Photo courtesy of Noel Vera

You need only two words to describe a Filipino horror film: Low Budget. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. What on the down side can include a limp plot and what Filipino film critic Noel Vera calls everything else -- "cheesy special effects, a tendency to use rubber suited men tossing innocent bystanders around, blood (often of the wrong shade and texture) and gore (often explicit, not always convincing)," this same lack of funds has resulted in a number of films whose use of plot, mood, directing and editing have sent chills down their viewers' spines.

Cinematically, the genre did not enter Filipino mainstream cinema until the 1920's when silent filmmakers started drawing material from folklore, churning out pieces such as 1927's Ang Multo sa Libingan (The Ghost in the Grave) and Ang Manananggal (The Viscera Sucker). Horror was also the topic of the country's first sound film, Ang Aswang (The Monster), produced in 1932.

Filipino horror cinema does not follow the Hollywood tradition of creating monsters from whatever is preying on the public's mind at the moment. Rather, it directly lifts inspiration from whatever is scary in Tinseltown. "Horror is one genre that's very much influenced by the trend in Hollywood; except in the last 5 years or so with the advent of the Asian horror," says Jo Atienza, former president and one of the original founders of the Philippines' Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), and who is now handling video asset management for the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Amidst all the sludge that makes up Filipino horror cinema, a few gems emerge, some of them serious cinematic masterpieces, others B movies that have become cult classics worldwide.

Atienza and Vera both cite two films by Gerardo de Leon, who Atienza says "is considered by many to be the greatest Filipino director," namely Kulay Dugo ang Gabi (The Blood Drinkers, 1964) and Ibulong Mo sa Hangin (Blood of the Vampires, 1966). While both were shot as serious films, they had very different and interesting effects. Amalia Fuentes, who played Leonore, the daughter in a doomed family of vampires, won a Best Actress Award for the latter, while the former had actor Ronald Remy hamming it up "with his Pinoy Dracula impression, complete with black cape, huge stand-up collar, and a doomed sex slave played by (a very sexy) Celia Rodriguez."

Kulay Dugo ang Gabi centers around Dr. Marco (Remy's) desire to resurrect his wife Katrina (Amalia Fuentes in a blonde wig) by transplanting her heart with her twin sister Cherito's (Amalia Fuentes, sans wig). Both souls are later saved through the power of prayer. All that, plus a hunchbacked and a dwarf for assistants, not to mention a recurring rubber vampire bat, make for a film that is captivating and borderline ludicrous at the same time.

Ibulong Mo sa Hangin , on the other hand, centers on the Escudero family, whose matriarch, Do?a Escudero (Mary Walter), has been locked in the dungeon by her husband because she is a vampire. Her husband, Don Enrique Escudero (Johnny Monteiro), for fear of spreading the disease, forbids their daughter Leonore to marry while strangely enough, allowing their son Eduardo (Eddie Garcia) to wed his girlfriend. The film is as much a family drama as it is a vampire film.

In a blog entry, Vera writes, "Interesting too to compare the two films' treatment of vampirism. In Kulay Dugo ang Gabi vampirism is an empowering, erotically energizing condition; you only need to look at Remy's Dr. Marco--a phallic symbol on legs--to realize this. In Ibulong Mo sa Hangin , vampirism is a true curse, a disease passed on from one generation to the next--not so much genetically (hemophilia comes to mind) as sexually, or in this case, through the erotic act of bloodsucking."

Another de Leon film that has reached cult status is Terror is a Man (1959), which was inspired by H.G. Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau , about William Fitzgerald (Richard Derr), a shipwrecked man brought to a deserted island by Dr. Girard (Francis Lederer), a mad scientist conducting genetic experiments on humans and animals. Fitzgerald falls in love with Dr. Girar's wife Frances (Greta Thyssen), who helps him, and the half-animal experiments, escape.

Another director whose films have achieved B movie status is Eddie Romero's "Blood" series, namely Brides of Blood (1968), Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968), and Beast of Blood (1971), which have inspired mainstream directors such as Quentin Tarantino. All of the films involve radioactive/mutant monsters, mad scientists and scantily clad women, and is set on the fictitious Blood Island.

Filipino cinema also has its share of monster movies, though they were in response to Godzilla more than a reaction to the dropping of the atom bomb in WWII. Ateinza cites Tuko sa Madre Kakaw (1959), a Godzilla-inspired flick about "a gecko who becomes a monster courtesy of a mad scientist."

Films that weren't out-and-out supernatural were more a reflection of what was being shown in Hollywood, while those that dealt with ghosties, beasties and things that went bump in the night were given a liberal dose of Filipino mythology, coupled with a liberal dose of Catholic morality, courtesy of 400 years of Catholic oppres -- er, influence -- under the Spanish rule. As a result, a lot of these films end with evil being overcome by, as Atienza says, "such Christian representations as the crucifix, the holy water, or by simply returning to the faith and repudiating Satan's handiwork."

It's a formula that's worked before, and continues to work in Philippine horror cinema to this day.