It was the great Ed Cabagnot of the CCP who once said that no movie, no matter how crappy, is totally worthless. Even the worst installment of Pido Dida–his example, not mine, I swear–serves a purpose.
It's stating the obvious: but every movie is a time capsule. It's always an era frozen in an hour and a half (unless it's Lav Diaz). Or unless it's deliberately a period movie. Regardless of genre, every film is a record of a milieu. Never mind the plot and the script, the oftentimes silly acting, and the inept direction–and never mind the scratches on the screen, the sudden cuts, and the poor sound. The delight lies in observing the entire thing with wide-eyed anthropological curiosity. What clothes were they wearing in 1979? What kind of cars did they drive when going out for dates? What about hairstyles? What were the slang words back then? What did Cubao look like back then? How many buildings were on Ayala and Ortigas? Was that a young Roderick Paulate decades before Bala at Lipistik? Was that the veteran actress before she had the boob and nose job? And why was Janice de Belen the object of collective male desire in those years? Why did most of the teen female heartthrobs of the '80s have what looked like faint hints of moustache? The answers all lie in those old movies. In a fast-changing world where a new mall and skyscraper shoots up in all parts of the city every hour, movies are maps of the vanishing terrains of memory.
All afternoons are about siesta and old movies. There's an entire generation of kids who grew up watching LVN and Sampaguita classics after lunch. I was one of them. I have vivid memories of snacking on guava jelly-slathered Sky Flakes while watching Petrang Kabayo, El Pinoy Matador, Ibong Adarna, Facifica Falayfay, etc. Now, every time so much crap happens around me, and the brain, it seems, screams for a vacation, I watch an old Pinoy movie. It was only recently that I got to enjoy the pleasures of cable TV. Old movies–black-and-whites especially. The more obscure, the better. My cable service only has Cinema One, and most of the time it shows stuff from the '90s to the more recent titles, usually hits and superstar-actor-vehicles by Star Cinema and Regal. Once in a while, usually during early morning to late afternoon, they'll throw in the occasional indie project and the quirky, from-leftfield stuff that you don't even know existed on celluloid. I've found out, however, that the Pinoy movie channels on Destiny like PBO and GPC offer more choices in terms of B-movies, from Palito (Rambuto: No Blood) to Jess Lapid to Muhammad Faizal to near-forgotten action stars (Nice to know that at least they saved some of the rolls from conversion into New Years' Eve torotots). Another thing: thanks to the Digibox, with just a click, I can now know the title of the movie being shown. I have no patience for waiting for the schedule page as it lazily rolls down to the rhythms of a Celine Dion song. Nor do I want to hassle friends via SMS with urgent messages such as "Oy, anong title nitong pelikula ni Dolphy na scientist siya at anak niya si Janice?"
