Theme: Filipino Cinema

Filipino Cinema refers to filmmaking from The Philippines. When we refer to Filipino Cinema, what we almost exclusively talk about is a series of films made between the late 1960s and the early 1980s.

Filipino horror cinema had begun with Terror is a Man (1959), an uncredited adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau (1896). Those involved went on to make Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969), which was promoted in the US and proved a reasonable success. This launched a series of sequels, copycats and assorted other horror films, founded around mad scientists, cheesy monster creations, bare boobs and tropical island settings.

In turn, low-budget US filmmakers of the 1970s began to look to the Philippines as a cut-price, non-unionised locale for shooting and churned out a good number of action and war films. The phenomenon is charted in the documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010).

The Filipino exploitation phenomenon faded away in the 1980s. There have been assorted genre films made in the country since, although nowhere near the amount there was in the genre’s heyday.