Machete Maidens Unleashed! On DVD: Filipino Noir

My DVD Hidden Gem pick this week for CBC Radio is the latest film from Mark Hartley, who is steadily carving a niche out for himself as the master of slickly made documentaries about the exploitation-movie traditions of the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. In Not Quite Hollywood, he provided a very entertaining, anecdote-rich history of the Australian "Ozploitation" scene, and now in Machete Maidens Unleashed!, he tackles the made-in-the-Philippines action and women-in-prison pictures of the ’70s.

I can't say Hartley added too many movies to my gotta-see list, the way he did in Not Quite Hollywood, but he tells an arguably more provocative story, rich in contradictions and provocative ironies. He doesn't tell it with any great depth or insight, but it's interesting to see how a movie as epic and ambitious Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now was in many ways following right in the footsteps, production-wise, as dozens of cheapo Grade-Z jungle action pictures before it.

You can listen to my segment about Machete Maidens Unleashed! by clicking here. Enjoy!