Pinoy James Bonds: Bernard Bonnin as Hammerhead

1967 – Hammerhead (Bonanza Productions/Puzon Film Exchange)

[Release date 30th May 1967]

Director “DLZ”/Danny Zialcita Music Demet Velasquez

Cast Bernard Bonnin (Hammerhead), Liberty Ilagan, Elsa Bouffard, Leni Trinidad, Vivian Lorrain, Eva Marie, Ben Perez, Eddie Arenas, Johnny Monteiro, Martin Marfil, Flor Bien, Renato del Prado, Eli Salas, Andy Canares, Mario Paje [other sources also list Vera Vargas, Eddie Mercado, Mary Ann Murphy, Bino Garcia]

1967 – Incognito (Zeta Productions/Dan-Sil Productions)

[Release date 4th August 1967]

Director/Story “DLZ”/Danny L. Zialcita Music Demet Velasquez

Cast Bernard Bonnin (Hammerhead), Perla Bautista, Ronald Remy, Timi Yuro, Ben Perez, Eddie Arenas, Nort Nepomuceno

Escape To Mindanao (1968)

1968 - Escape To Mindanao (Universal [TV])

Director Don McDougall Story Orville H. Hampton Teleplay Harold Livingston Producer Jack Leewood Cinematography Ray Flin Music Lyn Murray Editor Richard G. Wray Editorial Supervisor Richard Belding Sound Tommy Santos Art Director Napoleon Enriquez Production Managers Nilo Saez, Roberto Mariano Assistant Director Nick Miranda Special Effects Silvane Balicas Color Coordinator Robert Brower Music Supervisor Stanley Wilson Costume Designer Grady Hunt Wardrobe Alice Garcia Makeup Pat de Lara Production Coordinator Ronald Remy

Cast George Maharis (Joe Walden), Nehemiah Persoff (Captain Kramer), James Shigeta (Liutenant Takahashi), Ronald Remy (Lieutenant Parang), Willi Koopman (Anne Kramer), Vic Diaz (Sokuri), Eddie Arenas (Captain Aquino), Gil de Leon (Zairin), Andres Centenera (Viray), Vic Uematsu (Sergeant Major)

Wonder Women (1973)

1973 - Wonder Women (General Film Corporation)

[working title “The Terrible Transplants of Dr Tsu”; also released as “The Deadly And The Beautiful”, “The Chinese Puzzle”, “Women of Transplant Island” and in France as “Ongles Rouges et Cuisses d’Acier”]

Director Robert “O’Neil”/Vincent O'Neill Screenplay Lou Whitehill Adapted by Robert “O’Neil”/Vincent O'Neill Producer Ross Hagen Executive Producer Donald Gottlieb, Ronald Remy Cinematography Ricardo M. David Music Carson Whitsett Song "Wonder Women" Charles May Vocals Annette Thomas Editor Richard Greer Art Director Ben Otico Makeup Artist Ernie Carvajal Executive In Charge Of Production Arthur Marks In Charge of Production Nilo Saez Assistant Production Manager Gerry Gerena Sound Elpidio Salvador Special Effects Jessie Sto. Domingo Action & Stunt Coordinator Erik Cord Stills Mike Alejandrino, Beau Marks Script Supervisor Bert Amazan Jr Wardrobe Designer Jerry Bailon Nancy Kwan’s Wardrobe Lumen David Women’s Wardrobe Elcorte Ingles Assistant Cameramen Rodolfo Bautista, Manolito Cuenco Schedule Master Vic 'Basing' Costelo Additional Photography Michael Neyman

Cast Nancy Kwan (Dr. Tsu), Ross Hagen (Mike Harber), Maria De Aragon (Linda), Roberta Collins (Laura), Tony Lorea (Paulson/Lorenzo), Sid Haig (Gregorious), Vic “Dias”/Diaz (Lapu-Lapu), Claire Hagen (Vera), Shirley Washington (Maggie), Gail Hansen (Gail), Eleanor Siron (Mei-Ling), Bruno Punzalan (Nono the Fisherman), Joonee Gamboa (Won Ton Charlie), Rick Revere (Paulson's attendant), Rudy DeJesus (The Boy), Wendy Greene (The Swimmer), Leila Benitez (Lillian Taylor), Ross Rival (Ramon the Jai-Alai Player), Jesus Ramos (The Crabman), Phred Kaufman (The Beggar), Beau Marks (The Blind Athlete), Joe Conners (Joe the Athlete), Logan Clarke (The Attendant), Victor Vematsu (The Servant), Moises Sia (Paulson's attendant), Sal Vaca (The Desk Clerk), [uncredited] Marilyn Joi

Michael J. Weldon’s review from Psychotronic Video Magazine #30 (1999) p.12

Mike Carver (Hagen), a macho mercenary ex-CIA agent in leisure suits, is hired to investigate the disappearance of several athletes. Dr. Su (Nancy Kwan) has had them kidnapped to her private island for use in brain transplant experiments. Except for her assistant (Sid Haig with hair), all her agents are machine gun firing females in mini skirts. The fu fighting Maria De Aragon (from the director's BLOOD MANIA) has the most screen time and there's also blonde Filipino drive-in movie vet Roberta Collins and Afro hair Shirley Washington (DARKTOWN STRUTTERS). An eccentric cab driver (Vic Diaz) becomes Carver's guide and translator, so you get to see a lot of Manila (and a slo/mo cock fight). The General Films release substitutes "brain sex" for the expected skin scenes (it must have been rated PG), but pays off when Su's mutant failures escape from their cells. The score is typical funky wacka wacka wha wha music. Arthur Marks was the exec. in charge of production.

Michael Weldon’s review in Weldon (ed), The Psychotronic Encyclopedia Of Film, New York, Ballantine Books, 1983, p.790

Flower Drum Song star Nancy Kwan is the evil Dr. Su, whose all-female army kidnaps the world's top athletes to dismember and use for spare parts. Their organs are sold to aging millionaires. An insurance investigator arrives at the doctor's island fortress to stop the lady cutups. Producer Ross Hagen gave himself the hero role. With some pitiful monsters and Sid Haig.

The Blood Drinkers (1964)

1964 - Kulay Dugo Ang Gabi/“Blood Is The Colour Of The Night” (People’s Pictures)

[Philippines release date 31st October 1964; also released by Hemisphere Pictures in the United States in 1966 as "The Blood Drinkers" and 1971 as "The Vampire People"]

Director Gerardo de Leon Writer Cesar Amigo Based on the komik serial by Rico Bello Omagap Producer Cirio H. Santiago Executive Producer Danilo Santiago Music Tito Arevalo Cinematography Felipe Sacdalan Editor Atilano Salvador Production Design Ben Otico Makeup Tony Artieda, Rey Salamat Sound Effects Tony Gosalvez Sound Engineer Demetrio de Santos Special Effects Hilario Brothers

Cast Ronald Remy (Dr Marco), Amalia Fuentes (Charito/Katrina), Eddie Fernandez (Victor de la Cruz), Eva Montes (Tanya, the vampire bride), Paquito Salcedo (Elias, the guardian), Renato Robles, Celia Rodriguez, Mary Walter, César Aguilar, Eriberto Amazan Jr, Philip Antivo, Eddie Arce, Luis Benedicto, Andrés Benítez, Jess Buenaflor, Rudy Bugarin, Ernesto David, Mona del Cielo, Felipe Dionisio, Frankie Lastimoso, Tiva Lava, Renato Murado Jr, Fred Parain, Ric Paulino, Ricardo Rivera, Jess Roma, Felisa Salcedo, Frank Seavedra, Evelyn Shreve, Vicky Velasquez

Review by Andrew Leavold

The Sixties saw a revival of the gothic horror tradition thanks to Hammer’s Dracula series starring Christopher Lee, and a smorgasbord of Continental shockers like Black Sunday and The Horrible Dr Hitchcock. The last place you’d expect gothic to thrive is the Philippines, and least of all by one of their most respected filmmakers. But it did, and in 1964 director Gerardo (or Gerry) de Leon released a vampire film that is both universal AND intensely and uniquely Filipino, The Blood Drinkers.

Ronald Remy is striking as the complicated villain Dr Marco, as bald as Nosferatu in dark glasses and snappy 60s black outfits, and simultaneously terrorizing a secluded jungle village while pining for his dying vampire love Katrina. As well as a vampire, he’s a man of science and medicine, and with the help of his hunchbacked assistant and mute dwarf, he plans to transplant the still-beating heart of the village girl Charito into Katrina (both played by the gorgeous 60s Filipino starlet Amalia Fuentes). Modern technology and traditional faith are constantly juxtaposed in a film which cuts between colour film and black and white footage tinted in cool blues and blood red. Apparently colour stock in the Philippines in the 60s was too expensive for an entire feature, but like the rest of The Blood Drinkers, director de Leon uses this budgetary contraint to full advantage.

De Leon may fill the screen with Hollywood-inspired images of caped counts and rubber bats, but this taps into a rich vein of Filipino folklore littered with tales of evil aswangs and female vampires with giant bat wings called the mananaangaal. Add almost five hundred years of Catholicism, a Spanish colonial heritage and a countryside ruled by an almost feudal aristocracy, and the image of Charito’s undead parents trying to feed off her blood becomes so much more potent, as does the the overload of garish religious imagery.

Mad Doctor Of Blood Island (1969)

1969 – Mad Doctor Of Blood Island (Hemisphere Pictures/Independent International Pictures Corp)

[also known as Blood Doctor, Grave Desires, Tomb Of The Living Dead]

Directors “Gerry”/Gerardo de Leon, Eddie Romero Writer Reuben Canoy Producer Eddie Romero Executive Producer Kane W. Lynn Associate Producer Beverly Miller Cinematography Justo Paulino Music Tito Arevalo

Cast John Ashley (Dr Bill Foster), Angelique Pettyjohn (Sheila Willard), Ronald Remy (Dr Lorca), Alicia Alonzo (Marla), Ronaldo Valdez (Carlos Lopez), Tita Muñoz (Mrs Lopez), Tony Edmunds (Willard), Alfonso Carvajal (Ramu), Bruno Punzalan (Razak), Edward D. Murphy (Captain), Johnny Long, Paquito Salcedo, Felisa Salcedo, Quiel Mendoza, Ricardo Hipólito, Cenón González, Nadja

Review by Andrew Leavold

Brides Of Blood, starring former American teen heartthrob John Ashley and a bevy of naked virgin beauties being sacrificed to a green oozing monster, must have been the heady cocktail of sleaze and tropical breeze that caught the imagination of the drive-in audience; Brides... would be rerun a number of times and create enough buzz for directors Eddie Romero, Gerry de Leon and producer Kane Lynn to return to Blood Island to make a pseudo-sequel, this time with more sleaze, more ooze, more salsa on the enchilada.

The result was Mad Doctor Of Blood Island, and Hemisphere Pictures had an even bigger hit. John Ashley is back as Dr Bill Foster, investigating the outrageous claim that some of the inhabitants have green blood. Along for the ride is notorious 60s sexploitation star Angelique Pettyjohn as Sheila Willard, looking for her lost father who’s now the island barfly. Ashley stumbles on the ghoulish vivisection antics of Dr Lorca (played by Ronald Remy, who you may remember as the suave bald-headed vampire doctor in The Blood Drinkers); Lorca’s experiments have been turning the locals including his own wife into crusty green-skinned chlorophyll freaks craving blood - and more!

Mad Doctor Of Blood Island is your quintessential drive-in experience from the late 60s: so much blood, so much flesh, so much cheese, and so many zoom effects it feels like it was filmed in throb-o-vision. Always with an eye for exploitation, Hemisphere filmed a prologue “Oath of the Green Blood”, where movie patrons were instructed to repeat the sacred words and drink from a plastic sachet of green muck that was supposed to be lime syrup, but was in fact a toxic gel that reportedly made publicist Sam Sherman sick for days!

Now you can duplicate the drive-in experience in your own home: grab a bottle of undiluted lime cordial and repeat after me...

"I, a living, breathing creature of the cosmic entity am now ready to enter the realm of those chosen to be allowed to drink of the Mystic Emerald fluids herein offered. I join the Order of Green Blood with an open mind, and through this liquid's powers am now prepared to safely view the unnatural green-blooded ones without fear of contamination."

JUST RELEASED! MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND CD from Elysee Productions

From Elysee Production's website: "Elysee Productions is pleased to present its first original soundtrack release. Now available for the first time in any form is Tito Arevalo's amazing score for the cult horror fave, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND. Mastered from the original session tapes (recorded in full track mono at 15-ips), CD includes an 8-pg. full color booklet with liner notes and composer bio by Tim Ferrante. It's limited to 1,000 pressings. There are 34 tracks running 50 mins. 41 secs. Price: $19.99

"The music for MAD DOCTOR was composed by Tito Arevalo (whose real name is Eustacio de Leon Ilagan), older brother of co-director Gerardo de Leon. Arevalo was both an actor and composer whose career was as heralded as de Leon's. MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND came during the slowing years of his film music assignments, the last of which was Cirio H. Santiago's A TIME FOR DYING (1983). Tito Arevalo is virtually unknown in America, yet many cult film fans know his Blood Island sound. This composition uses unique orchestration that's influenced by the composer's Filipino culture and remains consistent in its tonal environment. So whether it's the deranged Don Ramon on a rampage or a romantic encounter, Arevalo never lets us forget that we're trapped in the jungle landscape of Blood Island. It is horror film music as never heard before.

"The events that lead to this original soundtrack CD began four decades ago when 23-year-old Samuel M. Sherman met with a gentleman by the name of Irwin Pizor in the latter's Hemisphere Pictures' Manhattan office. Hemisphere Pictures was one of countless independent production and distribution companies feeding ozoners and hardtops (film industry lingo for drive-in and traditional movie theatres) with low-budget exploitation fare.

"As a result of the meeting, a friendly association had begun and Sherman was introduced to Daniel Q. Kennis and Kane W. Lynn, Pizor's business partners. Kennis was one of the original investors in Hemisphere and Lynn was executive vice president. A third partner, Eddie Romero, was based in Manila and served as vice president of that office. Sherman had plenty to offer the cost-conscious group in that he could write copy (he wrote the one sheet hyperbole above), edit film and create marketing strategies better, faster and cheaper than National Screen Service. He was also tapped into the youth market through his work at Warren Publishing Company (Famous Monsters of Filmland, Eerie and Creepy magazines). Sherman's advice to Hemisphere's owners was simple: Start making horror films!

"In March of 1969, Lynn, upon returning from one of his trips to Manila, handed a cardboard box to Sherman. "Don't say I never bring you anything," he joked. Inside were three 1/4-in. audio tape reels; the master recordings of composer Tito Arevalo's scoring session for the company's newest production, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND. Sherman liked Arevalo's music from the moment he heard it and went to work writing and producing the film's theatrical trailer and radio and TV spots. The MAD DOCTOR campaign, aided by the Arevalo's unique sound, proved to be a winner with '60s filmgoers. Thanks to the film's incredible success a sequel, BEAST OF BLOOD, hit theatres in 1970 grossing even more at the boxoffice than its predecessor. Since that time, MAD DOCTOR has been seen worldwide via TV, videotape and now DVD.

HEAR THE MUSIC! CLICK HERE