a.k.a. DARNA AND DING
D’Wonder Films [1980] 120′
country: Philippines
director: J. Erastheo Navoa / Cloyd Robinson
cast: Vilma Santos, Nino Mulhach,
cast: Celia Rodriguez, Marissa Delgado
This is the first of the Darna [ostensibly the Filipino Wonder Woman, created in 1947 by Mark Revelo] series of films that I’ve come across, and the last of four to feature the beautiful super star Vilma Santos in the title role. The story begins when Narda and her little brother Ding happen upon a glowing white stone in the woods near their home. A disembodied voice from beyond says some stuff, and presto-change-o – Narda becomes Darna. Ding climbs on Darna’s back and rides her through the rather patriotic opening credits. They encounter trouble immediately after landing, with Darna having to do battle with Hawk Woman while Ding runs from a dirty old man before both tackle a rampaging giant and shove live electrical wires in his eyes.
At this point, nary ten minutes into the film, I was pretty much floored. I mean, how much random super hero fantasy crap can you pile into the opening of one film? I had no idea how the people behind DARNA AT DING could possibly keep up such a frenetic barrage of weirdness. And that’s when the reality began to dawn on me: they weren’t going to.
Sure enough, DARNA AT DING shuffles into something resembling a plot shortly thereafter, with the town in which Narda and Ding are staying suddenly being overtaken by hordes of the drooling undead. Narda investigates and discovers that the dastardly German scientist Dra Vontesberg is plotting to overthrow, er . . . something, with her collection of the recently deceased. Vontesberg captures Narda before she can transform into her alter ego and chains her up in a dungeon, leaving it up to Ding [who also possesses some poorly conveyed super powers] to save her. He does, Narda turns into Darna, and the zombified townspeople are somehow returned to normal [my tape blacked out for a while at this point, leaving me with no idea how the situation resolved itself].
The end? Well, not quite. The zombie townspeople plot is over and done with by the 65 minute mark, and Ding climbs on Darna’s back so that they can flutter off to some other place – in this case, China. There Ding gets caught up in the evil child-stealing plot of the startlingly bi-polar Lei Ming. With the help of a local news photographer, who is looking for a missing child of his own, Narda finds Lei Ming’s hideout, turns into Darna, fights a duplicate of herself and a robot, and puts an end to the child snatching for good.
DARNA AT DING is a bit of a mess, even by nonsensical low-budget fantasy standards. The tone is incredibly inconsistent, ranging from broad slapstick comedy [as seen in a Benny Hill inspired speed-up sequence showing townspeople running from zombies], spooky horror [Ding nearly killed by voodoo], and violent action. The segue between the two wildly disparate plots, in which Darna must fend off a truck load of escaped convicts, seems particularly off key with its graphic Peckinpah-esque slow motion shotgun blast and neck-snapping conclusion. Children’s fare this certainly isn’t, though it plays as such for a good chunk of its two hour running time.
Frequent shifts in tone and random outbursts of comedy/horror/violence I can deal with, but the sluggish plots really bog DARNA AT DING down. The first narrative, in particular, just seems to drag on and on, with various groups of locals running into zombies, getting scared, and running away over and over again. I, for one, could have done with a lot less of that and a lot more of Darna kicking escaped convict ass. And there I think is the film’s biggest flaw – there’s just not nearly enough of Darna in it. She appears at the beginning, middle, and end for a few minutes each and in highly enjoyable setups, but the remaining four fifths of the film is left to languish in entertainment limbo without her.
That’s not to say that there aren’t fun moments to be had in this twelfth Darna outing – quite the contrary. The opening is fantastically absurd [I really dig those forced perspective giant effects], as is the Darna-versus-Darna battle that serves as the climax. But for every moment of overt glee there are twenty or so more in which nothing happens at all. It’s a pity, really, as the potential for entertainment is certainly there, but remains woefully un-tapped.
From a production standpoint DARNA AT DING was better than I anticipated, and there was obviously at least a little money put behind it. Special effects were about as good as I expected, and work well enough without becoming entirely embarrassing. The cast is quite good too, paltry as the material they have to work with is. Vilma Santos is always a pleasure to have on screen, and Nino Mulhach never becomes tiresome or annoying as Ding. The giant who sees such little action is familiar as well – Max Alvarado, who would go on to play Columbus, one of the multitude of villains in FOR Y’UR HEIGHT ONLY. The soundtrack is groovy but of dubious legality. I recognized much of what was played, but could only pin down Pink Floyd’s Time for certain.
It’s sad to think that this is so easy to find when more promising entries in the series, like DARNA VS. THE PLANET WOMEN and DARNA AND THE GIANTS, are still so comparatively obscure. The film was released to VCD a few years back and is readily available at many online outlets. I downloaded my copy, which was graced with a few seconds of intrusive text gobble-de-gook and, as already mentioned, blacked out during one of the precious few action scenes. There are no subtitled or dubbed copies that I am aware of, but I never had the feeling I was missing out on much because of the language barrier.
All things considered, DARNA AT DING isn’t terrible – it just isn’t very good. There are some great bizarre moments to be had, but I suspect most viewers will be itching for the fast-forward button in the lengthy lapses between them. Worth it, perhaps, for fans of Vilna Santos or the Darna obsessive. Others would do well to skip it.
