The Bamboo Gods Project: Curse Of The Vampires (1966)

1966 – Ibulong Mo Sa Hangin/“Whisper To The Wind” (AM Productions)

[Release date 2nd September 1966 (gala opening 1st September); released in the US in 1970 as "Curse Of The Vampires" and later "Blood Of The Vampires", in the UK as "Creatures Of Evil", and in Mexico as “La Maldicion De Los Vampiros”]

Director Gerardo de Leon Story Ben Feleo Screenplay Pierre L. Salas, Ben Feleo Executive Producer Amalia Fuentes [as Amalia Muhlach] Cinematography Mike Accion Music Tito Arevalo Editor Ben Barcelon Sound Salustiano Evarle Sound Effects Tony Gosalvez Sound Engineer Demetrio de Santos Assistant Director Dik Trofeo Makeup Artist Baby Buencamino Set Decoration Ben Otico Men’s Warbrobe F.P. Bautista Sound Recordists Vicente Dona, Vic Dona, Tony Evarle, Pedro Nicolas Assistant Editor Narciso Galang Title Design [US version] Bob LeBar

Cast Amalia Fuentes (Leonore Escudero), Romeo Vasquez (Daniel Castillo), Eddie Garcia (Don Eduardo Escudero), Johnny Monteiro (Don Enrique Escudero), Rosario del Pilar (Cristina), Mary Walter (Doña Consuelo Escudero de Victoria), Francisco Cruz (Don Julio Castillo), Paquito Salcedo (Doctor), Quiel Mendoza (Sebastian Ugalde the Mute Servant), Andrés Benítez (Padre), Luz Ángeles (Maid), Tessie Hernandez (Maid), Linda Rivera (Maid)

HORROR/ROMANTIC DRAMA

NOTES by Andrew Leavold: In 1966 Amalia Fuentes was arguably the most famous woman in the Philippines after Imelda Marcos, and certainly the most popular actress at the box office. Ibulong... was her third film for her own outfit AM Productions (after her real name Amalia Muhlach) and was filmed back-to-back with the spy thriller Room 69 starring Eddie Fernandez as Agent Lagalag, and co-directed by Gerry de Leon, who also directed Amalia in her previous vampire outing The Blood Drinkers (1964) for producer Cirio H. Santiago.

The gala opening on 1st September 1966 at the Galaxy Theatre, a grand 1000-seat movie palace on Rizal Avenue in Manila, caused a frenzy with both audience and press, neither of whom could get enough of Screen Queen Amalia and her new beau, Ibulong... co-star Romeo Vasquez.

At the FAMAS Awards in April 1967 Amalia received her first Best Actress Trophy - the bulk of the awards went to Best Director Eddie Romero's The Passionate Strangers, and the Joseph Estrada-starrer Ito Ang Pilipino (both 1966).

Ibulong... was subsequently sold to Hemisphere Pictures, the US company partly owned by Eddie Romero, which had also released Kulay... globally in 1966 as The Blood Drinkers. Now titled Curse Of The Vampires and released as a double bill with Romero and de Leon's gore-and-green-goo-soaked Beast Of Blood, it was sold to a number of overseas territories.

Following Kane Lynn's death, Hemisphere's catalogue was transferred to their publicist Sam Sherman's new company Independent International. Curse... was finally released in the early 2000s on DVD as Blood Of The Vampires bearing the II indent at the start, and on Blu-Ray as Curse... with a host of extras, including my audio commentary and Eddie Garcia interview.

REVIEW by Andrew Leavold [transcript of my introduction to the "Schlock Treatment" broadcast on Briz 31 TV, 7th September 2007]

Both The Blood Drinkers and de Leon’s 1966 follow-up Curse Of The Vampires were dubbed into English and sold to the world by US company Hemisphere, the company who spent most of the 60s in the Philippines jungle making war films for the insatiable American drive-in market. De Leon and Hemisphere would later craft the most notorious Filipino horror films of all, the “Blood Island” trilogy; Curse Of The Vampires was the bottom of a 1970 double bill with a film Gerry co-directed with his frequent collaborator Eddie Romero, Beast Of Blood (1970), and from Hemisphere’s posters it looked to the world like any other low budget drive-in nonsense. But de Leon, along with Romero (Beast Of The Yellow Night, The Walls Of Hell), was a classically trained filmmaker and is enshrined as a Philippines National Artist, and thus everything he does is with purpose, from the masterful framing, composition, lighting… As a result, Curse Of The Vampires is not just a throwaway B-programmer with bloodsuckers but a serious horror film with deep cultural resonances.

A further link to The Blood Drinkers is Amalia Fuentes, who also produced Curse… under her real name Amalia Muhlach for her own production company. Amalia was one of the most famous Philippine actresses of the Sixties, a mixed Spanish or “mestizo” beauty who plays the heroine Leonore, a tragic figure at the centre of the doomed Escudero family riddled with vampirism and more. As a Spanish colony until the late 1800s, the country’s Hispanic legacy is still strong, leaving behind a feudal nobility who owed its allegiances more to Madrid than Manila. It’s no accident the film is set in the 1800s, in a Spanish mansion filled with the frayed trappings of a fading and failing colonial presence.

Leonore’s mother is played by Mary Walter, a popular mestizo actress from the Philippines’ silent era; the very Spanish-looking Eddie Garcia plays the weak and corrupt brother Eduardo, a classic villain of Tagalog movies here playing a less cartoonish and much more multi-layered version of pure evil. The other enduring legacy of the Spanish era is its overt Catholicism, which, as in many of Spain’s former colonies, has mutated into a strange hybrid of local folk beliefs with its own uniquely Filipino iconography. In this context, Curse Of The Vampires becomes a deeply Catholic morality play of good versus evil, combined with a cloying Filipino sentiment of love conquering all.

The film opens with Leonore in the arms of Daniel (Romeo Vasquez), a pure-hearted local lad who promises her to love her even from beyond the grave. Her father Don Enrique Escudero (Johnny Monteiro) denies permission for them to marry due to the family curse - vampirism, like madness, is borne by blood, and he has unwittingly kept the curse alive by keeping his vampire wife Dona (Mary Walter) locked in the basement. Every night she wakes up in her coffin, her now-animalistic screams pleading for blood. Don Enrique is forced to whip her into submission but can’t let go – the family has become insular to the point of incestuous.

The mother finally escapes from the basement, captured in a beautifully executed shot of the former matriarch, now a savage beast, tinted red in the foreground while her stern-looking portrait looms in the background. Eduardo willingly allows himself to be turned into a vampire by his mother’s loving embrace, and when his father dies in tragic circumstances, he assumes the paternal role of feudal lord. His veins now coursing with evil, he covets both his sister and Daniel’s sister Christina (Rosario del Pilar), to whom he becomes an aristocratic predator, demanding total servitude from his new vampiric bride (“You are my lord, I am your slave,” Christina says most tellingly on her short-lived honeymoon).

Leonore accepts her fate to follow the family curse, yet Daniel won’t allow her and reiterates his oath to protect her, in this life and the life after. The entire film is tinged with sadness and loss, and ends with not just a mob of angry villagers, but an entire Catholic parade, all brandishing torches while praying to gaudy statues of Mama Mary. Filipino gothic was a relatively small and short-lived genre, but de Leon certainly made it his own.

Its predecessor The Blood Drinkers was filmed with very little money in mostly black and white with tinted scenes for dramatic effect. Curse… is filmed in colour and unfortunately loses some of The Blood Drinkers’ aesthetic charms. De Leon does have a tendency to go overboard with in-studio lighting effects like a foaming-at-the-mouth Mario Bava, bathing entire scenes in saturated red and blue gels. It’s hardly subtle, but the effect is eerie and claustrophobic to say the least, even in the elaborately lit jungle and cemetery exteriors. Weird without intent and without a single trace of kitsch, this is, along with The Blood Drinkers, undoubtedly one of Filipino horror’s finest moments.

LA Times 13th November 1970 p.85

Blu-Ray review at the Mondo Digital website: "A superb new audio commentary by Andrew Leavold (The Search For Weng Weng) is loaded with info about the many players on the film, the context of Filipino horror at the time, the production process, and plenty more. He's very enthusiastic about the film, and it really helps the viewer appreciate it even more. A video interview with Garcia, 'The Cursed Vampire' (4m43s), is a quick sketch of his pre-acting life in the military and his memories of the film, especially the 'very dedicated' Walter and the much-admired de Leon."

Amalia Fuentes (Leonore Escudero)

Romeo Vasquez (Daniel Castillo)

Eddie Garcia (Don Eduardo Escudero)

Johnny Monteiro (Don Enrique Escudero)

Rosario del Pilar (Cristina)

Mary Walter (Doña Consuelo Escudero de Victoria)

Francisco Cruz (left - Don Julio Castillo)

Paquito Salcedo (right - Doctor)

Quiel Mendoza (Sebastian Ugalde the Mute Servant)

Andrés Benítez (Padre)

Luz Ángeles, Tessie Hernandez and Linda Rivera (Maids)

THEATRICAL

PHILIPPINES - Gala Opening on 1st September 1966 at the Galaxy Theatre, with a general release the following day. All layouts are by Reuben Arthur Nicdao.

USA - released in May 1970 by Hemisphere Pictures in a double-bill with Beast Of Blood (1970).

HAWAII - "Curse Of The Vampires" and "Beast Of Blood" toured by Consolidated for three months around the Islands commencing 30th September 1970

UK - released as "Creatures Of Evil" by Grand National Film Distributors in November 1971, in a double bill with Beast Of Blood (rechristened "Blood Devils"). Grand National specialized in X-rated programs, and had made a fortune earlier in the year with the Scandinavian import Language Of Love.

ITALY - IMDB lists the Italian title "Il Terrore Ha La Pelle Di Donna", but I can't find any evidence of a physical release

DENMARK - released as "Vampyrernes Forbandelse" in a double bill with Beast Of Blood (as "Uhyret Fra Blodøen"), distributor and release date unknown.

MEXICO - released as "La Maldicion de los Vampiros" by Poli Films Mundiales S.A., date unknown.

VIDEO

UK - "Creatures Of Evil" released on VHS and Betamax by Apple Video Film Distributors, early 80s

DIGITAL

USA - DVD released as "Blood Of The Vampires" by Image Entertainment in 2002; all digital releases are licensed from Sam Sherman's Independent International.