(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR!  It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet.  So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR!  She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by the end of Tuesday, December 6th!  Will she make it?  Keep checking the site to find out!)

On November 13th, TCM Underground aired the 1976 Filipino women-in-prison film, The Muthers!  And I recorded it!

Before I say anything about the film itself, I want to acknowledge how much I love the poster above.  I mean, that poster promises a film full of actions, thrills, and a healthy dose of girl power.  You look at that poster and you think to yourself, “The Muthers must be one the greatest drive-in films ever made!”

You might also think that from reading about the film’s plot.  The Muthers opens with Kelly (Jeannie Bell) and Anggie (Rosanne Keaton) sailing the high seas. It turns out that they’re pirates!  They forcibly board yachts and rob decadent rich people.  They’re good at their job and they have fun, too!  Even better, they’re constantly fighting a rival pirate, a blowhard chauvinist named Turko (John Montomgery)!  Turko only has one eye, that’s how much of a pirate he is!

If the film had just been Kelly and Anggie fighting Turko, The Muthers probably would be a classic.  However, since this is a Filipino women-in-prison film, Kelly soon discovers that her sister has been imprisoned on Get Out If You Can Island.  (Seriously, that’s what they call the island.)  The island is run by the evil Montiero (played by Tony Carreon, a perennial villain in Filipino cinema) and, if they don’t rescue her, Montiero will sell her into prostitution.

Naturally, Kelly and Anggie go undercover and infiltrate the island.  Sadly, the film gets kind of boring after Kelly and Anggie reach the prison.  One reason why Filipino exploitation films are so respected and loved by aficionados of grindhouse cinema is because they frequently went totally and completely over the top.  There was a shamelessness to the best of the Filipino grindhouse films and it makes them fascinating to watch.  The Muthers starts out like a classic, with the pirates and Turko and all that, but once Kelly and Anggie reach the island, the film becomes oddly restrained.  There’s little violence, little sex, only one notable use of slow motion, and the film even lacks the radical political subtext that runs through many women-in-prison films.  One can’t help but wonder what the late Jess Franco would have done with the same material.

So, sadly, The Muthers failed to live up to the promise of that poster.

It happens.