Teddy Page
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Teddy Page, also credited as Teddy Chiu or Irvin Johnson, is a Filipino film director and occasional writer. Page began his career apparently 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, 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 two films for Page, Fireback 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 often 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 somewhat famous for their oppressively low budgets, which might have also contributed to the low technical quality. 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 written information on Teddy Page to be found in print or online. In a short piece written on Fireback for the book Gods in Polyester, Richard Harrison recalls that Page was a likeable person who was treated rather badly by the Silver Star producers. 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.
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
- Teddy Page at the Internet Movie Database
- Nanarland, a French site housing many reviews of Teddy Page and Silver Star films (in French) and related interviews (some in English).
