Lady Untouchable (1968)

Image courtesy of Simon Santos' Video 48 blog

1968 – Lady Untouchable (Taurus Productions)  

[Release date 21st April 1968]  

Directors Bert Balilla, Anthony Ocampo Story Bert Balilla Sr Screenplay Pepe Mesina Producers Roberto Gonzalez, Nena Gonzalez Music Demetrio Velasquez  

Cast Magna Gonzales, Jing Abalos, Ronaldo Valdez, Tony Villar, Rocco Montalban, Ernie White, Eddie Gallegos, Nonong Palomar, Rod Francisco, Jun Santos, Norma Blancaflor, Jose Garcia, Danny Rojo, Raquel Gordon, Elmer Imperial, Protacio Dee  

KARATE/ACTION  

THE LOST MOVIE PROJECT: Piecing together the fragments of the Philippines' vanished cinema

NOTE by Andrew Leavold: One of the rare starring vehicles of Magda Gonzalez, daughter of Valentino "Latino" H. Gonzales, aka "The Father of Filipino Karate", and sister of action stars Roberto and Rolando Gonzalez. Like most of the family's films from the Sixties, Lady Untouchable has long been relegated to landfill, but thankfully we have this remarkably detailed recollection on Melchor's CinePlex blog: 

“Lady Untouchable” was a Filipino action movie released in the 1960s during the popularity of movies about secret agents and masked crime fighters around the world. The title role was played by Magna Gonzalez who is a karate expert in real life. The other cast of characters of the movie were Jing Abalos, Ronaldo Valdez, Jose Garcia, Tony Villar, Danny Rojo, Rocco Montalban and Ernie White among others.

A trio of enemies of the state in trench coat outfits and in dark eye glasses (Villar, Rojo and Montalban) sent a message to the head (Garcia) of an intelligence agency called “Philippine Bureau of Investigation” by attacking his home when he attended a party one night with his daughter (Gonzalez).The said attack killed his sick wife (Norma Blancaflor in a special appearance). The private nurse was almost killed, but before she lost consciousness, she was able to take a look at the face of one of the trio: Villar. She identified him in a photograph shown by a PBI agent (Abalos) to her. With this as lead, Magna decided to look for him personally. She thought that she could handle this task well because of the lessons she learned as a Criminology student. However, she did not tell this to her father because the latter will not approve it because he knew that revenge is on her mind.

The trio take their orders from an unseen superior. The latter’s voice was only heard by the former and their other comrades. During one of their meetings, their superior asked Rojo’s character to stay behind. He was ordered to kill Villar’s character. Rojo was shocked to hear this because Villar is his brother. However, for the sake of their organization, he killed him by shooting him with a rifle with telescope in a party at the penthouse of a building. Magna also aimed her own rifle at Villar, but she was beaten to the draw by Rojo. A team of agents led by Abalos was also at the scene because someone gave them a tip and chased the shooter. Abalos went to the direction where she went and thought  that the lady she loves was the killer (he was one of her suitors, the other was the character played by Valdez who became her boyfriend). She told him that he was wrong and she will explain at a latter time why she was carrying a gun.

It was later revealed that she applied and was accepted as an undercover agent of another intelligence agency and set aside her revenge for the death of her mother. This surprised her father and Abalos. However, she kept this secret from Valdez so that her cover would not be compromised. She, her father and Abalos later learned that the dead body of Villar was not found at the crime scene after he was shot.

With her official appointment as an agent, a series of encounters happened between her as “Lady Untouchable” and the target lawless elements where the three mentioned in the second paragraph of this post belongs. The latter found out the real identity of their masked adversary and sent Montalban’s character to kill her. He failed and was killed by her.

In retaliation, the enemies of the state kidnapped Valdez who did not know that her lady love is an undercover agent. He was brought to their secret headquarters where he was taken as a prisoner and killed later. His dead body was brought to her home and placed it in a sitting position as if he was taking dinner. It was in this position that Magna saw him when she arrived home.

In a later scene, her father was kidnapped by a group of men led by Rojo’s character in the locker room of a sports club when he was about to change his clothes after a badminton game which Magna and their family driver (White) watched earlier. She relayed this to Abalos who in turn talked to his fellow agents the day after if their sources have information on the whereabouts of their director. At first, they faced a blank wall. But an information from a source told them that agency head was brought to an island. Magna also received this information from her sources and went there ahead of Abalos.

When she arrived at her destination, she met her informer and told him that she will look quickly for her father. However, she fell into a trap door which led her to the secret headquarters of the men who took her father. This is where Valdez was brought and killed. She was taken to a cell where her father was held prisoner.

The mysterious leader of the group wanted to get a set of secret documents from the director of the PBI and with daughter Magna to be executed with the use of a certain device for torture, he will be forced to gave these to them. He requested them (the leader has access to the device’s button) to let go of her and told them that he will give to them what they want. This turned out to be a trick made by the director and told her about this when they were returned to their cell. The reason was these documents have been turned over already to the highest official of the nation.

The bars of their prison cell are charged with high voltage electric volts, so escape is impossible. However, Magna hid a bullet like device in her outfit which she used in  creating power interruption in the place by throwing it an electric outlet. It caused chaos in the enemy’s headquarters and the father and daughter were able to escape from their cell. But the emergency generator was activated which brought back power and they had to fight their way out. A secret was revealed to the part of the characters of Magna, Abalos and Rojo separately which surprised them: Villar’s character is alive and is the actual leader of the group.

The lady agent tried to chase the leader, but Rojo stood in her way to protect his brother and fought with her in a hand to hand combat. Rojo was killed.

Villar killed Abalos by bullets which came from the armchair (which doubles as a machine gun when needed) where the former always sits. But before the latter expired, he was able to shoot the former with a hail of bullets from his gun which killed Villar and destroyed the major facilities in the secret headquarters which eventually led to its destruction. Magna and her father were informed of the agent’s death by their family driver (served as a back-up who will call for help in case of trouble) who was in an alert mode when Magna went to rescue her father and saw for themselves the explosion of the area where they came from.

Tatlong Kasaysayan Ng Pag-ibig (1966)

Image courtesy of Simon Santos and his Video 48 blog

1966 – Tatlong Kasaysayan Ng Pag-ibig/"Three Histories Of Love" (AM Productions/Lea Productions)

[Release date 19th January 1966]  

Director Gerardo de Leon Screenplay Pierre Salas Based on stories by Amalia Fuentes Producer Amalia Fuentes [as Amalia Muhlach] Cinematography Mike Accion Music Tito Arevalo  

STORY 1: "Betty" Cast Amalia Fuentes (Betty), Romeo Vasquez, Eddie Fernandez, Teroy de Guzman

STORY 2: "Cynthia" Cast Amalia Fuentes (Cynthia), Romeo Vasquez

STORY 3: "Tina" Cast Amalia Fuentes (Tina), Romeo Vasquez, Vic Diaz

Other Cast Jing Abalos, Connie Angeles, Bessie Barredo, Tony Cayado, Bella Flores, Fred Galang, Tito Galla, Al Quinn, Manolo Robles, Renato Robles, Nancy Roman, Mary Walter  

ROMANTIC DRAMA/ANTHOLOGY

  

NOTE by Andrew Leavold: The first film under Amalia Fuentes' AM Productions company name, reuniting her with director Gerardo de Leon (The Blood Drinkers, 1964).

Image courtesy of James dela Rosa's Pelikula Atbp blog

"Revitalizing Romanticism" Spotlight column by Ophelia San Juan* in The Weekly Nation Magazine, February 1966, p.64

*future screenwriter and producer (Black Panther Of Shaolin, 1975)

Tatlong Kasaysayan Ng Pag-ibig, as its title suggests, is made up of three romantic stories. Just how romantic they are may be gleaned from the essential contents of each story: a young girl of college student age discovers love for the boy next door - after both have gone steady with other partners; a very rich woman develops a strong passion for a very tainted playboy-gangster, and prepares to throw away her fortune and her high-society life for the chance to live with him; a girl of the night supporting an invalid boyfriend and his poor family is led to marriage and respectability by him when he learns of the sacrifice she is making for his sake.

The best realized, the last episode is clear, realistic, cogent, and cohesive. Tina (Amalia Fuentes) is an unlettered waif who finds herself a hardworking, poorly paid, and often amorously assailed waitress in a Chinese-owned restaurant after a childhood of poverty and parentlessness. When a student (Romeo Vasquez) drops in to take his unluxurious snack, Tina immediately begins to like him, to solicit his friendship openly and without much timid modesty. An easy, casual relationship between the two ensues in which no word about love is said, no mention about a binding romance is made. Yet when Vasquez injures himself and becomes a cripple as he is sideswiped by an onrushing truck, Amalia is unable to stand his plight: she gives in to the Chinese restaurant owner's long-standing proposition for two hundred pesos, the exact price of a hospital room's down payment for Vasquez, and goes on to ply a prostitute's trade as she strives to give him worthy sickbed presents and, later, his sustenance as well as his family's (composed of a palsied, aging grandmother and a grade school-age sister).

Her self-sacrificing action may perhaps be explained by the fact that Vasquez's injury results from his own spontaneous, self-forgetting gesture to save her from the destructive path of the truck as she stands on the street calling his attention to a forgotten textbook - in which case this becomes a logical and realistic entry in life's balance book of values; and again it may be an impulsive and recklessly romantic notion of a female in love to still give her idol the most prized offering she can (her womanhood) while ostensibly exchanging it for his material needs - in which eventually this turns out to be a more complicated flight of fancy than O. Henry's The Gift of The Magi. The story of Tina in Tatlong Kasaysayan Ng Pag-ibig hints of equal elements of both realism and romanticism.

Blending these two becomes Director Gerardo de Leon's pleasant, if at times difficult, task - and the result is highly pleasing cinema whose only defect is its being too polished when it can be erratically and roughly truthful as life actually is. Whereas the modern cinema, as exemplified by the productions of the cinema verite movement, throws a natural, undiffused, and unfiltered look at life, the world of de Leon, so thoroughly examined in this trilogy about three young and beautiful women, is a lovely panorama, and even prostitution is divested of its gnarled visage, its sting of life, its chill breath of death. His is the romantic world of the Mary Magdalena, washed of sin by love and pure as driven snow - and the young lovers can cross the Santa Cruz bridge of sighs to the ringing of church bells. Or a heavenly choir, perhaps.

The same out-of-this-worldliness inherent in Tina's tale pervades the story of Cynthia, the rich socialite who would willingly give up wealth and identity just to be loved and possessed by her triggerman-lover. Again a very improbable story, and equally as romantic as the one about Tina, Cynthia's downward path to love is dramatically stopped by love's own sacrifice. Her triggerman-lover, who had been originally ordered and set to divest her of her wealth prior to his terminating her life, turns about and as in all the tales of the romantics sacrifices himself for love.

The story is apparently de Leon's meat - and he gnaws at it with verve and gusto. The result is a rather startling movie, full of blood and streaked with perversity - the romantic concept of the violent life as led by gangsters in marzotto. But the realism that de Leon eschews gives the movie its attractive sheen, and one is almost dazzled by Amalia's shining eyes as she looks, with wondrous blindness through her bejeweled world, at the nether zone of a lust-infested gangdom.

The world of Betty, the teenager who takes a bit of time to discover that love is living only next door, is no less romantic. This time the setting is suburbia, with its lovely bungalows, wide terraces, graveled sidewalks, swimming pools, and jam sessions.

Though the story is basically sophomoric - about the romantic theme of first love and its heart-rending discovery - the details used in bringing about the realization of love's awakening are quite striking and contemporary. The scene of Teroy de Guzman, just for one example, where he ogles the enraptured couple (Amalia and Romeo) inside a stalled taxicab is one of the most refreshingly new and originally acted sequences in Filipino movies. Above all, the characterization by Miss Fuentes of a bespectacled, rather gawky teenage girl getting more enamoured by the minute of the somewhat clumsy boy next door is almost like a closeup of a rosebud opening.

In fact, the entire film of Tatlong Kasaysayan is a study in acting, wherein Amalia Fuentes, who has always been better known for her sweet-faced beauty, presents a revealing inventory of her talents.

Not only did she write the original story, on which Pierre Salas based his script, but she also, by dint of sustained acting excellence, gives corporeal life to the characters which her imagination had created.

She can look and act like sweet sixteen, stand and preen herself like a diamond queen, and sway her hips (sometime her handbag, too) like a common streetwalker. Her portrayals of Tina and Betty are specially notable, as they almost embody the entire sphere of womanhood - from the birth of love to its death and, ultimately, it's rebirth. And through all the phases, Miss Fuentes is in full control, utilizing every nuance of glance and gesture, every inflection of word and voice, to communicate her thoughts and meanings. She does all this with an ease that almost traipses on the borderline of calculated coolness. If this is not true acting, somebody has to come up with something better yet.

Director de Leon's smooth and polished style is the only intrusion that occasionally reminds one of the make-believe quality of this motion picture. A bit of the cinema verite in places where the realistic and candid view is effective - as in the whorehouse sequence and in the slum settings - would have made Tatlong Kasaysayan a film worthy of any international film festival competition.

However, as it is now, the sophisticated Tatlong Kasaysayan Ng Pag-ibig is already a film to reckon with when the next FAMAS awards and the Asian Film Festival come around. It is far and above the quality of most Filipino movies. The camera work of Mike Accion, who has felicitously collaborated with de Leon in two other significant films, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, succeeds in evoking the proper moods and atmosphere for the scenes of the three stories. The background music written and directed by Tito Arevalo, while not specially arresting because of the lack of luster that good background music project in modifying and emphasizing a scene as an adjective does a verb, is unobtrusively correct. 

But perhaps the domination that Amalia Fuentes exercised is enough for a movie, even for one with three stories like Tatlong Kasaysayan. Excepting for some rare moments in the Tina story, wherein Mary Walter as the palsied grandmother watching with death-knowing eyes the evolving relationship between her crippled grandson and the virtuous prostitute gets in a few licks, Miss Fuentes dominates all the actors, including her leading man for all the three episodes - Romeo Vasquez. She emerges as a compulsive actress, projecting a multi-faceted, full and compelling image on the dim and narrow confines of today's Philippine movie screen.

With this kind of picture, the Filipino film might begin to discover its real metier - not the world of the pseudo-Western, nor of the tiresome secret agents, nor even of the glorified travelogue, in which Miss Fuentes herself has been badly exploited, but the true world of everyday people, even if made somehow glossier by the romantic outlook of such filmmakers as Gerardo de Leon and Miss Fuentes:  the world of love, sacrifice, nobility, and death - the world of humans.