The Bamboo Gods Project: Contra Señas (1965)

1965 – Contra Señas/“Counter Signal” or "Counter Sign" (Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions)

[Release date 12th September 1965]

Director Eddie Garcia Story/Screenplay Henry Cuino Producer Attorney Espiridion Laxa Cinematography Fortunato B. Bernardo Music Carding Cruz Editor Gervacio Santos Sound Supervisor Flaviano Villareal Sound Effects Marcelo Solo Production Manager Jose D. Laxa Assistant Production Manager Ramon Navarro Assistant Director Tony Dantes Special Effects Jaime Trajano Jr? Makeup Artist Cely Vega Settingmen Absalon Eslaban, Ben Gozo Propsman Edgardo Manlap Layout Artist Marvin B. Panganiban

Cast Tony Ferrer (Tony Falcon, Agent X-44), Barbara Perez (Vivian Gera), Miriam Jurado (Margie), Rod Navarro (Galvan's Henchman), Paquito Diaz (Galvan's Henchman), Arnold Mendoza, Bessie Barredo, Victor Bravo, Manolo Robles, Jose Garcia [as Joe Garcia] (Professor Gera), Manolo Noble (Colonel Campos), Rocco Montalban (Galvan's Henchman), Jennings Sturgeon (Alfred Kohnor), Menchu Morelli, Danny Rojo, Leon Pajaron, Rudy Dominguez, Greg Lansang, Rey Lapena, Rudy Moreno, Arsenio Almonte, Hernando Costa, Max Alvarado (Assassin), Nello Nayo, Sammy Sarmiento, Oscar Keesee [Jr] (Senor Galvan)

SPY/ACTION

NOTE: This is the fourth in a long-running series of Agent X-44 films starring Tony Ferrer. For a full filmography and detailed article on the X-44 series, click HERE.

Extract from Andrew Leavold's “Ang Artista At Ang Falcon” journal article on Eddie Garcia directing Tony Ferrer’s Agent X-44 films, Pelikula Magazine Volume 5, published by the University of the Philippines, December 2020

In the early- to mid-Sixties there were two major trends in the Philippines’ cinema – independent outfits taking the place of the crumbling studio system previously dominated by Sampaguita, LVN and Premiere, and action films. Rough, fight-laden, populated with “goons” (the stuntmen-turned-bit players used as human punching bags for the bidas or heroes). In addition to war films, westerns and urban crime films, and their inevitable parodies by Dolphy and Chiquito, a new trend sweeping the world: Bondmania. By the time the third James Bond adventure Goldfinger was released in early 1964, almost every filming country had their own homegrown spy hero battling one nefarious organization or another bent on world domination. The Philippines, always with an opportunistic eye on popular trends, took to the spy craze like a starving man handed a balut, and between 1964 and 1967 more than a hundred Filipino Bond imitations were released, as each action star sought to sex up his image, and each hungry independent producer wanted a slice of the action.

One of the hungriest was Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions run by Pampanga-born producer and president Attorney Espiridion Laxa, specializing in war, western and action films starring hot new stars such as Fernando Poe Jr and Joseph Estrada. “He would gamble on new ideas,” Eddie said about Laxa. “Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions was one of the most successful producers during that era.” Many of TIIP’s films starred Laxa’s younger brother Antonio, rechristened Tony Ferrer (after Hollywood actor Jose Ferrer), in a supporting role to Poe Jr, Estrada, Jess Lapid and others. Unfortunately for Tony he never really made much of an impact on audiences.

That was, until he became Tony Falcon, Agent X-44.

Falcon was the Laxa’s answer to Lagalag and Anthony Alonzo’s Agent 69 (1964), and in January 1965 the first X-44 adventure, G-2/Taga-Usig Ng Kaaway (“The Enemy Interrogator”), was released by independent outfit Broadway Pictures (no doubt associated with or even bankrolled by Laxa’s TIIP). Eddie Garcia was drafted as director; for him it was the first of these new Bond imitations. The film has long since disappeared but evidently a hit with audiences and firmly established the new character of G-2 operative Tony Falcon, Agent X-44, pairing him with the already-established Agent 69, which Tagalog Ilang-Ilang also did with the second X-44 film Kalaban Ng Sindikato, also directed by Eddie, only two months later. Interpol was the third, followed by a fourth –the earliest X-44 adventure AND Eddie Garcia-directed film in existence – called Contra Señas, or “Counter Signal”.

At immediate glance Contra Señas is a quantum leap forward in quality from the first three films. It is the first X-44 film in color, which was considered a big deal at the time, and usually reserved for the studios’ roadshow presentations. Cast opposite Ferrer is Barbara Perez, known at the time as the “Audrey Hepburn of the Philippines”, and was hot property, especially after she was offered a Hollywood contract in the wake of her appearance in the US production No Man Is An Island (1962). Then there’s the film’s opening, a magnificently staged sequence of shots in which Tony Falcon is dwarfed by massive oil tanks as he prowls and karate-chops his way through a goon-infested refinery (specifically the Shell Refinery in Batangas), while the music – Carding Cruz and his orchestra’s bongos, shimmying horns and staccato jazz stabs - propels the action along. Falcon then sets the refinery (more specifically, its miniature!) to explode, capping off an impressive credit backdrop which, although admittedly not up to Hollywood standards, is comparable to any Italian or Spanish Bond knock-off.

Contra Señas immediately kicks in with Professor Gera (Jose Garcia) offering his anti-missile formula to both the Philippine government and a shadowy organization (Red China? Russia? Intriguingly it’s never mentioned by name) for 200 million pesos. To ensure his personal safety Gera deliberately withholds the missing part of the formula, the “counter signal” of the film’s title, but is still kidnapped by the global conspiracy’s Manila representative Senor Galvan (Gerry de Leon and Eddie Romero regular Oscar Keesee Jr) and his parade of henchmen (Paquito Diaz, Rod Navarro, Victor Bravo), each one with a small army of apes in suits (Rocco Montalban etc), who threaten to snatch Gera’s only daughter Vivian (Barbara Perez). G-2 boss Colonel Campos (Manolo Noble) assigns his top agent Tony Falcon to protect Vivian; little does Tony know that Vivian’s rich socialite friend Margie (Miriam Jurado) is not only a member of Galvan’s nefarious organization, but is – horror of horrors – trying to destroy the budding romance between Vivian and Tony. The counter signal is finally revealed to be inscribed on a wheel-shaped pendant around Vivian’s shapely neck, but it’s too late, as the seemingly doomed lovers are grabbed and X-44 finds himself strapped to a table with a huge metal arrowhead aimed at his particulars.

Very much a product of its time and its formula, Contra Señas does little to deviate story-wise from the hundred other Pinoy Bonds. What is does impart is a level of worldliness not usually seen in Filipino action films of the period, as well as a high degree of sophistication in the way the story is translated onto the screen. “I enjoyed doing these Falcon series,” Eddie admitted in a 1978 interview in Expressweek. “They gave me the chance to explore the camera through quick pacing, fancy camera angling, all that stuff… I like my work to be fluid in the use of visuals and in continuity. I do a lot of homework even before the actual filming starts, and the script is usually pre-edited before the shooting begins.” Presumably Eddie was given more time and a larger budget than a regular Tagalog action film, and Eddie’s professionalism shows in his dynamic composition (high angles, triangular shots) and fluid action, in stark contrast to the usual technique of filming actors talking in a line in continuous shots.

Take, for example, the extended fight scene between Tony Ferrer and Paquito Diaz. Paquito’s character Maurice lures Tony Falcon to a deserted warehouse and ambushes him, initiating an unnaturally drawn-out and brutal fist fight. Eddie films much of the action from the warehouse’s mezzanine level, using low lighting to cast unnaturally long shadows. It’s beautifully staged and shot, using minimal cuts –clearly not for budgetary reasons, but instead to punctuate the violence. At one point Tony Ferrer can be seen falling down the warehouse’s stairs, then gets up and continues to punch the living hell out of Paquito Diaz – all in one single shot.

Many of the film’s pleasures lie in watching the actors trade on their familiar screen personalities. Quintessential villain Max Alvarado, one of the most frequently used goons in the entire X-44 series, makes a brief appearance in Contra Señas which he is used with maximum effect as both muscle and comic relief: playing hitman Damazol hired by Margie to kidnap Vivian and Tony Falcon, Max arrives at Vivian’s door in a ludicrous wig posing as her wildly effeminate manicurist. Damazol then Garottes one of Falcon’s sentries before Falcon literally stops him dead with a series of karate chops to the face. Another ubiquitous face in the early Tony Falcon films is “white goon” Jennings Sturgeon, a former GI who stayed in the Philippines after World War 2 to raise a family and study art at UP Dilliman. His in-law, screen villain Johnny Monteiro, introduced him to the movies, his gaunt features and an unfeasibly thin frame often gracing Eddie Romero war pictures; in Contra Señas he adds an eyepatch and a reasonably convincing accent to his East German agent character Alfred Kohner, a torture specialist imported from behind the Iron Curtain to extract the whereabouts of Professor Gera’s counter signal. Unfortunately for the shadowy cabal Gera chokes on Kohner’s cyanide-laced cigar before he can talk, leaving Kohner to berate himself for being too efficient. Sadly, Contra Señas would prove to be Sturgeon’s final film appearance before taking his own life.

Part of the success of Contra Señas is its repertory company, under the guidance of Tagalog Ilang-Ilang’s Attorney Espiridion Laxa. In addition to Eddie Garcia as director, there are writer Henry Cuino, Carding Cruz and his orchestra, the recurring characters Tony Ferrer and Manolo Noble, returning actors Victor Bravo, Rod Navarro, Paquito Diaz, and those supporting actors and bit players (the “goons” of Filipino cinema like Alvarado, Rocco Montalban). Through the craggy features and rugged landscape of Goon Cinema, the peculiarly action-centric films of the Philippines, these Bond imitations become recognizable in itself: characters, faces, musical motifs, rhythms, authorial stamps, all are part of the iconography of Philippine pulp cinema, of which Contra Señas is a well-crafted example. Disposable? Probably. An important time capsule of the Filipino audience’s desires and expectations? I would argue: most definitely. The innate worth of these films comes down to your own prejudices. If you’re expecting National Cinema or indigenous storytelling, you’re in for a rude shock. The X-44 films exist in an entirely different universe, far removed from the social realism coveted by serious cinephiles - a world of leisure suits, fancy mansions, sports cars; an imitation of the spy world portrayed in the West, and thus pure wish fulfillment as well as totally escapist fare. But as globalist as the films may be, they do have a local flavor. Bond Adobo (or Adobond?): a uniquely Filipino hybrid of a very recognizable original.