JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

T-shirt with illustration by Mariano Ching, P600. To order, email Raymond at elmondray@yahoo.com. Other designs by Mariano and by Louie Cordero are also available.

The Low Expectations Movie of the Week is Patient X, directed by Yam Laranas, starring Richard Gutierrez and Cristine Reyes. It exceeded my expectations: It’s a riot!

Richard (The Nestle Twins are back!) is a doctor whose family was eaten by aswang. We know he’s a doctor because he’s always defibrillating someone, and we know he’s serious because his expression says, “I am acting so hard right now.” Twenty years later he is summoned to his hometown by the police who have arrested one of the aswang, Cristine. We know she’s an aswang because she hasn’t aged in 20 years, and we know she’s a sexy star because before she eats people she rubs up against them.

Angry policeman TJ Trinidad has been trying to figure out how to kill her; his attempts to electrocute, burn, and shoot her are conducted in a hospital, which violates every code of medical ethics known to man. (Their excuse: She’s not human.) Cristine has been calling for Retchard because she wants to apologize for having his family eaten by her family when he was a little boy, and now TJ wants Retchard to get her to reveal how aswangs can be killed. Like she’s going to tell them.

Meanwhile Cristine’s family led by the head aswang who looks like a young Peque Gallaga (except that Peque’s horror movies were actually scary—see manananggal chasing Vice Mayor Herbert Bistek in the woods) is trying to break into the hospital, and we know they’re aswang because they growl like rabid dogs (No! Not Old Yeller! Huhuhu).

So the aswang try knocking on the door pretending to need medical assistance. . .and Richard opens the door! Major mayhem ensues, and I hope you bring your night vision goggles because the projector at SM Megamall needs a new bulb or something.

Best review overheard in SM Megamall: “Kawawa naman si Cristine, binaha na nga, napunta pa sa pelikulang ‘to.” (Poor Cristine, bad enough her house was flooded but she has to be in this movie.)

I suddenly remembered that Sesame Street cartoon Cowboy X. Cowboy X, yee-haa! marks everyone in Sniddler’s Gulch with X’s so the desperate populace turns to a little boy who asks him politely to stop marking the town with X’s. “Why shore,” says Cowboy X, “From now on I’ll be known as Cowboy O!” And the citizens of Sniddler’s Gulch were happy, because they weren’t really very bright.