(Beneath the Cogon is available streaming at Amazon Prime)
Horror gets little respect in the Philippines-- gets little respect anywhere-- but there's been good maybe even great work done.
Gerardo de Leon started a mini-trend with Terror is a Man (1959), his no-budget adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, with Wells' colony of hybrids reduced to one limping Leopard Man. De Leon's atmospheric style made up for the lack of production money, however, and the film earned enough that De Leon followed up with a series of Blood Island movies: fun if carelessly made pictures stuffed with nudity and spattered guts. De Leon also directed a pair of vampire films-- Blood is the Color of the Night (Kulay Dugo ang Gabi, 1966) and Blood of the Vampires (Ibulong Mo sa Hangin, 1971) worth seeing for the visuals and seething incestuous passions.
In the '70s, some of the best horror films include Lino Brocka's Wake Up, Maruja (Gumising Ka, Maruja, 1978) about a pair of doomed lovers haunting a film crew, and Celso Ad. Castillo's Kill Barbara with Fear (Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara, 1974) and far superior Malignant (Maligno, 1977). Omnibus films--short films collected under a theme--were a popular format thanks to the popular Night of Horror (Gabi ng Lagim, 1960). Some of the best Filipino-flavored chills can be found in brief doses: Frigidaire, part of the omnibus Shake, Rattle and Roll, 1984, is a witty horror-comedy about a psycho refrigerator; Mario O'Hara's Monster in a Jar (Halimaw sa Banga, from the 1986 omnibus Halimaw) is the memorable tale of a young girl, her jealous evil stepmother, and (of course) a bloodthirsty bone-white creature living in a huge terra-cotta jar.
That's the cream of the crop; the more typical Filipino horror movies nowadays combine huge helpings of comedy, cheap CGI effects, poorly made prosthetics, usually someone decked out in a furred-and-fanged costume, tossing victims about for the fun of it.
Rico Ilarde is one of the more interesting recent practitioners of the genre. Unlike the aforementioned others, he remains faithful; almost all his output is horror or science-fiction horror. His Blood of the Virgin (Dugo ng Birhen, 1999) features messy prosthetics (witch doctor's curse turns a Spanish conquistador into the living dead) confronted by an action hero of few words (martial-arts champion Monsour del Rosario, who can literally kick ass). His Woman of Mud (Babaing Putik, 2001) has a ridiculously voluptuous woman (Klaudia Koronel) slathered in sticky blood and facing off a warrior-poet. In both these commercial efforts Ilarde tells a perfectly serious tale of horror but adds a touch of comic-book heroism (martial arts, archery, military training).
The hero of Ilarde's latest Beneath the Cogon (Sa Ilalim ng Cogon, 2005) is a former soldier named Sam (Yul Servo) forced to hide out in a huge mansion surrounded by cogon grass. He makes good use of the silence and stillness to ratchet up the tension; the mansion itself is a grand third character, with its airless rooms, its unsettlingly sculpted bric-a-brac, its endlessly lapping waves of grass.
Ilarde tones down the stylized violence in favor of atmosphere and sense of dread; the mansion is a tight-lipped presence that gives up its secrets reluctantly, only after relentless exploration. And what of the beauty Sam discovers there, a girl named Katia (Julia Clarete) who he spies diving into a leaf-choked pool-- is she the hacienda owner's trophy wife? Precious daughter? Something else altogether?
Perhaps the source of Cogon's power is Ilarde's fascination with loneliness and isolation-- as filmmaker he's always marched to the beat of a different drum, too arthouse to be a commercial filmmaker, too pop culture to be welcomed in film festival circuits (except the blessed few that make a fetish of exotic horror like the Rojo Sangre Festival in Buenos Aires, where the film won top prize). Ilarde's stubborn persistence in staying true to himself produces quietly strange films, little worlds sealed off from the larger one, bubble environments with their own secret laws. Check this one out; you just might lose yourself under its oddball spell.
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