October 1998

1997 - “The Golden Afro Awards” blaxploitation article in Smokin’ Dog Press fanzine #3 (Brisbane)

1997 - Richard Kern interview in Purple Monkey Dishwasher fanzine #4 (Adelaide) early 1997

1997 - Peeping Tom article, God Of Gamblers The Return review, “Censorship in Australia Timeline” article in Plastic magazine #2 (Brisbane) July 1997

1997 - Maggie Cheung interview, Abel Ferrara article, Toby Keeler interview/Pretty As A Picture review in Plastic magazine #3 (Brisbane) Summer 1997

1997 - Lost Highway review in Plastic magazine #1 (Brisbane) April 1997

1997 to 1998 – edited, self-published and contributed to Trash Confidential fanzine #1-#4

1992 to 1995 – edited, self-published and contributed to Stumpy fanzine #1-#5

1991 to 1994 – wrote live reviews and interviews for B.U.M.S. (Brisbane Underground Music Scene) magazine, various issues

1991 – record reviews in Factotum fanzine, Brisbane

My Film Interviews

2017-01-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

MY INTERVIEWS

Cecille Baun (Philippines' Prosthetics Queen) 2014
Ivan Zaldarriaga (Cebuano Horror Director) 2012

Cecille Baun interview (2014)

2017-01-08T21:33:00.002-08:00

Mananangaal Queen of Quezon City: The Life and Bloodlines of Cecille Baun

[Catalogue notes for a Cecille Baun exhibition, Quezon City’s QCinema International Film Festival, October 2014]

If there's a prosthetics' equivalent of Santa's Workshop in the Philippines, it must surely exist in Wiltor Heights, a subdivision off Congressional Avenue in Quezon City.

At the back of a smart three-storey home is a high-ceilinged work space. To the right is an outdoor area where wooden racks stacked with bodies, limbs and plaster skeletons compete for space with row after row of helmets and boots from Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986). Inside the workshop, the head, torso and enormous black wings of a Mananangaal resembling a demented, fanged Michael Jackson casts its shadow from the ceiling.

Into the building walks a tiny, immaculately groomed and polite lady approaching her 80th year. She takes your hand in hers, beams a warm and inviting smile, and offers you coffee and a respite from the latex and clay carnage surrounding you.

It's hard to comprehend that this sweet little lady is in fact the Philippines' own Queen of Gore, the mastermind behind the bloodcurdling monsters, mangled faces, piles of fake corpses, evil charred babies, bullet-riddled bodies and fountains - no, make that geysers - of fake blood.

Cecille Baun is THE pioneer in an industry that could barely acknowledge the area of prosthetics and special makeup, let alone train a person to an international standard. When you look at the rich history of fantasy and effects-based cinema in the Philippines, such a statement seems false, considering the inspired work of such figures as Richard Abelardo, the Hollywood-trained production designer responsible for the LVN spectacles Ibong Adarna (1941) and Aladin (1946), and Tommy Marcelino, special photographic effects master behind the flying scenes, spaceships and giants in Darna, not to mention the body-splitting Mananangaals in Dugo Ng Vampira (1969).

Cecille's magnificent clay bust of the late King of Comedy, Dolphy, sits in pride of place on her work bench, a conical Chinese hat perched cheekily atop the iconic features. His hardened face is evidence of the basis of countless latex contortions and evidence of one of Cecille's first projects assisting the older prosthetics master Ernie Carvajal with Dolphy's rubber nose in Cyrano At Roxanne (1973). Her mutually lucrative association with Dolphy continued throughout their careers, the high point without question being his four roles in the award-winning Omeng Satanasia (1977), in which Cecille's talents transformed Dolphy from middle age into an old man AND a gay Devil. In one scene, three of Dolphy's characters appear within the one complicated setup. "What we did, I had to copy his face to the brother Georgie [Quizon], because he looks like him, then the other on another person. All cheating, the effects!"

Face cast of dimunitive actor Weng Weng

Mounted on wire frames on the walls above the clay Dolphy is Cecille's face mask collection: literally hundreds of clay faces Cecille has personally cast in plaster comprising the mainstay of the Philippines' film industry. Her vast collection outgrew her former space in Caloocan in 2000, where her two daughters Marie and Chat ("my shadow") assisted. I'm cast in plaster and perched somewhere near Weng Weng. Fernando Poe Jr, too, is on Cecille's wall of fame, a souvenir of her work on Patayin Si ... Mediavillo (1978). "He has a disguise that I made, I make him like an old man. Then he asked me, 'Why do I still look like me?' I said, 'Change your hair do!' Because when there's a fight scene, he always wants to keep that hair well combed like that!"

There was no How-To Manual for Cecille's chosen field. And so Cecille trained herself, largely through experimentation and possessing a vivid (some might say twisted!) imagination, and the results have been nothing short of astounding. It's no hyperbole to state that, over the course of five decades as the leading prosthetic artist working on local and international productions, she has literally and figuratively transformed the face of Philippine cinema forever.

Cecille with her snake-god ZUMA (1985)

Had the Fates not conspired, Cecille's life may have taken an altogether different path. It was 1970 - housewife Cecille had just graduated from a Cosmetology school and was caring for her youngest baby - when tragedy struck. Her husband, a large and loving man with the US Military, was buying a plot of land for the family in Pagsanjan. "The uncle of my husband called and said don't bring money," recalls Cecille. "I told him not to go there any more." Local criminals had targeted him, believing he was carrying large sums of cash for the land deal. His car was stopped by hoods in San Carlos, and he was shot several times.

Cecille was suddenly alone to provide for herself and her five children. "I can still feel him. Even when I am lying down, I can feel his presence."

Circumstances forced Cecille to be inventive. "I was planning to put up a beauty parlour, even in the small house where I lived. After that it so happened that I joined Beautiful - before there was a Beautiful makeup business here. When I was working for the Beautiful I was assigned to Repertory Philippines to do the makeup, and we were given a per diem treatment. When I don't have to work with the stage makeup, I used to sell Beautiful products, going to all kinds of places where I can sell the products of Beautiful. Then after that I was recommended to work with…first film I did was with Cindy Pickett, Pilar Pilapil, Those Days In The Sun - I was the hair dresser then of Cindy Pickett. After that I was given another American film, but I have to do the bite of a vampire - I was given only a little prosthetics training! I grew from doing those things, up til now. I am doing much of the effects within me. I don't have to look at the book then, I grew up with that kind of 'trial and errors'."

After working on number of stage productions, TV commercials and photo shoots, Cecille found herself on the set of Night Of The Cobra Woman (1972), a co-production between Roger Corman's New World Pictures and local producer Cirio Santiago's Premiere Productions. The film stars statuesque black actress Marlene Clark as a World War 2 nurse transformed by a possessed cobra's bite into an ageless Snake Goddess. Cut to 1972, and pretty American UNICEF scientist Joanna (the playfully-named Seventies starlet Joy Bang) is researching snake venom in the Philippines when her boyfriend Duff (Roger Garrett) arrives to keep her company. Her stories of a remote hut in the Antipolo hills and a seemingly ageless snake handler named Lena and her cobra companion named Movini intrigue him, and he stumbles on a now horribly-aged Francisca, her mutant hunchbacked son Lope (also a cockeyed Diaz), and Movini's fangs injecting its elixir of living death into his veins. Now Lena's lover and companion, and hopelessly hooked on Lena's venom, Duff seeks out victims for her insatiable lust for young males' life force, leaving her victims drained and prune-faced while she sloughs off her rubbery old skin.

"I had to make up snakes, all over her. I put the real snakes, not the fake ones! I had to put the firings on the neck of the snakes like that, and the makeup for the snakes, we had to put a little like that, like scales, on Marlene Clark, our leading lady. Whenever she's not successful in her plan, then she would become a snake woman."

You did her snake-eye makeup? "The eye makeup, and the little scales, as it goes. If in the picture, then I used to do props of that, a little, but not the whole body only here (points to face) or on the boobs, and then the eyes, the contact lens. They had to bring it here [from the States], we didn't have that before."

Local films soon followed, including regular work with pop sensations Elwood Perez and Joey Gosiengfiao, through their Sine Pilipino and Juan de la Cruz productions. Now considered a lost film, Lipad, Darna, Lipad! (1973) was groundbreaking, not only in its highly camp self-awareness and pure pop-culture-meets-European-arthouse sensibility, but in its directors' thoughtful application of special effects and prosthetics. Carvajal and Cecille transformed perennial bad girl Celia Rodriguez into Darna's snake-domed nemesis Valentina like never before in the series' previous three decades; likewise, Gloria Romero morphed into Impakta, and Liza Lorena became Babaeng Lawin. Cecille would continue her association with Darna in Darna And The Giants (1973) and Darna vs The Planet Women (1975), both starring Lipad…'s Vilma Santos, and the rebooted Darna (1991).

"I enjoy so much working on Darna, because I have lots of episodes. In one film I was doing all of it - sometimes I do the makeup also, sometimes I do the effects. At that time there was not much production design, only costume and makeup. So I made already prosthetics of the different enemies of Darna, for example Darna and Valentina, Darna and the Giants, and I made up Helen Gamboa into an outer space alien, then the head was blown out. The effects man forgot, but that's my head, we worked with. All the prosthetics there, I did."

In Sine Pilipino's similarly madcap, multi-storied and multi-director follow-up Zoom, Zoom, Superman (1973) starring Ariel Ureta in the title role, Gina Pareno undergoes a Planet Of The Apes-styled facelift from Cheetah the chimpanzee to giant gorilla Kangkong, while Celia Rodriguez goes bald as The Spider Woman. With a greater emphasis on photographic and prosthetic effects, Perez, Gosiengfiao and their cohorts were forcibly lifting the bar with regards to the quality of local films. "The director Elwood Perez said, set up the table, he wants more prosthetics, we can do it! We are brave to do it, because we can do the idea, how to do it. So after that, every time we make a movie, it's growing, growing, growing with prosthetics. We reach the fullness of prosthetics locally." One could also argue that local cinema became a lot smarter in general after Sine Pilipino.

I asked Cecille why there was no prosthetics guru to learn from? "As far as I know, there was a man that started it," she said, evidently talking about her problematic association with Ernie Carvajal, "but I was not able to join him. He's gone already." So where did your ideas come from, if there were no rule books or guides? "From my mind! I used to study by myself, all trial and error. But mostly by trial - first try, it's OK. Second is the perfect one."

Cecille's work on the Shake Rattle And Roll series, starting with Peque Gallaga's "Mananangaal" episode in the 1984 original, forever changed the way the Philippines perceives its own mythological creatures. The searing image of Irma Alegre's naked torso splitting in two in gruesome detail and spouting bat wings is easily one of the most iconic images of Pinoy horror of all time.

"I worked with the Effectman," says Cecille of her ghastly creation. "Always the Prosthetics, Effectman and Production Designer work together." What were your instructions from Peque, to reimagine the Mananangaal? "He wants a Mananangaal with BIG wings. It's really very hard to go out of the window, because it's so big, my God! I worked with Rommel Bernardino with the wings, giving life to the wings that he did. We used to help each other putting up the colour and the feathers. You should always work with people who understand their part and they will give us our part."

It seemed like Peque was trying to take the traditional cinematic image of the Aswang and Mananangaal to a new level, to do something startling? "It depends upon the director, and he wants the wings to be a little bit different from the former wings I did before, and then he will tell us what to do. It has to be approved by the director. I make a little of how it's made and how it's skin…sometimes with feathers, sometimes with a cloth material. We have to follow the director."

If you're creating an Aswang or Tiyanak, do you start with a drawing? "No. Modelling. The production design, they talk with the director. They'll say 'Tomorrow you're going to do this…' But give me something to know what kind of idea you want me to do! Maybe he's too lazy because he knows I can do it. That's giving me a hard time. I almost dream. I almost have done it in my dreams, because before I go to sleep I think of that. It happened in Oro Plata Mata [1982]. Because I have the face of the Japanese who's going to have his head cut off in the stream, with Joel Torres. Then the one who has his tongue cut off, Ronnie Lazaro. He has cut his tongue, then blood is coming out - I was the one who do these. I put in a tongue, of course. Latex. And much blood inside."

Cecille was also in charge of severing Lorli Villanueva's finger. "I put them already in my makeup bag. Then, she said, 'I'm going to retouch my makeup. Where's the makeup artist? I'll just use your lipstick…' But I forgot about the finger inside the box. She opens it - 'Ohhh!!!!' We pack up the shooting that day, and she was sent to the hospital." From the shock? "Yes!" Cecille laughs.

Cecille returned to work on Elwood Perez's Puri (1984), a twisted, damaged, and very European tribute to Hitchcock: twin sisters, incest, murder, madness, potent erotically-charged imagery, and a bell tower scene straight out of Vertigo (1958). Elwood pulls the carpet from under your feet the entire film, and the late Stella Strada - destined to commit suicide soon after filming - in her twin roles is simply magnificent (I love the final shots where she imagines her twin screaming at her from her coffin!).

Jaime Fabregas plays the twisted patriarch lying in his gothic mansion, his bald head and naked body covered in syphilis sores. "He is getting worse and worse, and the only medicine for that is the stuff of the kalachuchi, the white flower, to put on the wound. And then you find that Stella Strada, you look at her face, with many infection already - the corner of her mouth, the corner of the nose, there is already wounds or abscesses coming out. Elwood Perez asks me, 'Why this girl cannot express this dialogue well?' So I ask Stella, 'What seems to be the problem? According to the director you can't deliver your dialogue.' She said, 'Because I don't want to eat it [the sores].'

Cecille related to Stella, "'OK, I'll tell you the story'. So I mixed the blood where it's all edible, all eatable makeup, but with the effects as if it's worse wounds or whatever, and bleeding. The pus was condensed milk. Don't mix it together! But you have a different container of that. You just put on side by side, not to mix it. And then guava jelly, and then special fake blood from the food colouring with the Caro syrup. I'm happy with that! I enjoy so much experimenting."

With her confidence restored, Stella was able to complete her dialogue scenes. The problem then became how to stop Stella from eating her sores.

Another iconoclastic director Cecille collaborated with was the late Tata Esteban. What is known of Tata Esteban (real name Steve Regala) has been coloured by his own much-publicised personal narrative, carefully constructed following his conversion to revivalist Christianity as an almost cartoon-like fall from Grace and subsequent redemption and salvation. A “hardcore womanizer, flesh trader and shabu addict”, he is described on a Christian ministry's website, “promiscuous since he was 13, and constantly wallowing in money as he traded and bedded women, and showed off their wares in his hit nightclubs and movies...” A stroke, several heart attacks and his two year-old son asking for a hit of daddy's shabu, reportedly turned his life around in 2000, before a final heart attack in 2003 claimed Esteban for good; friends and colleagues remember him prior to his conversion as a talented if troubled artist whose personal demons no doubt got the better of him. It's tempting to draw parallels between Esteban's turbulent private life and his skewed filmic fantasies.

Starting with his demented sex-horror debut Alapaap (1984), his work gravitated towards the disturbed end of the erotic spectrum. Alapaap features William Martinez as Jake, a filmmaker fresh from the mental hospital for drug-induced exhaustion. He travels with brothers ad fellow filmmakers (real-life siblings Michael de Mesa and Mark Gil) and their girlfriends to Baguio and decide to crash in a mountain mansion along the way. The old house is the lair of a vengeful rape victim's spirit who takes on the gorgeous human form of Tanya Gomez, seduces Jake under a waterfall, then in an endless night of fog effects and Eighties rock clip visuals, turns the cabin into a charnel house.

The film's most gruesome set-piece is vintage Cecille. Eva Rose Palma, as Mark Gil's girlfriend Christine, is at a mirror when her possessed blow-dryer takes on a life of its own and turns against her.

"The director asked me if I could possibly make half of the face burn. I said yes, I'll put a face on the dummy. He said, 'OK, but I don't like it to look like the dummy.' No, it won't. We have to burn the face with the heat of the blower. It [the burn] will grow big, big. And then afterwards, on the face of this head, I'll arrange with the actress into the same position.

"I told the director, 'Direk, you cannot see if it is hot or whatever. Can I request for the effectman to put some red lights on the tip of my blower?' He said we don't have time. Then the director, Tata Esteban, gets mad. I said, 'Direk, I think we can do it.' When you see the red light, it means hot, and you see smoke, it's hot also. 'I need five smokers.'

"I put tubes on the face on every corner. In the middle I put a tube to blow smoke. And then when I do my hands, you blow! OK, change. Stop. Bigger and bigger. But the dummy's already prepared in the last stage, and when the lady flops like that, she's dead already. But the effects are still there, tubes from the liquids, tubes from the blood."

The action cuts from Christine's progressively blistering, bubbling face, to a final shot of the head horribly mangled, and one eyeball popping out of its socket.

"Instead of giving these effects to the effectman, they gave it to me. I was not expecting it!"

Cecille was Plaque of Recognition for Best Special Effects at the 33rd FAMAS Awards night, for her quick-thinking and ingenuity on Alapaap. "I just wanted to help the effects," Cecille says modestly. "But Tata said, 'You deserved it. You saved the rest of the problems there.'"

Cecille would work several more times with Tata Esteban, on the effects-heavy The Magician (1986), and on the apex or nadir, depending upon your viewpoint, of the Bold trend, the ghastly Hubo Sa Dilim (1985).

Disturbing beyond belief, Hubo… is one of the roughest Bold films to come out of the 80s. Esteban’s protagonist Dinkee (Michael de Mesa) lies on a psychiatrist’s couch and recounts his tales of childhood traumas and sexual obsessions – witnessing his promiscuous mother (Chanda Romero) shooting her husband (Tony Carrion) and herself; focusing his Oedipal lust and misplaced anger onto bold model Cristina (Maria Isabel Lopez), murdering her by sheathing a samurai sword into her vagina (in ghastly close-up), and then paying prostitutes to dance naked while he projects photos of Cristina onto their writhing bodies while he masturbates furiously.

There’s no denying the talent of Esteban as a filmmaker, or his intentions to make a genre film with style and depth. Somewhere along the creative process, however, things have gone terribly wrong. Aside from the green-and-red neon pornucopia of set-pieces, there’s very little on which to pin the film, and Esteban instead resorts to endless and pointless club sequences, sex scenes, confusing flashbacks and hallucinations, and of course the samurai sword sequence, which must surely rank as one of the most unexpected and repellent images in commercial erotica. Once again, it's vintage Cecille.

"You know what I did to her? I made a dummy out of Isabel. I copied her pubic hair. Michael de Mesa, the son of Eddie Mesa, is going to insert a samurai sword. But I asked Isabel, can I see your pubics? She said 'Yeeees!' She was a little bit drunk! 'I just want a picture that I can borrow.' So I was able to do it. Only the photo. And that scene, he inserts the sword up to here, that's what I did to Isabel. I can never forget that!"

You modeled the bottom half of her torso? "I have already a dummy for that. But I just wanted to copy the pubic hair."

I discovered another intriguing piece of trivia - it was Brillante Mendoza, at the time a production designer on numerous bold and Tata Esteban films, who was the one on set who pushed the sword into the fake vagina. In a strange twist of fate, he would dismember Maria Isabel Lopez on camera several decades later in the film that won him Best Director at Cannes, Kinatay (2009).

Cecille's work on international productions took an interesting turn in 1976 when she was offered a makeup position on Francis Ford Coppola's gargantuan Apocalypse Now (released 1979). "I did not push through with this. They just asked my services only for two weeks, because the director Coppola wants to start the shooting on August 22, because it's a 'lucky day.' And all the different departments could not get here. We shot in the Plantation where they have this salt. I was the one there who started it. When we transferred the location to Pagsanjan, I told Joey Romero [line producer Eddie Romero's son] that I cannot push through because Joe Don Baker is here, I accepted already the offer of one of the productions here [Chequered Flag Or Crash (1977)], then they permit me to go. So at the very start I started with that. It's the biggest production. Then I worked with Susan Sarandon and Joe Don Baker, the guy from Walking Tall [1973]."

Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) was another massive overseas production shot in the Philippines. "A very big memory that I can share!" says Cecille, who is clearly proud of her work on Stone's award-winning film. "There were so many interviews, and it's supposed to be together with Susan Sarandon again, because for the second time she was meant to be in town again, for I talked to the producer, 'You're going to be assigned to Women Of Valor [1986].' OK, I said. Then one time, it's not yet time for me to join the movie, because we're just preparing for that, and one Filipino producer, Jun Urbano, has two movies to do at the same time. There was a call for me to go to Cavite, and I thought it was Women Of Valor, so I was prepared, and when I was there the makeup couple interviewed me. I said, 'Is this Women Of Valor?' Nobody said that to me! On the truck I can read that this is Platoon. 'Yes, it's Platoon!' They asked me, 'Are you working with us?' Then Gordon Smith and Jeannie, his wife, then said, 'You come off the truck.' They're prepared to do the movie already! And they're arranging like that. They ask me, 'What if we lose some makeup and there's no more makeup, do you think we can do something about it?' I said yes. 'Where can we buy cotton, simple makeup materials?' I said yes, we can do it. Then they gave a piece of paper to the office.

"When we were working together, he said, 'You know, I like working with positive people, who never say no! Working with you is great!' So I started working on Platoon. I enjoy so much with the couple."

You did torn limbs, exploding bodies, bullet wounds…how much work was required on the set? "Of course we had to prepare for that, for the day of the shooting. I said, 'What can we do about it? There are lots of requirements!' So I hired my sons, my children, to work with me, and outside assistants, I used to hire also. It's really very hectic, but once you're doing it I'm inspired. The more and more, I'm not tired. After working then you go, 'Whoah!' [lays her head down] But once the director will approach you, and the producer, after the shooting, OK, then they congratulate you, my tiredness turns into gold! When I work, it's work, really I don't give a damn about eating…

"For war films, for Platoon, it's OK because I had a couple working with me. But for Hamburger Hill [1987], it's something that I managed to do alone. Instead of having a counterpart, I do all in me. Then I ask John Irving the director, 'OK we'll give you an assistant from Germany', his name is Neville Smallwood. I find working together with him is so much fun, and so much an adorable man. After that he got sick so he had to go back to Germany. He said, 'Do you want me to get another assistant to help you?' I said no more, but I need to give some workers, I don't need any counterpart. To do this movie, to finish it, with your name in it, we'll carry on, but I will have to add some more workers, another four assistants, and then I'll give reparations to the lower, to give them a bigger job, assistant but on a higher level. So I don't know if he was not able to carry the water here, but he was always drinking the beer…

"I have a hard time with the wardrobe, but I have to do all the prosthetics - maybe because I am a Filipina that they don't give any importance like that. And it so happened that there are going to be explosions in the film caused by the landing of the helicopter, and so the man was blown, intestines and everything. I had to dress up that man to look bloodied, and I asked the wardrobe, 'Can I have a uniform?' 'It's not the director's idea!' I said no, you ask him. When he came back, he gave me a uniform. 'OK, but I'm going to return this to you, because it's yours. But there's going to be blood on it.' Then I prepared already the intestines of the pig, it really looks so real. I bought it very early in the morning, it was already clean. Then I made a fake, blown-out stomach, the intestines scattered around. So with the uniform, because he's waiting for the helicopter to come to pick him up, he's lying down - I ripped his stomach so you can see the intestines and everything, and then the blood, and it so happened the lady and the man producers were there. The woman says, 'No wonder you asked for five types of blood, it looks so real!' Because when waiting for the helicopter to land, it takes a long time for that, then there is already a little discoloration of the blood; it's getting much thicker and much darker."

What's the secret to your blood recipe? "It's edible! It's safe to take the mouth or wherever you want to use it. Even the makeup that I use for the wound, and even if it's a very delicate part, it's much safer if it's food also. So I use for blood, it's Caro sugar with colour, the colour is all red.

"The other one is orange. Because when you use fatigues? You will not notice the blood dripping out if it is only red or black. If you use orange, you can detect the colour. And the other one, a bit thicker, I call gel blood.

"After that, the real blood from the bodies, still fresh. Every type is different.

"And the other one is 'loose blood'. That's easier to ooze out from special effects. Because you cannot do it from a pump if it is too heavy. In the wounds, once you have no bullet there, it will ooze out like a faucet.

"One more - not so red, it's very soft - not so red, not so orange, in the middle.

"Five kinds of blood. The wounded soldiers waiting for the helicopters, so it takes how many hours? There is already blood, blood… getting thicker. And then the lady producer said, 'Oh no, five types of blood? That looks so REAL!' I said, 'I upgraded it!' That's the hardest [job] that I did, because I am alone.

"Neville didn't know that they will be beheaded. Four days before the scene, because he has a script, he says, "I didn't know that there's going to be a beheading!" I said, "Why don't you know? You haven't talked to him first before coming?" He didn't know, only now. I said relax. 'Do you think we can do it?' YES! Thinking that all the time you have the camera on and they should follow the head rolling. 'Yes, I've done that already,' I said to myself. But then I read the script - it's going to be the whole body WITHOUT the head! Oh God, I said. Four days! Then the man that's going to play the soldier, very hairy, chest and arms. 'OK, get the man here…I'm just going to mould the neck.' After that I said, 'OK, I got this mould, just a little only, and then I need the real person to lay down near the river bank.' Then I said, 'Put a hole on this spot. Then give me black backing, and put his head down, then get plywood and put it on top of the hole.' I got a straw here and here so the man can breathe. Then I put on the prosthetics, and [the neck] was cut. You can see the effect of the oesophagus! You know why that scene should be the whole body and not the head? That's important, because the Medic Doctor from that war said, 'The irony of it is that we don't even know who he is, because they lost the dog tag.' That's my hardest, I was perspiring so. But I was able to do it.

"Later on they want me to make many dummies. Once my dummy was blown up, you can see all the cotton, the clothes, on the tree. Irving said, 'Wow, can you not make it to be blown mid-air? The camera you can see already the blood, the splatter all around, with meat and blood?' OK, I prepare myself already. 'What can I do?' I told them I need nine kilos of cow's meat…I put all the meat inside my dummy, the brains, and all the plastic [bags] full of blood, [and exploded] in mid-air…he was so satisfied!"

Cecille (white shirt) on set with Bruno Mattei, ZOMBIES THE BEGINNING (2007)

Several of Cecille's largest prosthetics jobs have been on recent low-budget Italian productions with the notoriously cheap genre specialist Bruno Mattei and producer Gianni Paolucci. Mattei had been previously based in the Philippines in the late Eighties directing a number of action, horror and science fiction-themed films, before the market for Italy's Tin Pan Alley industry of copycat B features dried up. In 2000, Mattei's former production manager Gianni Paolucci formed his own production company, La Perla Nera, to embrace the digital filmmaking revolution and bankrolled films similar to Bruno's Eighties' B features, but shot on HD video for a fraction of the cost, and thus released cheaply onto the 2000's direct-to-DVD market for a more modest rate of return. Cecille worked on Mattei's The Jail: A Women's Hell (2006), Island Of The Living Dead (2006), and La Perla Nera's most ambitious film to date - Zombies: The Beginning (2007) - which would also be Bruno's final movie, filmed on Corregidor and in Paranaque's RS Studios just before he passed away in May 2007.

Zombies: The Beginning is, to put it bluntly, insane on every level. On a microscopic budget, Bruno and producer Paolucci stage an impressive vision of a zombie apocalypse, culminating in Mattei's most bizarre conceit in a four-decade career of preposterous moments - an enormous Zombie Brain spawning a new generation of the Living Dead. I still remember with photo clarity visiting Bruno's set at RS a week before shooting, and seeing Cecille's incredible work-in-progress. In one half of the studio complex the production team had created a labyrinth of underground laboratories, with rows of cages and hospital beds where their zombie captives give birth to an army of egg-headed zombie fetuses - "zombinos", I suggested to Bruno, and he chuckled appreciatively. Much of the film's second half sees Yvette Yzon, the survivor from Island Of The Living Dead, and a cadre of troops battle the undead in these corridors, which inevitably careers towards the second half of the studio, home to the film's completely cracked end sequence - Yvette face to face with the malevolent Zombie Brain and its moist, cavernous womb undulating with pipes attached to screaming zombie surrogates.

Despite the digital camera's unforgiving eye in picking up the budget's deficiencies, Cecille's work throughout the film is awe-inspiring. "All these zombies, the children playing with big eyes… Every movement of that film is really work for us. There is not a day that we are not assigned to do all this makeup. For makeup requirements it's BIG." Sons Ramon and Ray also assisted with the massive prosthetics job in creating not only the zombie babies but their adult counterparts, the skin tearing, gallons of blood, bursting bellies, bullet squibs, bad teeth, the LOT. Cecille received a special effects credit in the end titles. "Imagine, we are not effects, but we do the effects - I have to move the Brain that we made, a very big Brain that's going to control all these babies of the zombies. I said I am not an effectman, but I am really thankful that we were able to do it, with the help of the effectman."

In retrospect, Mattei's zero-budget shockers are merely notches on a very large post. Cecille has applied makeup on Ben Gazzara and Britt Ekland on High Velocity (1976), on Cindy Pickett in Roger Vadim's Night Games (1980), applied Thai mud and blood on Kampuchea Express (1979) and Return From The River Kwai (1989). She relentlessly and selflessly pioneered the art of prosthetics in a country that initially held little regard for its artistry, but has since embraced the work of Cecille and many others in her field. "I used to be President of the Association of Makeup Artists," Cecille told me proudly. "We have so many members in the show business, boys and girls who want to join us. Our advisor is the late Attorney Laxa [Head of the Film Academy of the Philippines]. So we became a member of Mowelfund, and then later we were able to be recognized. We are given an award because of that. And then we were able to be included in every [festival] once a year. It's very good that I was able to get that opportunity to give all these problems with them about makeup.

"But before I joined this movie [business], there is no award for the Production Designer. Before, they were asking us to set the table and everything; it was not our work but we were happy to be doing that for the sake of it. But now later on, the Production Design, we were considered in our yearly Film Fest, we were also awarded, but the basic is that the Production Designer is getting very much involved in it. But it's really very much helpful with me because I depend on [the Production Designers], whatever they want us to do with the directors."

Why do you think Production Design never had that aura of importance? "I think nobody cared for that. But my Production Designers, maybe they just learned that they should have it also, because we have already the Makeup Association. But we were not given this Production Design Guild, we fell under the umbrella of the Production Design. But we were the first, when we have a meeting with Attorney Laxa, and everybody in the Film Fest. So I am much more relaxed because I have so many makeup artists receive awards every time there is a Film Fest. I am happy for that."

Happy 80th birthday, Cecille, and may your greatest work still be ahead of you.

CECILLE BAUN: PARTIAL FILMOGRAPHY

1972 – Night Of The Cobra Woman (dir. Andrew Meyer) USA/Philippines - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1973 - Wonder Women (dir. Robert O’Neil) USA - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1973 – Lipad, Darna, Lipad!/“Fly, Darna, Fly!” (dirs. Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Elwood Perez, Joey Gosiengfiao) Philippines - Makeup/Prosthetic Artist [uncredited]

1973 – Zoom, Zoom, Superman! (dirs. Elwood Perez, Joey Gosiengfiao, Ishmael Bernal) Philippines - Makeup/Prosthetic Artist [uncredited]

1973 - Darna And The Giants (dir. Emmanuel H. Borlaza) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup

1973 - Cyrano At Roxanne/"Cyrano And Roxanne" (dir. Armando Garces) Philippines - Special Prosthetic Makeup [uncredited]

1974 – The Thirsty Dead/The Blood Cult Of Shangri-La (dir. Terry Becker) USA - Makeup

1974 – Daigdig Ng Sindak At Lagim/"World Of Terror And Horror" (dirs. Maria Saret Abelardo, Ruben Arthur Nicdao) Philippines - Prosthetics

1974 – Kung Fu Master (dir. Leody M. Diaz) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup

1974 - La Paloma: Ang Kalapating Ligaw/“La Paloma: The Lost Dove” (dir. Joey Gosiengfiao) Philippines - Makeup Supervisor

1974 - Isang Gabi, Tatlong Babae/“One Night, Three Women” (dir. Elwood Perez) Philippines - Makeup

1975 – Duwag…Lumaban Ka! (dir. Santiago Garcia) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1975 - Son Of Fung Ku (dir. Jose "Pepe" Wenceslao) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1975 - May Isang Tsuper Ng Taksi (dirs. Luciano B. Carlos, Elwood Perez, Joey Gosiengfiao) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1975 – At Lumaganap Ang Lagim (dir. Armando A. Herrera) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup

1975 – Pandemonium (Lupa, Langit At Impiyerno) (dirs. Teddy Yip, Noli Villar) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup Cecille Baun

1975 - Darna vs The Planet Women (dir. Armando Garces) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1976 - High Velocity (dir. Remi Kramer) USA - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1976 – Mga Uhaw Na Bulaklak Part 2 (dir. Danilo Cabreira) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1976 – Sinta: Ang Bituing Bagong Gising (dir. Dindo Angeles) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1977 - Checkered Flag Or Crash/Manila 1000 (dir. Alan Gibson) USA - Makeup Artist

1977 - Electrika Kasi, Eh! (dir. Danilo P. Cabreira) Philippines - Prosthetics/Makeup

1977 - Omeng Satanasia (dir. Frank Gray Jr) Philippines - Special Makeup

1977 - Babae... Ngayon At Kailanman/"Woman…Now And Forever" (dir. Joey Gosiengfiao) Philippines - Character Makeup

1978 - Patayin Si… Mediavillo (dir. Armando A. Herrera) Philippines- Prosthetic Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1979 Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola) USA - Makeup Artist [Plantation scene only, uncredited]

1979 - Cola, Candy, Chocolate/Mga Seksing Turista/ "The Sexy Tourists" (dir. "Siggi Götz"/Sigi Rothemund) West Germany - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1979 - Isang Araw, Isang Buhay/“One Day, One Life” (dir. Leroy Salvador) Philippines - Makeup

1980 – Gabi Ng Lagim Ngayon/"Night Of Terror Now" (dirs. Cirio H. Santiago, Cesar “Chat” Gallardo) Philippines - Alma Moreno's Prosthetics

1980 - Night Games (dir. Roger Vadim) USA - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1982 – Raw Force/Warrior's Island (dir. Edward D. Murphy) USA - Makeup Artist

1982 - Oro, Plata, Mata (dir. Peque Gallaga) Philippines - Prosthetics

1982 - Invaders Of The Lost Gold (dir. Alan Birkinshaw) UK/Italy - Makeup Artist

1982 - Kampuchea Express (dir. Lek Kitaparaporn) Italy/Thailand - Makeup Artist

1983 - Raiders Of Atlantis/The Atlantis Interceptors (dir. Ruggero Deodato) Italy - Makeup Artist [uncredited]

1983 - Dance Of The Dwarfs (dir. Guy Trikonis) USA - Makeup Artist

1983 – Lumaban Ka Satanas/The Killing Of Satan (dir. Efren C. Pinon) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup

1983 - Juramentado (dir. Efren C. Pinon) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1984 – Alapaap (dir. Tata Esteban) Philippines - Special Effects [uncredited]

1984 – Shake Rattle & Roll (dirs. Peque Gallaga, Ishmael Bernal, Emmanuel H. Borlaza) Philippines - Prosthetics [Gallaga's "Manananggal" episode]

1984 - Pasukin Si Waway (dir. Manuel "Fyke" Cinco) Philippines - Prosthetics

1984 - Puri (dir. Elwood Perez) Philippines - Prosthetics

1984 - Final Mission (dir. Cirio H. Santiago) USA/Philippines - Makeup Artist

1984 - Heated Vengeance (dir. Edward D. Murphy) USA - Makeup Artist

1984 – Mad Warrior/Clash Of The Warlords (dir. Willie Milan) Philippines - Prosthetics

1985 - Hubo Sa Dilim…../"Naked In The Dark….." (dir. Tata Esteban) Philippines - Prosthetics [uncredited]

1985 - Wheels Of Fire/Vindicator (dir. Cirio H. Santiago) USA/Philippines - Prosthetics [as "Cecily Braun"]

1985 - Hinugot Sa Langit (dir. Ishmael Bernal) Philippines - Special Makeup

1985 – Zuma (dir. Jun Raquiza) Philippines - Makeup/Prosthetics Artist [uncredited]

1985 - Crossbone Territory (dir. Danilo Cabreira) Philippines - Prosthetics/Special Makeup

1986 - Salamangkero: The Magician (dir. Tata Esteban) Philippines - Makeup/Prosthetics Artist [uncredited]

1986 - Halimaw (dirs. Christopher de Leon, Mario O'Hara) Philippines - Prosthetics [Christopher de Leon's "Komiks" episode]

1986 - Sloane (dirs. Dan Rosenthal, Richard Belding) USA - Makeup Artist

1986 - Platoon (dir. Oliver Stone) USA - Makeup/Prosthetic Special Effects Assistant

1986 - Ninja Kids (dir. Pablo Santiago) Philippines - Special Makeup

1987 – Anak Ni Zuma/“Child Of Zuma” (dir. Ben Yalung) Philippines - Prosthetics [uncredited]

1987 - Hamburger Hill (dir. John Irving) USA - Makeup Artist

1987 - Huwag Mong Buhayin Ang Bangkay (dir. Mauro Gia Samonte) Philippines - Prosthetics

1987 - Tagos Ng Dugo (dir. Maryo J. De Los Reyes) Philippines - Effects/Props

1987 - No Dead Heroes/Blood Machines (dir. “J.C. Miller”/Danilo Cabreira) USA/Philippines - Makeup/Prosthetics [as "Cecille Bann"]

1989 - Valentina (dir. Santiago Garcia) Philippines - Makeup Artist/Prosthetics

1989 - Tamis Ng Unang Halik (dir. Artemio Marquez) Philippines - Prosthetics

1989 - Orapronobis (dir. Lino Brocka) Philippines/France - Special Makeup Effects

1989 - The Siege Of Firebase Gloria (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith) Australia - Prosthetics/Makeup Artist

1989 - Si Baleleng At Ang Gintong Sirena (dir. Chito S. Rono) Philippines - Special Effects Makeup

1989 - Return From The River Kwai (dir. Andrew V. McLaglen) USA - Makeup Artist

1990 - Mission Manila (dir. Peter M. MacKenzie) USA - Prosthetic Artist

1990 - Tootsie Wootsie: Ang Bandang Walang Atrasan (dir. Ben Feleo) Philippines - Special Prosthetics Makeup

1990 - Hulihin si... Nardong Toothpick (dir. Jett C. Espiritu) Philippines - Prosthetic Makeup

1991 - Andrew Ford Medina: Wag Kang Gamol! (dir. Ben Feleo) Philippines - Special Prosthetics Makeup

1991 - Boyong Mañalac: Hoodlum Terminator (dir. Eddie Rodriguez) Philippines - Character Makeup Artist

1991 - Darna (dir. Joel Lamangan) Philippines - Prosthetics

1992 - Sinungaling Mong Puso (dir. Maryo J. De Los Reyes) Philippines - Prosthetics [as "Cecil Baun"]

1992 - Angelina: The Movie (dir. Romy V. Suzara) Philippines - Special Makeup Effects Artist

1992 - Takbo... Talon... Tili!!! (dir. Efren "Loging" Jarlego) Philippines - Prosthetics Makeup

1992 - Hiram Na Mukha (dir. Joel Lamangan) Philippines - Makeup Artist

1993 - Ang Boyfriend Kong Gamol (dir. Ben Feleo) Philippines - Prosthetics Makeup Artist

1993 - Guwapings Dos (dirs. Manny Castañeda, Joey Marquez, Jose Javier Reyes) Philippines - Special Makeup Prosthetics

1995 - Eskapo (dir. Chito S. Rono) Philippines

Makeup Artist

1996 - Mumbaki (dir. Antonio Jose Perez) Philippines

Prosthetics

1996 - Daddy's Angel (dir. Joey Romero) Philippines - Props: Angel Wings

1996 - Dyesebel (dir. Emmanuel H. Borlaza) Philippines - Costume Designer

1996 - Sa Aking Mga Kamay (dir. Rory B. Quintos) Philippines - Special Makeup/Prosthetics

1997 - Ipaglaban Mo II: The Movie (dir. Rory B. Quintos) Philippines - Prosthetics Makeup Artist

1997 - Calvento Files: The Movie (dirs. Michael de Mesa, Laurenti Dyogi) Philippines - Dummy Prosthetics

1997 - Paano Ang Puso Ko? (dir. Rory B. Quintos) Philippines - Special Prosthetics Makeup Artist)

1997 - I Do? I Die! (D'yos Ko Day) (dir. Efren "Loging" Jarlego) Philippines - Prosthetics

1998 - José Rizal (dir. Marilou Diaz-Abaya) Philippines - Chief Prosthetic Effects Artist

1998 - Troublesome Night 4 (dir. Herman Yau) Hong Kong - Special Makeup Artist)

1999 - Mula Sa Puso (dir. Wenn V. Deramas) Philippines - Prosthetics/Special Makeup

2000 - Spirit Warriors (dir. Chito S. Rono) Philippines - Special Makeup/Prosthetics [as "Cecil Baun"]

2000 - Minsan, Minahal Kita (dir. Olivia M. Lamasan) Philippines - Prosthetics

2002 - Mano Po (dir. Joel C. Lamangan) Philippines - Prosthetics

2003 - Mano Po 2: My Home (dir. Erik Matti) Philippines - Prosthetics Makeup Artist

2003 - Spirit Warriors: The Shortcut (dir. Chito S. Rono) Philippines - Head Makeup Artist: Mermaids/Prosthetics

2004 - Aishite Imasu (Mahal Kita) 1941 (dir. Joel C. Lamangan) Philippines - Special Makeup/Prosthetics

2004 - So... Happy Together (dir. Joel C. Lamangan) Philippines - Prosthetician [as "Cecil Baun"]

2005 - Awaken/ Sa Aking Pagkakagising Mula Sa Kamulatan (dir. Ato M. Bautista) Philippines - Prosthetics/Makeup

2005 - Shake Rattle & Roll 2K5 (dir. Uro dela Cruz, Rico Maria Ilarde, Richard Somes) Philippines - Prosthetics [Uro dela Cruz's "Poso" episode]

2006 - Kagat Ng Dilim/"Fangs Of Darkness" (Short) (dir. Cesar Hernando) Philippines - Special Makeup

2006 - Shake Rattle And Roll 8 (dir. Rahyan Q. Carlos, Topel Lee, Michael Tuviera) Philippines - Prosthetics [Topel Lee's "Yaya" episode]

2006 - Barang (dir. Neal Tan) Philippines - Prosthetics [as "Cecil Baun"]

2006 - Umaaraw, Umuulan (dir. Richard Arellano) Philippines - Prosthetics

2006 - The Jail: A Women's Hell (dir. "Vincent Dawn"/Bruno Mattei) Italy - Special Effects Supervisor/Special Makeup Effects Artist

2006 - Island Of The Living Dead (dir. "Vincent Dawn"/Bruno Mattei) Italy - Special Effects Supervisor/Special Makeup Effects Artist

2007 - Zombies: The Beginning (dir. "Vincent Dawn"/Bruno Mattei) Italy - Special Effects Supervisor/Special Makeup Effects Artist

2007 - Pasukob (dir. Wenn V. Deramas) Philippines - Special Makeup Artist

2008 - Santa Mesa (dir. Ron Morales) USA/Philippines - Hair/Makeup Assistant

2008 - Baler (dir. Mark Meily) Philippines - Prosthetics

2009 - Arusi: Sumpa Ng Demonyo (dir. Fellyx Honeyfield) Philippines - Prosthetics

2009 - Nobody Nobody But Juan (dir. Eric Quizon) Philippines- Prosthetics/Special Makeup Artist [as "Cecil Baun"]

2010 - My Lai Four (dir. Paolo Bertola) Italy - Special Makeup Effects Artist

2010 - Amigo (dir. John Sayles) USA - Head of Makeup, Hair & Prosthetics

2010 - Ang Babae Sa Sementeryo (dir. Neal "Buboy" Tan) Philippines - Prosthetics

2011 - Aswang (dir. Jerrold Tarog) Philippines - Head Prosthetic Artist

2011 - Machete (TV Series) (dirs. Gina Alajar, Don Michael Perez) Philippines - Prosthetics

2012 - The Grave Bandits (dir. T.A. Acierto) Philippines - Makeup Artist

2012 - This Guy's In Love With U Mare! (dir. Wenn V. Deramas) Philippines - Prosthetics

Strike Commando (Italian/Filipino Action, 1987)

2017-01-08T19:02:00.002-08:00

1987 - Strike Commando (Flora Film)

[Italian production shot in the Philippines]

Director/Editor “Vincent Dawn”/Bruno Mattei Story “Vincent Dawn”/Bruno Mattei, “Clyde Anderson”/Claudio Fragasso Screenplay/Assistant Director “Clyde Anderson”/Claudio Fragasso Producer Franco Gaudenzi Cinematography Richard "Gras”/Grassetti Music "Lou"/Luigi Ceccarelli Production Supervisor Rocky Coleman Production Manager “Oscar Faradyne” [possibly another screen name for Luciano Pigozzi] Art Director “Bart Scavya”/Mimmo Scavia Special Effects Rodolfo Torrente Makeup "Peter"/Pietro Tenoglio Costumes Valentina Palmer, Tigano Lo Faro [Rome] Assistant Cameraman "Al Chessar"/Aldo Chessari Head Grip Charles Brody Best Boy Bart "Chessar"/Chessari Assistant Editor “Lilian Matthews” Dialogue Director Gene Luotto

Cast Reb Brown (Michael Ransom) Christopher “Connely”/Connelly (Col. Radek), “Loes Kamma”/Louise Kamsteeg (Olga), “Alan Collins”/Luciano Pigozzi (Le Duc), Alex Vitale (Jakoda), Karen Lopez (Cho-Li), Philip Gordon, Edison Navarro (Lao), Ricardo Santos, “James Gainers”/Jim Gaines (Radek's soldier), Fred Gahudo, Juliet D. Lee (Diem), Rose De Guida (Radek's receptionist), Rene’ Abadeza (Viet Cong soldier), Charly Patino [IMDB lists as Charlie Patiro?], [uncredited] Mike Monty (Major Harriman), William Berger [voice: English version] (Maj. Harriman), David Brass (Martin Boomer - POW in Jakoda's camp), Michael Welborn (Radek's Soldier), James McKenzie (Radek's soldier), Massimo Vanni

Mini-review by Andrew Leavold

First of Italian director Mattei and writer/AD Claudio Fragasso's premier batch of basic, workman-like, charming and utterly entertaining knockoffs of much better made knockoffs, shot around the former Apocalypse Now sets in Pagsanjan, and featuring Reb Brown as a typically shirtless, bemuscled Spaghetti Rambo named Ransom, an American commando left for dead behind North Vietnamese lines by the snake-like Colonel Radek (Christopher Connelly, also in Ruggero Deodato's Filipino-shot Raiders Of Atlantis [1983]) and rescued by sympathetic villagers in a former French mission under the frazzled alcoholic Le Duc (Antonio Margheriti's favoured "old man" character actor Alan Collins, aka Luciano Pigozzi). Once rescued, he implores Radek and his former commando leader Major Harriman (Mike Monty) to send him back behind enemy lines to confirm rumours of two Russians helping the VC, in return for liberating the villagers. Instead Ransom finds his friends, including a young woman and boy, massacred, and is captured by the bald Russian giant Jakoda (The Bronx Executioner's Alex Vitale) and beautiful cohort Olga (underused Italian starlet “Loes Kamma”/Louise Kamsteeg), who intend to break his spirit and exploit his "war machine" reputation in their propaganda war against the West - he's strung up, beaten with poles, burnt with oil lamps, and trapped with the fly-covered corpse of his former cellmate, American POW Boomer (David Brass). Naturally a VC camp can't hold Ransom and he breaks out in a flurry of exploding huts and machine gun blasts before facing off against Jakoda in what I call the film's "Bruno Moment", the jaw-unhinging tangent present in every Mattei knockoff, and in Strike Commando, the sight of two shirtless no-necks butting heads and kicking each other in the balls, before Ransom punches him over a waterfall (yelling "Americanskiiiiii!!!" all the way down) and unleashing a primal "Whoaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!!" Bruno's American cast is uniformly decent, as is Vitale, who Mattei clearly envisages as his own Richard Kiel (even down to Jakoda's ragged metal dentures!), and the Filipino regulars are also on parade - Juliet Lee, a Chinese-Filipino actress later in Bruno's Double Target (1987) and production manager on Claudio's Zombi 4: After Death (1988), is Jakoda's black-bereted VC crony who gets to kick the living Jesus out of Ransom; Jim Gaines Jr, his bright red headband recognizable through the chopper's windows at 200 metres, plays Radek's radio operator, and Michael Welborn makes a brief appearance as a GI. Followed by an in-name-only follow-up.