Equalizer 2000

Equalizer 2000

Philippines – 1987

Director – Cirio Santiago

MGM/UA Home Video, 1987,VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 25 minutes.

I’m going to spend a little time with the cover of Equalizer 2000 here because no matter now old I get and how many times I “fall for it” I will always be a sucker for this kind of box. I’m also a sucker for films with a number in the title and especially (I know, we’re getting real esoteric here) numbers that are round thousands. They practically scream out “The future is going to be awesome! Come see!” And especially when the date in question has already passed by the time I see the film. That’s how I picked this movie. From the cover of Equalizer 2000, a cover which I might add is one of the most amazing pieces of modern pop-art ever created, one immediately assumes it’s going to be about Richard Norton and his breasts. The painting (because this was originally painted, by a person, with a brush) perfectly captures the look of slightly melancholy disinterest which, from Gymkata (1985) to Road House 2 (2006), Norton consistently brings to his performances. I realize that’s just how his face is shaped, but it is beautifully captured here and perfectly suited to this film. So intimidating and so confident is he that this whole endeavor is quite literally boring. So too does the woman at his side appear nonplussed by the battle that’s just begun in both word and deed on the cover. She is after all sheltered by the considerable bulk of Norton and his tool. In fact, she almost looks tired. Like a Southern California roller-skate waitress who’s been working all day and just wants you to quit staring at her chest and order your fucking burgers. Her boyfriend is here now and you are sooo not interesting.



But this movie isn’t really about Richard Norton or breasts. It’s not Richard Norton’s undeniable physical prowess which is the subject of that line on the back of the box. He is not the ultimate weapon although you would be excused for thinking so. No, the entire movie, from the title to the endless squabbling of the plot is about that rifle-grenade-launcher, rocket-launcher, laser, shotgun he’s carrying. That is the Equalizer, and they’re hanging a hell of a lot on that weapon. After some kind of apocalypse the world has been reduced to a parched desert landscape marked intermittently only by the cardboard and canvas forts of scattered scavenger cliques. Norton however, known here as Slade (the most popular boys name after the apocalypse it would seem) is a roving unaligned loner. As various

factions attack and defend against other factions, Slade is wounded and rescued by Karen who drives them back to her “good” guys. It is here that Slade discovers them welding a bunch of extra barrels onto an M-16. Upon completion Slade simply takes it. No one argues. Karen (Corrine Wahl) stares longingly at Slade. More assaults follow and the Equalizer changes hands several times until the “good” guys win and Slade drives off into the sunset to be alone with his thoughts. The purpose of this presumably is to build tension as “the ultimate weapon” tilts the delicate balance of post-apocalyptic society one way, then another. It doesn’t.

For as badass as it may be, the Equalizer is lost in the political squabbling that poses as this film’s “action,” its result as predictable as it is tedious. Corrine Wahl, nee Alphen does hang lustily upon Slade’s body, but from afar, with her eyes. She’s come a long way from Hot T-Shirts after all. In his second screen role ever, Robert Patrick makes an appearance as a minor character. His first film had been Santiago’s supremely nutty Future Hunters in which he starred as "Slade" with the supporting talents of, you guessed it, Richard Norton who looked predictably bored. Further lifting the costumes straight from Bobby Suarez’s Warrior’s of the Apocalypse, Equalizer 2000 discards the drug addled lunacy of both earlier films in favor of a monotonous back and forth exchange of small arms fire. Cheap Filipino post apocalypse films could hardly be more different. Slade and Karen’s thousand yard stares on that gorgeous cover would seem to be more disappointment than confidence.

For the box completist...

Silk

Silk

Philippines - 1986

Director – Cirio H.Santiago

MGM/UA Home Video, 198?, VHS

Run Time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

For a movie named after its lead protagonist, Silk is infuriatingly coy about using her. Few action films are so audacious as to be named after the key protagonist but in such cases there is no hesitancy to demonstrate the reasoning behind this decision. Both Dirty Harry and Cobra open their films with an explosive introduction that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Perhaps it is because Silk is a woman that director Santiago didn’t feel that people would buy the idea of a tough, trigger happy female cop. Perhaps it’s because the name doesn’t make any sense considering the character’s lack of personal suavity and the film’s dearth of nudity.

I won’t say that it’s all downhill from there, it’s not a bad movie per-se, but neither is it very memorable. Cec Verill (you wouldn’t know her from anything else) plays Silk, a hard-ass cop who busts drug smugglers in Hawaii (actually the Philippines.) Trouble is, much of the film seems to be about her male coworkers arguing amongst each other and fighting over money. Through a meandering plot Silk tracks down baddies and blasts ‘em, uncovers nefarious plots and blows ‘em up, gets captured, escapes and does it all again, but despite claiming to be “so fucking smooth,” her primary function appears to be fucking up dude’s plans. With a name like that I expected a veritable cacophony of one-liners or a sea of sweat slicked skin. I’m guessing the movie was named after the fact (as often happens) in order to create as false an impression as the cover. An image which, though titillating in the extreme, is about as egregious as the movie gets.

Santiago didn’t often waste a chance to get the women out of their clothes, (his earliest efforts included numerous Women In Prison films) but I can’t understand it here. I do appreciate the fact that her value to the film is not purely sexual (her outfits do make this claim dubious) but her hard ass attitude is as much a sensationalization of her gender (in it’s “unusualness”) as T & A, but the extra skin would have cheapened its appeal even more. Perhaps that’s the irony of Silk. In all it’s unreasonableness it upsets our expectations and reminds us not to make assumptions. Or not. Maybe I’m trying to validate what’s really just a bunch of crap.

Go read the review at Comeuppance!

The Deadly and The Beautiful

The Deadly and the Beautiful 

Philippines – 1973

Director – Robert Vincent O’Neill

Media Home Entertainment, 1984, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 32 minutes

When a famous Jai Alai player disappears without a trace, Mike Harber is off to track him down. Leading with his libido, he soon discovers that a syndicate of beautiful but deadly Wonder Women (the film’s original title) is behind the kidnapping. When Mike decided to pursue a career in insurance he never quite pictured himself fighting criminal masterminds or mad scientists in the seedy underbelly of Manila. The job description “insurance investigator” doesn’t exactly ooze sex appeal after all, but nothing is quite like it seems in The Deadly and The Beautiful. In fact, cockfights and cycle-cab chases aren’t exactly the “underbelly,” and Dr. Tsu’s Go-Go squad aren’t quite a syndicate.

Combining the well worn action spy/secret agent plot (the pre-credit sequence does a worthy Bond imitation, only topless) coupled with the mad scientist performing unorthodox experiments on humans, The Deadly and The Beautiful is essentially a film version of a men’s adventure magazine come a few years after its time. As such it’s not exactly unique or terribly inspiring in it’s content, at least nothing we haven’t seen from Eddie Romero or Cirio Santiago a few dozen times by now. Where it might suffer from a lack of budget or originality however, The Deadly and The Beautiful is extremely generous with sincerity. With all the dire intensity of a 40’s science-fiction serial, and the gritty peril of a location shot action flick, this film literally revels in it’s milieu like a pig in shit. Sincerity goes a damned sight farther than “propriety”, and no matter how many bad rubber monsters and shitty drunken lead actors you have, what an old friend of mine used to call “heart,” will make your movie.

Using a decrepit warehouse to transplant the organs of young athletes into the aging bodies of her wealthy clients, Dr. Tsu somehow manages to turn a profit despite her rickety handmade equipment. When Mike Harber shows up, Tsu cuts short her vinyl clad hit-squad’s latest session of frozen donor boner and sends them to make-out/take-out the erstwhile insurance investigator. Careening through a veritable buffet of Manila scenery and culture with the help of the ubiquitous Vic Diaz and crushed-velvet and ascoted Sid Haig, Mike at last lands on the couch for an up-close-and-personal round of ‘brain sex’ with the good Dr. Tsu. Just before they can reach whatever climax happens at the end of brain-sex, the doctor vanishes in a puff of smoke promising to return a-la Mad Doctor of Blood Island for a second round and possibly even a franchise. I suppose that would explain the carboard laboratory. If you had to abandon all that equipment every time some clunky gumshoe with an ethical hang-up came snooping around (and this seems to happen a hell of a lot,) you’d probably build your lab on the cheap too.

The Deadly and The Beautiful isn’t purely Pinoy. The writer/director and the big ‘stars’, Sid Haig, Ross Hagen (Mike,) Nancy Kwan (Tsu) and Roberta Collins are all American, but as soon as the principals are done forwarding the plot or whatever it is they do, all sorts of Filipinos suddenly appear with vintage WWII weapons and start blasting the shit out of each other on behalf of one or the other side. It reminds me more than a bit of Western colonialism in that the Westerners (Europeans and Americans, in that order here) moved in and made the locals do the rough stuff. Only, underneath it all, nothing would have run without the locals, it was an economy of deception.

The more contemporary Westerners in question were just as dependent on this “cheap” exoticism (and labor) to make their movie(s.) There is an exemplary scene in The Deadly and The Beautiful when, after seducing and attempting to assassinate Mike, one of the Wonder Women flees and initiates a long chase scene through the streets of Manila. The local color makes for some exciting realism, but at the same time can’t help but reveal true local flavor. At one point can be seen a Mule carrying a man with a bullhorn followed by a string of pedicabs bearing banners campaigning for “Remy – Councilor.” This is, I am pretty sure, a frozen historical reference to the late martial artist Remy Presas who worked for the Philippine government for a minute in the early 70’s and which only Pinoy audiences would have appreciated.

To tell the truth of course, the movie industry in the Philippines was initially a product of colonialism as well. Dependent on the whims of the Western dollar to a great extent, but as with any local industry, the Filipinos built their own cinematic house with the master’s tools. The underlying myth to this whole narrative is revealed in the fact that without the local, without Pinoy, the whole ruse would be both narratively and economically impossible. Filipino, and I dare say Southeast Asian films in general (I'm thinking here specifically of Indonesian and Thai, but assuming it applies elsewhere) are some of the best in the world. I hate to say it’s purely a factor of scarcity because despite a relative dearth of these films in USAmerica, I don’t think it is. One gets the impression however that, at least during this period, Filipinos must have really cared about making movies because they put their heart into every one. The Deadly and The Beautiful is a prime example and a rare treat which, thanks to Jack at En lejemorder ser tilbage (among other fine sites,) I’m glad that I revisited.

Sorry about the image quality, its an old tape of a bad print!

Black Mama, White Mama

Black Mama, White Mama

Philippines/US - 1972

Direstor - Eddie Romero

Orion Home Video, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 26 minutes

This is a personal favorite of mine because it is one of the first Corman/Philippine exploitation movies I saw. It's a favorite of many people apparently, across many genres. Oftentimes it is classified among the Blaxploitation and Women In Prison genres. I can see elements of both, (more of the latter) but I would call it more of a Caper movie. It doesn't really matter though because it is awesome, and written by Jonathan Demme!

I Spit On Your Grave

J'irai cracher sur vos tombes ( aka I Spit On Your Grave)

France - 1959

Director - Michel Gast

A 1959 French film based on a novel in which a light skinned black man returns to the town where his brother was lynched. Seeking revenge upon the murderers he joins their gang and ends up getting involved with one of the girls. Sounds basically like a French race-mixing exploitation film along the lines of the American model vis-a-vis I Crossed The Color Line and I Passed For White.

Day Of The Woman (retitled as I Spit On Your Grave in 1980)

United States - 1978

Director - Mier Zarchi

I Spit On Your Grave as most of us know it, is a pretty notorious film. I personally heard of it long before Thriller: A Cruel Picture or Cannibal Holocaust. It was so notorious that it spawned a number of remakes, sequels and "re-titlings" for video. An official remake is set to be released later this year.There are also several bands with albums titled "I Spit On Your Grave," and various plays on that title, and I found a few foreign websites that were sketchy so I didn't download any of their images.

This Italian poster for the Mier Zarchi movie makes it look like a fetish/slasher along the lines of Fulci's New York Ripper doesn't it?

This Wizard Video sleeve is from It's Only A Movie.co.uk. Wizard Video was an imprint of Charles Band's Empire Pictures.

Japanese sleeve from the incredible Japanese VHS Hell.

Ms. 45
United States - 1981
Director - Abel Ferrara
Perhaps not an explicit spinoff , but the theme is exactly the same. Admittedly, there have been a great number of rape-revenge films made, but Ms. 45 was made almost immediately after I Spit On Your Grave, so its hard to deny the connection. Poster from IMPAwards

Naked Vengeance
Philippines - 1985
Director - Cirio H. Santiago
Naked Vengeance was an unofficial remake directed by Roger Corman's Philippine man of action and all around exploitation gristmill Cirio Santiago. Cover scan from Vestron Video International.

Savage Vengeance

United States - 1993

Director - Donald Farmer

The cult status of Zarchi's film generated a plethora of titular and thematic spinoffs including the Eden Entertainment I WIll Dance On Your Grave series, many of which were simply previously existing low budget films released under a deceptive series title and cheap cover artwork. However, the series did include the film Savage Vengeance which was an unofficial sequel to Day Of the Woman that stars (under pseudonym) Camille Keaton in a reprise of her DoTW Jennifer role.

Girls For Rent (retitled for video as I Spit on Your Corpse)
United States - 1974
Director - Al Adamson
When this film was released on video it was retitled, probably to conjure associations with the Zarchi movie. It is now available on DVD from Troma.

I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your Grave
United States - 2001
Director - Eric Stanze
Not sure about this, apparently a pretty rough film. I thought I had seen it in high-school, but the date is way off for that.

I'll Kill You, I'll Bury You, and I'll Spit On Your Grave Too!
United States - 1995
Director - Thomas R Koba

IMDB gives a date of 2000 for this one, but the box appears to say 1995. I swear I saw it when I was still in high school back in the 1990's, so who wins that one? Before I knew my ass from my elbow I remember mistaking it for the Zarchi film and being sorely disappointed by its low quality. The VHS box above confirms my story since it is basically the same "design" as the Eden I Dance On Your Grave series from the 90's, right down to the reused and cobbled cover image.

I Spit On Your Remains
Japan - 2005
Director - Yoshiyuki Okazawa

Oyle bir Kadin ki
Turkey - 1979
Director Naki Yurter
It think its a little presumptuous to simply call it "Turkish I Spit On Your Grave," as if the Turks have no actual creative spirit of their own. According to IMDB the title translates to "A Woman Like That" and I find it difficult to believe that Day of the Woman was released in US theaters in November of 1978, then made it to Turkey and was remade by a Turk and released by 1979. Unless the director saw DoTW in the US, the turnaround is just too quick. It took the "Turkish Star Wars" five years to appear after the release of the American film.

I Spit Chew On Your Grave

United States - 2009

There is no IMDB page for this film, but since the arbiters of corporeal substance, Amazon have it for sale, it must be real.

Warriors of the Apocalypse

This has got to be some of the coolest box art ever, not just because I'm a shallow heterosexual man, but because it is epic and looks like it should be airbrushed on the hood of a lowrider. Courtesy of C.W. Taylor.

Warriors of the Apocalypse

Philippines – 1985

Director – Bobby A. Suarez

Lightning Video, 1987, VHS

Run time – 1 hour, 28 minutes

It is profoundly amusing to me that there is such a distinct connection between post-apocalypse films and the iconic heavy metal band Judas Priest. This is in large part due to a common design aesthetic of the time popularized by Priest’s frontman Rob Halford. Thanks to the tough guy image of heavy metal and bikers, spikes and leather became symbolic of rebellion and would only upon later revelation assume its distinctly ironic caste. Warriors of the Apocalypse takes this not-so-coincidental association so far into the realm of mythology that it defies belief.

The only survivors of the nuclear holocaust are an intrepid tribe of Leathermen led by a rugged and glistening bear named Trapper. Emerging from the desert wastelands half starved and dehydrated from weeks of marching, the Leathermen embark on a longshot quest to make the world into a fantasy-metal headbangers paradise.
Their first mission is to secure a steady supply of righteous eats and cool fresh water. To do this they employ the assistance of a permed Asian man who promises to lead them to the Magic Mountain.
Their epic quest is interrupted however by a tribe of Guinean pygmies. When they are cut down by the Leathermen’s eager gunfire the pygmies resurrect each other and attack again; and are gunned down and resurrect each other. Finally they return with reinforcements; Norwegian amazons in Bo-Derek wigs. Their mere appearance (and impressive marksmanship) robs the Leathermen of any will to fight and they are quickly captured. The band are dragged to prison in the Pygmazon village which features its own giant Maya pyramid and evil bikini queen.

If your mind is a little bit blown by all this wacky genre mixing, you’re not the only one. Upon escaping from the skull-cave-jail-with-electronic-spaceship-style-bars and fleeing into the jungle, the Leathermen take a pause to de-compress all the insane sensory input with some of the local toke-ables. Needless to say this leads to their prompt recapture.

I’ll admit I’m having a hard time not just synopsizing every insane element of the entire plot. It is too mindboggling to make real sense of, and it only gets stranger from here on out. An extended fertility ritual, a nuclear power plant operated by lepers, and a climactic eye-laser and secret rock-throne weapons-console-battle all lead to the sudden ascension of the Leathermen to a position of metal-sovereignty over the Amazonian groupies and pygmy roadies. Coupled with the radical absurdity of Cirio Santiago’s equally post-apoc and amazon laced Future Hunters, Warriors of the Apocalypse further compounds my belief that Filippino films are just awesome fucking nuts. Even if I’m not quite sure that the plot is linear in the traditional sense of the word, it is definitely memorable. Just ask these guys, they remember the whole thing.

The Boys In Company C

The Boys In Company C

US/Philippines – 1977

Director – Sidney J. Furie

Pacific Family Entertainment, 2002, DVD

Run time - 2 hours 5 min.

And so, my friend Daniel and I continue our brief foray into semi-obscure Vietnam War films.
This one was something of a myth when I first started studying the Vietnam War 10 years ago. Nobody gave a shit about Vietnam, and nobody gave a shit about a low budget indie feature about Vietnam. This movie wasn’t available anywhere which was tragic to a history nerd because it was supposed to be the earliest (fiction) movie that tackled the GI experience in the war. I couldn’t find it until years later on this low quality DVD that looks transferred from VHS, since then a newer and presumably nicer DVD has been released.

Boys In Company C predates Full Metal Jacket by a good 10 years, but you might think you’re watching an early screen test of the latter as a group of dumb kids line up and get their asses handed to them by a bunch of Marine Corps drill instructors led by R. Lee Ermey.
Each of the recruits is a narrow stereotype, and Ermey quickly gets them in line by sticking up for loner Tyrone Washington. Before induction Washington was a “street-wise” pimp who got drafted and now plans to ship heroin back to the States in body-bags (presaging American Gangster by a good 30 years.)

The boys all end up in Vietnam where each scene plays out as the height of irony, with all the legendary futility of 'Nam encapsulated in every scene. The men are nevertheless pitted against their distant, self-interested officers and resort to typical war movie stoicism. Alas, with all the ironic or wacky vignettes too little time has been devoted to generating much sympathy for any of them.
If it doesn’t have much new to offer the war genre, it is the first cinematic release to apply those clichés to the unique cultural milieu of Vietnam. Boys In Company C is if nothing else a historical hinge upon which the American war film turned from patriotism to cynicism. Its themes are nothing new, the men are still everyday heroes and victims of the “system”; only the system is no longer implicitly “good”.

In this way it might also be compared to some extent with Robert Altman’s 1970 classic M*A*S*H* (which was also a dig on Vietnam), for it tries with all it’s might to capture some of the same camaraderie and war weary insanity of its predecessor, right down to the big game at the end. In this case it’s a soccer game in which the boys are told to intentionally lose in order to make their South Vietnamese opponents feel good. For this humiliation they will earn their way out of combat into a plush multi-game circuit, but at the last minute tragedy strikes again in the form of more clumsy stoicism squeezed out under duress.

This gem was executive-produced by Raymond Chow, who founded Golden Harvest Pictures after he split with Shaw Brothers in 1970. Since then he has produced such classics as the China O’Brien series and the first three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films among numerous Chinese titles.
Director Furie has done a few other war films including the Iron Eagle series and another ‘Nam picture called Going Back.

In addition to coat-tailing a line from the MASH marketing scheme, this poster seems to be trying to appeal directly to Vietnam Veterans with the sub-script.

A nice 1 sheet from Movieposter.com with images from the film.

US VHS box art, the 2008 DVD, some other thing, A Spanish DVD, and a UK DVD.

Behind Enemy Lines

Behind Enemy Lines

a.k.a. – Killer Instinct

Philippines - 1988

Director – Cirio H. Santiago

Media Home Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run time – 1 hour, 23 min.

No, this is not the gung-ho Owen Wilson Gene Hackman vehicle of 2001. I liked that movie when I saw it in the dollar theatre because I knew nothing about the Yugoslav wars, but both of those things have changed.
This Behind Enemy Lines is all about the ‘Nam and is the product of Filipino ‘Namsploitation garbage-grinder Cirio H. Santiago, one of Roger Corman’s protégés in the days when he was farming production out overseas. Just in time too, thanks to Chuck Norris The ‘Nam was a popular product in the States and the Philippines was cheap and full of people who looked to Average dumb Americans sufficiently “oriental” to suspend disbelief. You’ve got to do a lot of that with Santiago.

Somewhere in “North” Vietnam an American patrol led by Robert Patrick is searching for a POW camp but they are caught just as they find it. The sun rises over the same rickety sets and cast of extras as ‘Nam Angels and finds our “hero” and his surviving boys stuck in tiger-cages and watched over by a sadistic Russian who Patrick will undoubtedly fight one-on-one by the end of the film. But for now Patrick escapes and gets back to base where he yells all his lines and recruits some more guys to go back and have another chaotic and ultimately boring firefight that seems to indicate the merciful end of the film.

No such luck. Patrick is wounded and the team flies to Thailand to regroup. A bearded guy shows up to cast an authoritative pall over next several assaults on the shantytown POW camp. The first of these multiple, yes, multiple raids takes place while Patrick is recovering from his wounds with the help of a pacifist American nurse who doesn’t have a warlike bone in her body, until now.

Sufficiently reassured of his manliness Patrick suits up for yet another daring daytime raid to get the Russian, god bless the broad daylight frontal assault. For a movie with such terrible dubbing we can hear every crunching clattering step these assholes make. The subsequent boom-fest and chase scene do indeed end with the long awaited Cold War analogue between Patrick and the Russian, ended in 30 seconds flat by Patrick’s vein-bulging hatred of all things living.
This is confirmed after the battle when he coldly guns down his nurse girlfriend.


It’s remarkable how in every one of his ‘Namsploitation junkers Santiago manages to take the fun parts -like the goofy borderline racist heroics- and drag them out into utter mindless boredom, or blast through ‘em in a few short seconds. I’ll admit, this is an improvement over Caged Fury, but with the awesome insanity of Future Hunters already long gone, and 'Nam Angels just over the horizon, Behind Enemy Lines shows that improvement is a contextual term.

There are at least six other films that go by this name including the David Carradine vehicle I reviewed under the title P.O.W. The Escape, and some other Nam P.O.W. thing that came out in the 90's. Like I said, blame it all on Chuck Norris.