Teddy Page
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Teddy Page, also credited as Teddy Chiu or Irvin Johnson, is a Filipino film director and occasional writer. Page began his career as a very young man in the early '80s, directing low-budget action movies for producer K.Y. Lim's Silver Star Film Company (called 'Kinavesa' in the Philippines). Most of them starred the same prolific group of European and American expatriate actors working in the Philippines in the '80s: Mike Monty, Romano Kristoff, James Gaines, Eric Hahn, Mike Cohen, Bruce Baron, Ann Milhench, Gwendolyn Hung, Ronnie Patterson and Ken Watanabe (not to be confused with the other, more famous Ken Watanabe). Former Spaghetti Western and peplum star Richard Harrison also acted in three films for Page, Fireback, Hunter's Crossing and Blood Debts (1983). Many of his earlier efforts were written or co-written by Watanabe, Kristoff, Gaines or Harrison using a pseudonym.
The majority of Page's films are generally classified as Z-movies, characterized by loose, seemingly improvised narrative (Fireback, for example, is supposed to take place in the United States, but the setting suddenly changes to "The Jungle" for the last third of the film), bizarre plot twists, and comically bad acting accentuated by equally poor dubbing. Gratuitous, often sadistic violence is mixed with near childlike naivety, with characters having comic book names like "Panther" and "Cat Burglar". Another trademark of the earlier Page films were oversized, customized special weapons, which feature prominently in Fireback and Blood Debts.
The Silver Star productions are infamous for their extremely low budgets, which might have also contributed to the low technical quality. In the book Gods In Spandex, Richard Harrison states that the Page films he appeared in didn't have complete shooting scripts and many scenes were improvised, hence the disjointed narrative. However, it can be said that Page's early films are particularly bad even on the admittedly low Silver Star standards. Despite, or possibly because of these failings, they have attracted some cult interest, especially in French B-movie fandom.
There is very little information on Teddy Page in print or online. He is discussed briefly in pieces by Richard Harrison and John P. Dulaney in the books Gods in Polyester, Or, A Survivors' Account of 70's Cinema Obscura (2004) and Gods In Spandex, Or, A Survivors' Account of 80's Cinema Obscura (2007). He is also mentioned in passing in interviews of Bruce Baron, Nick Nicholson and Mike Monty at the French B-movie website Nanarland.
He is still working as a director on films and television in the Philippines, now using his real name of Teddy Chiu. His last directing credit is the 1999 action film Anino. He's also worked as a Second Unit Director or assistant director, most recently in the 2001 film Xtreme Warriors.
Partial filmography
- Fireback (listed as a 1978 film on the IMDb, more likely made in the '80s)
- Blood Debts (1983)
- Deadringer (1985) starring Max Thayer
