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, Richard Somes' Ang Lihim ng San Joaquin,
and Topel Lee's Yaya 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 Lessons from the School of Inattention.)