For Your Height Only (1979) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Why am I talking about a zero-budget, nudity-free 1979 Filipino movie which was made in Tagalog, and later dubbed into English.

Long story.

Tuna sent me this movie because he thought it would appeal to my sense of the absurd. He was right.

It's about a small secret agent named 00, A  2 foot 9 inch dwarf Weng Weng. Now, we aren't the Guinness people, but I think it's a fair guess that he's the shortest secret agent of all time, unless you count Tom Cruise in those Mission Impossible films.

Anyway, unlike James Bond, Weng Weng gets his assignments and his gadgets from the same guy, presumably because the Filipino Secret Service can't afford to have two separate guys do this, or perhaps because there are not enough letters in Tagalog to support having both an M and a Q. The obligatory Bondian scene with the gadgets is one of the best I've ever seen. The M and Q guy, like all the characters in the movie, speaks in 1930's American gangster slang, and he gives the l'il guy his gizmos with some interesting twists. And, bizarrely enough, he keeps complimenting 00 on his listening skills.

  • First, there is a radio controlled hat which looks just like one of those red, white and blue trimmed straw boaters that they wear on the floor of political conventions. Well, the "secret" agent looks mighty dapper in this, let me tell you. There isn't any explanation of why a secret agent would need a radio-controlled Maurice Chevalier hat, but the bad guys seem to be deathly afraid of it. Perhaps there is the ever-present fear that he might break into "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" in his squeaky voice. Of course, if that was the plan, the Agency could have saved a few bucks, since this tactic would be just as effective with a non-electronic hat.
  • Then there is a fountain pen which kills. "Of course. It isn't any good if you need to write with it, but we can't have everything."
  • Then there is a ring which can detect poison. It is made out of gold because the service couldn't afford platinum. Times are tough at The Secret Agency. (That is what the Agency is called - I guess they couldn't afford any marketing guys to create a catchy name for them)
  • The film also features an umbrella which fires bullets. This plays an important part in the film. You see, the budget was so small in this movie that they couldn't afford guns, so they have one bad guy point the umbrella at the l'il nipper, and the sound effects guy adds a gunshot noise to the sound track. 00 then uses this same umbrella to float down from a multi-story building, ala Mary Poppins.

The bad guys are so impoverished that they have to drive Volkswagen bugs. This is only one sign that their Evil Organization isn't doing that well. I'm pretty sure their cash flow problem stems from the fact that their evil master plan is to sell heroin to kindergarten children. Well, that's certainly evil enough, but it doesn't sound very profitable. I'm fairly sure that the average Filipino kindergarten kid had very little disposable income in 1979, so the sales volume in The Evil Organization must be hurting. Either that, or the bad guys have priced the heroin so low that they can't make a profit from it. Either way, it isn't much of a plan.

Some sample dialogue from the film:

  • "Why, he's making a monkey out of the forces of evil."
  • "Alright sister, freeze, the jig is up."
  • "Oh, my little head."
  • (about a police photographer photographing a crime scene) "I wonder if she does Bar Mitzvahs"

By the way, if you're looking for a chick-flick to impress your date, you can't go wrong with For Your Height Only - it's rated 9.0 by female IMDb voters.

Both of them.

Amazingly enough, this film inspired a sequel called The Impossible Kid

 

DVD INFO

  • Two films, no extra features

 

NUDITY REPORT

No nudity. (There is some in the sequel.)

The Critics Vote ...

The People Vote ...

  • IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 5.0/10. How can people go through life with such a humorless outlook?
The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

  • A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
  • B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
  • C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
  • C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
  • C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
  • D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
  • E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
  • F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

 

Based on this description, this film is a C+, arguably the greatest bad movie ever made. In the same league as Road House and Hell Comes to Frogtown, except with way more cock-punching.

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