Even before it formally opens in theaters
next week, a lot of people would have seen
Yam Laranas's film Radyo in the ten
thousand free advance screenings in various
malls and Metro Manila campuses.

Radyo is an exploration in the
slasher genre, and makes use of indie tricks
and nonsequiturs to supply the laughs.
There are moments of inspiration derived
from sources as diverse as Chinatown,
the carriage thing from the Odessa steps sequence
in Battleship Potemkin, or Brian de Palma.
Jeffrey Quizon makes an interesting serial killer,
though I am not completely convinced that there
is enough method in his madness. Bits of him
seem borrowed from previous screen slashers, like
that nodding dog-in-a-car from The Bone Collector.

But more than anything, this particular slasher
can be summed up in these few words:

Attack of the killer jologs.

Does anyone know if the Film Center at
UP Diliman regularly shows trailers now
before each screening? Guffaws echoed at
the trailer of an Indian film called
Yaadein. There were boyband wannabes
doing their song-and-dance under the pouring
rain routine, screamfests, Bollywood in all
its gawdiness. Yet come to think of it, it's
not much different from any of our own
hysterical melodramas. They were all speaking
in Hindi, but soap in any other language
still bubbles?

There was also a trailer for Dario Argento's
Phantom of the Opera starring Julian
Sands of such classics as Warlock.
Dario Argento directed Suspiria, a
dark but campy movie about various killings
set in a ballet school. It has all the elements
of a good thriller, complete with creative
dismemberments, lesbian overtones, and
probably the inspiration for Princess Leia's
ensaymada hairdo. Suspiria
came out in 1976, a year before Star Wars.