For Y'ur Height Only

I watched this at 2am and it was entertaining in the way a movie littered with obvious and repeated gags can sometimes be, but then again I was drunk so my judgement may have been slightly impaired. Then again my tolerance for bad movies tends to go down if I've had a few, so I'd say yeah it's worth watching.

Anyway the only reason I'm writing this is because while I was watching the movie I couldn't for the life of me figure out the theme music which is the accompaniment pretty much throughout. It was only near the end that I realised it's a mangled version of Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, made to sound "a bit James Bond-ish". I wonder if the Moodies even know their song was used for this?

The synopsis sounds pretty fun, but I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I'd hoped to... it's quite cheaply and poorly made. Scenes begin and end without much continuity. The acting is horrendous. The dubbing, while ridiculously bad, isn't all that funny.

I do thank Mondo Macabro for including some additional information about the star and the movie, and for including a second movie, Challenge of the Tiger, which I haven't watched yet. Possibly the other Agent 00 movie would have made a better companion, or a collection of trailers for his movies. I would have liked to have heard the original language soundtrack as well. Oh well.

Still, I'm glad such a silly movie exists, and that it has been preserved.

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!

This movie cracked me up the whole time, I couldn't stop laughing or commenting,that Weng Weng is a dwarf had nothing to do with it. (ok, there were a couple of times) If you want to watch a movie that is a really terrible production but fun to watch, this is the one for you. Weng Weng truly is a gifted martial artist and fun to watch do stunts, one in particular made me gasp for his safety. If you go in not expecting a lot from this movie I think you will greatly enjoy it, especially if you watch it with some friends.

At the height of his popularity, Weng Weng was invited by then First Lady, Imelda Marcos to the palace in honor for his contributions to Philippine cinema. He was also named an honorary Philippine Secret Agent and was presented a custom-made .25 caliber pistol by then Vice Chief of Staff General Fidel Ramos.

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.