Scorpio Nights (1985)

Scorpio Nights (Peque Gallaga, 1985)

Park Jae-ho's Summertime (2001) is an observation of a young man's descent into sexual adventurism. The man, an activist who is hiding from the authorities, lands in an apartment directly above that of a married couple. Through the several holes on his floor, he observes the man from downstairs having sex with his wife, who seems to be in a mechanical trance. One night, the activist proceeds downstairs, pretends to be the husband, and makes love to the wife, who is again in a mechanical trance. When the wife discovers that it is the activist and not her husband who is having sex with her, she consents, and the two engage in an extremely dangerous love affair. The erotic escapades happen amid a backdrop of Korean political unrest, blatantly in display during the non-sexual moments of the film. Sadly, Summertime is quite simply an unenticing piece of muddled erotica.

Scorpio Nights, the 1985 film that directly inspired Park's beautifully photographed but inert dud, is undoubtedly the better film. Scorpio Nights tackles one hot summer where a student (Daniel Fernando) is left alone in his dorm room, which is directly above the apartment of a security guard (Orestes Ojeda) and his wife (Anna Marie Gutierrez). The student peeks through one of the holes that separate their rooms, observes the couple having sex at night, assumes the identity of the husband to have sex with the sultry wife, gets addicted to the dangerous relationship, and finally meets a grisly end. Minus the very specific historic-political setting of Summertime, plot-wise, the two films are almost identical. However, Scorpio Nights achieved an unsurmountable atmosphere of fetishistic, fatalistic and erotic danger that Summertime can never do so with its period-piece, self-important yet soft core pornographic approximations.

What differentiates the two films is its setting. Scorpio Nights, unlike in Summertime with the antiseptic interiors of the secret lovers' love nest, gloats in excessive filth, palpable heat, and unbearable humidity. Director Peque Gallaga, who started as production designer for great Filipino directors like Eddie Romero (Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon (This Was How We Were, What Happens to You Now, 1976)) and Ishmael Bernal (Girlfriend (1980) and City After Dark (198o)), exemplifies a very keen eye for detail. Gallaga's Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death, 1982), which many local critics regard as his masterpiece, is the paramount example of a work of a production designer-turned-director. The film is sumptuous to look at; the period details are pitch perfect; there is a fathomable attention to outward aesthetics (the famous exodus scene where rows of people and their carabaos pass by a backdrop of burning houses is one spectacular feat). That aesthetic sense common in most production designer-turned-directors, once translated in a story that inhabits a world of upstairs-downstairs sexual trysts and societal repression, results in one of the most thematically intriguing, visually arresting, and sweaty-and-kinky erotic films ever made.

Scorpio Nights is almost entirely shot inside a low-income compound that houses a boy's dormitory (the interiors are essentially masculine, with calendars and posters of scantily clad women adorning the walls; also representative of that repressed attitude towards sex (or anything that was abhorrent to Ferdinand Marcos' concept of new society) that is very particular during Marcos-era politics), several single-family dwellings, a welding shop, a basketball court, and a communal bathing area. The area is in itself a masterpiece of production design (by Don Escudero). The courtyard (if you can even call it that) is the perennial meeting place, a flea market of invaluable rumors and stories of macho conquests. Separating these areas are hole-infected partitions, glass windows, and flimsy plywood doors. Certainly, privacy is a luxury here thus, the entire compound is practically the breeding ground for future rapists and sexual deviants with its daytime banter of seedy type and its nighttime invitation for voyeurism and other acts.

The grime, rust, and mud that line that quintessential Manila compound only emphasize the lowlife morality that fuels the near-ridiculous storyline. During its non-erotic moments, the film takes a neo-realist stance at least up to the point wherein the student discovers the unlikely phenomenon of having his sexual fantasies turn into his present reality. Gallaga then revels in erotic camp, of pink mosquito nettings enveloping lustful lovers at the height of their sexual activity; or transparent raincoats hiding their naked bodies from the rain. During those moments of zany visual and sexual excesses, we get a glimpse of exactly why the allure of the downstairs wife is unbearable, even to the point of fucking in the midst of the threat of death. It's that unwavering boyhood fantasy that Gallaga so excellently wants us to believe in; and if we don't necessarily believe in that fantasy overcoming reality, at least it was one hell of a ride.

Some screenshots from the film:


The student fondles a feather (erotic poster in the background)


The entrance to the compound


Residents of the compound hanging their laundry


The student and the downstairs wife in ecstatic copulation


Lovemaking while covered in rain and a plastic raincoat

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This review is my contribution to the Production Design Blog-a-Thon at Too Many Projects Film Club.

Silip (1985)

Silip (Elwood Perez, 1985)
aka Daughters of Eve

Elwood Perez's Silip has that ball-grabbing opening. It is that sort of opening that immediately catches your attention to either go on with the film with much more curiosity and gusto, or to just leave it be and consider yourself salvaged from further moral damage. The film begins with Simon (Mark Joseph), the village butcher, hitting a live carabao on the head. The carabao collapses as the man keeps on hitting it on the head. It's a savage sequence. Perez makes use of a real live carabao, probably a lot cheaper than an animatronic one (Perez didn't really had to worry about animal rights activists back then) which is later on killed, disemboweled, beheaded and butchered right in front of our eyes. The carabao, supposedly the pet of one of the village boys, is pleaded by the village kids to be spared. Headstrong Simon disagrees and preaches about the practicalities in life: what makes their carabao different from the rest, that the beast will die anyway, and that the village requires that he do the brutal act so that everyone can eat.

Silip (its literal English translation is Peeping) was released outside the Philippines as Daughters of Eve. The film was peddled as bizarre curiosity from an exotic land, a softcore (or described as near-hardcore) pornographic feature; and quite rightly so. The film features an onslaught of sex scenes, both titillating and disturbing, and long stretches of time wherein all we see are naked bodies prancing around the village. Yet there seems to be something else brewing beneath the film's flesh-colored celluloid other than mere titillation. Silip is very rebellious in its themes and even in its production.

Made in 1985 during the decline of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorship in the Philippines, Silip was one among the many soft-core to hard-core (locally referred to as pene films because it featured actual penetration) that sneaked through the uncharacteristic laxity of the local censors. Unusually though, Silip, unlike other sex-themed features like Peque Gallaga's Scorpio Nights(1985) , did not try to dent governmental institutions or just to make a quick buck out of the nation-wide depression and dissent, but instead sought to arouse questioning of that other important and prominent institution in the Philippines, the Catholic Church.

The film features two sisters, Tonya (Maria Isabel Lopez) and Selda (Sarsi Emmanuelle, one third of the trio of sexy actresses named by their managers after soft drinks). Tonya teaches catechism to the children of the village while the parish priest is recuperating from an illness in another town. However, Tonya has a secret sexual attraction for Simon, who is currently bedding Maria (Myra Manibog, whose surname an obvious pun on the Tagalog word for "horny"), elder sister of the young lad from the opening (now holding a grudge against Simon for killing his carabao, and having sex with his sister).

Selda just came home from the city with an American lover. She's the exact opposite of Tonya as her views on sex is more liberal and less guilt-filled. Amidst the apparent disagreement between the two, a similarity surfaces: that both of them are in a state of heat. Tonya tries to ease the lust by rubbing herself with salt or sand while Selda, on the other hand, beds any man she sees while desperately eying Simon.

Scripted by Ricky Lee, who has achieved revered status as the Philippines' best film scribe, the film features several sequences of remarkable bravura. Perez, who alongside the late Joey Gosiengfiao has ushered in Philippine films with cult exploitative flavor, knows the value of shock. Silip may in fact be regarded as numerous eye-opening and sweat-producing scenes stringed together by drab and lengthy connectors; which is probably why the film feels far too long. The opening scene can only be topped by the film's astounding conclusion: a gang rape that appears to be a sweaty, greasy and undoubtedly un-arousing orgy inside a bamboo shanty. Each big scene is an attack on valued principles and norms of propriety; it's actually quite easier to digest the film as mere exploitation than actual art. Art dictates a semblance of truth while exploitation is for mere sensual pleasuring.

The inclusion of religiosity within the context of the characters' flesh-starved existence complicates matters. It seems to beg the question of that difficult balancing act of rigid faith and the natural call of the flesh. It definitely is not a masterpiece as Perez's filmmaking is quite too elementary to raise the film's level to heaven heights. However, it cannot be considered as mere curiosity, or even definitive of Philippine cinema during that era of governmental turmoil and public discontent. The film is Pasolini-esque in its irreverence and Bunuel-esque in its social absurdity.

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This post is my contribution to The Bleeding Tree: The Trashy Movie Celebration Blog-A-Thon.

Mondo Macabro has done an excellent job in restoring this unique film. Previously, one can only view this film, dubbed in English and subtitled in Greek, through the many bootlegs that roam the black market and the internet but with the loving dedication of the guys behind Mondo Macabro, we have with us a 2-DVD set, with the original Tagalog track and a bevy of extra features.

Hinugot sa Langit (1985)

Hinugot sa Langit (Ishmael Bernal, 1985)
English Title: Snatched From Heaven

Ishmael Bernal's Hinugot sa Langit (Snatched from Heaven) is a very challenging film to watch. Right from the start, the audience is introduced with scenarios of complex problems pressed after other problems. The characters are drafted from your typical melodrama stereotypes. The center of the drama is Carmen Castro (Maricel Soriano), the impossibly patient victim of the screenwriter-created dilemmas. Revolving around Carmen's personage and dilemmas are other characters that are seemingly cut from traditionally established cinematic stereotypes. There is Stella (Amy Austria), the liberated and seemingly modern cousin of Carmen. Juling (Charito Solis) is Carmen's overly religious landlady, an avid member of a charismatic prayer group. Jerry (Al Tantay) and Bobby (Rowell Santiago), are the two men in Carmen's life, the former, an irresponsible playboy-gambler, the latter, a traditionalist who is stuck to his life plans.

Hinugot sa Langit, on paper, sounds like your typical Filipino melodrama where histrionics and impossible scenarios abound, but fantastically, the film is far from that. Beautifully restrained, simple, and hard hitting, Hinugot sa Langit tackles a controversial topic with an uncontroversial control and a humanistic approach to a central character that has all the problems of the world to withstand.

During the first few minutes of the film, we are informed that Carmen is pregnant. Her cousin Stella scoffs and recommends abortion. The father of the child, Jerry, also recommends abortion. Her landlady, who is busy juggling her religious aims and her legal quarrel with the poor families illegally living in her land, suggests that she keeps the baby as killing it would be a sin against God. Carmen sees signs that would seemingly suggest an answer to her difficult decision. Her poor neighbors struggle for money to feed their children. She sees a physically malformed child vending goods outside the church. She loses her job at a financing company due to the struggling economy during that time.

Hinugot sa Langit may be branded as preachy and anti-abortion but in reality, while its focus is that controversial issue, Ishmael Bernal and screenwriter Amado Lacuesta, populates the film with side stories that suggest a latter more pressing issue, which is societal hypocrisy. It just so happens that abortion is the most telling of issues. The Philippines being a prominently Catholic nation declares abortion as criminally and morally wrong yet funnily, the practice is unwrittenly accepted among women who are time-pressed with a decision. Such is the scenario here, Carmen is surrounded by suggestions of what to do but is left upon her own faculties in deciding. Each suggestion is clouded by a tinge of doubt. The characters surrounding her aren't naturally sure of their own lives. Stella is outwardly happy and wild but inwardly is insecure and lonely. Juling carries within herself an unerasable guilt which she tries to forget through her religious practices, forgetting that the world has deeper problems than her past. All the events and the characters have unnatural and seemingly impossible roots, but as a screenplay, as a dramatic film, Hinugot sa Langit works.

Thematically sound, Hinugot sa Langit also boasts of technical mastery. The music is sparse and controlled. Bernal forgoes the over orchestrated notion of what a drama should be and instead relies on his visuals and his actors talents to draw out emotions. The cinematography is simple but there are some very wonderful shots where the lighting, the blocking of the actors, and the framing, contribute to an impressive addition to Bernal's atmosphere of confusion and cynicism for this unsure Filipino society. The acting is very impressive. Maricel Soriano is wonderfully restrained, letting go of her usual histrionics for the more difficult style of acting that comes from what is felt within than what is outwardly presented. Charito Solis is a wonderful presence, and so is Amy Austria, who singlehandedly gives the film a lighthearted humor.