Now playing: Trailer: Machete Maidens Unleashed

Rare is the occasion that I am excited for the release of a documentary. Most of the Michael Moore stuff leaves a sour taste in my mouth because, in general, they’re preachy. However, Machete Maidens Unleashed really looks like something that I can sink my teeth into and abandon my fear of the genre. MMU is the behind the scenes look at the production explosion of Filipino exploitation films in the 1970s. The film is screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and should be informative as well as expletive. Can’t wait to check this one out!

Official Synopsis

Machete Maidens Unleashed! begins in the early seventies, when the country’s low production costs and exotic locale encouraged many American filmmakers to shoot there. In a country with considerably narrower views on the subject of taste, dozens of monster movies, women-in-prison flicks and blaxploitation actioners were being churned out at an increasingly rapid rate, and familiar names like Roger Corman and Pam Grier were often along for the ride. This prolific output continued right through the decade and climaxed with Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal Apocalypse Now, which left dozens of sets and props for lo-fi filmmakers to recycle for years to come.

In the early eighties, the country finally saw its own raunchy renaissance, with an international film festival, lucrative film market and distinct brand of filmmaking to call its own. At the centre of this creatively fertile period was the James Bond send-up For Y’ur Height Only, starring the somewhat legendary cult icon Weng Weng as a pint-sized secret agent.

In order to flesh out (pun absolutely intended) the country’s cinematic heyday, Hartley’s esoteric exposé features candid interviews from Corman, Joe Dante, John Landis, Eddie Romero and a slew of renowned filmmakers, actors and critics, all of whom provide revealing, often scandalous, anecdotes about this no-holds-barred era and region in movie making. So sit back and enjoy one of the most outlandish studies in film history ever told. You’re going to need a bigger video store.

[Toronto International Film Festival]

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