The Infernal Brains Podcast, Episode 19

The focus on Filipino cinema continues at 4DK with the latest, long awaited episode of the Infernal Brains podcast, in which Tars Tarkas and I discuss the cult classic James Batman. Think you're excited about Batman vs. Superman? Well, you might think again once you've had a gander at this low budget Filipino adventure that features both Batman and James Bond. I mean, when you consider that it also features a cameo by the Black Rose, James Batman easily outweighs BvS in terms of sheer superhero poundage (which I think is what you're into.) Listen to the episode here.

(NOTE: This episode has a couple of audio problems in the form of intermittent mic. distortion due to a wonky connection. As you can still easily understand what's being said, Tars and I felt that it was not too severe to interfere with your enjoyment of this fun and informative episode.)

The Last Pinoy Action King (Australia/Philippines, 2016)

Weng Weng is a hard act to follow. I suspect no one knows that better than Andrew Leavold, who directed 2013’s The Search for Weng Weng, an at once fascinating, touching, and hilarious documentary about the Philippines' notorious three foot tall action star. Yet follow Weng Weng Leavold has, co-directing--with his Search for Weng Weng co-writer Daniel Palisa--The Last Pinoy Action King, a documentary about the beloved Filipino action star Rudy Fernandez. Now, Fernandez is a star about whom I know little to nothing (I haven’t even seen one of his films), but I chose not to do any preliminary research in order that I might better judge how well the film makes a case for his importance. Also, I’m lazy as fuck.

I should say first off that King is a much more conventional documentary than its predecessor. Telling the story of Fernandez, a superstar whose life story was amply documented in the media of his day, requires far less excavation than Weng Weng’s—with the result that, as opposed to Search’s labyrinthine detective yarn, King is much more of a straightforward tribute, told through numerous talking head interviews with family, friends and colleagues. Consequently, Leavold contents himself with remaining a behind-the-scenes presence here and does not appear on screen. This diminution of the “hero’s journey” aspect seen in Search (let us pause while Joseph Campbell spins in his grave), of course, renders less likely the occurrence of those happy flukes—like Leavold being granted a sit down interview with Imelda Marcos—that gave Search a lot of its unexpected charm.

By all this, I’m not trying to say that Leavold’s absence from the screen is a strike against The Last Pinoy Action King; no one is expecting him to become the Michael Moore of Filipino cult movie documentaries, after all. It’s just something that I think fans of The Search for Weng Weng would want to know going in. I think it’s also salient that what Leavold and Palisa do bring over from the previous film is a tendency to use their subject as a jumping off point from which to paint a much broader picture of Filipino popular cinema as a whole, which makes this film every bit as essential for world pop cinema fans as Search was. (I should also mention here that Andrew and I are longtime internet friends, though I have repeatedly missed out on opportunities to meet him in person.)

Using the aforementioned interviews, along with plentiful film and television clips, Leavold and Palisa reconstruct Fernandez’s rise to fame. Coming from an entertainment industry family (his father was prolific golden age director Gregorio Fernandez), Fernandez, who is known to family and fans alike as “Daboy”, signed with Sampaguita Pictures in 1970. After an unfulfilling run as a romantic lead, he finally made his mark as an action star with 1976’s Bitayin si… Baby Ama!, in which he portrayed real life criminal Marcial “Baby” Ama. From there, he went on to star in a string of successful features that made him, at his peak, second only to Fernando Poe Jr. as the Philippines greatest action star.

Indeed, FPJ casts a long, generously muttonchopped shadow over The Last Pinoy Action King, on account of him being both a towering figure in Filipino popular cinema and a pioneer of the then prevalent turn toward independent film production (Sampaguita, at the time of signing Fernandez, was the last surviving of the Philippine’s “Big Four” major studios). At the same time, it is easy to see Fernandez as a departure from the cinematic archetype that Poe had established. With his delicate features and quiet demeanor (interviewee after interviewee describes him as “shy”), Fernandez stood in stark contrast to Poe’s brute masculinity, and as such became something of a teen idol in addition to a scrappy hero of the people.

When considering Rudy Fernandez’s career, it’s difficult for me not to compare him to Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Both men reached their peak of fame at a time when their countries were under martial law, and thus allowed their audiences, suffering under the constraints of despotic rule, to rebel vicariously through them. Like Bachchan, who embodied the archetype of the “angry young man”, Fernandez was consistently cast as an enraged everyman fighting against corrupt authorities and venal fat cats. Also like Bachchan, he capitalized on his populist appeal by entering politics in middle age, making an unsuccessful bid to become the mayor of Quezon City in 2001.

Though Fernandez stirred up a minor tabloid scandal with his live-in relationship with teenage “Bomba” actress Alma Moreno, his off-screen life appears to have been pretty tame—and no interviewee in The Last Pinoy Action King will describe him as anything but exemplary. Indeed, if the film could be said to have one major flaw, it is the fault of Rudy Fernandez himself and not of the creatives behind it: He was just too nice. One person after another tells us that, as a friend, he was loyal to a fault, as the president of the Actors Guild, a fierce champion of workers’ rights, and to his longtime spouse, actress Lorna Tolentino, an ideal husband. You might think that this would make it easy to dismiss the film as a hagiography--but, given that Leavold, with The Search for Weng Weng, managed the mean feat of being both affectionate and relentlessly probing, I find it highly unlikely that he would skew his narrative in such a fashion. Nonetheless, I wonder if it is terrible to wish that the actor had at least one unseemly flaw so that the story of his life might have a little more spice. Probably.

On the positive side, it is this ubiquitous adoration that makes the account of Fernandez’s premature death, from a particularly aggressive cancer in June of 2008, all the more moving. It is clear that he is still deeply missed by most who knew him and that his death was a cruel blow from which many of them are still recovering (superstar Sharon Cuneta’s stricken recounting of his painful last days is especially heartbreaking.) This section of the film is exemplary of how Leavold and Palisa commendably let the story be told by the participants themselves, without the aid of cinematic device. It is in this way that The Last Pinoy Action King, while perhaps a less “gonzo” film than The Search for Weng Weng, is arguably a more mature one. Whether you prefer that or not is up to you. To me, it’s a symptom of versatility that bodes well for the future of both men as filmmakers worth watching.

Swing it... Baby! (Philippines, 1979)

The notion that disco music was an innocuous peacetime distraction is belied by its reliance on an almost militaristic set of imperatives. No one ever wrote a disco song titled “Perhaps You Might Like to Dance”. Instead it was titles like “You Should Be Dancing” and exhortations to “get on the floor” and “shake your groove thing”. Faced with such hectoring demands, one could be forgiven for thinking that disco was little more than just bullying with a beat.

Which brings us to Swing It… Baby! Here Filipino sweetheart Vilma Santos, titular star of the three best Darna movies, plays Marilen, a disco queen who is also the manager of the disco group VST & Company, IRL chart toppers who sound so much like the Bee Gees that it has to be addressed within the screenplay (“The Bee Gees? There’s no comparison!”). Marilen is being tirelessly pursued by Ben Benedicto, an executive with Genesis Entertainment, who wants to sign the group. She testily refuses his offers, but for what reason I am not sure, as the film had no subtitles. It did seem, however, to be a matter of principle on Marilen’s part, as if going corporate would somehow compromise the purity of VST & Company’s disco.

Ben Benedicto, by the way, is played by Romeo Vasquez. A matinee idol in the Filipino cinema of the 60s, Vasquez excised himself from a career slump by starring in series of popular romantic dramas with Santos--of which Swing it… Baby! is the seventh--despite the fact that the eleven year age difference between the real life couple raised a few eyebrows. Ben’s mogul image is bolstered by the omnipresence at his side of three obsequious cronies played by the musical comedy trio Tito, Vic and Joey. Of this trio, Joey DeLeon also enjoyed considerable solo success as a comedian, radio personality and TV presenter, although he is most known to the discriminating readers of 4DK for his role in Alyas Batman en Robin.

The action of Swing It… Baby! plays out against preparations for a Filipino Music Festival sponsored by the “Pop Music Foundation”, which is presumably the reason for Ben so ardently wanting to add VST & Company to his stable. In an address to his staff, he lays out the scope of his vision: “We are not selling just records; We are not just promoting performers; We are also shaping new cultural patterns for our country”. Incidentally, the music of VST Company was representative of a Filipino cultural pattern then known as the “Manila Sound”. This was soon replaced by another cultural pattern known as “OPM” (“Original Pilipino Music”), thus punching the clock on VST and Company’s fifteen minutes of fame.

It eventually dawned on me that Swing It… Baby! takes place within the same fictional universe as the Bollywood film Disco Dancer—a sort of uber-populist disco dimension in which the dancers themselves have as much chance of winning fame and adulation as the musicians whose music they dance to. Thus VST and Company comes with a troupe of dancers that are both an inseparable part of their entourage and an equal attraction in their stage shows. The standout among these is Elmo, who, when not dancing for the group, commands adoring audiences who pay for the privilege of watching him and a couple of backup dancers do the Funky Chicken. Fittingly, he is played by Mike Monserrat, who came to fame as a dancer on the Filipino TV program Penthouse 7.

Marilen and her brother have a swank home, inherited from their parents, that serves as disco central for her and her friends. When financial woes raise the threat of them losing the house, she decides to knuckle under and sell out to Ben and Genesis Entertainment. The group’s arrival in The Big City follows, kicking off with them causing a Manila traffic jam which they quickly turn into a block party through the magic of disco. Meanwhile, Marilen and Ben have disco’d their way into a romance. This leads to her neglecting her duties toward the band, which in turn creates tensions that leave them prone to the influence of Ben’s scheming ex-girlfriend Didith (Amy Austria).

Though it would be unfair, given the lack of translation, for me to make a final judgment on the matter, I have to say that the chemistry between real life lovebirds Santos and Vasquez did not in my estimation exactly burn up the screen in Swing It… Baby! Then again, the romance between them is—somewhat tiresomely--portrayed as being of the wisened “oil and vinegar” variety, with their characters either bickering or broken up for most of their time on screen. Nonetheless, when the screenplay decides that the time has arrived, reconciliation is reached, and all drama is pushed aside to make room for a climactic disco spectacle of considerable pageantry.

Is Swing It… Baby! a must see? It is… provided you really, really, like disco--or if you are simply fascinated by the portrayal of individuals for whom disco is at the absolute center of their existence. There are indeed many amusing mustaches, sparkly tops, and poufy hairdos to behold, not to mention some chintzy but colorful stage sets (though, make no mistake: Xanadu this is not). Wilma Santos is her typical, fiery-yet-charming self and Tito, Vic and Joey perform a sci-fi themed number that namechecks Space 1999. At the same time, at two hours and twenty minutes, it is much longer than any film of which those can be claimed as its chief attributes has any right to be. If ever a film could be chopped up and snorted, that might be the ideal way to partake of this oddity.

San Francisco gets Wenged!

If you live in the Bay Area and don't wake tomorrow to find that you have been washed out to sea by the coming superstorm, you might want to head down to San Francisco's Roxie Theater. Taking place there will be the Bay Area premier of friend-of-4DK Andrew Leavold's highly recommended documentary The Search for Weng Weng, which is screening as the opener to the Facine/21: 21st Annual Filipino International Cine Festival. The film screens at 7pm. Andrew will be there and so, nature allowing, will I. Should you swim, paddle, wade, or snorkel, it would behoove you to be there also.

Of wild women and were-beasts

They came from as far away as Tokyo for last night's Shout Down, and The Twilight People rewarded them generously. Simmering bromance, Pam Grier writhing sensuously in tiny clothes, and a literal batman were among the wonders on display. And now those of you who missed the "live" experience can witness it via the neatly condensed Storify transcript linked below:

The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down:
The Twilight People on Storify

And now a preview of next month's feature, as the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down celebrates Halloween with class:

It's all happening Tuesday, October 7th at 6pm PT. For my thoughts on Bloody Pit of Horror, a tremendously fun and stupid movie, see my Teleport City review here.

Tonight! The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down goes hybrid with THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE!

It could be said that participating in the 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down has slowly stripped the Shout Down crew of its humanity, reducing us to an animal state in which we roam the internet in packs, hunting for ever more bizarre films to sink our teeth into.

Tonight, the steaming carcass on which we will feast is THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE, a Roger Corman-backed U.S./Philippines co-production that pays lurid homage to "The Island of Dr. Moreau". All you have to do to gorge along with us is sign on to Twitter at 6pm PT sharp and, using the hashtag #4DKMSD and the handy link below, tweet your reactions to the wonders unfolding before you.



To be honest, this is actually a pretty entertaining film, as I pointed out in my Teleport City review , so, if you can, you should at least join us for the watch-along aspect of the evening, even if you are not moved to comment. We'll be looking for you.

Next Tuesday: The 4DK Monthly Movie Shout Down goes dark with THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE!

Most 4DK readers would head for the hills at the slightest mention of Twilight... Wait! Come back! You see, The Twilight People, the subject of next Tuesday's Monthly Movie Shout Down, is not that kind of a Twilight movie. Instead it's one of those Philippines-shot, Roger Corman produced horror fantasies that happens to feature a young Pam Grier as a ferocious -- albeit sexy -- human/cat hybrid. It's actually very entertaining, blissfully free of sparkly vampires, abstinence messaging, or hollow-eyed Hollywood ingenues. For further testimony as to it being tolerable, why not check out my review of the film over at Teleport City. Or, hey, just check out this trailer I made on my phone:



Sold? Good. Then join us on Twitter, next Tuesday, September 9th, at 6:00 pm PDT as, using the hashtag #4DKMSD, we tweet along to this choice piece of Pinoy-sploitation. It would behoove you to do so!

Darna (Philippines, 1991)

Actress and model Nanette Medved, born in Hawaii to a Chinese mother and Russian father, stands alongside Eva Montes as one of the few one-time movie Darnas. Though she had other roles, this seems to be the most noteworthy thing about her career, as it is one of the first things mentioned in almost every biography of her that I could find, alongside her apparently controversial marriage to a Filipino tuna magnate.

Prior to Medved’s series debut/swan song in 1991’s Darna, the character of Darna had not appeared in Philippines cinemas since 1980’s Darna at Ding, the last of four Darna films starring Vilma Santos, who is widely agreed to be the quintessential screen Darna. By comparison to Santos, who brought a playful, tomboyish quality to the role, Medved’s lithe femininity – abetted by her more revealing costume – marks the beginning of a, for lack of a better word, “sexification” of the character that culminated with the casting of the starkly bodacious Anjanette Abayari in 1994’s Darna! Ang Pagbabalik. This is just one of a number of changes to the Darna canon that Darna attempts, most of which didn’t stick and only served to prove that canon’s durability.

Some sources describe Darna as a remake of the original Darna film, 1951’s Darna, which was directed by Fernando Poe Sr. (father of you know who) and starred Rosa del Rosario in the title role. As that film seems to have been lost to the fires of time, that’s a difficult claim to verify. Suffice it to say, then, that the film is enough of a reboot to warrant yet another retelling of Darna’s origin story (already retold in at least two of the other Darna films I’ve seen). This time that origin is especially evangelical in nature, with young village girl Narda (played by 9 year old Anna Marie Falcon) receiving a literal visitation from an angel before her fateful encounter with the meteor that delivers to her the magic “Darna” stone – which amusingly flies into her mouth of its own accord to affect her initial transformation.

For some reason, director Joel Lamangan and/or writers Eddie Rodriguez and Frank Rivera felt a need to give Narda two little brothers rather than the traditional one. Thus, in addition to her familiar sidekick, that cocky little whelp Ding, we also have the older and more cautious minded Dong (get it?). I can’t over stress how mysterious the motivation for this is, given the fact that the brothers, when not acting in concert, seem pretty interchangeable, and are effectively benched when both become captives of the villains for the latter part of the film. Beyond that, young Narda’s home life is pretty much what we’re used to seeing, if a wee bit more upscale, with her and her siblings living along with their sweet old Lolo (Lorli Villanueva) in an actual house, as opposed to the usual modest hut. I was unable to determine whether her family was actually in on Narda’s secret identity, though they are clearly on familiar terms with Darna. There is even a remarkable scene of Darna towing the whole brood along with her as she flies over the city, Grandma hanging on for dear life.

After these youthful shenangians, we cut forward a dozen years or so to find Narda all grown up. Darna takes the classic B movie route of showing us how at once virginal and hawt our young heroine is by depicting her innocently bathing in a placid river -- clothed in a flimsy white shift, as you do – while being spied upon by a group of leering cretins. This means that we get to see Darna beat up a gang of potential rapists, a scene that culminates in a between-the-legs, “pussy power” shot of Darna’s groveling foes that Telegu master of nuance KSR Doss would surely applaud.

But this grown up Narda (now played, of course, by Medved) is no longer the humble country girl we’ve become so accustomed to seeing in Darna movies. On the contrary, she has left her rustic beginnings behind to choke on her careerist dust and moved to the Big City, Manila, to work as a journalist. Darna can certainly be called to account for borrowing from Wonder Woman -- check out our heroine’s oh so familiar bullet repelling bracelets – but the other American comic book property from which this particular scenario is lifted is difficult to mistake. Narda’s big city reporter is both bespectacled and reserved, and has a co-worker/love interest, fellow reporter George (Tonton Gutierrez), who, while literally shouting his love for Darna from the rooftops, barely registers Narda’s existence. At least, that is, until midway through the film, when Narda predictably doffs the glasses and dons a slinky cocktail dress, signaling to the world that she is actually glamorous model and actress Nanette Medved.

While its class politics may not be as blunt as those of other Darna movies, Darna still draws its villains from among the decadent celebrity class. The first of these is “world famous archeologist, businessman, philanthropist, artist and playboy” Dominico Lipolico, played by Captain Barbell’s Edu Manzano. As we see in the prologue, Dominico is a sort of anti-Darna, also finding the source of his supernatural powers at the site of a meteor crash and also answering to voices from the beyond, though, in his case, ones of a decidedly more satanic nature. In fact, part of his scheme seems to be to turn Darna into an evil version of herself, forcing her to transform while under the influence of a dark potion he has made her consume. Until then, however, he is happy just to soil Darna in the eyes of the law – a not too difficult task given that this version of Darna, like Spiderman, is considered a problematic vigilante by the local gendarmes. As a result, Darna actually ends up doing some time in the bucket later in the film.

Of course, what makes Dominico even more dangerous is the fact that he has teamed up with Darna’s arch nemesis, the gorgon Valentina, played with appropriately operatic bombast by Pilar Pilapil. Valentina’s guise as the “first Filipina fashion designer and international model” (Darna, while unsubtitled, is rife with Taglish, which I appreciated immensely) provides for some deliciously disco-y fashion show settings for the action to play out in, all the better to underscore the dissolute-yet-glamorous immorality of these high living antagonists. Indeed the only misstep with this character might be that her familiar, Vibora, is here played by a wise-cracking muppet snake -- voiced by Ruby Rodriguez – that looks like a serpentine incarnation of Waylon Flowers’ Madame. Then again, it does provide a welcome “WTF” element to the proceedings, so I’m not complaining.

In grand Filipino exploitation movie tradition, Darna, despite its family friendliness, does not pull punches when it comes to its horror content, nor to the business of putting tots in harm’s way. At one point, Dominico demonstrates the extent of his malevolence by transforming a timid schoolmarm into a feral, bat winged vampire. This fearsome, constantly screaming creature is later seen luring a little girl to her death by teasingly dangling her teddy bear in front of her, the ensuing slaughter, partially off screen, leaving little to the imagination. I should also mention that this Darna is the same one that we saw in Darna at Ding (I call her “Old Testament Darna”), who blithely condemns law breakers to a death that due process would likely find unwarranted. Keeping it raw, Darna also, after a particularly bloody climactic fight, gives us the rare sight of a bloodied Darna howling for vengeance.

Happily, Darna balances its more disturbing content with generous doses of the risible, such as when Dominico and Valentina rub their hands together in conspiratorial glee over the prospect of interfering with something called the “Boy Scout Olympics”. Ding and Dong, naturally, are among the scouts attending this grand pageant and thus end up in the villains clutches. Elsewhere we have Valentina carrying Vibora around with her like a mouthy purse dog, and the muppet at one point swallowing Darna’s magic stone and transforming into a snake muppet in a little Darna bikini. Then there is the brony-tailed Dominico’s lavish, self celebrating “free party” for all the people of the city, at which he cynically announces the formation of a philanthropic organization dedicated to the betterment of the Filipino people. The guest of honor: “Internationally famous mannequin” Valentina, who, in the course of the runway show, whips off her turban to reveal her writhing coiffure.

I am probably the least reliable person to offer a critique of Darna, because, to be honest, there is literally not a single Darna movie that I have not enjoyed. I am fond not only of the character, but of the fondness with which she is portrayed. The Filipinos, they love themselves some Darna. Just watch the scene in which the passengers of a train which Darna has just helped avert disaster crowd the windows to wave at her as they pass, with her enthusiastically waving in return. Darna at these moments seems less the awesome superhero than she does just plain neighborly. It is for this reason, I think, that Darna’s attempts to urbanize the character didn’t hold, with the following Darna! Ang Pagbabalik actually putting extra emphasis on her humble village origins. Darna, the most approachable of heroes, is nothing if not a country girl at heart.

Still, Nanette Medved, while perhaps not the most charismatic of screen Darnas – and perhaps also at the mercy of some misjudgments on the filmmakers’ parts – does nothing to get in the way of the affection that those filmmakers obviously held for the property. Unlike the action films of Fernando Poe Jr. (who, yes, I understand is a real person and not a comic book character), which are fueled by a sense of rage and underclass grievance, the Darna movies, while occasionally touching upon similar inequities, come from a place of considerably more warmth and humor. My critical faculties thus incapacitated, I can only offer a friendly wave as their star glides amiably by.

The Infernal Brains Podcast, Episode 17

The femalien is a ubiquitous figure in the science fiction cinema of the 50s and 60s. She can take many forms, be it in Catwomen of the Moon, a film that gives us a good idea of what happens when a man going through a bitter divorce writes sci fi, or in a Mexican lark like La Nave de los Monstruous, which gives us a good idea of what results when the person who ate the worm out of the Mezcal bottle writes sci fi. Covering it all is a big job, too big for any mere man to handle. And that is why Tars Tarkas and myself, in preparing this latest episode of The Infernal Brains, asked for the help of The Cultural Gutter’s Carol Borden, who provides a much needed women’s perspective on the subject of marauding space ladies from throughout world cinema.

Download the episode here, or watch it below accompanied by an estrogen rich slideshow. Even though we know that what you really want is to pop over to our YouTube channel and subscribe. Call it women’s intuition.

The Search for Weng Weng (Australia, 2013)

To the cult film connoisseurs who will make up its core audience, The Search for Weng Weng has already become something of a legend. Directed by Andrew Leavold, founder of Australia’s largest cult video store and author of the indispensable blog Bamboo Gods and Bionic Boys, the film has been seven years in the making and at times seemed at risk of never being completed at all. There is no underestimating the power of obsession, however, as now, thanks to Leavold’s benign mania and the generosity of his supporters, The Search for Weng Weng is finally in the can and poised to make its festival debut.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am among the many people thanked in The Search for Weng Weng’s closing credits -- and also that I see Leavold as very much a kindred spirit. Perhaps it’s in revolt against our own insignificance that chroniclers of international cult cinema like him and me weave entire histories from footnotes and, in so doing, strive quixotically to rescue our subjects from the grasp of obscurity. In any case, Leavold certainly presents himself a challenge with the diminutive Filipino spy spoof star Weng Weng, a figure whom, if anything, has become even more of an abstraction during the time it has taken Leavold to complete his film, thanks to numerous YouTube clips and novelties like The Chuds’ “Weng Weng Rap” going from being a human casting gimmick to a full blown meme and a punch line to a large number of people who would never, unless prompted, think to consider his humanity.

Though he likely needs no introduction to readers of this blog, I’ll simply say that the 2’9” Weng Weng, after being discovered by husband and wife producers Peter and Cora Caballes, became the star of a string of miniature spy spoofs that made him a sensation of sorts in the Philippines of the 1980s, while at the same time earning him a spot in the Guiness Book of Records as the most diminutive adult actor to appear as the lead in any film. When one of those films, 1981’s For Y’ur Height Only, got picked up for international distribution, Weng Weng, for better or worse, became for a time the most recognizable face of Filipino cinema outside the country’s borders. As Leavold notes in the introduction to his documentary, aside from these scant facts, little is known about the tiny performer beyond what we see on display in the handful of his films that survive; that being the image of a monumentally inexpressive, karate fighting homunculus with a tendency to punch his opponents in the groin before escaping between their legs.

Leavold, over the course of numerous visits to the Philippines -- whose bustling streets he films with an affectionate eye for gritty detail -- structures his excavation of Weng Weng’s past as a classic detective story, with us learning each new revelation, one piling on top of another, as he does. His interview subjects include many figures familiar to Filipino exploitation enthusiasts -- producer/director Bobby Suarez, the One Armed Executioner himself, Franco Guerrero, Silip’s Maria Isabel Lopez -- but it is often the grunts on the ground -- the stuntmen, gophers and grips -- from whom he gleans the most salient clues, among them an editor he stumbles upon completely by chance who turns out to have worked on most of Weng Weng’s movies. There are also, as with most investigations, a fair share of intriguing detours, the most surreal being a visit to the mansion of Imelda Marcos that sees the scruffy Leavold given the VIP treatment at a gala reception for the former first lady’s 83rd birthday. A tour of the grounds, conducted by Imelda herself, follows, during which we’re given a loving look at the glass entombed corpse of her dictator husband.

While displaying a healthy sense of humor about his own nerdy fixations, Leavold’s approach to his subject is refreshingly free of the snark one might expect, and is instead unapologetic about being what ultimately amounts to a serious, compassionate and rigorously competent work of investigative journalism. Given the lack of detail he starts with, the extent to which he is able to color in the broad outlines of Weng Weng’s life and career is remarkable. And despite some picaresque details -- like the possibility that Weng Weng may have actually been employed by the Filipino secret service -- the portrait that emerges is, not surprisingly, the more melancholy one that one might expect in a real world in which child-like, 2’9” tall men don’t typically get to woo a succession of beautiful women and fly around in jet packs.

At the same time, and by necessity, Leavold presents a larger portrait of the Philippines’ home grown, Tagalog language film industry that makes his film a welcome counterpoint to Mark Hartley’s fine Machete Maidens Unleashed (to which Leavold also contributed), which focused almost exclusively on the country’s American co-produced contributions to the international exploitation market. Given special focus are the concurrent waves of 1960s James Bond inspired spy pictures, like Tony Ferrer’s long running Tony Falcon series, and irreverent spoofs -- Dolphy vehicles like James Batman being an example-- that dovetailed into the Weng Weng phenomenon. He also touches interestingly upon those aspects of Filipino culture that immunized the makers of Weng Weng’s films from the kind of censure that, in the U.S., greeted Tod Browning’s Freaks, a frequently touched upon film that also exploited its featured performers’ real deformities.

One thing that Leavold comes up against repeatedly in his interviews is the sense that, to many in the Philippines today -- and especially among its cultural proponents -- Weng Weng and his films are something of an embarrassment (in fact, the incredulity of his interview subjects begins to become something of a running gag). A particular sore point seems to be the fact that, at the much touted 1982 Manila International Film Festival, despite the works of the country’s most respected filmmakers being on offer, the only Filipino property to be purchased for distribution outside the P.I. was For Y’ur Height Only. However, it is in this light that I think Leavold’s documentary offers a testament to the worthiness of international pop cinema (or what some, Leavold included, might call “trash” cinema) as a focus of close investigation.

For, indeed, Filipino masters like Lino Brocka might have striven earnestly to show the rest of the world -- or, in most cases, the more or less affluent, predominately white attendees of western art cinemas and film festivals -- what life is like for the Philippines’ impoverished masses. Yet it just might be that a film like For Y’ur Height Only offers us a clearer and less exclusive window into the hearts and minds of those masses. What we then see is both a cheerful lack of pretension and a pronounced generosity of spirit, combined with what Imee Marcos calls the propensity of Filipinos to “turn pain into ridicule”. Given how poignantly The Search for Weng Weng drives this point home, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to consider documentaries like it and Machete Maidens Unleashed as standing alongside “serious” works like Eleanor Coppola’s chronicle of the production of Apocalypse Now, Hearts of Darkness as essential filmic records of the Philippines’ cinematic history. You, of course, might not agree, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing this film at the soonest opportunity.