Machete Maidens can be watched in its entirety on YouTube. It’s a lot of fun, but it also made me queasy.
Real corpses? Really? Look, I’m as “safety third” as the next person, but some of what allegedly went on during the making of these movies was callous and amoral.
I hate finding myself in agreement with John Landis, but while it was delightful to watch him puncture Roger Corman’s pretension, Landis’ reasoning will raise eyebrows among viewers of a certain age:
He says he knows too much about the sheer chaos on any film set, especially one for an action flick, to believe Corman or anyone else is thinking about Art when they shout “Action!”
And, well, Landis does indeed know about film set chaos. Not to mention exploiting non-white talent…
What’s ironic is that, the Phillipine-made films were shot in a time and place where life was cheap and regulations didn’t exist, and, if Machete Maidens is to be believed, these directors had only one fatality.
Whereas Landis didn’t notch up three corpses for the sake of a shot until he was shooting in ultra-regulated First World California.
No one is tasteless enough to bring any of this up in Machete Maidens.
Although you may now look at all their jokes about the trouble with filming helicopters a little differently.
