For Y'ur Height Only

Like the reviewers before me, I have to say the dialogue in this movie makes it worth the watch. What no one else mentioned though, was that the voice actors used Edward G Robinson & James Cagney voices for all the villain characters. I don't know about you, but I doubt gangsters in the Philippines talk like that!

A lot has been said of Weng Weng and his spy "devices", but the thing that cracked me up was the wardrobe of the Crime Syndicate - either Hawaiian shirts or button down shirts open down to the navel. These guys looked like rejects from a cheap disco!

If you love bad movies, run, dont walk, to your video store and get this one!

A 1979 Filipino movie filmed on a zero budget in Tagalog, and dubbed into English? Can it be worth watching? Absolutely.

It's about a small secret agent named 00 - really small - a dwarf about 3 feet tall, named Weng Weng. Now, I haven't consulted the Guinness records 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.

The budget is so small in this movie that they couldn't afford enough guns, so they have one bad guy point an 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.

Anyway, unlike James Bond, Weng Weng gets his assignment 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.

This is one of the great scenes. 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 remote controlled 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. They couldn't afford any marketing guys to create a catchy name for them, so they're just The Secret Agency.

Luckily, the bad guys are no better off, and have to drive Volkswagens. This is only one sign that their Evil Organization isn't doing that well. I'm pretty sure it's because their plan is to sell heroin to every sandbox and kindergarten in the country. Well, that's certainly evil enough, but it doesn't sound real profitable. I'm not sure if the little 1979 Filipino kindergarten kids had all that much disposable income, so Evil Organization's gross sales must be pretty low, and I think they can forget about floating that IPO. 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.

Sample dialogue * "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"

This movie is available on DVD. As I write this, The Godfather is not available on DVD. Nor is Schindler's List, nor Star Wars, nor American Beauty, nor Raiders of the Lost Ark, nor Rear Window, nor Lawrence of Arabia.

But For Your Height Only is.

"For Y'ur Height Only" rivals "Withnail and I" for great dialogue. How often have I howled at lines like "There's a lot of dough in this dough, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker" - if only we knew what the hell that's supposed to mean. Maybe it's better not to know - as Mr Kaiser warns, "Don't be a nosy parker, Paco: with that curiosity of yours, you're liable to wake up one day and find yourself dead."

If you ever want a shining example of a plot device, then check out the scene where our hero's taxi runs out of petrol. There's plenty of other shortcomings, but you'll never see or hear anything else quite like it. All praise to the visionary who introduced me to this gem. Go seek it out.

Meet our hero Agent 00 (Weng Weng). Lover. Fighter. Badass secret agent dude. Fashion plate. He does it all, and then some, and he's only two and a half feet tall. Naturally, he's the best hope for the forces of good when the minions of the nefarious Mr. Giant kidnap scientist Prof. Kohler (Mike Cohen). Kohler has devised an all powerful N bomb that Mr. Giant will use to control the world. As he works his way through a sexy bevy of babes, so too does Agent 00 beat up and mow down one incredibly inept bad guy after another.

Here's one for you to check out if you think you've seen it all. A combination of dwarfsploitation and spy spoof, it gets a fair bit of mileage out of some truly gut busting vocal performances / dubbing and uproarious dialogue. The sight of our diminutive hero soaring through the air and effortlessly clobbering goons is good for much amusement. Unfortunately, for this viewer, the novelty ultimately wore off with a fair bit of movie left to go. The good news is that it's never really boring; it does have energy. And while it tends to be crudely made, that's not a debit for this brand of entertainment. (Obviously, it IS intended to be a comedy.)

Among the highlights: Agent 00 meeting with a boss who's a combination of the "M" and "Q" characters from the James Bond franchise, the sight of him using an umbrella to make an escape (after taking an understandable pause to romance a lady in a bed), and flying towards the bad guys' hidden fortress by using a jet pack.

The Bond style music is catchy, but it's also repetitive. And just like many a Bond film, the ladies are outstanding scenery attractions. The smooth Mr. Weng is quite a hoot to watch.

Seven out of 10.

Sometimes I feel like a pusher: I take an obscure film and introduce innocent people to it. For free. Then smile and laugh when they come crawling back to me for another fix.

"For Your Height Only" is the drug which has addicted many on first exposure. And no matter how many times one has seen it, the craving grows...

The DVD is out of print (and the price is heading steadily up), but worth keeping an eye out for since you will want a format which won't wear out during multiple sharings with new "customers". DVD is also nice to have for quick reverses to confirm, "Did I just see that?"

The movie is worth owning for the "Butt Slap of Death" scene alone.

Only one thing could make this film funnier: Weng Weng's voice dubbed into a deep baritone. Maybe I'll tackle it someday... (Actually, WW's own speaking voice was said to be very rich. The dub makes him rather squeaky. And as has been mentioned, the gangsters are dubbed in Aussie versions of 20's American gangsters... marvelous!)

Several sources claim there is a sequel to this film ("The Impossible Kid"), and perhaps even two ("Agent 00"). Tracking these down have become the Holy Grail of my film collecting. (Some other aliases for the sequel may be "The Impossible Kid of Kung Fu", "The Incredible Kung Fu Kid", and "007&1/2: Nothing is Impossible".)

Good things come in small packages!