Boy God (Philippines, 1982)

To give credit where it's due, Andrew Leavold has already provided a terrific overview of Boy God (aka Stone Boy, aka Rocco, Ang Batang Bato) over at his very fine blog Bamboo Gods and Bionic Boys, in which he not only summarizes the film, but also gives a substantial amount of background regarding its production. (And if you have any interest in Filipino film at all, you owe it to yourself to also check out the phenomenal capsule history of Pinoy B cinema that Andrew recently posted. It's absolutely essential.) The fact that Andrew has done all of the heavy lifting of providing a context within which to view Boy God means that I'm left free to instead simply focus on what a weird movie it is. Thus, in approaching the film, I think that both Andrew, a knowledgeable person, and I, a lazy person, have been afforded a chance to play to each of our individual strengths.

Still, what I will tell you is that Boy God stars Nino Muhlach, the phenomenally popular Filipino child star who we here at 4DK last saw in 1980's Darna at Ding, in which he co-starred with Vilma Santos in her last screen turn as the beloved Pinoy superheroine Darna. Like Darna at Ding, Boy God was produced by the Muhlach family's production company, D'Wonder Films, and, in its similarly superheroic themes, represents an attempt to capitalize on the success of that earlier film. As will happen with child stars, encroaching adolescence was necessitating a bit of re-branding on the part of Nino and his handlers, as he was rapidly becoming unsuitable for the cute kid roles that his stardom was built upon. The one-two punch of having him portray Darna's sidekick and then a magical hero made of rock seems, then,  to have been a bid to position him as a teenage star of crazy fantasy action films.

And, if nothing else, Boy God succeeds at being crazy. Although primarily a fantasy film, it also seems to contain within it elements of every other type of Filipino exploitation movie of its day. There are horror elements which seem to draw upon both Catholic traditions and local folklore, two-fisted action with jungle guerrillas firing machine-guns at one another, spy elements right out of the Tony Falcon films, and, of course, as in any example of Filipino popular cinema, lots of broad comedy. I have also heard Boy God referred to as a children's film, which it very well might have been by the Filipino standards of its day. But whether you personally would want to expose your toddler to it would be determined by just how well you think a film prominently featuring spirit rape would fit into their regular diet of Pixar fare and Yo Gabba Gabba.

Another noteworthy aspect of Boy God is that it is a veritable tour de force of low budget special effects, encompassing everything from crude drawn animation to crude claymation to crude suitmation. In other words, basically every kind of "mation" that could be accomplished for less than the cost of one day's catering on the original Clash of the Titans is brought to bear upon the task of realizing the film's menagerie of fantastical beasts and magical creatures. Unfortunately for my purposes, director J. Erastheo Navoa and cinematographer Hermo Santos wisely chose to blanket these effects in an obscuring fog of dim lighting and murky night photography, rendering it nearly impossible both for them to be seen in all their flawed glory by the cinema audience and for me to get any decent screen caps of them.

Our adventure begins when a strange, toga wearing specter impregnates a young village woman against her will, with the result that, some time later, baby Rocco is born. Sadly, not long after this blessed event, a spurned former lover of  Rocco's mom, village bad guy "Robby", shows up with his motley band of guerrillas to riddle both her and her husband with machine-gun bullets. This leaves Rocco's old grandma with the task of raising him, a process that increasingly involves her having to hide his growing superhuman abilities from the prying eyes of the other villagers. (As is frequent in Pinoy films, both A and B, village life is portrayed here as a seething hellhole of intolerance and malicious gossip.) Eventually young Rocco discovers that his powers are nullified when he is exposed to water, and his grandma helpfully explains that this is because he is made of limestone, and, like limestone (and Alka Seltzer), he becomes stronger when heated, but dissolves when placed in water.

Meanwhile, none other than oft-resurrected Nazi madman Dr. Mengele (Jimmy Wilson) is contaminating the water supply with a chemical that is turning the villagers into werewolves and giant vampire bats. Among the werewolf contingent are a trio of cannibalistic witches so unwholesomely smitten with young Rocco's plump dimensions that they end up -- in one of the film's most prize winning moments of utter wrongness --  tying his naked, well-basted 12 year old body to a giant spit and trying to roast him. While the basting part does the trick of incapacitating Rocco, the roasting part has the opposite effect, and he ends up kicking the asses of both the were-witches and their giant bat minions.

And at this point, you might be surprised to learn, the events of Boy God take a somewhat unusual turn. An old bearded sage type appears and announces himself to Rocco as Vulcan, "Elder of the Immortals". Rocco's real father, it turns out, was also one of the Immortals -- who appear to be a sort of Filipino B movie approximation of the Gods of Olympus as according to Ray Harryhausen -- and is now being held in limbo for the crime of falling in love with a mortal woman. Rocco's mom is also in limbo, I guess just because she's a woman. Anyway, the only way that Rocco can free the both of them, he is told, is to travel to the land of the Immortals and complete a series of arduous, predetermined tasks.

And so, with this, Boy God becomes a quest narrative of the least epic scale imaginable, with Rocco, now kitted out in junior-sized gladiator togs, marching through what appears to be the same small expanse of forest over and over again, fighting in succession an army of midgets, a partially claymation cyclops, and a pair of Siamese twin ogres. Also thrown in to provoke happy associations is a very Darna-like character called Janus, who pops up intermittently to aid him. Finally Rocco reaches the realm of the Immortals, where he is told that what he really needs to do in order to free his parents is return to Earth and settle this whole Dr. Mengele business. This he does, and thus effectively ends the "epic quest" portion of Boy God, just in time for us to have a James Bond style finale in which Rocco and the forces of the law invade Mengele's secret compound, do battle with his machine-gun wielding minions, and blow a lot of stuff up.

What to say about Boy God really? Out of all the Tagalog language films made for the local Filipino market, Boy God had to be one of the most eccentric candidates for being dubbed into English and set loose upon the international home video market -- admirably so, even. While it's not too hard to imagine that much within it was business as usual to its original intended audience, it's another thing entirely to put yourself in the shoes of some unwitting, Reagan era patron of Blockbuster who brought it home for his kids to watch, only to end up with therapy bills that plague him to this day. For us today, though, looking back upon the film with the kind of world weary sophistication that only prolonged exposure to the internet can engender, it's a different matter.

Or is it? To tell the truth, I don't think that any amount of distance, either temporal or emotional, can render Boy God any less strange. That is its true super power.

Friday's best pop song ever

Chalbaaz (India, 1969)

Chalbaaz begins with the sound of the 007 theme, and the sight of Indian stunt film king Dara Singh in a crisp black suit, dispatching a gang of armed goons with cool but deadly efficiency. And then he wakes up. It turns out that, while he may dream of being James Bond, Dara's character here, Ranjit, is instead a hapless beat reporter for an undistinguished daily rag who still lives with his mom. Nonetheless, we will still, by the time the film has run its course, see him become enmeshed in a perilous international intrigue involving rival gangs of enemy spies and a much coveted figurine that conceals within it some kind of secret something-or-other.

I've mentioned elsewhere that Dara Singh functioned as a sort of all-purpose action hero during his mid-to-late 60s heyday, able to embody Hindi versions of Samson, Zorro, Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, etc. as his films -- and their wardrobe departments -- required. Still, the makers of Chalbaaz made a wise choice by casting him as an everyman here. Even though their obvious intent was to churn out yet another Bollywood cash-in on the popularity of the Bond franchise, to cast Dara as an urbane super-agent in the 007 mold would have undermined his earthy, up-from-the-streets appeal, which was largely dependent upon on a charming lack of sophistication. Such qualities did not, however, prevent him from portraying the kind of classic Hitchcockian dupe, unwittingly embroiled in a web of international espionage, that he does here.

Chalbaaz's makers also benefitted greatly from a Dara Singh who, at this point in his film career -- while perhaps not developing into any kind of master thespian -- was becoming increasingly comfortable in his role as a movie star, and consequent with that, was showing an increasing ability to make fun of himself. Thus, in contrast to the monolsyllabic jugernaut who marched through his early films, dutifully hurling bodies left and right as the fight choreography required, we have a more loosey-goosey Dara Singh who gamely mimes along to romantic duets, cracks wise at his opponents during fight scenes, pulls off a couple of madcap comic masquerades, and generally takes part in a lot of good natured clowning around. This of course means that, as spy movies go, Chalbaaz is certainly on the more whimsical end of the spectrum, a fact underscored by its being populated by, in addition to a somewhat dopey protagonist, a seemingly endless parade of walk-on caricatures, from wacky bellhops and eccentric auctioneers to goofy newspaper editors and zany restaurateurs.

The problem is that, despite these comedic elements, Chalbaaz also wants to provide its audience with the kind of thrills expected from a straightforward 1960s spy picture, and -- whether from a lack either of financial means, commitment or imagination -- never goes far enough in either direction to set itself apart from the already quite overcrowded pack. I'd be curious to know what percentage of all feature films made in the world between 1965 and 1969 were spy films. If I had to guess, I'd say... well, let's just say that it would be an awful lot of them, of which I think I've seen an embarrassingly large sample. Among these, even the very cheapest feature some pretty over-the-top elements, which means that any contender really has to push the envelope in terms of absurdity to make any kind of impression. Absurdity and over-the-top-ness both being things that Bollywood has historically shown no tendency of shying away from, it's all the more disappointing that Chalbaaz so frequently can't come up with anything more to dazzle us with than an overlong foot chase set to needle-dropped surf music.

To be fair, habitual Bollywood bad guy Shyam Kumar does raise the stakes a wee bit when he shows up in the second hour as a ringleader with a small platoon of Mrs. Peel-like, female karate assassins. Not only does this further prove that no country with men in it is immune to the charms of Diana Rigg in a form fitting cat suit, but it also provides a precious smattering of exactly the kind of campy silliness that Chalbaaz would need an awful lot more of to make it worth me recommending it. Still, I should make allowances for the fact that the VCD of the film was not subtitled in English, and the corresponding possibility that its Shakespeare level dialog and mindbogglingly ingenious plot twists, had I understood them, would have more than compensated for the lack of purely visual stimuli. I kind of doubt it, though.

While my own returning to the Dara Singh well again and again is turning out to be a game of diminishing returns, it must be said that Chalbaaz will be less of a disappointment to some than to others. For instance, its song score by Lala Sattar, while no classic, boasts its fair share of real toe tappers, and its leading lady, Sanjna, is indeed easy on the eyes. More importantly, a training montage featured in the film's opening minutes will likely be seen as a boon to those ladies -- and gentlemen -- whose interest in Dara Singh goes somewhat beyond his ability to execute all the standard, federation-approved holds. And to you folks in particular I say, "You're welcome."

Akrepler (Turkey, 1983)

  
Akrepler director Cevat Okcugil deserves our attention for at least two reasons. First of all, he directed the 1966 film Orumcek Adam, which is the earliest of three films -- the others being 1972’s Orumcek and 1973’s 3 Dev Adam -- that have all come to be referred to by the unofficial title “Turkish Spider-man”, not to mention that it’s the only one of those films that is actually named Spider Man, albeit in Turkish. Depending upon whom you believe, Orumcek Adam was either based directly on the famous Marvel comic book hero, and is thus one of the very first -- if not the first -- of the wave of superhero films produced in Turkey throughout the late 60s and early 70s, or it has nothing to do with Spider-man at all. Okcugil also directed the 1967 film Django vs. The Gestapo, whose title sums up everything that’s great about Turkish pulp cinema in four words.

Akrepler (English translation; “Scorpion”), is one of Okcugil’s later films, an un-subtitled copy of which just happened to recently fall into my suspiciously well-manicured hands. I really can’t tell you much about what’s going on in it during it’s first half. But during it’s second it turns into a revenge tale, which makes its events far more relatable. I mean, who out there doesn’t have someone whom they’d like to make pay and pay and pay for some real or perceived wrong that they’ve perpetrated? And if you say not you, you are a damn liar, and as God is my witness I am coming for you if it’s the last thing I do.

Akrepler’s protagonist is a burly mustache farmer by the name of Jamal, who is played by Kemal Aydan. We first see Jamal out on the town with his big-haired, chain-smoking best buddy and a couple of foxy mamas, enjoying the floor show at a ritzy restaurant. Afterward they all go back to one of their apartments, where one of the women shoots up some drugs and hallucinates her way into a Jess Franco movie, complete with lots of hyperactive zooming in and out on people’s sweaty faces.

While all of this is going on, a criminal gang whose hideout prominently features a cheesy scorpion wall plaque (oh what paths might their lives have taken had they never bought that plaque?) is committing a string of brutal armed robberies. What these have to do with Jamal is unclear, but eventually some of the gang’s members go to Jamal’s folks’ house, kill both of his elderly parents, and rape his sister, who looks like Turkey’s answer to Tina Yothers. At this point, needless to say, the shit is on.

In his quest for revenge, Jamal makes the mistake of turning to his big-haired, chain-smoking friend for help, only to find that said friend has secretly been a member of the scorpion gang all along. Big Hair shoots Jamal and leaves him for dead, after which Jamal is rescued and nursed back to health by a woman whose wardrobe consists entirely of red vinyl jumpsuits and leopard print lingerie worn as day wear.

Once recovered, Jamal resumes his hunt for payback, and also starts wearing a domino mask for some reason. As with most Turkish superheroes, Jamal’s wardrobe is mask optional (as I recall, in 3 Dev Adam, the Turkish Captain America’s costume simply served the same purpose as a lucky pair of underwear), and he mainly seems to wear his for the purpose of whipping it off dramatically to reveal his identity whenever he’s got the drop on an adversary. In every case, that adversary reacts with gasping astonishment at the fact that this identically coiffed and mustached, Jamal-shaped man is, in fact, Jamal.

To anyone accustomed to the wild, action oriented style of 1960s Turkish films like those in the Kilink series, Akrepler might come off as a bit ponderous and deliberately paced. While there are certainly a decent amount of scenes involving fighting and bloody gun violence (for some reason aimed disproportionately against old people), there is also an awful lot of dialogue and what appears to be actual plot separating them. Having not seen many other Turkish pulp films from this late period, I couldn’t tell you if this is a sign of the industry as a whole maturing, and as a result embracing more prosaic narrative conventions, or if it is simply something particular to Akrepler. In any case, if it is a sign of age, there is nothing in Akrepler that demonstrates a corresponding maturing of cinematic technique, as what we see here is the same homely, point-and-shoot style that we’ve been seeing in these movies since the get go. Even the grand tradition of stealing the film’s soundtrack from James Bond (Turkish trash cinema renaissance man Kunt Tulgar gets sound engineer credit here) is still observed -- though in this case it’s George Martin’s score to Live and Let Die that gets the workout, rather than the usual John Barry joints.

And appropriate to that, Akrepler’s finale is a crescendo of decidedly sub-Bondian proportions, with Jamal gunning down the whole scorpion gang, sexy lady minions and all, and then blowing up their unassuming, HO scale cottage hideout. Ah, but revenge does not come without a price for our hero. Whoa… wait. What? Yes, that’s right; Akrepler doesn’t even allow us the vicarious thrill of seeing our hero rain bloody vengeance upon his foes with impunity, but instead suggests that such actions somehow have consequences. Crazy, right? Wow, Akrepler, if I’d wanted to be bummed out, I would have just watched Turkish E.T.

Friday's best pop song ever

Antar The Black Prince (Egypt, 1961)

Antar The Black Prince comes to us in searing Eastmancolor, as befits a swashbuckling adventure of such epic scope. The film is based on the life and legend of Antarah ibn Shaddad, a 6th century poet and hero whose poetic works have come to be considered among the greatest in the Arab language. As the title indicates, Antar was indeed black, the son of an Arab tribal leader and a female Ethiopian slave. However, he is here played by a light-skinned Arab actor in black face. Given the movie's frequent admonishments about not judging men by the color of their skin, this makes for a bit of cognitive dissonance; it's sort of like watching Al Jolson sing "Fight The Power".

The aforementioned actor is Farid Chawki, a popular star of Egyptian action films during the 50s and 60s who crowned himself with the title "The King of the Terzos". The term "Terzos" refers to Egypt's third class movie theaters, the lowest level in the Egyptian cinematic food chain. From what I can tell, these were essentially the same as America's grindhouses, being somewhat disreputable urban movie houses running a constant program of second and third run films for the benefit of a largely male, working class audience.

That largely male, working class audience had their own name for Chawki: "The Beast". And any mystery surrounding that moniker can be easily dispelled by watching a film like Antar The Black Prince. The young Chawki is gifted with both imposing physical stature and brute intensity, as well as a seething, street level machismo that makes him quite the credible screen brawler -- though less so when he is trying to portray a mastery of the sword than when he is simply tossing people around with his bare hands like Dara Singh. When angered or cornered in Antar, he frequently lets out a loud, guttural roar, making for quite a contrast to those moments in the film when he spontaneously gives voice to florid romantic verse.

As depicted in the film, Antar's struggle to free himself from slavery, win the acknowledgment of his nobleman father, and the hand of his highborn cousin, A'abla (Kouka, wife of Antar director Niazi Mostafa, who cast her as a series of Bedouin heroines in his films) is a tough row to hoe. It is only after he saves A'abla from a gang of rapacious bandits that his father, Shaddad, deigns to relieve him of his lowly sheep herding duties and make him a knight in his army. Even so, it takes yet more instances of Antar single-handedly saving the collective asses of his tribe before Shaddad will agree to publicly admit to being his father, and then more acts of selfless heroism before the tribe will recognize him as a suitable mate for A'abla.

And even then the battle isn't over, as the romantic designs of the foppish Prince O'Mara -- smitten with A'abla -- and Shaddad's adulterous wife Somaiyah -- likewise with Antar -- lead the two to resort to every kind of chicanery imaginable in order to derail the relationship between Antar and A'abla. Finally, A'abla's father schemes with O'Mara to get rid of Antar once and for all by demanding that Antar supply for A'abla a dowry of one thousand red camels, which can only be obtained after a lengthy journey into hostile territory via a particularly treacherous stretch of desert. Honestly, it's a wonder that Antar didn't just tell everyone to get stuffed and go off to form a tribe of his own.

In short, being the lover of a woman of legendary beauty like A'abla proves to be nothing but trouble for Antar, as she is relentlessly being carted off by one lustful bandit, unscrupulous nobleman or another -- invariably screaming "Antar! Antar!" as she goes -- throughout the film. This has the potential to give the story a sort of Perils of Pauline repetitiveness. But, despite being limited by an obviously modest budget, the filmmakers manage to keep thing lively through the use of lots of aggressive color, frequent fight scenes, rousing Bollywood-style musical numbers, and the occasional jolt of surprising gore. The film may not provide a lesson in tolerance for those who are otherwise inclined, but it at least might demonstrate to them the inadvisable nature of keeping down a black man who could easily snap their necks with his bare hands.

Operation Thunder Thighs

Is it at all possible that there could be another person on this Earth who is as big a fan of Telegu action starlet Jyothi Laxmi as I am? If so, maybe they should consider bidding on this poster for her 1972 thriller Miss Chal Baaz, Tingoo Agent 000 that recently went up for sale on eBay.

(Thanks to Durian Dave at Soft Film for passing this along.)

Speak the Dr. Gori way!

Soon the Earthlings will feel my power.


Behold, all is proceeding according to plan


Your days of spoiling this green and fruitful planet
will soon be at an end.


My flying whale is perfect in every detail.


Spectreman will not win.


This time, Karis, failure will not be tolerated.


(Evil laughter)

Friday's best pop song ever