Shake Rattle and Roll 12 (2010)

Shake Rattle and Roll 12 (Zoren Legaspi, Topel Lee & Jerrold Tarog, 2010)

Something has to be said about how Regal Films treats its films. Shot digitally, the films are haphazardly transferred to film to be projected in theaters. As seen in theaters, the films look absolutely abominable, with its already muted colors bleeding into each other and digital artifacts scattered throughout the unsatisfactory images. In other words, far from the usual gloss that has been part and parcel of mainstream filmmaking, all the recent films of the historic film studio, in its attempt to churn out movies within a budget by utilizing digital filmmaking, are horrid manifestations of the ills of technology in the service of filmmaking for convenience and profit rather than artistry and integrity.

Shake Rattle and Roll 12 exemplifies this blatant bastardization of film that seemed to have ripened into practice for Regal. The fact that it is the twelfth in the series of three-part horror/horror-comedy anthologies that started in 1984 is enough proof that these films exist as cash-cows and that any artistic merit that can be derived from them are mere byproducts of their commercial goals. The series has never been a bastion of originality. However, either by sheer luck or actual inspiration, several episodes like Ishmael Bernal’s Fridyider (1984), Richard Somes’ Ang Lihim ng San Joaquin (2005), and Topel Lee’s Yaya (2006) have surpassed their borrowed beginnings and can be regarded as contemporary classics in Filipino horror filmmaking. That said, the fact that included in the series’ twelfth installment is an episode that justifies the series’ continuing existence despite the strong evidence that the series is nearing creative depletion makes the aforementioned lack of respect by Regal for its filmmakers and their films more painful.

Shake Rattle and Roll 12’s first two episodes, Mamanyika (Mama Doll), directed by Zoren Legaspi, about a murderous doll that purports to be the mother of a little kid who lost her mother, and Topel Lee’s Isla Engkanto (Enchanted Island), directed by Topel Lee, about a group of friends who become victims of engkantos in an island, are slightly entertaining but hardly memorable additions to the franchise. Jerrold Tarog’s Punerarya (Funeral Parlor), however, is something else. It is that rare deliberately graceful horror short that is made even more special by the fact that it seems to be a piece of treasure in a sea of junk.

Punerarya starts inside a funeral parlor where a young teacher (Carla Abellana, who magnificently avoids all clichés in horror film acting to deliver a refreshingly relaxed but intense performance) is introduced by the funeral parlor’s owner (Sid Lucero) to her children, her new students --- a morose girl and her friendly brother who are curiously sensitive to light. What follows is a slow yet delicious unraveling of mysteries closeted within the confines of a morbid but otherwise normal business operation.

Tarog has mastery over the time and thematic limitations of his medium. He withholds telling too much plot to the disservice of creating an atmosphere that accommodates the episode’s mix of the real and the bizarre. The episode seamlessly shifts tones and modes, incorporating Tarog’s own musical score that delights in what is overtly fanciful and subtly sinister, making most of the carefully mapped visuals.

Punerarya is a near-perfect use of the thirty-or-so minutes of its running time. Like Bernal before him who in Fridyider created a wildly horrific view of Philippine suburbia with his newly relocated family who gets terrorized by a murderous refrigerator, Tarog eschews the built-in thrills of his already strange subject matter, a family of aswangs who hide behind their business for survival, to create something more intelligent, something more horrifying. Sadly, the episode exists as a washed-out and perhaps shortened version of what it should have been, thanks solely to the indomitable power of the purse who regard what could be a future masterpiece as just another Christmastime commodity.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Shake, Rattle and Roll X (2008)

Shake, Rattle and Roll X (Topel Lee & Mike Tuviera, 2008)

Shake, Rattle and Roll X, the tenth installment to Regal Films' horror trilogy franchise that started in 1984 and has become an annual Christmas tradition since 2005, is definitely better than its predecessor, which really isn't saying alot. Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 (2007) is simply one terrible film, where audiences are forced to care for a family terrorized by a carnivorous Christmas tree, a love-obsessed girl stuck in a perpetual nightmare she concocted, and a group of goth kids menaced by a murderous enchantress. The problem with Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 isn't so much the fact that the tales have become outrageously ridiculous, but that the directors and studio executives have concentrated more on filling the screens with talentless teen idols and pathetic special effects than actual storytelling. One only needs to revisit Fridyider, Ishmael Bernal's episode in the first Shake, Rattle and Roll (1984) about a murderous and sexually-charged refrigerator, to see an outlandish concept done right.

Shake, Rattle and Roll X opens with Emergency, directed by Mike Tuviera. The story involves a hospital that is suddenly attacked by a horde of aswangs (in Philippine folklore, monsteres who feed on babies and human entrails) when an injured pregnant aswang (Mylene Dizon) is mistakenly taken in as a patient and inevitably, suffers a miscarriage. Two ex-lovers, a doctor (Roxanne Guinoo) and a paralegal (JC De Vera), restore their romance as they try to ward off the aswangs from killing each and every one of them. Emergency is simply disposable entertainment. Whatever attempt at storytelling or characterization is drowned by the film's inability to really determine what it wants to be. The horror is truncated by the romance, and vice versa. The attempts at gore (or even a mild showing of blood) is prevented by shameless commercialism. On the other hand, Richard Somes' Ang Lihim ng San Joaquin (The Secret of San Joaquin), the third episode in Shake, Rattle and Roll 2k5 (2005) which also tackles aswangs terrorizing a man and his pregnant wife in a small town, succeeds, despite the thinness of its plot, because of directorial integrity. The film showed that Somes knew what he was doing, meticulously injecting the film with throwbacks to horror classics and in turn, creating an effective horror picture that is distinct from its inspirations. Sadly, such is not the case with Tuviera's Emergency.

Class Picture, directed by Topel Lee, fares better. Yaya (Nanny), the second part of Shake, Rattle and Roll 8 (2006) about a little boy who takes it upon himself to protect his family from an aswang masquerading as his little sister's nanny, shows Lee as an effective conjurer of atmosphere, creating a remarkably ominous coming-of-age little tale out of what essentially is a run-of-the-mill scenario. The story of Class Picture is worse than run-of-the-mill, it's actually cliche. A group of students, who were required to sleep in their school during the weekend to finish an exhibit, are haunted by the ghost of a vengeful nun (Jean Garcia) from one of the antique photographs they discovered in the school storeroom. Before all of them die, Joy (Kim Chu) needs to figure out how to stop the demented nun from exacting revenge on them. Lee succeeds when he isn't required to forward the story, sprinkling the film with clever setups, most probably to salvage whatever brilliant idea (a crazed Catholic nun on a murderous spree) from the grips of commercial storytelling. Unfortunately, whatever is left of Lee's ingenuity (after coming up with such disappointing films like Ouija (2007), My Kuya's Wedding (2007), I have less confidence in his talents) cannot really defeat the idiocy of the ensuing events in Class Picture.

Tuviera returns with Nieves, about the titular character (played by Marian Rivera) who fights engkantos for the benefit of her small village. When Adonis (Pekto), her beloved husband, is kidnapped by one of the engkantos, she swears to stop fighting engkantos. However, when a needy little boy asks for her help, she is forced out of retirement and discovers that there is something more than impish engkantos that is happening in their small village. Surprisingly, Nieves is the most fun episode of the three (the first two being tiring to watch). Perhaps it is the air of ridicule and irreverence (and seeing Rivera play the Filipino equivalent of a blonde bimbo, without the oozing sensuality unfortunately) that made the little film charming. While Nieves can be delightful at times and admittedly watchable, it still suffers from the typical quips of current Filipino mainstream filmmaking, which is the inability to maintain a brilliant idea to the end. Thus, Nieves becomes redundant midway and just annoyingly silly in the end.

The Shake, Rattle and Roll franchise seems to have lost what for me, it stood for: the infusion of new talent into the flailing mainstream film industry. Since it was revived in 2005, it became the springboard for several filmmakers (Somes, Tuviera, Lee, to name a few) to penetrate the industry. Shake, Rattle and Roll X proves that the optimism I reserved for the franchise is totally unfounded. The franchise, I concede, is nothing more than a Yuletide cashcow for its devious investors. If a good segment comes along (and as I've mentioned, there are good segments like Ang Lihim ng San Joaquin, Yaya, LRT), it is more of an aberration than a trend.

Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 (2007)

Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 (Paul Daza, Mike Tuviera & Topel Lee, 2007)

When Regal Studios decided to revive the Shake, Rattle and Roll franchise (a franchise that temporarily ended in 1997 with its 6th reincarnation) for the 2005 Metro Manila Film Festival (a yearly festival which starts on Christmas Day where all movie theaters in the country are blocked in favor of the nine or so entries, all of which are products of the mainstream, with fairly big budgets and riddled with big-name stars), it was met, mostly by more discerning film viewers, with a disapproving groan. Has the mainstream lost all originality that it needed to dig its dusty archives to capitalize on the two week-long film festival? The cornered audience however mindlessly bought the idea and gorged on the three horror episodes like Christmas fruitcake, prompting Regal to turn the franchise into a yearly film festival tradition, and earning tons of money in doing so.

I thought the revival of the Shake, Rattle and Roll franchise was a great idea. The mainstream film industry is too old-fashioned and shrewd to invest on new filmmaking talents that it seems like the industry was never going to grow up (and every Metro Manila Film Festival looked like a reunion of fossilized commercial directors like Joel Lamangan, Jose Javier Reyes and Gil Portes, most of which are directing more than a single film in the roster of entries, turning the event into a bland, uncreative, and very exploitative event). The Shake, Rattle and Roll franchise provided cheap entry points for new filmmakers to penetrate the mainstream, and more often than not, their short film contributions to the horror triptych turned out to be the best films in the festival (like Richard Somes' Ang Lihim ng San Joaquin (The Secret of San Joaquin) in Shake, Rattle and Roll 2k5 (2005) or Topel Lee's Yaya (Nanny) and Mike Tuviera's LRT in Shake, Rattle and Roll 8 (2006)). I have to admit that I was quite satisfied with the resurgence of the horror franchise. Sadly, Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 finally broke this satisfaction. The latest addition to the franchise is an indubitable disappointment, each of the episodes evoking a frigid creative energy from start to finish.

The first episode entitled Christmas Tree is directed by newcomer Paul Daza, his credits include co-writing the screenplay for Mike Tuviera's Txt (2006). It's essentially about the titular Yuletide ornament, which we find out early on as having been imported from the heart of the Amazon jungle, who has an appetite for human beings. It's a humdrum affair. The hero of the picture is a little kid (played by Nash Aguas, terrific child actor who impressed me in Topel Lee's Yaya but here, has nothing else to do but wallow in shallow and mechanical line reading and cued crying), traumatized by the death of his father (underutilized Tonton Gutierrez) and is now tasked to be the sole man in their family, which includes his mom (Gina Alajar) and two sisters (Lovi Poe and Sophia Baars). Half of the short is spent on trite characterization and repetitive montages of holiday cheers, before engaging us with the final showdown between the extended family (now including grandmother (Boots Anson-Roa) and uncle (John Prats)) and the silly-looking Christmas Tree monster, an evident letdown considering that Daza had to bore us to death first before torturing us with this cheap special effects spectacle. It must be noted that in the first Shake, Rattle & Roll (Emmanuel Borlaza, Ishmael Bernal & Peque Gallaga, 1984), Bernal crafted a horror short entitled Pridyider about another inanimate object, a refrigerator, that rapes and murders. Bernal's short was scary, funny and inspired while Daza's is just annoying.

Bangungot (Nightmare), the Mike Tuviera-directed middle portion, is much better. He tells the story of Marionne (Roxanne Guinoo) who is in love with her employee Jerome (Dennis Trillo). Unfortunately, Jerome is already engaged to another girl Florence (Pauline Luna), signaling Marionne to light a candle one night and recite Latin incantations that would magically have both her and Jerome dream about each other. Of course, things go awry when a mysterious being robed in red starts haunting both of them in their dreams, threatening to suck the life out of them (with effects clearly stolen from the Dementors of the Harry Potter franchise).The story again relies on a twist to complete the dread, and it's a good thing that the twist, more than being a story cliche, adds depth, teeth and danger to Marionne's chronic obsession. It's all good and clever I thought, but it barely compares to Tuviera's own LRT, a monster flick that fed on the very plebeian necessity of commuting before transforming into an allegory on the callousness and selfishness of the powers that be.

Finally, Topel Lee's Engkanto (Enchantress) is about a band (think teenage amateurs complete with facial make-up, tattered faux goth clothes, and an abundance of shallow angst, all played by local television's teen stars --- Melissa Ricks, Mart Escudero, Jewel Mische, Felix Roco and Matt Evans (as the band's roadie with a distracting afro)) on their way to a provincial gig. They get lost on the road, spends the night in an abandoned resort which also turns out to be the home of an engkanto (an Earth spirit which takes the form of a lovely enchantress, played by a very dull and surprisingly un-seductive Katrina Halili). I had very high hopes for this episode despite the fact that Lee seems incompatible with the mainstream (the two feature films he made for Regal after Yaya were disasters of different degrees --- Ouija (2007), a ghost story with some good ideas sullied by the absolute lack of subtlety; and My Kuya's Wedding (My Brother's Wedding, 2007), a genuinely likable rom-com that had serious storytelling and originality problems). Since the would-be victims are all walking stereotypes (even the emotional tension that supposedly exists among them feels unreasonably banal, a worthless attempt to put personality into what essentially are fodder), a gargantuan weight falls upon the shoulders of the engkanto to redeem the short. Unfortunately, she's a confused creation, a seductress who is barely seducing, a monster who is barely terrifying (she controls a horde of frenzied zombies; sadly, all they do is run and grab). Lee seems to be banking on Halili's sexual stature, but she's hardly sensual with a virginal white dress wrapped all over her. In Peque Gallaga's Manananggal (Monster), final portion of the first Shake, Rattle and Roll film, sexy actress Irma Alegre is both seductive and horrifying as the titular creature; and she only needed half a body to be an effective onscreen monster.

Alas, it seems that the franchise has finally lost its steam. Instead of being the vehicle for pumping young blood into the decaying mainstream, it has removed all pretenses of being anything other than a shameless cash cow. If Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 is a barometer for the state of Philippine mainstream cinema, I am quite saddened to say that it's moribund beyond any type of salvage.

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This review is also published in The Oblation.