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As they used to say on Monty Python: And now for something completely different...
Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)
IMDb Info
Running time: 84 minutes
Great title for a movie, isn’t it? But this is not just any movie. This is a documentary about movies made nearly half a century ago...nearly half a world away from Hollywood...in a startling collaboration between native and foreign film-makers that came to be known as...the Filipino Exploitation Explosion!
It all began back in the 1960’s when American (as well as British and Australian) film-makers became aware that the Philippines movie industry was busy, productive and inexpensive. The American producers reasoned: Why not hire Filipino crews to make the movies for us, while we make a bundle marketing them to American audiences? [The Australian perspective is covered in the movie Not Quite Hollywood].
The key players are here – Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Jack Hill, Jonathan Demme, Eddie Romero and John Landis – to tell the story, as scenes from their movies whiz by on the screen. There’s no skimping on the GIMPing – images of torture, humiliation and rape of women appear along with explosions, gunfire and monsters. This is all in keeping with the three Bs of the B-movies produced – Beasts, Bullets and Breasts – and the film focuses on three main genres: Horror, WIP (women in prison) and Action/Adventure.
Horror: A segment of the film tells the story of the Blood Island trilogy, a series of movies made in the late 1960’s by Corman, Eddie Romero and beach movie veteran actor John Ashley. Each of the three were made in the same location in the Philippines, nearly back-to-back and with overlapping cast members, playing different characters in each one. Along with fetching Filipinas in skimpy island garb, each movie cast a different American blond actress as the lead GIMP. In the near future, I plan to review the entire trilogy of movies.
Below is a montage of GIMP scenes. (Please note: the images in this review are all capped from Machete Maidens Unleashed!; so if you see the film, you will see these scenes.)
GIMPs of the Blood Island Trilogy
Brides of Blood - Unknown native maiden [l] sacrificed to appease the island’s lusty mutant-beast; Beverly Powers [r] meets the monster.
Angelique Pettyjohn [l] in Mad Doctor of Blood Island; Celeste Yarnall [r] in Beast of Blood
Celeste Yarnall is rescued from quicksand, but her saviors demand a reward.
WIP: Then the movie guys got this idea: what if we put the babes in prison and have them shoot their way out? And what if while they’re in prison, we have them get tortured/raped/naked? (I’m paraphrasing here). Sounded like a plan, and so emerged such gems as The Big Doll House, Women in Cages, Black Mama, White Mama, and The Big Bird Cage, all made in the Philippines during the early 1970s.
GIMPs of Jungle Prison Movies
Lovely Roberta Collins riding the Wheel of Torture [l]; getting her tits electrocuted [r].
Christine Tam [l] shocked in an unusual pose; Judi Brown [r] menaced by a snake.
Pat Woodall [l] feels the lash; Anitra Ford [r] is left hanging.
Action/Adventure: Keeping up with movie trends seen elsewhere, Corman et. al. also generated movies that provided plenty of bullets and breasts outside of the conventional WIP formula. The collaboration benefitted from the very good relationship between the movie industry and the military of the Philippines, which supplied guns, ammunition, vehicles, ordnance, experts and extras to fuel the shoot-em-ups and explosions needed to drive the plots. Another advantage was that Filipino stunt actors were willing to risk their fool necks for $5 a day; but Corman points out that American advice about how to institute safety measures helped cut down the typical fatality rate for these movies.
Sexual slavery (The Hot Box), revolutionaries (Savage Sisters), militant cults (Escape from Blood Plantation) and martial arts conflicts (Firecracker) were just a few of the themes that provided good GIMP scenarios. And when Spielberg introduced Jaws, Corman countered with Up from the Depths.
GIMPs of Action/Adventure Movies
Cheri Cafaro gets drilled in Savage Sisters [l]; topless “skin diver” faces sea monster in Up from the Depths [r].
Enslaved natives in Escape from Blood Plantation; sweet Roberta Collins stripped again.
Cutting bottom as a prelude to rape [l]; unknown loses her shirt in Firecracker[r].
A lot of the actresses from these flicks are on hand to comment about the hardships of life on a jungle set in particular, as well as specific scenes. Celeste Yarnall (Beast of Blood), Gloria Hendry (Savage Sisters), Laurie Rose (The Hot Box), Jeannie Bell (TNT Jackson), Margret Markov (Black Mama, White Mama) and Pam Grier (too many to mention) are just some of the babes who are interviewed. It’s fair to note that time has not been kind to these ladies, although Celeste Yarnall’s classic beauty still shows through. Pam Grier was singled out for mention by the talking heads, who noted that she had little or no prior acting experience before jumping into the WIP flicks with great energy and determination.
It’s a bit discomfiting to watch Corman (and others) chuckle about cutting corners to save money, or showing the same footage of an exploding helicopter in trailers for different movies, even those that didn’t include the scene itself. One’s first impression is that he is laughing all the way to the bank, at our expense. But it’s clear that without the cost-cutting, these movies would never have been made, or certainly would never have been shown to American audiences.
But by the late 1970s, the fun was jeopardized by the emergence of big-budget, American-made blockbusters like Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979). Audience expectations about production values, special effects, etc. set a higher bar. To compete, Corman, Demme and the rest began to shift their production activities back to the US. In addition, multiplex cinemas began to replace the drive-ins and grindhouses that provided the market for cheap products from the Philippines. (Cue the footage of a drive-in being bulldozed.) The movie closes with the saga of one last-ditch effort to make a big-budget movie in the Philippines: Francis Ford Coppola's ill-fated festival of cost over-runs, Apocalypse Now.
Overall, however, this movie is highly entertaining. As promised, there are tons of bullets, breasts and beasts. The scenes fly by very quickly, but nearly all are clearly identified with their respective movie titles. Everyone displays good humor about their movies, and no one tries to make them out to be more than what they are: cheap thrills, the like of which we rarely see in mainstream movies these days.
Whether you view it for nostalgia’s sake, or to learn about some new GIMP scenes you’ve never seen before, this movie plays like a feature-length highlight reel of an era we’ll never see again.
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