1986 – No Blood No Surrender (Jonrox Films/Larry Santiago Productions)
[Release date 10th September 1986]
Director Rudy Dominguez Writer Ernie Ortega Producers "Kado" & "Uro" Executive Producer "Jonrox Films" Line Producer Rosanna Manalaysay Cinematography Rudy Quijano Music Carlos Rodriguez Editor Samuel Domondon Sound Engineer Bing Santos Sound Effects Bert Santos In Charge Of Production Mennen P. Santiago Production Manager Wilfredo Mendoza Assistant Director Marcial Sorita Effectsman Concordio Achay Fight Instructors Ernie Ortega, Ruben Ramos Makeup Artist Eddie Valeriano Setting/Propsman Mamerto Balerio Assistant Cameraman Rodel Quijano Soundman Boy Dominguez Assistant Editors Arsenio Collado, Danny Collado Animation Rolly Santiago Layout Artist Eddie Domer Titles Lauro Romero Stills Giant Hilario Materials Trustee Rogelio Pallones Sales Manager Lauro Romero Assistant Sales Manager Ador Baligaya Advertising Controller Jay Torres Advertising Manager Tony Roxas Shipping-In-Charge Ramon Soriano Collector Joselito Exito
Cast Palito (Samson), Panchito (Captain Atravado), Max Alvarado (Mayor Mercado), Michelle Aquino [listed in the end credits as “Mischelle Aquino”] (Melinda), Ernie Ortega (Chief of Police), Ruben Ramos (Ben Cordova), Eddie Llaneta (Dagul), Eddie Valeriano, Bondying (Bondying), Fernando Poe Jr (Sylvester Stallone), Vilma Santos (Samson’s Wife), Redford White (Special Forces Soldier), Roderick Paulate (Edna [“Sofia” in the export version]), Janice Jurado (Seductress), Brandy Ayala (Seductress), Sheella Mari (Seductress), Jograd dela Torre, Dencio Padilla (Balut Vendor), Jun Fernandez, Boy Vernal, Tony Roxas, Tony Malto, Cesar de Paz, Carding delos Santos, Freddie Esguerra, Maning Boca, Rizal Stuntmen, Tanay Stuntmen, Tanay Boys Stuntmen The Policemen Bert Blanco, Allan Paradero, Nemmie Gutierrez, Jun Advincula, Boy Aquino, Tonton Kishani, John Domingo, Boy Tizon, Jun Icasa, Rey Abad, Charlie Cedeno
COMEDY/ACTION
Anatomy Of A Skeletal Goon Comedy Part One: No Blood No Surrender review by Andrew Leavold [Part Two: James Bone review is HERE]
Palito (Spanish/Tagalog for “matchstick”) was just one of many familiar faces from Filipino films of the Seventies and Eighties – like a taller and much, much thinner Weng Weng, his frighteningly skeletal frame cast him as a human dishrag or walking corpse (“bankay” in Tagalog), usually with a bandage around his head. Not surprisingly, his bankay routine never got old.
Like many older comedians from the Vaudeville era, stick-thin Palito traded on his startling appearance, along with a stock of facial tics, grimaces and smutty wordplay, and in turn etched his features into the rockface of Pinoy pop culture. When he passed away in 2010 from lung cancer aged 76, there was a genuine sense of sadness over his passing, as if a small piece of the Philippines' collective film psyche had vanished into the ether forever. For Palito was truly a veteran of hundreds of Filipino comedies and action films from the mid-Sixties, a regular bit-player – either the comic foil of action stars Fernando Poe Jr, Jun Aristorenas and his wife Virginia, or Third Banana to Dolphy and Chiquito, Nino Muhlach, and more recently Tito, Vic and Joey. and Redford White - and a memorably meatless face with pronounced cheekbones and sunken eyes often registering a look of pure bewilderment, to count upon for a scene or two of regulation "funny business".
The most vivid recurring mental image of Palito amongst Filipino filmgoers is that of a walking corpse: bone-white, in a funeral shroud and bandage wrapped around his jaw. The schtick is remembered today as if it was freshly minted. I remember interviewing Palito in 2007 when comedian Amay Bisaya interrupted and rolled off a checklist of patented Palito cliches: "How are you, Mr Palito? Are you still dead? Are you living in the cemetery?" Unfortunately for Palito, his level of public recognition could no longer be converted into paid movie work. Towards the end he barely scraped by with a living wage, working a weeknight gig playing congas at a casino in Santa Cruz, and cadging bus money from anyone who would take the time to buy him a cup of coffee. "Producers have given him a large amount of money," other out of work actors would tell me, sensing a conspiracy of pathetic proportions, "he's only pretending to be poor." They believed every word! Nevertheless his wife and children was virtually penniless when he died - was Palito keeping his rolls of unspent cash stashed in his congas, perhaps? - and went public asking for donations for hospital bills for his final hospital stay. Poor, sweet, fragile man.
Back in Palito's heyday in the Seventies and Eighties, it was possible for him to shoot scenes for three or four movies in a single day, changing costumes in the back of jeepneys as he tore from one set to the next. A substantial role alongside pale-skinned comedian Redford White in his Rambo rip-off Johnny Rambo Tango (1985) led to some enterprising producers imagining Palito in his own starring vehicle: Palito as Ram-Buto (“Ram-Bone”), in which our unlikely leading man would run around the Filipino jungle, arms like twigs, clutching an enormous hunting knife, and an M16 that’s twice his width! From there it’s a slippery slope – First Blood becomes No Blood… with the end of the name of martial arts smash hit No Retreat No Surrender tacked on for good measure! That way Jonrox Films got a two-for-one bargain, appearing at the peak of the Eighties’ Pinoy Parody craze, and once again proving the local producers' old adage "when you're onto a winning horse, beat it to death, and quickly".
In No Blood No Surrender Palito plays Samson, a mysterious Vietnam vet who wanders into the small town of Santo Sepulcro in his army duds to deliver a litter to the wife of his dead army buddy Hercules (Samson? Hercules?). Immediately he raises the ire of the corrupt Mayor Mercado (Max Alvarado) and the Police Chief (Ernie Ortega), who rule the town and their nearby camp, a base for their smuggling operation complete with a private death squad of armed gorillas and even a guard tower. When the Chief’s main henchman Cordova (Ruben Ramos) dumps him on the highway leading out of town, Samson refuses to take the hint, and heads back into Santo Sepulcro, only to discover Hercules’ wife has also passed away, leaving the house to their daughter Melinda (Michelle Aquino). She’s grateful for her father’s latter, and finds in Samson someone she can trust; however her houseboy is less trustworthy and literally sells them out to the Mayor, who has serious designs on Melinda as he did her mother, for thirty pieces of silver. Samson is thrown in jail, but both he and Melinda flee into the jungle, where his army training kicks in: fashioning wooden spears, spiked bamboo traps, and gleefully ticking off the entire list of ‘Namsploitation cliches as if no-one had ever thought of them before.
Samson’s former Special Forces commander Captain Atravado (a relatively subdued Panchito compared to his roles opposite Dolphy, here playing the Richard Crenna role) comes looking for him, and explains away Samson’s insane rampage (“I trained him…Vietnam”). To prove just how close Samson is to breaking point, there’s a flashback sequence of Samson and Atravado following their Special Forces squad – Redford White makes a non-speaking, blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo here - into a Vietcong ambush. Yep, ‘Nam may have been hell, but the Philippines is worse – much worse – with an angry and dangerously armed stick insect with Tourette’s (“Shit!” “Fuck you!” “Asshole!”) on the loose.
The producers pull in every favour from Palito’s long list of co-stars and film-biz connections.
Hot actress Janice Jurado and bold star Brandy Ayala appear as part of a trio of nymphomaniacs who, desperate for ANY man, pull the first one they discover outside their window – Samson, whom they initially mistake for a monkey – and seduce him, before he completely exhausts them and heads on his way. More of a shock addition to the marquee is superstar Vilma Santos’ last-minute appearance as Samson’s long-lost wife; it would have been more of a shock if I hadn’t remembered Palito and Nino Muhlach were the comic relief in her superhero saga Darna At Ding (1980). But the real trump card is Da King himself and Palito’s action hero Tito, Fernando Poe Jr. As Samson is beset by the Chief’s goons, FPJ drives up in his yellow buggy, joins him in dispatching the attackers with a series of trademark rapid-fire punches and slaps (with the help of a balut vendor, played by FPJ’s regular sidekick Dencio Padilla!), then drives off leaving Samson to wonder just who the hell that was. “He’s the famous movie star,” replies Dencio without missing a beat. “He’s Sylvester Stallone!”
No, he’s definitely not Stallone, Palito is no Rambo, and to most casual movie fans No Blood… makes absolutely NO sense. Imagine the horror of an action fan in Greece or the Netherlands settling down to watch Palito’s apocalyptic redux of First Blood, and finding instead a Pinoy Parody of a Hollywood action film – and poorly dubbed to boot. It’s not alone: the Philippines’ comic action films were being sold abroad along with their serious counterparts during the post-Platoon boom of 1986 to 1988. That’s how you discover Redford White’s Johnny Rambo Tango and Soldyer! (1986) on an obscure VHS label in Spain on the video store shelf alongside Dolphy’s Action Is Not Missing (as “Porky’s 12”!). Those films’ shared schizophrenic mix of comedy, action, and comic action must be jarring to a foreign audience unfamiliar with the Philippines’ unique sub-genre of Goon Comedy. The operative word, of course, is “goon”, and let’s face it, goons can’t help but be goons. And no more so than in No Blood No Surrender, as the goons have taken over the asylum – Ernie Ortega is on triple duty as henchman, scriptwriter, and fight instructor along with co-star Ruben Ramos, and all of the film’s other stuntmen-turned-bit-players are determined to wrench that five seconds of facetime and a glorious on-screen death from the next Hawaiian-shirted shitkicker. As for the comedy, it’s usually of the silliest, most boorish, crass, and cruelest kind, trading on cheap cracks at the tall, small, fat, puny, weak, and in the case of the Mayor, the leeringly macho Max Alvarado, despite his silk scarves and mult-coloured outfits, or conversely the non-hetero – and who else but Roderick Paulate could pull off Melinda’s shrill and treacherous houseboy “Edna”, as he spent most of the Eighties perfecting his ghastly gay caricatures.
No Blood… was sold to at least four international territories, and its name is apt, and not just because of its corpse-like connotations; it appears to the untrained eye that it can’t make up its mind if it’s a relatively bloodless spoof or the real deal. Although the film has its fair share of gun battles and explosions, and an unexpected appearance by Fernando Poe Jr, it fails as both. It does however work on a much higher, more hyperreal level, whereby the innate weirdness of Filipino goon comedies such as this and Weng Weng’s movies leave you floored, slack-jawed and wanting more.
Anatomy Of A Skeletal Goon Comedy Part Two: James Bone review is HERE
Ernie Ortega (Chief of Police)
Ruben Ramos (Ben Cordova)
Eddie Llaneta (Dagul)
Bondying (Bondying)
Fernando Poe Jr (Sylvester Stallone)
Vilma Santos (Samson’s Wife)
Redford White (Special Forces Soldier)
Roderick Paulate (Edna [“Sofia” in the export version])
Janice Jurado (Seductress)
Brandy Ayala (Seductress)
Sheella Mari (Seductress)
Dencio Padilla (Balut Vendor)
THEATRICAL
PHILIPPINES - 10th September 1986
VIDEO
mp4 files [both English-dubbed releases with Dutch and Greek subtitles, and the longer Tagalog version with no subtitles]
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