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Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak
English Title: Wild Flowers
Year of Release: 1957 / B&W
Director: Tony Cayado
Screenwriters: Medy Tarnate & Emmanuel Borlaza
Adapted from the serialized komiks by Carlos Gonda
Producer: Sampaguita Pictures
Cast: Daisy Romualdez, Susan Roces, Romeo Vasquez, Tony Marzan, Bella Flores, Eddie Garcia, Marlene Dauden
Cora is lured by a drug syndicate after she encounters a glamorous crook, Greta. Conrado is also recruited by Greta and discovers that his boss, Big Boy, wants him to attract more female patrons to their gang’s smuggled opium. But as the authorities get closer to cracking down on the syndicate, Cora’s life is imperilled while Conrado begins to plot a takeover of Big Boy’s gang.
Film noir is the style that initially lends cover, in a manner of speaking, to this tale of moral corruption in the big city; eventually the noir element takes over everything and lends a solemn aura to the star-oriented house image of Sampaguita Pictures, including the narrative’s ingénue, played by the then-barely legal Susan Roces. The sight of the wholesome, winsome teen actress descending into an underworld of gangsters and sex workers eventually enabled her to “stretch” her persona from young-idol vehicles to drama and horror, setting a template that her contemporaries and successors have since been able to benefit from. Tony Cayado’s smart, confident direction of material adapted from a then-disreputable source, komiks literature, similarly pointed the way for successive generations seeking a balance between pulp pleasure and social discourse. Best of all, the expected antagonist in the virgin-vs.-whore dichotomy, depicted by Bella Flores with her trademark voluptuous swagger, turns out to be strong-woman enough to take the initiative in delivering our innocent from the certain calamity awaiting her.
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