TONY FERRER as TONY FALCON, Agent X-44 - The Complete Filmography and Master File
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
THE COMPLETE X-44 FILMOGRAPHY (in order of release): G-2 (1965), Kalaban Ng Sindikato/“Enemy Of The Syndicate” (1965), Interpol: Hadlang Sa Manlulupig/“Interpol: Barrier To The Conqueror” (1965), Contra Senas/"Counter Signal" or "Counter Sign" (1965), Mastermind (1965), Deadline: Agosto 13 (1966), Trapped! (1966), Blackmail! (1966), Sabotage (aka The Karate Chop, 1966), Boomerang (1966), Code Name: Octopus (1966), Kill...Tony Falcon (1966), Frame-Up! (1966), Solo Flight (1967), The Assassin (1967), Crackdown! (1967), Modus Operandi (1967), Target: The A-Go-Go Generation (1967), The Specialists (1968), The Infiltrators (1969), Seven Deadly Roses (1969), The Mad Killers (1969), Blue-Seal Mataharis (1969), The Pushers (1970), Crisis (1970), Master Key (1971), The Strategist (1971), The Criminals (1971), The Smugglers (1972), Darna And The Giants [cameo] (1973), The Interceptors (1976), Legs...Katan...Babae!/ "Legs...Body...Girl!" [cameo] (1981), For Y'ur Height Only [cameo] (1981), Di Bale Na Lang [unconfirmed cameo] (1987), Agent X-44 [supporting player] (2007)
The Philippines’ cinema in 1966 was a vastly different place to 1960. In just six years, the number of films produced had almost doubled to 198, and can be directly attributed to aggressive independents cutting a swathe through the Big Three’s monopoly and sending them into a rapid decline. [28] The Manila Film Festival [29] was established in 1966 in an effort to showcase local cinema in theatres usually reserved for Hollywood and European features. Even as late as the mid Sixties, local films were generally regarded as a second-rate artform, a panacea for the bakya masses. One result of the massively successful MFF was to grant Filipino films an aura of respectability which only grew as the film industry exploded into the Seventies. The second result was more unexpected: the inaugural MFF’s top grossing film, the spy caper Sabotage, became a bona fide hit, and turned its ordinary-looking thick-bodied and thick-lipped former cinema usher into THE James Bond of the Philippines.
Naturally it was Ferrer's brother, Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions' Attorney Espiridon Laxa, who gave Pampangan-born Antonio Laxa, rechristened "Ferrer" after the American screen idol Mel Ferrer, his first screen break in Kilabot Sa Barilan. “He started with our company as Production Manager,” said Attorney Laxa, “and because our movie stars FPJ and Erap became friends, they suggested to him, 'Why don't you appear also?' So he appeared in some of their films, and then later on he graduated into a film of his own. That was how he became a movie star.” And he became good at it? “Well, he succeeded,” Attorney Laxa laughed. “I don't know if he was good at it or not!”
Supporting tough-guy roles in key TIIP features followed, often in multi-actor action vehicles, a key strategy by producer Laxa to keep one step ahead of the majors. One surviving film from the period, the all-star World War 2 actioner, Suicide Commandos (1962), pairs the young, almost unrecognizable young Ferrer opposite Fernando Poe Jr, Joseph Estrada, Romeo Vasquez, goon favourite Max Alvarado, and star-on-the-rise Jess Lapid, as a guerrilla squad sent through Japanese lines to blow up an airfield. [30] Sadly, Ferrer's role as a knife-wielding, Japanese-butchering psychopath is never fully realized, nor (perhaps thankfully) does he get the girl.
By the mid-Sixties the world had gone crazy over James Bond. Most Western-influenced film cultures were churning out one gadget-laden spy caper after the other, and the Philippines' copycat industry was more voracious than most. Following Goldfinger's release in 1964, no fewer than twenty Pinoy Bonds appeared within a manic two-year cycle.
The first local 007 imitation appeared in April 1964 - Eddie Fernandez as Agent Lagalag, courtesy of director Cirio H. Santiago - followed by Agent 69 (Anthony Alonzo) on June 1st. A second Lagalag adventure Bakas Ng Dragon/“Trace Of A Dragon” was released in July, and the inevitable spoofs began in September with Chiquito as James Ban-Dong: Secret Agent 02-10. Dolphy answered with Dolpong Scarface Agent 1-2-3 in December 1964; both films were the earliest screenplays by future auteur Celso Ad. Castillo). At least 32 spy-themed action and comedy films produced in the Philippines in 1965, reaching a peak of possibly more than 41 spy features released in 1966. Eddie Fernandez scored a second spy role as Johnny Oro, Charlie Davao played both Secret Agent 009 and Agent X-55, Eddie Rodriguez was Paolo Stacatto, RP Secret Agent 077, Bernard Bonnin became Agent 707, Hammerhead AND Secret Agent M-1, Romano Castellvi was Agent Domino, Eddie Rodriguez was Cobra…
With the possible exception of FPJ and his cowboy pictures, no other local cycle had penetrated Pinoy pop culture to such an extent, thanks to the deluge of spy-related titles and characters from all fronts – film, radio, the komiks, and the burgeoning new medium of television.
“For those aspiring to a national cinema that would reflect the true spirit and essence of the Filipino, the secret agent genre represented all that was corrupt in Philippine cinema and the nation. Critics blasted these films as embarrassing and unassailable evidence of the industry's dearth of creativity, crass commercialism, and hopeless tendency to mimic foreign forms and themes.” [31]
But it was Tony Ferrer as Tony Falcon, Agent X-44, who entered the public consciousness as THE Pinoy James Bond. Ferrer seemed to embody the perfect local version of Bond: a karatista and devout ladies' man in real life, to the point where the public and private personas became inseparable. From G-2/Taga-Usig Ng Kaaway (“G-2/The Enemy Interrogator”; 1965) [32], the first of more than thirty Falcon adventures until his titular, self-referential appearance as Vhong Navarro's boss in Joyce Bernal's spoof Agent X44 (2007), Ferrer truly belonged in his trademark tailored white suits and X-ray sunglasses, and despite several reasonably successful stabs at the international market, his non-Falcon roles never had quite the same impact.
In July 2019 the Philippines lost a Titan of its cinema. A country went into mourning, and so did I.
I was privileged to have interviewed Mr Garcia twice: once in 2007 for my documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013), and finally in January 2019, only months before his on-set accident and untimely passing. I found him to be extremely kind and generous with his time, if a little short on details - after all, he acted in more than 700 feature films! Eddie was also at home behind the camera, eventually becoming a multi-awarded director and receiving acclaim for his films from the serious Nora Aunor vehicle Atsay (1978) onwards. Even at the time it was more or less forgotten that Eddie was a prolific director in the Sixties, and had made a name for himself directing a series of spy films during the height of Bondmania as well as making an action superstar out of Tony Ferrer and an iconic character of G-2 operative Tony Falcon, Agent X-44.
Out of the eleven X-44 films Eddie directed, two topped the box office at the Manila Film Festival, ensuring the continuing success of a series of films which totaled more than 35 over a sixteen year span [1]. For any film series regardless of genre this is a stellar achievement. In a sea of imitators, Tony Falcon WAS the Filipino James Bond, and probably to some old-timers still is. Just like Ian Fleming’s character, Tony Falcon long outlived the initial wave of Bondmania from 1964 to 1967; at final count, X-44 films do in fact outnumber the Bond series by more than ten features.
A large part of the series’ success, I suspected, was due to Eddie Garcia’s direction. But where could you find those X-44 movies – or, for that matter, any of Eddie Garcia’s early films as director? As with most pulp films of the Sixties, copies of many of the X-44 series no longer exist in any format. Those that have miraculously survived the ravages of time and successive waves of technology are simply not in circulation via TV, streaming, DVD or Blu-Ray [2]; and as much of the remaining Philippines’ film output is in Tagalog without subtitles in English or any other language, and research for historical context is practically non-existent, those films are both inaccessible AND incomprehensible outside of a miniscule circle of film collectors and academics.
With the recent discovery of two of the earliest Tony Falcon films – Contra Señas (“Counter Signal”; 1965) and Sabotage (1966), both in English, both directed by Eddie - a fuller appreciation of Eddie Garcia’s work as director may truly begin. Cast your preconceived notions aside as we delve into one of the most disreputable of genres, the spy thriller, one readily forgotten in the arguments over Global vs National Cinema. No, these films are pure pop cinema, and under Eddie’s sure hand, GREAT pop cinema. Eddie elevates his meagre material to a never-before-seen level of professionalism and sophistication – and I would add “internationalism”, as many of the titles and much of several of the films’ dialogue are in English. I would even go so far to argue that the Sixties, almost universally regarded as a wasteland of disposable and imitative dreck, should instead be considered the Philippines’ Golden Age of Pulp Cinema, and the Eddie-directed Sabotage as its high water mark.
Eddie almost never made it into show business. As a Philippines Scout based in Okinawa after World War 2, he could have easily become a career military man. His friend suggested he try out for producer/director Manuel Conde’s Siete Infantes de Lara (1949) as one of the seven musketeers fighting Moors; to his surprise he was training for hours each day in stunt work and sword fighting. He soon became a contract player for Sampaguita Pictures, quickly becoming comfortable in action films, usually as kontrabida or villain, in which his military and stunt training were put to good use. But Eddie had greater ambitions.
“I used to hang around the editing room, watching the editors,” Eddie told me. “Then, when I’m not acting – because Sampaguita had four units, they were grinding at the same time – I would go to the set of another director and watch him direct.
“When I started I said I’m going to give myself fifteen years, and I’ll probably be able to direct a film… Luckily it took me twelve years.
“I started directing at Sampaguita Pictures. The late Dr Vera gave me a break, and that’s how my directorial career started.”
His first directing job was Karugtong Ng Kahapon (1961), a war film starring Mario Montenegro, Rita Gomez, Ric Rodrigo and Marlene Dauden. It was followed by two films in 1963, one more for Sampaguita - Historia De Un Amor with Juancho Gutierrez and Josephine Estrada - and Ang Manananggol Ni Ruben for the independent Pilipino Pictures.
Who was your main inspiration, I asked Eddie? “David Lean,” was his modest reply.
Freed from his Sampaguita contract in 1963, Eddie decided to go freelance, acting in kontrabida roles and accepting the occasional director job. At the time 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 [3], 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 Galvan’s only daughter Vivian (Barbara Perez). G-2 boss Colonel Campos (possibly Manolo Roble, although I can’t confirm his name) 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. [4] “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 fulfilment 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.
Ferrer’s high-profile follow-up debuted at the first ever Manila Film Festival inaugurated by Mayor Antonio Villegas, who commandeered first-run theaters usually reserved for foreign films for ten days beginning June 24th 1966. Sabotage was Tagalog Ilang-Ilang’s entry amidst stiff competition from other goon films with established action stars: two from Fernando Poe Jr (Sarhento Aguila At Ang 9 Na Magigiting and a reissue of Zamboanga), the Dolphy spy spoof Napoleon Doble At Ang Sexy Sex, rival Bond-alike Target Domino directed by Danny L. Zialcita and starring Romano Castellvi, and the Jess Lapid western Gunfighter, Triggerman with Eddie Fernandez, and Jun Aristorenas as Rico Soliteryo. Incredibly, Sabotage became the top-grossing film and scored the Best Action Film award. Tony Ferrer had become a bona-fide star.
Before the Manila Film Festival, local films were relegated to only a few theaters; MFF framed local cinema in a way that opened up new venues, new financial opportunities, and most significantly, granted a newfound aura of respectability for Tagalog films. “During those years, ’66 and ’67,” Eddie told me, “it was the glory of local cinema. They were beating Hollywood at the box office!”
A degree of Sabotage’s phenomenal success must be attributed to the perfect fit of Tony Ferrer in the role of X-44. He does indeed cut an impressive image: lugubriously oiled coiffure, stylish suits, a mean hand at karate, and while not conventionally handsome, possessing a certain je ne sais quoi. As a result, the distinction between Ferrer’s real life and screen image was deliberately blurred by articles which spoke of a lifestyle as swinging as his alter ego. There were tales of Ferrer gambling on the casino ship moored off Manila Bay, rumors of affairs with his leading ladies. On-screen he’s polite and attentive to women – ALL women, even the ones he’s forced to kill – if a little predatory, and evidently has the sexual appetite of a hessian sack full of rabbits. In both Contra Señas and Sabotage he does, to his credit, fall in love with the female lead, a trait seemingly peculiar to the Philippines’ Bonds, as if to make their characters more palatable to a local (read: predominantly conservative and Catholic) audience, and to prove Tony Falcon isn’t just a rom-bot spraying romantic interest faster than the Exxon Valdez.
Even without Ferrer, Sabotage would have been a fearsome beast, under the terrifyingly sure hand of director Eddie Garcia. As official MFF entry Laxa allowed Eddie his largest budget to date, and it shows in its next level of polish, film language and sheer glamour. Like Contra Señas, Sabotage is in color, but was also filmed in Scope, taking advantage of its breathtaking Baguio locations, and of its four starlets providing the sizzle: the stunning Josephine Estrada, a red head introduced in Sampaguita films in the early Sixties; Alicja Basili, a hyper-exotic blonde bombshell with a Polish name but believed to be Italian and mainstay of at least seven X-44 features, and with a European accent as thick and impenetrable as her crayoned eyebrows; the welcome return of bad girl Miriam Jurado as the super-villain’s unnamed moll; and English-sounding Mary Louise Matheson in her sole film credit as a literally poisonous red-headed temptress.
Agent X-44 is ordered to Baguio to investigate mysterious blonde Irna Martinelli (Alicja Basili), suspected by his G-2 boss Colonel Campos to be an international saboteur. She is in fact in the employ of Destruction Unlimited, a global crime syndicate headed by the sardonic, chair-bound, Bond-worthy (and possibly Communist) villain Senor Garredo (Joe Sison). Accompanied by Christine (Josephine Estrada), the stewardess he meets on the flight to Baguio, Falcon discovers that Garredo and his Destruction Unlimited are plotting to take over the country’s three main hydroelectric plans and hold the Philippines hostage. With his private army of goons in camouflage and red berets, personally trained and supervised by arch-mercenary Darmo Durango (Max Alvarado), securing all three plants, Garredo cuts the power of one station and Manila grinds to a halt, just to show Campos and the Philippine government he isn’t joking. Garredo’s goons then kidnap Christine and overpower Falcon, tie them up (Falcon to the metal floor with a nest of spikes hovering over him), and set the controls on DESTRUCT! while precious seconds tick away.
To a Filipino (and particularly Manila) audience Sabotage’s stunning Baguio locations – Falcon wooing Christine at a mountain lookout with the sweeping Cordillieras behind them - were already exotic, but the sight of Tony Falcon in a cable freight car hundreds of feet in the air locked in a fistfight with one of Garredo’s goons would have proved irresistible. Much of the film’s impact is generated by the use of three actual hydro-electric power plants near Baguio and in Laguna, in particular the Binga station in Bontoc, whose tunnels and cavernous interiors are captured with wide angle lenses for maximum impact. Then there the gadgets – machine guns are everywhere, fitted into the back seat of a car during the Baguio car chase, and in the armrests of a wheelchair (for her treachery in informing on Destruction Unlimited, Miriam Jurado is executed with twin blasts from the seated Garredo!). Falcon’s flame-shooting ring from Contra Señas make a return, as do his X-ray specs, and this time they can also detect poison from Mary Louise Matheson’s drinks cabinet.
More than the X-44 previous films, Sabotage ups the ante on its sophistication and international gloss by the fact that more than 90% of the dialogue is delivered in English. This makes for some awkward dialogue exchanges between actors whose first language is most definitely not English and, if anything, is a not-so-subtle reminder that you are after all watching a product of the Philippines. Take, for example, the scenes between Alicja Basili and the heavily-accented Tony Ferrer, whom she refers to “Torn-knee FarlKONN.” “Are you shoore dat’s all you want frrrrrrom me?” she fizzes at a baffled-looking Ferrer, as his grasp on the English language becomes more tenuous by the second.
There’s no doubt Ferrer enjoyed the peak of his popularity with Sabotage. “Admittedly, it's the best carbon copy of James Bond yet," offered film critic Wilfrido D. Nolledo, "with its torrid kissing scenes, chilling karate bouts, and very effective bang-bang—all with U.N.C.L.E. editing by Director Eddie Garcia [sic]. And Tony Ferrer makes a sprightly spy.” [33] Of the 41 spy-themed releases of 1966, eight were Ferrer's: along with Sabotage were Deadline: Agosto 13, Trapped!, Blackmail! (love the exclaimation marks!), Boomerang, Code Name: Octopus, Kill... Tony Falcon, and Frame-Up! The Tony Falcon titles from '66 onwards were notably in English in an attempt to match the sophistication and internationalism of the Bond series.
Miraculously, the Sabotage team were able to replicate their phenomenal success with their follow-up, Modus Operandi, at the 2nd Manila Film Festival in 1967, and was declared the top grosser and Best Action Film. Around this time the X-44 franchise was leased out to other companies; without the well-oiled machine the quality evidently began to suffer. Crackdown! (1967) from Gretas Productions, for instance – one of the four surviving X-44 adventures from the Sixties – is, by comparison to the Eddie Garcia-directed efforts, cheap (and in black and white, a retrogressive step!), flat, unimaginatively staged and perfunctorily filmed, parochial in its playing for cheap laughs in the cheap seats, depressingly ordinary, and derivative of not only the James Bond series but its Filipino counterpart.
1967 signaled the tail end of the James Bond cycle as gadget-laded spy films slipped from vogue. Even Ferrer himself was making more karate-themed films by the time Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions entered the 4th Manila Film Festival in 1969 with The Mad Killers. Directed by A. Gregorio, this time the film didn’t rate at either the box office or Awards Night.
One sole surviving print from the Sixties, The Infiltrators (1969), reveals a very knowing spy flick peppered with white faces, delivering half its dialogue in English, and its décor leaning towards a garish Euro Pop-Art cheapie. Scientist Dr Jonathan Goldenberg is determined to put man on the Moon (this IS still 1969, remember); Aryan assassin “Adolf Strauss” is given orders that Dr Goldenberg is not to leave Manila, thereby setting the US thirty years behind the Reds. Strauss sets up a Kennedy style assassination complete with his own decoy. Falcon, however, does a switcheroo on the scientist, but the decoy tries to blackmail crime boss Savedo (Rod Navarro), whose blonde Italian moll Gina Cardinale also doubles as an exotic dancer shaking her tassels in a giant parrot cage, and quickly finds his toes pointing ceiling-wards. The Infiltrators, with its Batman segues, machine gun shoot-outs, car chases, and the iconic Falcon with his unrepentant Pomade-flavoured pompadour and trademark all-white suit, is just fantastic. Not surprisingly the Tony Falcon films continued to be a staple of the Seventies at the rate of one or two a year – and, just like its source of inspiration, outlasting all of its "imitators" from that initial burst of Bondmania, even penetrating the international market, thanks to an unlikely ally from the West Indies.
TIIP came back, all guns blazing, in 1970 with Crisis – an X-44 adventure deliberately geared towards the world market, reuniting Tony Ferrer with director Eddie Garcia and Sabotage screenwriter Greg B. Macabenta, and stacked with dependable faces such as Rosemarie Gil, Marissa Delgado, Alicja Basili and Joy Dee, Leopoldo Salcedo, Sabotage’s villain Joe Sison, and goons Victor Bravo and Max Alvarado. Expectations at the 5th Manila Film Festival were clearly high and Crisis won the Best Director award for Eddie Garcia, but lost at the tills to Dolphy’s top-grossing jet-set comedy Tayo’y Mag-Up, Up And Away.
The X-44 series did indeed sell abroad, albeit in a modest way. Initially several of the early Eddie-directed films screened in Guam, including Trapped! (1966), The Assassin (1967), Sabotage and Modus Operandi; one of the films’ selling points was that the dialogue contained more than 70% English. Hawaii, too, screened X-44 films for a primarily Ilocano-speaking diaspora. In 1970 an enterprising Trinidad distributor named Anthony Maharaj purchased the West Indies rights to around ten X-44 films from Tagalog Ilang-Ilang and dubbed them into English, including Contra Señas.
Born in Trinidad from Indian parentage, Anthony Maharaj was destined it seems to follow his family into film distribution. Rejecting the traditional Hindi musicals for the more visceral thrills of spaghetti westerns, the craze soon died in the late Sixties and Maharaj was left with a need to purchase even more exotic actioners. "I decided one morning to go to the Far East," Maharaj told me at a plush hotel in Makati. "Everybody said, 'You're mad!' I said, 'No I'm not. There's a place called Hong Kong. I think I'll find Chinese action movies.' I got on a plane, walked the streets of Hong Kong, didn't find anything that appealed to me, and I said, 'Let me go to a place called the Philippines.' So I came to the Philippines. I stayed at a hotel called Manila Garden Hotel, and I got into a taxi and I says, 'Take me into town where the cinemas are.' And in front of the cinemas I saw there beautifully hand-painted billboards that said, 'Agent X-44! Tony Ferrer, Karate King!' And I thought BINGO."
It was in 1971, immediately prior to Hong Kong's kung fu explosion, that the cinema owners directed Maharaj first to Edwin Bote, then to Attorney Laxa of Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions. “I met him, I said, 'I like these films, but they're black and white, they're not in English.' Edwin Bote then said, 'I can help you. We will cut out all of the scenes that you don't want' - which was everything that was not action - 'and we will dub it. It's very simple - parrot dubbing.' So they guy put on a headset, and they played back on a tape recorder, and dubbed it. It was very primitive but it worked."
Maharaj initially purchased three Tony Ferrer spy features - Sabotage (1966), Modus Operandi (1967), Crisis (1970) - from Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions. "I took the films back, it was the Christmas season in Trinidad and Guyana, and I convinced the cinema owners there that, 'Listen, this is something new.' They were not easily convinced." A curious phenomenon occurred: instead of the films filling up the B-slots of double features, the crowds went bananas over Tony Falcon's fighting scenes.
"Once the trailers went into the cinemas, audiences had never seen anything like karate. This was foreign to them. And so they went crazy, jumping out of their seats, and the films made a fortune."
Ferrer became an unlikely superstar, and Maharaj bought more Tagalog features for the West Indies market. News travelled back to the Philippines that their B films were a hit; the Philippines Daily Express enthusiastically reported that the West Indies has "placed orders as well for a total of 300 local films reportedly involving 1.2 million US dollars." [34] Through Bote’s growing international connections, Tony Falcon also became an action icon in West Africa and Indonesia [35]. Then, almost as suddenly, the bubble burst – coincidentally around the time Bruce Lee broke big - and the West Indies’ demand for Filipino action films evaporated. “The first two did quite well. Then one morning I woke up and opened a film called Kill…Tony Falcon, and nobody came to the cinemas. And I knew it was over.”
Those English-friendly versions were then distributed to West Africa, Indonesia and Thailand [5]. Possessing a copy of the English-dubbed version of Contra Señas is a mixed blessing – it’s a miracle that it exists, and is at least comprehensible to a non-Tagalog audience, but is such a wretchedly awful dubbing job that you can actually hear the sound recorder being switched on and off.
INSERT "THE INTERCEPTORS"
After more than a decade headlining films for his brother Espiridion Laxa's Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions, Ferrer emerged from his family’s formidable shadow to form his own company, Margarita Productions, in 1977. By then Ferrer was well past his prime. His body was thickening, his turbot lips more pronounced that ever; the Pinoy Bruce Lees were attracting the greatest share of attention from the chop-sockey-obsessed crowd, while Ferrer had never fully made the transition from karatista to kung fu master. Younger stars such as Rudy Fernandez and Lito Lapid were waiting in the wings, and even the older Ramon Revilla Sr was comfortably coasting through his regulation bandits-with-anting-anting features. Nevertheless, with himself and his brother Nick Romano in generous roles and crony Efren C. Pinon often in the director's chair, producer Ferrer enjoyed a reasonably good six year run, making a total of ten features.
Margarita Productions gave Ferrer the opportunity to resurrect his Agent X-44 character in 1979 after a notable five year absence. He even deliberately evoked the name of his biggest Sixties hit, in an attempt to reignite his soggy screen presence. And you can tell that Sabotage 2, released the same year as the James Bond adventure Moonraker, has a faint reek of desperation in its BIG production numbers, filmed by as many as six different shooting units, as over-the-top as its two million peso budget [69] - admittedly impressive for a local film - allows.
A cabal of hired killers target a visiting Latin American businessman Don Franco Madriago (distinguished-looking mestizo actor Tony Carreon) visiting Manila to receive one billion in gold for agricultural equipment. Gold will remain the currency standard, he tells reporters - but warns, "Don't let it fall into the wrong hands." The killers are on the payroll of Siberian renegade Dr Ivan Skovsky (the future Dr Von Kohler, Mike Cohen, adopting an even sludgier Euro-villain accent), who demands 50 percent of the Philippines' gold reserves - or else. Falcon thwarts an initial attempt on Madriaga's life by jumping off a chopper onto the Holiday Inn roof, kicking the snoiper in the guts, and yelling "Police!" before blasting him full of holes. Next stop is Baguio, where at a polo match, Falcon knocks Don Franco from an exploding saddle (according to Jim Gaines, they actually blew up a real horse). From that moment on, Tony Falcon also becomes the killers' target, in the sights of two seductive assassins in the shapes of Azenith Briones and Olivia O'Hara, a samurai sword-wielding Protacio Dee and Jim Gaines with an enormous afro talking jive ("Listen, broad…that dude ain't nothin'!"), Romy Diaz firing a machine gun from in a helicopter which explodes with just one shot from Falcon's handgun, and Nick Romano in a second chopper aiming a bazooka at Falcon's speedboat. This time Falcon manages to run from the water, through a coconut grove, and into his car with a rocket launcher in the roof - BOOM! If it sounds exhausting, you haven't seen nothing yet…
The assassination plot is a mere smokescreen for Dr Skovsky's true purpose - driven mad in a Soviet Gulag, he first demands ALL of the Philippines' gold by pointing thermonuclear warheads at its reserves, before holding the the rest of the world to ransom. Falcon cleverly decides to infiltrate Skovsky's secret underground lair in nothing but his white suit and stick-on beard, just in time for Skovsky's missiles, computer banks manned by girls in silver-strapped bikinis and go-go boots, Max Alvarado, and goons in matching red polo neck sweaters, to be blown sky-high. Daft and straight-faced to the point of splitting skin, Sabotage 2 over-imagines its capabilities - and yet the wide arc by which the film misses its intended mark is what actually saves it. Without director Efren C. Pinon's utterly humourless direction there'd be no love scenes photographed through cheap chandeliers and Seventies opticals, no bile-inducing moment of Tony Falcon peering though X-ray Specs at a ballroom full of naked bottoms, no briefcase gun, no sub-Dick Tracy TV watch, or Ferrer kicking an assassin to death with his golf spikes. No, it would resemble any other by-the-numbers Pinoy goon actioner.
In Ang Agila At Ang Falcon ("The Eagle And The Falcon"; 1980), Agent X-44 teams with the King of Pinoy Action, Fernando Poe Jr, in the final of the 30-film-plus series. FPJ plays no-nonsense cop Ed Bello teamed with the white-suited playboy agent Ferrer to thwart a criminal kingpin (Mike Cohen once again) and his plot to destroy the Philippines government. These gloriously pulpy X-44 adventures are always about BIG action scenes, fast pacing, goons galore, slabs of English dialogue for extra "class", and a bevy of beautiful women for the thick-bodied, inner tube-lipped Ferrer: here it's gorgeous Liz Alindogan, in flashbacks as Falcon's bride gunned down by assassins mid-romp in a field (“inspired” by Bond's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, hey Tony?), and blonde American karate kitten Jillian Kessler, also doing her Filipino tour of duty in Raw Force (1982) and Cirio Santiago's Firecracker (1981).
There's humour in Ferrer showing the rough-diamond FPJ his ultra-modern villa, gold-plated Armalite and stewardesses on tap, and instructing Da King about style and pleasure by whipping out his X-Ray Specs and ogling at naked diners. A co-production between FPJ Productions and Margarita Productions, Ang Agila At Ang Falcon is a decent disco-flavoured finale to fifteen years of Falcon, somewhat scaled down from the Bond-level excesses of Sabotage 2, but goofy and goon-centric in all the right doses.
REWRITE THIS BIT
Despite Tony Ferrer’s relatively high international profile (for an actor in Tagalog films at least), the Seventies weren’t kind to him. Ferrer’s body thickened along with his dinghy-shaped lips, and his karatista roles were supplanted by the Pinoy Bruce Lees (Ramon Zamora, Rey Malonzo atbp.) and younger action stars like Lito Lapid and Rudy Fernandez.
As the decade progressed he relied heavily on his own company Margarita Productions to supply him with leading roles, evoking the word “Sabotage” for a sequel in 1979 which cost producer Ferrer a small fortune and was “big” in every sense of the word, but nowhere near as huge a success as the original.
X-44 was finally paired with Fernando Poe Jr in Ang Agila At Ang Falcon (“The Eagle And The Falcon”, 1980) and made a cameo in Ferrer’s sole foray into directing, the Hagibis (Filipino Village People) vehicle Legs…Katawan…Babae! (“Legs…Body…Girl!” 1981), as well as playing Weng Weng’s boss in For Y’ur Height Only (1981). [6]
The Agent X-44 series and Tony Ferrer's film legacy are really the key to understanding the internal dialogues within Pinoy Action films, and the phenomenal local success of Weng Weng as Agent 00. "Not exactly spoofs," said Teddy Co of the Agent Falcon films. "They were actually very serious imitations of the James Bond genre films." It’s true they were far from parodies, but also more than an homage. As a result, Weng Weng's own Agent 00 films, co-opting Ferrer's white suits and X-ray specs, and even featuring Ferrer, become essentially a self-reflexive and practically self-aware extension of an already complicated goon family tree; a quasi-serious spoof of a deadpan imitation. "So you could see a progression," added Teddy. "You can see that the DNA has been passed on from Sean Connery to Tony Ferrer, and all the way to this diminutive action star Weng Weng."
So is it with more than a trace of irony or self-parody that Tony Ferrer dons Agent X-44's white suit TWICE in 1981, as Weng Weng's boss in For Y'ur Height Only, and in his own disco spy comedy?
Legs…Katawan…Babae! opens with pretty agent Sahlee (Myrna Castillo) tested by Tony Falcon, then congratulated by on a job well done (and is promised a bit of fun after the mission's complete). Sahlee is assigned along with agent Nick Serbos (Nick Romano) to crack a confederation of international drug smugglers lorded over by American crime boss Stan Masterson (who else but Mike Cohen?). Naturally, Sahlee catches the eye of Sonny Parsons, aspiring action star and leader of vocal group and loose motorcycle gang Hagibis, and between chasing chicks and disco numbers, some line-dancing on stage in a Manila beerhouse, one while splashing around in the surf ("Katawan, katawan, katawan, katawan…oooooooh, katawaaaaaaaan!"), all five Hagibis are dragged into the case.
Before long Agent Falcon, impressed with their kung fu and motorcross skills, deputizes them into the secret service and hands them a licence to kill Goons. They then trade kicks with the Syndicate's muscle, a mohawked biker thugs straight out of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), and head to an all-out assault on Masterson's drug factory. Nick watches approvingly as Sahlee, in singlet and hotpants, blasts the goons' cars with her grenade launcher; cut to cowboy hero Jess Lapid Jr on his horse as he receives Sahlee's signal via walkie-talkie. Jess then rides in on horseback, blasts a few baddies with machine gun fire, before riding off into the sunset. Which, technically, makes Legs…Katawan…Babae! a biker kung fu goon action spy comedy disco musical WESTERN.
It's like an endless, delirious Disco party inside Tony Ferrer's cocktail-addled head, a distillation of all things gaudy, goonlike, and definitely not gay. Two members of the original Goon Convention appear in bit roles: Rusty Santos as a bald biker, and Franco Guerrero as one of Tony Falcon's agents - Franco couldn't remember that he, too, was one of Weng Weng's co-stars! Even veteran contribada Max Alvarado gets in on the act, joining Joaquin Fajardo and three other fat and toothless goons at a beach hut as they dance and mime and wobble their exposed bellies in front pf plus-sized models to a Hagibis number ("Legs! Legs! Legs!") - before the Real Hagibis arrive and beat up Fat Hagibis. Inside the beach hut the five guys mount the stage for their final number, a magnificent hand-clapping, proud proclamation to hetero love - think "In The Navy", only straighter and chintzier - and are joined on stage by Sahlee and a random selection of jiggling bikini girls.
Without warning Weng Weng appears from the audience, does a handstand, then flips onto stage, boogies in front of Myrna, and is then held aloft on one of Hagibis' shoulders, from which he beams, jiggles and fist-bumps the air in time with the music, more or less, during the film's closing moments.
The effect? Devastating. Mind-exploding. Like watching the greatest car-crash moments of Filipino B cinema crushed into a compact 100 minute cube of exquisitely boneheaded Crazy.
Aside from handing the torch to Vhong Navarro in the 2007 reboot X-44, For Y’ur Height Only effectively seals a sixteen year cycle, and Ferrer’s casting is no accident. The elaborate spy parody draws inspiration from the X-44 series, and specifically Sabotage: the flashing segues, Weng Weng’s white suit, the goons’ red berets, Tony Ferrer’s debriefing scene, and of course the X-Ray specs (although it’s Weng Weng’s ring which “detects all poisons”, not the glasses). For a fifteen-year-old film to have seeped into the public consciousness and continue a dialogue with an audience is quite an accomplishment.
There have been hundreds upon hundreds of Filipino action films churned out over the succeeding decades. I would argue that none of them come as close to Sabotage in sheer scope and imagination, thanks to Tagalog Ilang-Ilang’s well-oiled machine at work, and with Eddie Garcia behind the steering wheel. The fact that an entirely Filipino series could last for so long and travel as far as it did is quite a significant achievement. And, as despicable as the X-44 films may appear in the eyes of the critics and academics, the films were Eddie Garcia’s training ground, and without his early Bond imitations like Contra Señas and Sabotage, award-winning films such as Atsay simply wouldn’t exist. Paalam, Eddie, and thanks for the pulpy, goon-addled, spy-a-delic memories.
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