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Samar

Language: English
Additional Languages: Filipino & Spanish
Year of Release: 1962
Director: George Montgomery
Screenwriters: Ferde Grofé Jr. & George Montgomery
Producers: MAM & Winchester

Cast: George Montgomery, Gilbert Roland, Ziva Rodann, Joan O’Brien, Nico Minardos, Mario Barri, Henry Feist, Tony Fortich, Johnny Cortez, Carmen Austin, Esperanza Garcia, Danilo Jurado, Luciano Lasam, Pedro Faustino, Joaquin Fajardo, Pamela Saunders, Rita Moreno

In 1870 in the Philippine Islands, “a colony of imperial Spain—ruled with an iron hand” (per an opening title), Dr. John David Saunders, an American, criticizes the occupation government and is banished to the prison island of Samar. He manages to befriend Col. Juan Sebastian Salazar, the penitentiary’s commandant, and learns of the former’s aspiration: to organize a trek to a difficult-to-access wilderness abundant in gold. Salazar conscripts the prisoners, with Saunders serving as his right-hand person. Unfortunately Capt. de Guzman, an old army nemesis, gets wind of Salazar’s plan and attempts to sabotage the wayfarers before they reach the promised land.

John Saxon had more film projects, Pam Grier was on the verge of recognition, Marlon Brando was already more famous, but George Montgomery’s involvement in Philippine film production held a few distinctions of its own. Seeking to boost his Hollywood standing after a stint as a leading man whose options had started to dwindle, he persuaded financiers to invest in a country where their funds could still yield A-scale results. His six projects, all except the first made during the 1960s, were way less than ten percent of his total output as film actor, but they were all modestly budgeted and color-processed; even more significantly, all except the first and last were directed by him. Interestingly, all films except the present one were set during or right after World War II. And unlike Saxon’s and Grier’s projects, which benefited from the participation of local creatives (in contrast with the technicians and performers whom Montgomery maintained), Montgomery’s films played fast and loose with historical and geographic realities. Samar’s false premises bookend its outlandish El Doradoish myth-making: not only does a mountain of gold not exist anywhere on the island, Samar never was a penal colony. Amazingly, even more egregious errors mark Montgomery’s other Philippine-set films.[1] He also did himself scant favors by being a less capable actor than any of his aforementioned American confreres. Nevertheless Samar still endures more than Montgomery’s other films, primarily because its pre-American setting enables him to provide an unsparing critique of foreign occupation, without necessarily looking forward to more benevolent rule by the next occupants, inasmuch as US interest in the islands was still a few decades in the future. His jokester persona also provides a refreshing contrast with the narrative’s actual lead, the dream-driven Spanish officer. And although the always-pernicious demonizing of indigenous tribespeople continued apace here, the practice tended to endure to the recent past in local genre works and is only now encountering pushback. But with the fiction’s sufficient distance from the Philippines’s neocolonial center of power, certain possibly unintended historical resonances unapologetically occupy center stage during their respective moments: the hanging of blood-drained rebels’ bodies from trees, for one thing, and the climactic celebratory pealing of a church bell (reminiscent of the anticolonial Philippine army’s commemoration in Samar, which peeved the Americans seriously enough to confiscate the church bells of the town in retaliation). We may also note in addition that Samar preceded Irving Lerner’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969) and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972), both better-received El Dorado tales set in the actual locales ravaged by Spanish explorers; for further, immediate, but perhaps futile, intertextual reference, the main character in Montgomery’s From Hell to Borneo (1964), still Philippine-set despite its title, welcomes companions to his property in Mindanao, with its name unannounced but displayed over its entrance: El Dorado, none other.

Note

[1] George Montgomery’s team may have been proceeding from an awareness of the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm (hence the film’s more accurately situated German title, Der Rebell von Palawan); even then, the Iwahig setup was conceived and implemented during the American occupation. Montgomery’s first Philippine-set project was John Barnwell’s Huk! (1956), a propagandistic effort where he played a plantation owner in conflict with Communist guerrillas, whose organization the characters mispronounce to rhyme with “fuck.” His Pinas career started in earnest with The Steel Claw (1961), which he directed, but which was mostly set on a ship at sea, hence largely exempted from having to acknowledge historical events. In From Hell to Borneo (1964), his character travels from Manila to Mindanao to defend his island property from interlopers, but never really strays away from local territory despite the film’s title. In Guerrillas in Pink Lace (1964), he plays an army officer evading deployment by masquerading as a priest, but gets stranded on an island with a bevy of go-go dancers; their panic is occasioned by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a few days earlier, despite the fact that the attack on the Philippines was historically scheduled the same day (reckoned in 1941 on the 8th of December instead of the 7th because of the International Date Line), delayed by only a few hours because of cloudy weather over the attack base in Taiwan. Montgomery’s final Philippine film, Warkill (1968), was directed by his regular scriptwriter, Ferde Grofé Jr. (son of the celebrated composer of Grand Canyon Suite), an overt and fairly astute combat film that’s only undermined by a comparatively less-distinguished use of film style compared to what Montgomery managed to brandish.

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Tubusin Mo ng Dugo

English Translation: Redeem with Blood
Alternate Title: Tubusin Mo ng Dugo … A Crime Story
Year of Release: 1988
Director: Pepe Marcos
Screenwriter: Jose N. Carreon
Producer: Bonanza Films

Cast: Rudy Fernandez, Marianne de la Riva, Debbie Miller, Princess Punzalan, Johnny Delgado, Eddie Garcia, Perla Bautista, Rez Cortez, Roy Alvarez, Ernie Forte, Zandro Zamora, Romy Diaz, Val Iglesias, Abbo dela Cruz, Ruben Rustia, Renato Robles, Conrad Poe, Estrella Kuenzler, Rene Hawkins, Usman Hassim, Renato del Prado, Bella Flores, Felix E. Dalay, Bert Vivar, Joey Padilla, Big Boy Gomez, Rommel Valdez, Naty Santiago, Luis Benedicto, Cheryl Garcia, Manny Doria, Emily Tuazon, Robert Miller, Jimmy Reyes, Bebeng Amora, Bert Vivar, Ernie David

Fresh out of prison, Carding participates in the small-time neighborhood rackets to which his upbringing accustomed him, with the help of his lesbian pal Bing Bong. He courts Elena but her father disapproves of her favoring a common hoodlum, while he also hooks up with Sally, a bargirl, whenever he’s in desperate need of quick cash. His mother asks her old friend Captain Torres to watch over him, but during another stint in jail, he’s able to escape when an inmate, Gordon, is freed by his homies. Counted as the newest member of the gang, Carding finds himself working on big-time heists but gets into scrapes with his mates because of their ironhearted code of conduct, necessitated by the crisis situations that they confront during their money-making activities.

Rudy Fernandez had at least one other celebrated bad-boy role, in Edgardo Vinarao’s Diskarte (Strategy, 2002), which aspired for ill-advised redemption by detouring midway into religious-revivalist folderol. Tubusin Mo ng Dugo was a far more impressive endeavor, nearly derailed at two junctures by the character’s tendency to force himself on women who resist his advances, even if they implicitly yield afterward. Such pigheadedness, aggravated by the hero’s otherwise charming insouciance, would be part of a cultural tradition that was already newly primitive during the time it was presented. The measure of TMD’s achievement may be collocated in the analog era, before computer graphics became available as a matter of course. From this strictly technical perspective, nothing else during its time came close; even the deplorable negligence it suffered due to inadequate recognition mechanisms barely impinges on its skills display, inasmuch as it proceeds from a satirical approach rarely attempted in the genre. It also immensely benefits from the successful realization of an ambitious thematic scheme, wherein the psychological stress that inheres in outlaw activities not only grows with the organization but also turns inward, resulting in (occasionally well-founded) paranoia over one’s allies and in terrifying internecine conflict. In certain respects, TMD turns out to be as much of its era as, say, Lino Brocka’s Maynila (1975), and likewise deserves its own share of appreciation amid acknowledgment of its unfortunate shortcomings, if a decent print can still be salvaged anywhere.

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Kahit Pader Gigibain Ko

English Translation: I Will Even Tear Down Walls
Year of Release: 1998
Director: Joey del Rosario
Screenwriters: Humilde “Meek” Roxas & Joey del Rosario
Producers: RS Productions & Regal Films

Cast: Phillip Salvador, Rosanna Roces, Elizabeth Oropesa, Eddie Gutierrez, Richard Bonnin, Dindo Arroyo, Alona Amor, Bob Soler, Susan Galang, Gamaliel Viray, Ernie Zarate, Eric Francisco, Mon Confiado, Denver Razon, Jetro Castro, Ric Arellano, Bernard Fabiosa, Cris Daluz, Joey Sarmiento, Jec Chaves, Rona Rivera

Former sex worker Sandy Galang dresses in a habit and makes a killing begging for alms with real nuns. Members of a rebel group attempt to kidnap her but she is rescued by Captain Roman and his team. Sandy confesses that she is on the run from Senator Madrigal, whom she witnessed and recorded murdering a cabinet secretary. Roman brings Sandy to his superior to narrate her story, but Madrigal’s henchmen are able to track them down wherever they go. Roman contacts Senator de Joya, an opponent of Madrigal, to get more reliable assistance.

Joey del Rosario cut his teeth on Fernando Poe Jr.’s series of blockbusters in the 1980s, while Phillip Salvador started a bit earlier with the film and theater projects of Lino Brocka, but persisted in the action genre after his mentor’s death. The final element in the mix was Philippine cinema’s so-far last sex star, Rosanna Roces, an atavistic beauty justifiably famed for her startling candor and raunchy humor. Kahit Pader Gigibain Ko hangs its narrative premise on her unique precocity, complemented by her real-life backstory of professional sex work. After an opening flashback following a suspense detour halfheartedly ascribed to political rebels, the narrative settles into its standard series of silly chases and increasingly impressive shootouts, punctuated by its characters’ articulations of their plans and motives, plus the requisite makeout scene between the two leads. The resolution, whereby national-scale electoral politics is cleansed by its own principled players, would be problematic in any serious context, but KPGK laces (or may we say poisons) its proceedings with the same camp-sensationalist treatment, leaving the one definite conclusion we can make: that the undertaking was essentially a tribute to and update of the romantic comedies that solidified the respective star statures of FPJ and Susan Roces, bequeathing a confection that can be occasionally snacked on through the then-forthcoming millennium.

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Totoy Buang: Mad Killer ng Maynila

English Translation of Primary Title: Totoy the Lunatic
Year of Release: 1992
Director: J. Erastheo Navoa
Screenwriter: Humilde “Meek” Roxas
Producer: OctoArts Films

Cast: John Regala, Mark Gil, Aurora Sevilla, Rina Reyes, Francis Magalona, Bob Soler, Sharmaine Arnaiz, Kevin Delgado, Zandro Zamora, Daria Ramirez, Howard Zaleta, Lollie Mara, Romy Diaz, Danny Labra, Nonong de Andres, Johnny Vicar, Josie Tagle, Cathy Sablan, Lorena Mendez

The son of a police officer, Totoy sees his father respected by the community but experiences abusive treatment, also extended to his mother when she tries to intervene for his sake. His mother decides to flee with him but the father’s able to stop Totoy from joining her. Now completely at his father’s mercy, Totoy suffers not just physical battering but also sexual assault. His psychological equilibrium suffers permanent damage even though his body ultimately heals: he slays his father and somehow manages to get away with the crime, leading a life of apparent working-class normality—until he encounters other instances of excessive cruelty, even when committed against other people. He becomes a person of interest when several murder victims are straitjacketed in the same way his father used to torture him.

Totoy Buang will probably be one of the most extreme samples of genre films in the Philippines. You can set out to catalogue its shortcomings and your checklist will be full, even in terms of the selling point it became known for: the presence of lead actor John Regala, who by this time had lost whatever physical sightliness he started out with. The genre’s populist predisposition, however, helps tide it over several near-disasters, including a then-standard flirtation with religious revivalism. The main character is also furnished with complex female characters (his survivalist mother, a privileged girlfriend, and a gangland insider) as well as with an upright police officer, the kind of person his father never was, who shares Totoy’s outrage when he learns about a white-slavery racket that preys on homeless children. These plot elements ensure that Regala’s uniquely inspired anarchic delivery remains rooted in a working-class perspective marginal enough to occasionally make anyone sufficiently sympathetic with his circumstances wonder whether he might be the sane one after all. Actors understandably regard the performance of madness as an opportunity to showboat their store of skills and technique; Regala apparently drew from the reality he was intimately familiar with, which tragically overcame him in the end.

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Tandem

Year of Release: 2015
Director: King Palisoc
Screenwriter: Zig Marasigan
(Based on an original story by Mikhail Red)
Producers: Tuko Film Productions, Buchi Boy Films, Quantum Films

Cast: JM de Guzman, Nico Antonio, Rochelle Pangilinan, Elora Españo, Alan Paule, Simon Ibarra, Paolo O’Hara, Dennis Marasigan, Joel Saracho, Karl Medina, BJ Forbes, Bongjon Jose, Marga Zaylo, Melissa Ramos, Carla del Rosario, Maja del Rosario, Dennis Corteza, Jenn Romano, Ysabel Yuzon, Prince, Grace de Luna

Roman commits snatch thefts with his younger brother Rex by working (though not riding) in tandem on their respective motorcycles. As an ex-convict, Roman feels protective toward his brother and concerned for his pregnant wife, although he also once had a fling with Rex’s current sex-working girlfriend. Rex however is too compulsive and reckless, as Roman once was. One of their attempts, caught on a security camera, incites an exchange of gunfire between Rex and a security guard. Alba, the corrupt police officer who provides protection for Roman, warns the latter about his brother-partner. The brothers then plan one last lucrative heist with an accomplice, where they pounce on the delivery agent of a construction company and flee with the bag that contains personnel salary. But the understanding that a failed operation will place them at the mercy of Alba drives a wedge between them.

The misconception that art films are antigenre by definition fortunately didn’t endure to the present, except for miseducated, often privileged products of the country’s communication schools. Unfortunately, the acknowledgment of the universal preponderance of genre principles was unsurprisingly transmuted by influential critics demonizing the socially oriented films that were created primarily for foreign filmfest exhibition. It took a concerted ploy among genuinely progressive commentators to point out that the desire for overseas validation was itself the problem—a critique that implicitly challenged the original film critics circle’s tendency to recognize foreign-exhibited films, obviously to suggest a parallel between the members and the foreign evaluators. The term used to downgrade social-problem films was “poverty porn,” a problematic throwback to the film-educated preference for genres that were not considered low and therefore dismissible (better designated by feminist critics as body genres, since these incited physical responses in their viewers; pornography itself has become one of the most productive areas of genre study since the late twentieth century). Tandem may be regarded as one of the numerous releases designated as worthy but trafficking in so-called poverty porn. Enough temporal distance ought to enable us to appreciate its careful appropriation of the semiotics of social significance even as it refuses to relinquish its valuation of the complexities and ambiguities of well-observed plot and character, with an ironic resolution that can only be fairly described as heartrending in its cold-bloodedness. The fact that the film was exhibited on the eve of the inauguration of a regime that made riding-in-tandem fashionable not for robbery, but for assassination, should alert the country’s commentators to their failure to read warning signs prominently presented in popular culture.

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Ang Daigdig Ko’y Ikaw

English Translation: My World Is You
Additional Languages: Hiligaynon, Cebuano
Year of Release: 1965 / B&W
Director: Efren Reyes
Screenwriter: Fred Navarro
(From a story by Efren Reyes)
Producer: FPJ Productions

Cast: Fernando Poe Jr., Susan Roces, Oscar Keesee, Lito Anzures, Victor Bravo, Pablo Virtuoso, Dencio Padilla, Vic Varrion, Mario Escudero, Rudy Meyer, Philip Coo, Marilou Murray, Esther Vizconde, Romy Nario, Resty Sandel, Angelo Buenaventura.

At the Manila Yacht Club, Don Larrazabal has asked his men to lock his daughter Vicky in the cabin of his vessel, to take her away from Daniel, the man she wants to marry. When they arrive at Matabungkay Beach in Batangas, however, they remain unaware that she jumped overboard and swam to shore. She finds a dilapidated cargo truck driven by Roman, who has stopped for lunch with his two employees. She steals their food and boards the open-air cargo section. Roman and his companions think that one of them has been sneezing, but when they stop they discover Vicky. She pleads with them to take her to Baguio, offering to help in their work and even drive the truck herself. Since her clothes are wet, they offer her Roman’s spare clothes while Roman later says he can provide her with work if she needs it. When her father and his men pass by in their car, the truck occupants hide her and deny they’ve seen her. But when the father finds out that Daniel has gone to Baguio, he and his men proceed to the summer capital, believing they might find Vicky there.

Male actors who became directors were such a guarantee of film quality that one or two overlooked names would not be such a big deal. (In a satisfying twist of fate, the country’s last excellent actor-director was a woman, Laurice Guillen.) As a performer, Efren Reyes also lingered in the shadow of Gerardo de Leon, another actor-director. Fortunately he made a number of films for yet another actor-director, Fernando Poe Jr., whose most significant contribution was … as producer. FPJ spent a major portion of his fortune on maintaining prints of his films, even those produced by others. He may have been artistically limited as a consequence of this commitment, but the rewards—the best video transfers of any official distributor in Philippine cinema, not to mention occasionally excellent titles not stored at the Singapore (now Asian) Film Archive, by directors who would have otherwise remained unrepresented—are available for anyone with a passing interest in local pop culture. Ang Daigdig Ko’y Ikaw acquired a patina of nostalgia for its distinction of being the first film where FPJ teamed up with Susan Roces, over a decade since their emergence as major stars of competing First Golden Age studios, when their respective personas were already fully formed. Not surprisingly, these factors, alongside Poe’s and Roces’s equally matched levels of charm and ability, enable ADKI to sustain more strongly than most other first-time star teamups. The film’s success is evidenced in several more of their costarred projects over the next couple of decades as the most enduring lead duo in local cinema, although Roces’s tradition-enforced inactivity after her marriage to Poe must be counted as a regrettable loss, considering the superiority of her skills set relative to most of her star-level contemporaries. Their status as film royalty also contributed to a certain anxiety over the presumably dismissive response to their first project together: subsequent Roces-Poe movies were marked by a striving for allegorical serviceability, seemingly apologetic over the excessive pleasures provided by ADKI, which was supposedly further compromised by several moments reminiscent of its obvious source of inspiration, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934). Yet ADKI does not aim to surpass the Capra, providing instead a credibly indigenous counterpart. It elects to resolve as an open tribute to another local film, outstanding but now lost: Cesar Amigo’s Sa Atin ang Daigdig (The World Is Ours, 1963)[1]—proof that it had not just its heart in the right place, but also its feet on the right turf.

Note

[1] Spoiler alert: Both Ang Daigdig Ko’y Ikaw and Sa Atin ang Daigdig function as romantic comedies; the former is expanded by scope and locale in constituting for the most part a road trip, but the latter manages to focus more effectively on class differences. One might remark that the references to It Happened One Night diffuse the concentration of ADKI, but then again, social commentary is not its primary purpose. The parallels with SAD might be suggested by the commonality of the Filipino word for “world” in their titles, but the ending of ADKI dispels any doubt when it mounts a variation on the climax of SAD, where the central pair, played by Robert Arevalo and Nida Blanca, arrive at an understanding of their possibly irresolvable differences and the less-privileged Blanca character walks away from Arevalo, toward the camera; when Arevalo realizes he wishes to work out their relationship and calls to her, she continues advancing but this time with a knowing smile as he starts running, upon which the film ends. Film critic and scriptwriter (and National Artist for Theater and Literature) Rolando S. Tinio went on record to describe SAD as the best Filipino film he had ever seen, circa the early 1980s; I had included it as one of two black-and-white titles, along with Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa (1958), in my top-ten canon—see Joel David and Melanie Joy C. Garduño, “The Ten Best Filipino Films Ever Made,” National Midweek (July 4, 1990), pp. 125–36, rpt. in Fields of Vision: The Digital Edition (Amauteurish Publishing, 2014), posted online. A local article that interrogates instances of film appropriations is “Imitation and Indigenization in Melodramas in the Late 1950s,” Huwaran/Hulmahan Atbp.: The Film Writings of Johven Velasco (University of the Philippines Press, 2009), pp. 113–24. For a useful recent discussion that teases out the complexities of cross-cultural appropriation from relatively marginal locales to the center, see Alex Taek-Gwang Lee’s “From Porcelain to Chips: A Genealogy of Global Technology and Capitalism,” Everyday Analysis (August 29, 2025), posted online.

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Here Comes the Bride

Additional Languages: Spanish, Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: Chris Martinez
Producers: Star Cinema, OctoArts Films, Quantum Films

Cast: Eugene Domingo, John Lapus, Tuesday Vargas, Angelica Panganiban, Cherry Pie Picache, Tom Rodriguez, Kim Atienza, Cai Cortez, Johnny Revilla, Bart Guingona, Ricky Rivero, Ricci Chan, Neil Ryan Sese, Ayen Munji-Laurel, Madeleine Nicolas, Timothy Chan, Nico Antonio, Cecil Paz, Ernie Forte, Malou Crisologo, Tess Antonio, Raul Vasquez, Eric Espiritu, Anthony de Guzman, Peaches Beleno, Raquel Donila, Tess de Guman, Mitch Dantes, Sammer Concepcion, Kim Buranday, Kevin Zaldariaga, John Carl Daluz, Arianna Jarmel P. Panganiban, Jeio Navel Suarez, Mark Anthony Saycon, The Bien Rivera Group

A wedding couple and the members of their party proceed to a beach resort in Rizal Province, where the ceremony will be held. People in five cars, alone or with their companions, are confronting crises of varying degrees. When they pass over Magnetic Hill, a solar eclipse takes place and their vehicles are involved in a chain collision. After the accident, a person in each of the cars notices unusual behavior, duly affecting everyone around them. A lawyer behaves like the prudish bride, eager to get to “her” wedding and worrying her best friend, the bride’s mother; a gay hairdresser turns into an elderly Spanish-speaking casanova, messing up a bridesmaid’s makeup but compensating by providing her with hot sex; a rustic nanny bamboozled by the family who employs her turns dominative and argues for her legal rights as well as those of others; a retired tycoon starts speaking like a naïve bumpkin and is delighted by the discovery of easy access to money; the prudish bride-to-be suddenly revels in her youth and beauty, changes into provocative clothes so she can flirt with hunks on the beach, and insists on a premarital romp with her flabbergasted fiance. The bride-in-the-lawyer’s body, who’s prevented from attending her own wedding, figures out that the five of them have exchanged personalities; they approach a paranormal expert, who informs them that the convergence of the accident along with the solar eclipse on Magnetic Hill might have been responsible for their alterations, but that if they have to replicate the incident in order to restore their original personalities, they will have to await the next solar eclipse two years from the present.

The high-concept comedy is such a rarity in Philippine pop culture that the qualified achievement of such an undertaking would be preferable to its total absence. Here Comes the Bride takes the further risk of elevating the attempt to a grand scale, premised on the entertainment skills promised by a larger-than-usual cast proceeding from various distinctive types, each one moving to personas far different from the one they started out with. All the actors have had sufficient training in the roles they embody, plus additional experience in one or more of the performing-arts venues of theater, TV, and/or film, honing their HCB role-playing further through preproduction exercises. The one exception is the semi-central role of the bride: as portrayed by Angelica Panganiban, she starts out opposed to her real-life identity of a bubbly, adventurous, occasionally outrageous lass, but transitions to an even more extreme version of her public personality, thus inadvertently though momentarily upstaging the rest of the cast. The measure of the self-awareness of HCB’s creatives lies in their figuring out how the narrative’s dynamic should play out. Since the setup’s complication lies first in tracking the transformation of each character before they figure out the underlying cause of the phenomenon, the process of awaiting the next paranormal opportunity and setting themselves up in order to replicate the opening multivehicular pileup takes on a technical (actually technological) aura. An attempt at a last-minute mixup, with the dislodged personalities winding up in still the wrong bodies, provides the standard race-against-time suspense prior to the requisite happy ending. Its arrival signifies as much the closure of the present plotline as the opening up of a challenge to tackle more high-concept projects with equal or greater ambition, matched with all the preparatory ability our collection of talents can muster.

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Tigasin

English Translation: Masculine
Year of Release: 1999
Director: Ike Jarlego Jr.
Screenwriter: Mel Mendoza-del Rosario
Producer: Star Cinema

Cast: Eddie Garcia, Victor Neri, Alma Concepcion, Alvin Anson, Peque Gallaga, Lito Legaspi, Manjo del Mundo, Rez Cortez, Jean Saburit, Amy Perez, Roldan Aquino, Archi Adamos, Gino Paul Guzman, Augusto Victa, Dexter Doria, Ester Chavez, Ogie Diaz, Idda Yaneza, Gandong Cervantes, Robert Talby, Ed Aquino, Archie Ventosa, Nikka Ruiz, Janet Diaz, Gloria Garcia, Joseph dela Paz, Janice Manuba, Eric Jimenez, Kevin Cabaluna, Dianne Sandico, Apolinario Reyes, Jenny de Guzman, Danny Celis, Reggie Sison, Tom Olivar, Polly Cadsawan, Ding Mendoza, Banjo Romero, Diego Salvador, Joe Jardi, Kim Laurel, Joe Lpid, Nemie Samson, Alberto Wahing, Freddie Elasigue, Jay Bermundo, Nonoy de Guzman, Jake Madrigal, Mon Confiado

Greg Marcial looks forward to a well-earned leave of absence after busting a crime ring, but his superior requests one last mission from him. Several elderly men have been suffering cardiac arrest while engaging in sexual intercourse, but in order to conduct an investigation, Marcial has to pick out a new partner for field work. Police trainers discourage him from selecting Ramon Ignacio, whom they find insufferably arrogant; Marcial though appreciates his sharpshooting skills and straight talk, and Ignacio proves crackerjack enough in helping him track the victims’ cause of death to a locally manufactured synthetic version of Viagra. They arrest promo salesladies who push the product along with skin cream, and subdue resistant van operators. But as they celebrate their mission accomplished, their superior arrives to inform them that more deaths have occurred. They ascertain that the victims pick up their escorts at a riverside restaurant that specializes in aphrodisiac preparations, run by a high-living proprietress named Jessica, who endangers their operation when Ignacio finds himself falling for her.

Ike Jarlego Jr. might have had a short directorial career, but he’d actually grown up in the film business. Since his father Enrique was the preferred editor of First Golden Age master Gregorio Fernandez, he literally first showed up as a child actor before following his father’s footsteps and proving himself worthy of the family profession. Ironically, his early filmmaking attempts—specifically Andres Manambit: Angkan ng Matatapang (Clan of the Brave, 1992) and Nena (1995)[1]—were greeted with acclaim that they had difficulty sustaining. His decades-long stint as editor though provided him with a healthier orientation than formal film training would have inculcated. Tigasin would be proof of value in any commercial filmmaker’s oeuvre, if not for the unfairly high expectations that industry observers imposed on Jarlego. He had enough good sense to infer that Eddie Garcia’s late-career focus on action material could benefit from the actor’s sex-comedy chops (a colloquial translation of the title would be “priapic,” which needs no further elaboration), and relies on newcomers to deliver crucial support; Victor Neri supplies the right measure of interactive chemistry, although the rarity of successful May­–December buddy-cop films even in overseas cinema proves how distinctive the achievement is. Alert to the homoerotic implications, Jarlego stages a love-motel investigative foray where the partners masquerade as a queer couple, with Garcia reviving his tacky-queen persona, still scandalously effective after all this time.

Note

[1] I had been a founding member of Kritika, the organization that selected Andres Manambit, which also won top prize at the yearend Metro Manila Film Festival. Nena later won the Young Critics Circle’s best-film award—though I was also a founding member of the group, I’d already started US graduate studies by then. I am grateful to police officer Juan Miguel B. Manansala for clarifying some dynamics in Philippine National Police operations.

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The Untold Story of Melanie Marquez

Year of Release: 1987
Director: Artemio Marquez
Screenwriter: Ricky Lee
(From a story by Melanie Marquez)
Producer: Miracle Boy Films International

Cast: Melanie Marquez, Caridad Sanchez, Tony Santos Sr., Rosemarie Gil, Totoy Marquez, Rene Salud, Maya dela Cuesta, Renee Salud, Lawrence Pineda, Romy Diaz, Tony Bernal, Karla Kalua, Desiree Verdadero, Sonny Pinga, Odette Khan, Virginia Angeles, Ma. Cecilia Magmayo, Julie Ann Cortez, Daryl Tupaz, Mark “John” Marquez, Cherry Ong, Rodolfo Manlangit, Ricardo de los Remedios, Ma. Luisa Laurel MacCutcheon

While enduring persecution at a young age from her wealthier and fairer classmates, Melanie helps out her mother by working as a domestic helper at a bordello, where the women admire her height and beauty. Exasperated by her mother’s rage over their economic difficulties, she follows her mother’s suggestion to seek assistance from her estranged father Artemio, who has attained some success as a movie director in faraway Manila. Artemio’s mistress resents the appearance of her partner’s legitimate child and banishes Melanie from their home and office. She tells her mother about the other woman badmouthing them, upon which the mother confronts the mistress. Melanie decides to train on her own as a model, and attracts the attention of fashion designer Renee Salud, who grooms her for local and eventually global beauty contests. Melanie fulfills her dream of winning the Miss International crown, but she also realizes that heartaches will remain an essential part of her life, regardless of whatever station she attains.

No better proof of how well the Philippine film industry used to thrive lies in such a sample as this. Artemio Marquez was virtually an ancient relic by this time, having lived and worked through two Golden Ages of productivity, his primary distinction lying in how his production house made a breakout star out of Nora Aunor via a series of musical quickies. When his daughter Melanie became the second globally renowned figure that he was associated with, his film-mogul acuity kicked in and, doubtlessly inspired by Aunor’s transformation into the country’s major performer, impelled him to create the kind of personal project that only an openly eccentric yet highly professional showbiz longtimer could pull off. Melanie Marquez, who was also just as invested in the undertaking, affirms her seriousness by allowing herself to be slapped multiple times, sometimes in slow motion, by every major character who happens along.[1] Despite The Untold Story of Melanie Marquez’s otherwise dismissible premise and handling, the film presents a useful record of Melanie’s catwalk prowess. Even more significantly, it prevails as a rare contemporary incarnation of authentic camp, according to the paradigm stipulated by Susan Sontag in her 1964 article “Notes on ‘Camp’”: inadvertent in affect, premised on artifice, funny despite its serious intent, open to multiple readings by insiders, utterly embraceable given the proper perspective and preparation, with Melanie’s undeniably androgynous appeal overlooking the proceedings.

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Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo

English Translation: The World Will Kiss My Heart
Year of Release: 1988
Director & Screenwriter: Artemio Marquez
Producer: Regal Films

Cast: Snooky Serna, Gabby Concepcion, Pops Fernandez, Martin Nievera, Lotlot de Leon, Ramon Christopher, Caridad Sanchez, Daria Ramirez, Rez Cortez, Tita Muñoz, Subas Herrero, Lucita Soriano, Ester Chavez, Mario Escudero, Charlon Davao, Judy Anne Santos, Jane Zaleta, Ryan Fortich, Luis Benedicto, Egay Gonzalez, Jay Cuyuca, Nemits Rivero, Ceso Yusi, Brigham Manalastas, Ernesto delos Reyes, Ric Mercado, Chito Ilagan, Butch Miraflor, Mark Lopez, Mercie de Vera, Marlene Vegasca

Growing up in rural poverty, Aurora and Amalia have to cope with the sudden death of their mother by agreeing to having their sister Claudia adopted by a wealthy couple, who rename the child Betty and bring her with them to the US. When they grow up, only Aurora remembers the separation; she permits her boyfriend Benjie to seek his fortune in Manila but fails to hear from him after a while. This is because the owner of the nightclub where he works, a wealthy widow, entraps him so she can possess him as her new hubby. Short of cash for continuing her studies in the city, Amalia decides to find work as well. Albert is smitten by her and gets her hired at the same workplace where Benjie landed, since the owner (now Benjie’s wife) happens to be his elder sister. Betty visits the Philippines with her husband Renato, a struggling musician, so they can stage a concert where Betty will be singing Renato’s compositions. Aurora, who’s searching for Benjie, is distracted while walking and gets hit by Renato’s car. The guilt-ridden Renato takes his victim to his home so she can recover and gives her a job as domestic helper, but Betty resents her presence and keeps quarreling with her husband and still-unrecognized sister.

The triumph of The Untold Story of Melanie Marquez signaled that Artemio Marquez still had some squall in his sails at an age when most people would be enjoying their retirement. Regal Films’ Lily Monteverde, an even more voracious talent-hunter than he’d ever been, contracted him and made sure to corner all the crowd-pleasing material that his impressively extended film practice enabled him to churn out. For better or worse, Marquez embodied the quintessence of the Pinoy filmmaker-as-journeyperson. The lore that he’d managed to store up, however, held him in good stead, and could best be sampled in his first project for Regal. Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo had none of the personal signature (such as it is) that he’d endowed in his daughter’s luridly luminous biofilm, and it bore the stamp of “Mother” Lily’s insistence on casting young real-life celebrity couplings that generated audience titillation all their own. But it also had all the hallmarks of his most financially successful period as owner of Tower Productions, where the types of aspirants that the First Golden Age studios resisted for not being Euro-pretty enough were launched so stratospherically that the more old-school movie stars could only survive by retreating into hard-core sex-film projects. Nearly all of those teen-idol and bomba films are lamentably lost, but in SPKHM we can still see how Temyong Marquez’s wholesome-youngster formulas could weave their spell on enthralled movie fans: fateful coincidences, dramatic outbursts, pregnant secrets, a yearning for connection—so drenched in openly manipulative music-infused schmaltz that the final-act benevolent intervention of an affluent matron can be welcomed only in so far as it could help draw the proceedings to a close.

Note

[1] The other Artemio Marquez stamp would be a breakdown scene where the (usually female) character would hysterically sweep away all the contents atop a table. In Melanie Marquez’s next project with her father, the Regal Films production Nasaan Ka Inay? (Where Are You, Mother?, 1988), she apologizes to the partner of a sister she had wronged by literally wallowing in and gobbling down mud—the closest we have ever gotten to subconsciously approximating Divine in John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), although Melanie might have to be grateful that apparently neither she nor her father witnessed what Divine actually scarfed down. A detailed recollection-cum-appreciation of this moment (in Filipino) was provided by Jerrick Josue David in his Linyang Pinoy, Hugot Pinoy feature on Facebook. For Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” book source, see her anthology Against Interpretation (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1966).

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Eseng ng Tondo

English Translation: Eseng of Tondo
Year of Release: 1997
Directors: Fernando Poe Jr. [as Ronwaldo Reyes] & Augusto Salvador
Screenwriters: Pablo S. Gomez & Manny Buising
(“Inspired by a true story” [opening credit title])
Producer: FPJ Productions

Cast: Fernando Poe Jr., Ina Raymundo, Jenny Syquia, Chuck Perez, Mandy Ochoa, Anita Linda, Zandro Zamora, Johnny Vicar, Bob Soler, Marita Zobel, Bing Davao, Eddie Arenas, Jose Romulo, Gerald Ejercito, Bong Francisco, Rudy Meyer, Tony Bernal, Tony Carreon, Nanding Fernandez, Robert Rivera, Bernard Atienza, Romy Diaz, Jimmy Reyes, Joey Padilla, Nonoy de Guzman, Robert Talby, Art Veloso, Lily Rose, Boy Sta. Maria, Steve Alcarado, Joone Ranillo, Dante Castro, Bert Vivar, Chanel Fernandez, Jaera Gomez, Joan Salazar, Paul Vivo, Ding Alvaro, Shiela Sanchez, Boy Diaz, Orlando Miguel, Zernan Manahan, Bon Vibar, Vic Varrion, Ernie David, Leo Gamboa, Richard Duran

Lt. Eusebio Natividad, nicknamed Eseng, is an officer in the police detachment of Manila’s Tondo district, known for its slum community and gangland activities. His brother Belo keeps attempting to take advantage of his good name by running gambling rackets, wearing down Eseng’s patience until he decides to arrest Belo himself. His wife Digna worries over Eseng’s late work hours—not only because of the dangers he faces but also because of the many temptations that come his way at night. Unknown to her, the school where she teaches is preyed on by the spoiled scion of Villafranca, a rich and influential crime boss; along with his friends, he entices a student of Digna to pose for model photos so they can gang-rape her. Eseng tracks them to a bar, where he makes the acquaintance of Elvie. He foils the latter’s fencing of stolen goods but winds up accepting her as his mistress. After Eseng raids Villafranca’s headquarters, the latter hires an assassin to get rid of him. The gang members then target Digna herself and succeed in abducting her, forcing Eseng to step up his investigation.

As the country’s top action-film star, Fernando Poe Jr. consolidated his status by relying on several impositions and performative quirks, to the point where his persona became an object of satire.[1] One could sense him trying to break free every so often—allowing news of the death of his character to overwhelm his family in Eddie Romero’s Aguila (1980), or opening another movie with his character’s actual death but enabling his twin brother to avenge him in the self-directed Ang Probinsyano (The Provincial Man, 1996, unsurprisingly spun off into the most successful series in local TV). With Eseng ng Tondo, he relinquished total control over his directorial function and toyed with narrative material that treated the flourishes beloved by his fans as throwaway or comic moments, even tacking on an open ending for good measure. The resultant product is as rewarding as any that can be reasonably expected from the major male auteur that Philippine cinema had endowed us with. Around this time, young turks were upping the ante as local action cinema’s final shot at significance, rendering the typical FPJ film as too stately paced to match. Yet Eseng ng Tondo manages to hold its own, partly because its relatively dignified approach complements its elderly performer, and also because its conscientious exploration of Tondo’s much-exploited territory, enhanced by the absence of FPJ’s usual aspirational tendency, confers on its denizens a stature and vibrance equal to the star of the picture. As if to confirm that its intentions are indeed forward-looking, it sets its climax in a distinctly working-class event, a so-called byucon (open-air beauty contest) that ends with cat-fighting participants, with Tondo imprinting itself by ensuring that the organizers and contestants comprise cross-dressers. [Tech note: Make sure to source an integral copy rather than the official distributor’s anomalously censored version.]

Note

[1] The standard imposition in any Fernando Poe Jr. movie is that the hero he plays should never be permitted to die, supposedly occasioned by Muslim fans rioting in theaters over the ending of Celso Ad. Castillo’s historical drama Asedillo (1971), as recounted by Nick Joaquin a.k.a. Quijano de Manila in Ronnie Poe & Other Silhouettes (National Book Store, 1977). His gender-progressivity is also generally acknowledged, although (as far as I know) never cited anywhere beyond a master’s thesis at the national university. The histrionic devices associated with his persona include: the exhalation in the delivery of final words to signify intense emotion—an affectation eventually adopted by his friendly rival Joseph Estrada; the slightly stooping stance (enhanced by signature low-waist denim jeans) to signal a more relaxed pose, in contrast with his enemies’ tensed-up posture; the quick-drawing of handguns with supreme sharpshooting skills, to ensure he always wins during showdowns; and the impressively swift delivery of abdominal punches (termed bara-bara) guaranteed to overpower any overconfident bully.

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