![]() ![]() What I wouldn't give for a doc by Hartley charting these directors time under Corman's tutelage. In interviews for the film, the former Corman proteges come off as boys who resent the old man while still carrying some affection for him. More than anything else, though, Machete Maidens stands as a document of the period of exploitation film driven by Roger Corman as witnessed by graduates of the "Roger Corman Film School." Some of the best parts of the doc feature directors like Landis, Dante, and Jonathan Demme detailing their time under Corman, and this is truly where the documentary's heart seems to lie. Not the films themselves, per se, but the simple reality of being female action leads in a period where that concept was hugely uncommon. Most of the actresses-now in their 50's and 60's-seem to laugh off the work they did during the era, a couple of them even defending the work as acts of feminism. Hartley does take a stab at the sexual exploitation of the actresses featured in the film, including starlets of movies like TNT Jackson, Firecracker, and The Big Bird Cage about what it meant to show their stuff and generally get knocked around on-camera. I thought this was a brilliant thread worth further explanation-why would Marcos turn a blind eye here-but regrettably, Hartley brings it up and then moves on. What this meant, and what Hartley deftly points out through ample footage, is that numerous sexed-up tales of revolution were being shot at the same time and in the same place where Filipinos even suspected of having ant-government leanings were shot in the street. Instead, what we get here are a series of talking head pieces about various films shot in the country during the rule of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, with quite a few anecdotes by some of the aforementioned talent about the almost comically lax standards that allowed low budget Western filmmakers to come in and have pretty much carte blanche to shoot what they wanted, even as the regime was cracking down on anyone carrying so much as a pocketknife. It should be thrilling, live-wire stuff, but unfortunately, Machete Maidens lacks the one thing that Not Quite Hollywood had: a compelling arc, making it feel more like a snapshot than a story. Hartley assembles a staggering collection of filmmaking talent including Joe Dante, John Landis, and even Corman himself, along with the stars and starlets that got to go in front of the cameras and strip, fight, and shoot guns in small pictures for the big screen. His latest, Machete Maidens Unleashed! gives a similar treatment to the exploitation cinema that was shopped out of the Philippines back in the 70's under Roger Corman and other fast and cheap filmmakers looking to get away with as much sex and violence as possible for their onscreen efforts in an exotic locale without the pesky problems of health and safety and labor laws. The pleasure of that doc was the candid series of talking head interviews along with the chance to discover quite a few Aussie films I'd never heard of in addition to a healthy dose of blood, bullets, and breasts. “My whole life’s been that way.Director Mark Hartley's 2008 doc, Not Quite Hollywood, was a wild and exuberant ride, charting the unexpected rise of the Australian film industry as it embraced sex and violence in genre cinema. “Things always seem to come along,” he said. Now he’s hoping the attention can help him produce his rock-themed reality talk show for the internet, “where women tell stories about their sex lives,” filmed at hot rod car shows.īut, true to the easygoing spirit that comes across in his parts of the film, he’s not too worried about it. He stood on the sidewalk out front greeting people when it ended. “They wanted to get in on the action,” Dean said. A couple he met at a bar heard he was in it, started buying him beers, and then they all went together. He saw the movie with a large audience at a theater. He doesn’t consider himself homeless - “I’ve got a van, with a refrigerator in it, but I do have coffee in the morning with some homeless guys.” He drove north to the Ocala area where, he said, the people are nicer and he has several women helping him out, “for free,” with a T-shirt business and printing his emails. They finally looked in the computer and said that’s it. ![]() “You have to have a guest pass to go to the pools and the rec centers, and I was getting guest passes from all kinds of women and buddies. ![]() “They finally caught up with me,” Dean said recently. ![]()
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