MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED (2010)

From Mark Hartley, editor and director of the Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) comes another highly entertaining dissection of the insane world of exploitation movies from somewhere other than Tinseltown. In this tongue-in-cheek romp, he explores the Filipino connection during the time in the sixties and seventies when the corrupt dictatorship of President Marcos and his wife not only allowed homegrown trash from the likes of Eddie Romero (creator of the awful Blood Island trilogy) but welcomed American productions in, providing they didn't include subversive propaganda against him. Ironically, blaxploitation director Jack Hill sought to fill his movies like The Big Doll House (1971) and the less amateurish parody The Big Bird Cage (1972) with a hefty amount of revolutionary plotting whilst there - not that anyone was going to treat his tits and guns Pam Grier/Sid Haig epics as manifestos for anything other than laughs. Also highlighted is the cavalier disregard for safety from Filipino directors whereby stunts were performed by totally unqualified performers almost regarded as disposable meat puppets.

Not all movies shot in their wild jungle world were lowbrow grindhouse fare though. Infamously, Coppola's anti-war masterpiece Apocalypse Now was shot in the Philippines using Marcos's army helicopters and troops after palms were copiously greased for the privilege. Covered here but detailed more extensively in Eleanor Coppola's superb Hearts of Darkness documentary, this loaning out of resources was still unreliable and caused havoc with the shooting schedule when the choppers were repeatedly flown away to fight guerilla forces in the mountains. No wonder Coppola came to realise that the making of Apocalypse Now became as much a location autobiography as an examination of the Vietnam war debacle.

Hartley gets plenty of great interview footage from the Filipino filmmakers still alive, as well as Hollywood stalwarts like Roger Corman and director Brian Trenchard Smith. Watch out for the sequence where creators and stars of some of the worst female exploitation titles attempt to retroactively claim them as pro-feminist emancipation statements, cross-cut with John Landis gleefully calling bullshit.
Highly recommended madcap fun!