MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! (Australia, 2010)
Directed by: Mark Hartley
Featuring: Roger Corman, John Landis, Eddie Romero

Ready for a crash course in the coolest movies you’ve never heard of? From the unstoppable Aussie team that brought us Not Quite Hollywood, the secret history of Australia’s exploitation film industry, comes MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! an unbelievable look at the Filipino exploitation film industry in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. (For an actual example of one of these gonzo movies, check out Raw Force.)

Financed by overeager American producers with no taste, and shot against the backdrop of the brutal regime of Ferdinand Marcos, these explosive, bloody gems became synonymous with grindhouse cinema. Dubbed “jungle films” by critics of the day, titles like Blood Island, Cleopatra Wong, and For Y’ur Height Only brought trashy Eastern cinema to the States without the ravenous Yankee audiences ever realizing it. Get ready for first-hand accounts from unprepared American starlettes who found themselves in caves that doubled as both dressing rooms and latrines, find out the truth – straight from Pam Grier and Sid Haig – about what it was like to be trapped in The Big Bird Cage, and learn why a primordial dwarf named Weng Weng somehow became Manila’s answer to James Bond.

Through poignant, eye-opening – and often hilarious – interviews with Roger Corman, John Landis, Jack Hill, R. Lee Ermey, and others, director Mark Hartley puts us in the shoes of these often completely lost professionals as they careen aimlessly through South Asian jungles, tangle with military police, and put their lives on the line to provide audiences back home with a taste of the exotic. And to sweeten the pot, Filipino film legends Eddie Garcia, Efren Pinon, and Eddie Romero are on hand to reminisce about their larger-than-life adventures, bombarding us with more mutated monsters, topless warrior queens, and buckets of green blood than conventional good taste should allow. From the political subtext to the sideshow barker sales pitches, MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! is an all-inclusive tour of the Philippine’s very own wild, unhinged and totally off the hook exploitation cinema.