Little Boy Blue, Tiny Terrestrial (1991)

Little Boy Blue, Tiny Terrestrial

Philippines 1991 colour

Director Eddie Reyes Writers Joey de Leon, Tony Y. Reyes

Cast Atong Redillas (Ato), Jay-Are Reyes (Empoy), Jen-Jen Otico (Neneng), Luz Fernandez (Lola Panchang), Joaquin Fajardo (Crocodile Danding), Joey de Leon (Professor Presto), Rene Requiestas (Stallone), Richie D’Horsie (Kuya Freddie)

We here at Schlock Treatment like to dig deep. Deeeeeep. So when Little Boy Blue suddenly appeared on the radar out of nowhere, believe me it’s an obscure one: a childish Catholic-laced E.T. ripoff from the Philippines, featuring a large blueberry that’s been molested by a Teletubby. Painful, infuriating, and at times like trying to stop a runaway bus with your teeth, it is nevertheless lovably dumb and, as far as lovably dumb Pinoy parodies go, one of the dumbest.

A squat stopper-shaped spaceship is spotted over Batangas, practically over the heads of three pre-teen cousins living in a simple nearby barrio. After their extended prayers – this is a devout Catholic family, you’ll need to remember - the kids beg their grandmother Panchang to tell stories of aliens – unbeknownst to them, at the same time the strange craft lands in the jungle. Aliens, says Panchang, descend from the heavens to punish the wicked. Just like Jesus, or, come to think of it, like Santa Claus. Back in the jungle the spaceship opens and out bounces a round rubber blue thing covered in squid suckers, and it takes refuge in the kids’ barn. The two young boys, Ato and the twitchy Empoy, are woken by strange sounds and uncover the creature scoffing the family corn. And what a creature it is: a head somewhere between a Gremlin and bloated Yoda atop a furry scrotum and Big Bird feet. And blue: all fluro blue, and emitting sounds like a mid-butchered veal (“Nyip! Nyip! Nyip!”). They argue over what to call it. “Do you remember the film ‘Extra Terrestrial?’” asks Ato. Tiny Terrestrial, they agree, or TT for short. “You’re just jealous,” they yell at their female cousin Neneng, the Drew Barrymore of this bizarre parallel universe, “that we have a TT [“titi” being Tagalog slang for penis] and you don’t.” They also settle on Little Boy Blue, and Neneng bonds with the gentle creature by pressing her finger lightly against TT’s rubber prong. It’s a touching scene in more ways than one, aiming for the emotion of Spielberg’s original but marred somewhat by TT’s high pitched bleating.

Of course you can’t have an ET clone without the meddling adult scientists, and at alien research group PAGNANASA’s headquarters, pretty young scientist Dr Delgado (and by young, I mean seventeen or eighteen) runs TT’s craft through a battery of tests. She believes the ship has emerged from inner space, not outer, and may be a relic from the lost city of Atlantis, thus proving the ranting renegade Dr Galileo’s theories correct. In Little Boy Blue there’s much discussion about Plato, and how the destruction of Atlantis is comparable to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah. Huh? Don’t worry, it makes more sense soon… Dr Delgado’s limp-wristed boss Zarate orders her to head a team to capture the alien and perform further experiments. Her final analysis: TT is “gentle and very easy to love”. In another section of the scientific community the insane Galileo pays a goon squad headed by “Crocodile” Danding to kidnap Little Boy Blue and show the world just how sane he really is. Try to find the creature, however – TT spends much of his Earth time running around the village draped in a sheet or at the nearsighted Grandma Panchang’s house learning how Jesus is “God to all peoples”. Before you can say “Hail Mary” he’s kissing rosary beads and crossing himself, and in the film’s most uncomfortable moment, has a religious epiphany whilst comparing his own suffering to a wooden Jesus on a crucifix. You can imagine when he returns triumphantly to his home planet, like a round blue Conquistador, there are going to be conversions a-plenty.

A lame-duck Sunday School pantomime, or a Spielberg spoof that landed eight years too late? I’m having money each way. For all its inherent absurdity and ecumenical leanings, Little Boy Blue is a feeble-minded effort, a throwaway project clearly written on the hoof by the team who brought you the (ahem) superior Alyas Batman En Robin. I’d say it’s an easy bet that Joey de Leon and Tony Reyes don’t even remember flipping this cheap quickie off; at the time, writer/director Reyes and comedian Joey were the busiest creative unit in Filipino comedy, clocking in at around ten features each per year, and considered the top box office draw of 1989. Not everything they touch turned to gold, however, but they certainly give it the old Quezon City try, and for marquee value Joey phones in a cameo as PAGNANASA’s Professor Presto (he’s been peering at Venus – not the planet but his new secretary, fnyar fnyar). The usual suspects are rounded up and given their regulation two minutes of screen time: toothless and heartbroken Rene Requiestas is a barrio bum named Stallone who sees little blue monsters even before his first sip of Tanduay, and TVJ’s regular sidekick Richie D’Horsie strums a tasteful song about dying of cancer.

The film’s major flaws are its leaden pacing courtesy of director Eddie Reyes (son? Brother? Of Tony), its sledgehammer morality, and discomforting attempts at toilet humour aimed at an older demographic than its intended audience of under-tens. None of this is meant as harsh criticism, of course, and the gaping wounds are an essential part of its charm. When I use words like “unbearable”, I mean it with a father’s love for his hopelessly naïve and sugar-addicted infant. For me, I don’t know who’s more unbearable, and I love them equally and unconditionally – the child actor playing Empoy (another of the ubiquitous Reyes, this time Jay-Are), who delivers every line like he’s sleepwalking and trying to create static electricity by brushing both ears, or TT himself, the nyipping testicle betraying not a single emotion from under its rubber mat. His one discernable word – “Bye!” – comes not a moment too soon, and I for one wish Little Boy Blue so long, bon voyage, and thanks for the screaming.

14th November 2010: Magic Of The Universe (1986)

Magic Of The Universe

Philippines 1986 colour

aka Salamangkero: The Magician, Monster Of The Universe

Director Tata Esteban Writers Tata Esteban, Grace Hill Serrano

Cast Michael De Mesa (Lolo Omar/Professor Jamir), Tanya Gomez (Lovina), Tom Tom (Bojok), Sunshine (Freza), Armida Siguion-Reyna (Mikula)

What is known of Filipino director 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 Shibu, 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 the demented sex-horror Alapaap (aka Clouds) in 1984, his work tended toward the erotic, and is most notorious for the samurai sword-in-vagina sequence from Hubo Sa Dilim (aka Naked In The Dark, 1985). In context, Esteban's startling filmography makes his 'kids' fantasy Magic Of The Universe that little bit disconcerting.

Esteban cast two of the leads from Alapaap, Michael de Mesa (son of Rosemarie Gil, brother of Cherie Gil) and bold star Tania Gomez, as Jamir the Magician and his wife Lovina. The film opens at a circus with Jamir's vanishing act going horribly wrong – their daughter Freza (Sunshine) has truly disappeared without trace. The couple venture deep into the jungle with their tubby child assistant Bojak (played by Tom-Tom – and no-one properly explains where HIS parents have vanished to) to consult a shaman. He proceeds to carve up one of his monkey companions with a machete, and invites the party to scoff fresh steaming brains out of the convenient monkey-skull desert bowl for divine inspiration. The child, it appears, has slipped into another more magical realm, and Lovina soon vanishes too, leaving Jamir and Bojak wondering what to do with their ever-diminishing family act.

Jamir is visited by the spectre of his great grandfather Lolo Omar (also played under a landslide of latex by Michael de Mesa). He tells Jamir of the family's mystical lineage, and how Omar's black-hearted acolyte Mikula - the Root of All Evil - is holding the Magical Realm hostage. The audience's descent is sudden, plunged head-first into a universe resembling a Duran Duran filmclip by Russell Mulcahy (but in fact co-designed by Magic's AD and future auteur Brillante Mendoza), populated with slobbering pig-people, monkey-men and dwarves in white-face, and presided over by the demented Mikula, she with the domed skull pulsing so wildly it threatens to send her headdress into orbit. “I am an animal, it's true,” Mikula declares to her court's menagerie, “but I RULE!”

It's a strange amalgam of influences at work in Magic Of The Universe. From Hollywood comes the sinister, otherworldly nightmares of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, with more than a nod to the title of He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe. Closer to home is the reinvigorated horror and fantasy industry courtesy of Peque Gallage and Lore Reyes (Shake Rattle And Roll, Once Upon A Time), following on from such successful fantasy franchises as Carlo J. Caparas' Ang Panday series (1980-1983), Ramon Revilla's anting-anting films, the Seventies revival of Darna and company, and if one follows the trail far enough back, to the original Darna (1950) and Djesebel (1953).

There are serious pacing issues, not to mention large fissures in the film's internal logic which prevent it from straying too far from the mundane. Its 1986 Metro Manila Film Festival slot, and the economic imperatives that come with such a responsibility, also tend to dampen Esteban's darker impulses, which are naturally given full rein in his more adult features. There's also a regulation stream of superfluous name stars who serve little more than marquee value: Dick Israel as forest dweller Arbutus with his stone wife Madera (Odette Khan), Liza Lorena as Kleriga, Mikula's wildly painted nemesis, and Gina Alajar as Siddha, the grail keeper of the Regalia, a wand designed to defeat Mikula and thus restore the balance of Goodness and Justice in the Magical Realm.

The film has moments of intentional absurdity: Mikula's court suddenly drops everything for an Oingo Boingo-styled musical number, the singer in snake dreads gargling San Miguel beer for vocals, and guitars made from human bones. For the most part, however, it's a grim affair, and far too grim to be considered 'light entertainment'; poor eight-year old Sunshine looks genuinely terrified for her entire performance, and I'm certain she's not that intuitive an actress. Severed heads are boiled for Mikula to absorb their strength – and let's not forget brains slurped out of monkey skulls! Then there's the goofy muppet Gondo, a jibbering flap-eared vision from my own personal Hell draped around a black and white TV, which I assume is both his torso and narrative function. For a tittering gargoyle it's given a fair amount of screen time, and presumably Esteban didn't want to waste a single inch of his Satanic-inspired rubber creation.

29th August 2010: Alyas Batman En Robin (1991)

Alyas Batman En Robin

Philippines 1991 colour

aka Batman En Robin, Alias Batman And Robin

Director Tony Y. Reyes Writers Joey de Leon, Tony Y. Reyes

Cast Joey de Leon (Batman/Bruce), Keempee de Leon (Kevin/Robin), Rene Requiestas (Jocson/Joker), Dawn Zulueta, Vina Morales (Vina), Panchito [Alba] (Tiyo Paenguin)

Philippines cinema has had a long and fruitful relationship with its komic industry dating back to the Forties, as well as a tenuous grasp on the concept of international copyright law. Much of Western culture was adopted and adapted, and put through the process of “Pinoyization”: out of the other end of the cultural sausage machine came a product that was faintly recognizable, but very much Filipino in flavour.

At times producers didn't even bother slapping a new label on a familiar product. The Sixties, it seemed, was open season on Americana: not only Batman, but James Bond, the Phantom, Tarzan – the list is endless. Copyright holders required a court case to be mounted in the offenders' country of origin – a costly and often pointless process, particularly if the offending territory is as far away as the Philippines. And so the relentless plundering of Batman iconography continued, including the intriguing titles Batman Fights Dracula (1967) and Batwoman And Robin Meet The Queen Of The Vampires (1972). But enough was enough, and when Batman En Robin premiered in Manila cinemas in 1991, DC Comics sent a cease-and-desist letter (or so the story goes). The film was withdrawn from theatres, only to reappear on VHS months later with “Alyas” before the film's title, but with all of the infringing material – the name Batman, for starters, along with the symbol, the Batmobile, the Bat Cave ad nauseum – thankfully intact. There's parody, and the degree of license bestowed upon its comedic form, and then there's outright theft. I think you'll quickly note which side of the legal fence this unrepentant sack of arse is proud to sit.

Kevin (Keempee de Leon) is a teenage dreamer obsessed with comics and especially Batman and Robin, lives with his older brother (Joey de Leon) in their parents' old house, is a champion swimmer at his local high school, and object of every young girl's affections. His jealous rival is schoolmate Jocson (Rene Requiestas), a would-be Casanova with full moustache and no front teeth and possibly the oldest schoolboy in the Philippines. He hates both Kevin AND Robin with a passion, and favours the darker charms of Batman's rival The Joker instead. As fate would have it, Jocson's Tiyo (“Uncle”) Paeng (Panchito) invites him to join his new criminal organization, a fearsome bunch based on Batman's rivals: Uncle Paeng crowns himself the Paenguin, complete with top hat and umbrella, while Jocson dons the pancake makeup and spikes his hair into antennae to create the most ludicrous, almost Dali-esque caricature of the Joker in Comicdom.

With assistance from a slinky Cat Woman and her gang of masked she-kittens, Tiyo Paenguin and the Joker embark on a crime spree the likes of which “Gotham City” (or is it “Anila”, as a newspaper headline suggests?) has never seen. At the Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange, the super-baddies point their guns at the cashiers – and then break into song and dance routine, whilst the girls behind the counter wave their upstretched arms in unison. And the musical numbers don't stop there. Kevin talks his older brother into donning the superhero costumes and teaming up as the Caped Crusader and Wonder Boy in order to banish Paenguin and Joker, and by association, Evil from the world of the Right and Just. Over the top of a montage showing the two brothers getting into superhero shape and building their own Batmobile, musical copyright is once again flushed down the toilet to the tune of the Beach Boys' “Surfin' Safari”:

Do you still remember from your comic book?

All the series of the Dynamic Two

The Caped Crusader and the Wonder Boy

Kalaban nila ang mga goons (They fight all the goons)

Holy smoke, Batman and Robin

Oh my God! Batman and Robin

Praise the Lord Batman and Robin

Shoot na shoot Batman and Robin

Let’s do Bruce Wayne now and Dick Grayson now

They are all a part of me…

For all its surface weirdness and eccentricities to a Western audience, it must be remembered that Alyas Batman En Robin was considered a major release in the Philippines: produced by the largest studio at the time, Regal Films, and starring three of the most popular comedians ever. Joey de Leon's Batman is just one of hundreds of his comedic creations from a career dating back to the Seventies as popular TV comic, game show host, DJ, singer, and member of the phenomenally popular team of Tito, Vic and Joey (affectionally known as “TVJ”). Along with brothers Tito and Vic Sotto, TVJ graduated from TV sensations in Seventies sitcom Iskul Bukol to prolific films stars throughout the Eighties. Aside from the odd reunion the trio went their separate ways in '88, and it was Joey who had the earliest hits with goofy parodies like Starzan (1989) and The Long Ranger And Tonton (1989), often with Batman's Tony Reyes in the director's chair. Alyas Batman... is even cheeky enough to reference Joey's most beloved screen character:

Batman: No, no, I don't really like Batman.

Kevin: What do you like?

Batman: I'd like to be Starzan!

Kevin: What? Starzan? And turn it into shit?

Joey is still one of the most prolific presences on Philippines TV in four separate shows for GMA-7 – testament to any popular comedian's staying power, and their public's loyalty and adoration. The same can be said for Panchito Alba (“Uncle” Paenguin), the gruff, exasperated sidekick of Dolphy, the Philippines' King of Comedy, in movies and on stage together since the early Fifties, and a top-shelf comic in his own right. Rene Requiestas (Jocson/The Joker) found fame much later in his life as Joey de Leon's comic foil in many of solo outings, with his trademark missing front teeth and malleable moustache. Sadly, both comedians passed away soon after Batman – the 36 year-old Rene of tuberculosis in 1993, the much older Panchito following complications from a stroke in 1995, aged 70.

As with much of the Philippines' populist fare, Batman's faults are many and glaring. It adopts a regulation Bollywood-style “masala” approach: throw in some comedy, some romance, some by-the-book goon action (and let's not forget the musical numbers!), and pad out the film's unnecessarily long running time with protracted and pointless exposition, in the belief the audience's ceaseless fascination with their favourite film personalities will carry the movie just nicely. Even the goon punch-ups – a chance to emulate the “Biff! Bang! Pow!” moments of the Sixties TV show – are flat and uncooked, with not even the hint of a camera tilt on the horizon. It's lazy, perfunctory filmmaking at best, which trades on accumulated goodwill and over-familiarity which in the West would merely breed contempt. Luckily for Alyas Batman En Robin the film is, at times, as funny as it is bizarre, and the humour – never an easy thing to translate between cultures - is in turns silly, self-aware, puerile, grotesquely unfunny, ribald and downright scatological. Take for example Paenguin and Joker's escape from their prison cell, under a toilet and into the sewer below...

Paenguin: In a toilet bowl? That's why you're a shit, smell like shit, because you're always close to shit!

Joker: I thought you wanted to escape?

Paenguin: How? Are you going to put me in and flush me?

Then there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it studio in-joke – Batman points to the Regal Films emblem on Kevin's Robin costume and says, “Wait, what's this? This is a Viva film [Regal's main rival]. Why is it on Regal? “I bought it already,” replies Kevin.

On the romance front there's young Kevin and his puppy-lovestruck classmate Vina (pop star/actress Vina Morales), who halt the film long enough for a duet in English which sounds like Celine Dion dropping her breakfast. Batman himself goes weak in the tights for ace reporter Angelique Legarda (Dawn Zulueta) and at one point even addresses the camera in a Wayne's World moment (come to think of it, Joey does look like an older, doughier Mike Myers) and asks the audience, “What if I do a dream sequence?” Cut to a fantasy poolside sequence in which Batman saves Angelic from a gang of goons but loses his mask, and tries to maintain his secret identity by wearing her bikini on his face. What can I tell you? I'm a sucker for lowbrow silliness. In a word: Comedy...Gold...

Despite the best efforts of Uncle and nephew, the true family values of goodness and justice prevail, and the storyline stresses that Batman is nothing without Robin, and vice versa. The film ends with the Batman clan, a reformed Paenguin and Joker, and a cast reunion on the front lawn outside the Batcave. There's even a few surprise additions: Angelique in a Wonder Woman costume (hubba hubba!), Superman, and even a go-go dancing dwarf Spiderman! Cue a second stolen tune, this time “At The Hop”, while the Joker points out his new-found humility in Taglish (a mangle of Tagalog and key English phrases):

Kung kayo ay isang salbahe (If you’re bad) and you are very naughty

You dirty rat. You’re very dirty rat!

Pwede pa kayo mag bago at hindi pa nahuhuli ang lahat (You can still change while it’s not too late)

Let us sing kumpare (friend) that the world means love and not the rot

Let us good na brod (Let's be a good brother),

Let us not be bad

That’s better

Let’s be good na part (Let’s be part of good), let’s be afraid of God

Ahh... Let's believe in love!

It's equal parts comedy heaven and hell, and I sure know which part Rene Requiestas is in right now, tittering away in whiteface, after witnessing the DC Comics car crash courtesy of Manila traffic, Alyas Batman En Robin.

Sunday 30th May 2010: Dara vs The Planet Women!

Darna vs The Planet Women

Philippines 1975 colour

Director/Writer Armando Garces

Cast Vilma Santos (Darna), Rosanna Ortiz (Elektra), Eva Linda, Lita Vasquez, Lieza Zobel, Diana Villa, Zandro Zamora, Bentot Jr (Ding)

Tonight we delve into the uncharted world of Philippines superhero films with another of our exclusive translating and subtitling for Schlock Treatment. Tonight's film features the Queen of all Filipino superheroes and heroines in the 1975 Darna vs The Planet Women.

The film dates from one of the last Golden Ages of Filipino cinema, the early Seventies, in which over 200 feature films a year were produced for an exclusively Philippines audience. One of the reasons of the local industry's phenomenal success is the audience's close identification with their superstars, and none more so than a duo of teenaged girls, Vilma Santos and Nora Aunor. In fact to this day Filipinos over a certain age will argue over whether they were a Vilmerian – a fanatical follower of the mestiza or lighter-skinned regal beauty Vilma – or Noranian, those who favoured the shorter, flat-nosed and darker skinned Nora. Fan clubs and magazines, TV shows, press interest over their teen love affairs with fellow co-stars (the “love-teams” of Guy and Pip, Vi and Bot): an entire mini-industry sprang up devoted to their lives, loves and supposed rivalry. Both became two of the most respected actresses of their generation, and yet it was Vilma who landed the role of the most successful komik character in Philippines history.

Darna may be easily dismissed by many as a cheap Pinoy knockoff of Superman or Wonder Woman, but there's much more to her. Since her first appearance in the burgeoning komik industry in 1947, she captured the imagination of the komik-reading underclasses: Narda is an innocent country lass who has superpowers thrust upon her transforming her into the costumed Darna to protect the world, the Philippines, her village, her family, and most of all, her younger brother Ding. It's wish fulfilment for girls, pure cheesecake for boys, and after sixty years - her first film appearance was in 1950, the last TV series three years ago - Darna is still a much-revered staple of Philippines pop culture.

Vilma took over the role in 1973 in a crazed, Mad Magazine style satiric reimagining called Lipad, Darna, Lipad, and over four appearances in the next seven years, would arguably become the actress most associated with the role. Darna vs The Planet Women from 1975 is the most fun and certainly most colourful of Vilma's stint, thought strangely enough it's as if the previous Darna adventures had never occurred, or had slipped into a Black Hole where most of the Philippines' lost cinema must also exist. Instead we are reintroduced to Narda, unremarkable country lass with a heart of gold and serious limp. Her two great loves, it seems, are chubby little brother Ding, and her awkward beau Ramon. An altercation with the local goons ends with a flying saucer suddenly appearing over a field, and Ramon is beamed aboard. It's a ship piloted by Elektra (Rosanna Ortiz), blue leader of a pack of painted space floozies clad in primary colour wigs, shower caps and AM radios strapped to them. Narda feels bad about losing her guy to a space sorority, but a kindly voice tells her to stop worrying, and plonks a magic stone in her lap. On the cry of “Darna!”, Narda transforms from unglamorous barrio girl – unassuming, with very little makeup - into gaudy statue of pure womanhood. No wonder poor Ding's eyeballs are almost dropping to the ground like marbles.

The Planet Women, it seems, are here to study human behaviour- whether they like it or not – and are intent on kidnapping the world's leading scientists. Not so, says Darna, who flies into their space ship to play the jealous girlfriend bit. She gets back Ramon, but it won't be the last time the Planet Women gain control over the weak-willed boob. It's a real battle of minds: desperate kung-fu kicking Star Slappers against the self-righteous Darna in an escalating series of face-offs and showdowns for the ultimate prize – the fate of the Universe itself.

It's a triumph of Seventies Tack, a distillation of pre-Star Wars sci-fi to its gaudiest elements, and a tinfoil tribute to Barbarella: ugly styleless furniture painted silver and doubling as cosmic chic. The Planet Women themselves are sex on a stick for the under-twelves; my favourites are a toss up between The Blonde, bewigged and bejewelled, with a gorgeous set of love handles and looking like a Twenties' flapper straight out of Ken Russell's rejected costume sketches for The Boyfriend, and the Blue One, primarily because you can see under the bikini line where the blue makeup ends!

At times cheerfully derivative, and at best a vivid interweaving of overseas archetypes and local folk tales, you'll have to admit you've never seen anything like it before, as we bring you for the first time translated and subtitled into English, Darna vs The Planet Women.

Sunday 27th December 2009: Boy God!

Boy God

Philippines 1982 colour

aka Stone Boy, Rocco Ang Batang Bato

Director J. Erastheo Navoa Writer Joeben Miraflor

Cast Nino Muhlach (Rocco), “Jim Melendrez”/Jimi Melendez, Isabel Rivas, Cecille Castillo, Dely Atay-Atayan (Granny), Jimmy Wilson (Mengele), Palito (Pancho)

Hola, Schlockmongers, and welcome to a family holiday edition of Schlock Treatment. It's that time of the year for an insane kiddie flick, and tonight's movie from the Philippines more than qualifies. Many of these shot-in-Tagalog fantasy films were never destined to leave the Philippines; thanks to busy distributor Cinex Films, we have this demented miniature Clash Of The Titans, which frankly gave ME nightmares as a kid, along with its other galleries of provincial grotesqueries.

Boy God, or Stone Boy as it's also known, stars possibly the most famous Filipino child star of all time, Nino Muhlach. Success for young Nino was in his genes, as the Muchlach clan was tantamount to film royalty - Auntie Amalia Fuentes (The Blood Drinkers [1964] and Curse Of The Vampires [1966]) will be forever remembered as the "Elizabeth Taylor of the Philippines". From age three, Nino would receive top-billing with the most famous film stars of the Seventies, and sentimental audiences warmed to his moon face and chubby thighs immediately, so that one of his 1977 films would out-gross the original Star Wars. Nino's father Alexander Muhlach formed D'Wonder Films to capitalize on Nino's early success, thus becoming one of the most powerful independent producers of the day.

By 1982 he was approaching his teen years and was now not so cute and adorable, and his box office lustre had begun to lose much of its shine. D'Wonder had previously bought into the iconic Darna franchise with Darna At Ding, featuring Vilma Santos as the Philippines' answer to both Supergirl and Wonder Woman and cherubic Nino as her little brother, and with its already-established Darna fanbase and cheap yet charming and effective special effects, the film broke box office records as the most successful Darna ever over Christmas 1980. The Muhlachs wisely decided to return to the fantasy genre one more time with 1982's Boy God.

Baby Rocco is born the same night his parents are gunned down outside their house. Years later, Rocco is now a precocious eleven year old living with his grandmother, who warns him to keep his growing powers secret. “You’re like limestone,” she explains - harder under heat, but dissolves in water. Just what a self-conscious 12 year old wants to hear. Meanwhile the evil German scientist Dr Mengele is turning the village into werewolves and vampires, and the pale bodies of their victims are starting to pile up by the waterfront. Little Rocco is captured by three witches who keep him weak and moist and, in the film's most disturbing image of all, they tie a naked, basted Nino to a bamboo spit under a full moon (not Rocco’s, of course) while turning into werewolves. The heat naturally makes him stronger and he escapes, only to be picked up in a fantastic tracking shot by a swooping, screeching vampire bat (a costume with enormous bat ears and umbrellas for arms).

Recovering in a cave, Rocco sees a vision of Vulcan, an Elder of the Immortals. The blind coot tells Rocco of his Immortal heritage - his father, Python, fell in love with a mortal, making him half-god - and suggests he travel to the Land of the Small People to save his parents from Limbo. At this moment the film morphs once again from vampires and werewolves and becomes Clash Of The Titans, or a much cheaper Italian variety sword and sandal adventure. He wakes next to a gladiator costume ("looks like a fat girl's dress!") and sets off towards his mist-shrouded goal, battling a small array of mythical creatures, but aided by an army of dwarves - all no taller than Rocco - and the girl warrior “Janus”, who looks and sounds suspiciously like Darna. Cue the trick perspective shots and claymation that would make Ray Harryhausen blanch, and perhaps the definitive shot of the film, in which the giant cyclops Golem plucks up one of the dwarves, chomps through his middle (this is a kid’s film?) and spits out his sword like a toothpick.

It's a strange film alright, cute and baffling, though with a simple three-act structure - boy learns powers, boy battles monsters, boy becomes immortal - which never allows the film to grow stale. Filipino films are renowned for "borrowing" elements from other films, and it's not just Clash Of The Titans from which the film takes its cues; there's the dwarf army from Time Bandits, and a lycanthrope transformation scene cribbed from either An American Werewolf In London or The Howling which, despite its crude stop-motion effects with plasticine and Brillo pads, is unnerving enough both in its primitivism, and in its family film context. There are also echoes of the Philippines' own bloodthirsty folklore in Boy God's creatures: shape-shifting female blood drinkers, the Aswang, and the bat-winged eaters of the dead, the Manananggal (unlike Boy God's batmen, however, their torsos detach themselves for easier flying), which have been unnerving Filipino children, not to mention adults, for centuries. It's this black wedding of Hollywood fantasy and horror and the Philippines' own brand of ghoulishness which gives Boy God its potency - a Harryhausen epic on a hundredth its budget, of course, but with monsters the folk in the Provinces will tell you are very, VERY real. Now that's unnerving.

Still, unnerving audiences is our speciality, and Schlock treatment is proud to bring you our gory, certifiable Holiday Special: the 1982 Boy God.

Sunday 15th November 2009: James Batman!

James Batman

Philippines 1966 b&w

Director Artemio Marquez Writers Pepito Vera-Perez, Artemio Marquez

Cast Dolphy (Batman/James), Boy Alano (Rubin), Shirley Moreno, Diane Balen

Greetings, Schlockateers - my name is Andrew Leavold from Trash Video welcoming you to the second in a four week season of International Superheroes here on Schlock Treatment, and a world-first: a Schlock Treatment exclusive subtitling of the Filipino James Bond-meets-Batman spoof, James Batman.

Tonight's film was already a rare example of Philippines cinema from the Sixties, a period in which between 150 and 200 films a year were produced. That's a staggering 150-200 Tagalog-language films each year, an overwhelming number of which never dubbed or subtitled into other languages and exported past the Philippines borders, and shot on 35mm film for a developing nation's relatively impoverished audience.

And yet , like other former colonial outposts Mexico, Turkey and India, the film industry boomed. Alongside radio and komik books, movies were a cheap and easily accessible form of mass entertainment, and the population took their own movies to their hearts, allowing the studios to maintain an elaborate system of stars, uniquely Pinoy forms of storytelling, and their own stable of komik superheroes and supervillains. Throughout the Sixties, "goon" films reigned supreme - the action-centic movies named after a villain's ape-like henchmen, and a staple of Filipino cinema right into the Eighties. The fact these "goons" are the Philippines' finest stuntmen AND action stars-in-waiting only adds to the gritty rough-and-tumble of these films' ubiquitous fight scenes. In the Sixties, the action king was Fernando Poe Jr; his comedic counterpart, the king of the "goon" parodies, was a man named Rodolfo V. Quizon Jr, or simply known to generations of adoring Filipino fans as Dolphy.

Dolphy began his career as a song and dance man and vaudeville comedian during the Japanese occupation during World War 2. The flourishing studio system in the early Fifties gave him a decade-long contact with Sampaguita Pictures, and he quickly graduated from bit roles and comic second banana parts to leading man in musical comedies. He encapsulated a droopy-shouldered and slightly pot bellied Pinoy Everyman: a henpecked, cowardly (if lovable) loser, or wily would-be trickster who both turn out "good" or at least functional to others in the end. Men identified with him, women adored him; before long he was making a movie a month, on top of TV and radio appearances. Parodies of Hollywood and European movies soon became Dolphy's forte, and he played the Pinoy version of everyone from the Lone Ranger to Tarzan, from - I kid you not! - Genghis Bond to Adolphong Hitler.

Tonight's movie James Batman was released in 1966, at the height of the Filipino komik superhero AND spy craze, featuring Dolphy as James Bond AND Batman - and often in the same scene! The "international" crime fighters are both called in to weed out nefarious organization CLAW and their leader, the cartoonishly Oriental Drago. Dolphy is hilarious as Bond, complete with lecherous sneer and a checkered jacket that matches the bedspreads (cool!), and it's a role he's familiar with, having already starred in a slew of spy knockoffs - Dolphinger, Dr Yes, Operation Butterball to name just three. But it's his Batman where the film comes alive and he steals the scenes from himself: crazed fight sequences, sadly with no Tagalog equivalents of "BIFF!" and "POW!", but with exaggerated tilts and low angles, and Carding Cruz's ever-present stolen surfadelic score. There's an array of other villains, not to mention an army of nurses with pre-war tommy guns, an all-girl squad with low cut black cocktail dresses and executioners' hoods, and the ending in Drago's lair - complete with a huge hand for a chair spitting lasers from the fingertips - kicks the entire Manila-A-Go-Go enterprise up one big lunatic notch. Superb.

Apologies for the grain-streaked picture and appalling sound, but it's a miracle the movie still exists, considering most of the Philippines' pre-80s films have vanished forever into the ether. I make no apologies, however, for its low budget or parochial nature. For one thing, In Third World cinema (and by "third", I certainly don't mean it as a derogatory term, and more in the traditional sense of meaning neither the West nor Russia) there is traditionally a three way dialogue between the filmmakers, their dominant cultural models (usually from Hollywood or Europe), and the audience who consume both local and imported fare. We, as a Western audience in the Twenty First Century, form a fourth voice, one removed by both time time, language, customs and geography; we are by no means an unimportant voice, but we must adjust our Schlock Goggles accordingly. Secondly, its sheer ingenuity, charm and chutzpah come from the film - and the Philippines - making a mockery of its mega-budgeted model. And seriously, where else will you see both James Bond AND Batman take on an army of well-trained goons? The answer, as always: "Only in the Philippines". Which is where we take you now in the manic Manila meltdown, the 1966 James Batman.