This film is an incredible religious fantasy mind-blower from the Philippines. After the spiritual defender of a small seaside village dies, it falls to his nephew in the big city to return and protect the villagers from the "Prince of Magic" and his evil minions. The nephew, decked out in blue jeans and matching denim jacket and sporting a nice Tom Selleck mustache, learns to harness his newly-found Holy magic powers, and sets out to defeat the Prince. But the Prince's men kidnap our hero's daughter and transport her to Hell, to be sacrificed by none other than Satan himself! The hero must battle the minions of the underworld to rescue his child and protect the village from harm.
This film is truly one of a kind. The bad dubbing, cheesy laser-gun sound effects for the magical spells, plot twists and turns that are baffling, inspired make-up design, and chintzy costumes combine for one grand viewing experience. Satan is depicted alternately as a skinny guy in a red body stocking wielding a plastic pitchfork, and also as a chubby cheeked guy in a bad tux and a Dracula cape. At one point, our hero picks up a (real) snake and slaps its head 3 or 4 times before tying it into a knot and throwing it on the ground, where it promptly turns into a short naked Filipino guy with snake-scale make up all over his body. I had a hard time figuring out who the audience for this was supposed to be. It takes its religion seriously, and there is a lot of Catholic imagery and iconography. But at the same time, its cartoonish magic wizard battles are also punctuated with gratuitous nudity and bloody violence. Whether viewed as a bizarre cultural exercise outside of our norms, or as a piece of unintentionally hilarious exploitation madness, I finally realized that the audience for this is those with a taste for the absurd. Since I have a taste for the absurd I can rate it 9/10 for myself, but the standard deviation on the viewers' appreciation of this film is going to be very high.
