For Your Height Only (1981)

I figured there was no way that this Filipino spy spoof, which stars a 2'9" fellow named Weng Weng as its James Bond surrogate, could live up to the general silliness of its concept. Jesus, was I ever wrong. This thing is the rare B-movie gift that keeps on giving -- no matter how crazy it gets, there's likely something equally crazy or crazier in the next reel. There's not so much a plot as a series of things that follow one another in a vague mockery of temporal order, all loosely organized around the psychotically violent Agent 00 and his efforts to bring down a crime syndicate by killing every last motherfucker in said syndicate. (Yes, I did make a "short temper" joke during the film.) Seriously, every other scene in this film involves Weng jumping around and kicking/shooting/exploding the crap out of anything that crosses his path. He's a spry little fella, too, which leads to no end of amusement (like the bit where he literally flips over an opponent and kicks him in the ass). Then there's the dubbing. While dubbing generally is wounding to your average film, here it only accentuates the mania, especially considering the number of inexplicable lines of dialogue that had to be intended as goofball tongue-in-cheek jokes. I mean, one of the women in the film calls Weng "petite, like a potato." I swear I'm not joking, and I've got Andrew Borntreger to prove it. I haven't even gotten into the bizarre interludes involving Weng's love life or the portly villain in the screaming red blazer who sounds like Robert De Niro after dental surgery. Clearly, this film is awesome. If you haven't seen it, I command you to remedy that.

Grade: B