“Wonder Vi”

“Wonder Vi” was a movie released in the Philippines in 1973 by JE Productions, a film company owned by actor who became later a politician (elected in office as Mayor, Senator, Vice President and President in different timelines in his colorful political career) Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

The movie can be described as combination of action, drama and adventure.

The cast of characters were Vilma Santos (the title role as lead character was played by her), George Estregan, Nick Romano, Marissa Delgado, Romy Diaz, Angelo Ventura, Bebong Osorio, Ely Roque, Paquito Salcedo, Jesse Lee and Arsenio “Boots” Bautista among others. The last actor mentioned was also the film’s director.

Wonder Vi is a young lady who lives in the jungle with her grandparents (Roque and Salcedo) where their livelihood is having a small land planted with various vegetables and fruits. Come harvest time, they sell it to the nearby town and the portion of their earnings was spent buying the things they need in their home in the jungle. The young lady can be described as a teenager female version of Tarzan who swings from vine to vine in the jungle.

Vi has a monkey named Chito as her pet. She found another pet which is a dog. She saw it one day in the jungle in a space capsule which landed there. The said space capsule came from the United States of America which launched a rocket in outer space as an experiment in which the dog is the passenger. While in orbit, the rocket detoured back accidentally to Earth.

The rocket landed in the Philippines, particularly in the jungle near the young lady’s community. The most powerful nation in the world offered a large sum of money (in Philippine currency – Pesos) as a reward for the person who will find the dog. The government of the Philippines helped by immediately assigning a search party of military personnel led by the character played by Lee as a ranking officer.

Since the amount of reward can give the finder a substantial fortune, several persons became interested in the reward: a man who is moving on his life after his ladylove was killed (Estregan); a married couple (Romano and Delgado); a gang of motorcycle riders (Diaz as the leader) and a group of bandits (Ventura, Osorio and Bautista among them) are engaged in the race to find the dog.

The man and the married couple were lucky to meet the jungle girl and her grandparents who by that time had found the dog already. The latter welcomed the former to their home and treated them like extended members of the family. But, the necessity and the color of money prevailed and they did actions which can be compared to a tight competition.

The jungle lady found this out later which she treated as an act of betrayal from their guests and protected the dog from being taken away by them. The bikers and the bandits were not far behind in doing this, but the timely arrival of the search party foiled their respective attempts.

The young jungle lady is very sad because the dog that she found and became her pet which she learned to love and care had to be returned to its home nation even if she and her grandparents will receive the reward. When the dog came to her arms before it leave her finally, she spent the last few quality minutes with the said dog. In protecting the dog from being taken away, it was revealed that she is a skilled fighter as a jungle lady.

The above four chosen images that were used for this online feature post as our visual aids were taken from selected online resources as our materials for our references.

With special mention to the Video 48 Blog for the use of the movie poster as material for this online article.

That’s all for now.

Until the next feature post.

Happier Days Ahead to All of Us!

TRIVIA

• Vilma Santos (Rosa Vilma is her actual first name) celebrates her 60th Anniversary in the entertainment scene (cinema and television) this year.
• She was elected and served as the Mayor of Lipa City, Batangas from June 30, 1998 to June 30, 2007.
• After her three terms of office as Mayor of Lipa City, she was elected and served as Governor of the Province of Batangas from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2016.
• She was later elected and served as a Member of the House of Representatives representing the 6th District of Batangas from June 30, 2016 to June 30, 2022. In this legislative chamber, she served for a short tenure as one of its Deputy Speakers.

“SWORD OF GIDEON”

“SWORD OF GIDEON” was a television movie miniseries which was broadcast in Canada and in the United States of America via HBO in 1986.

It was later broadcast in Philippine television channel GMA 7 in 1987 as a prime time feature presentation. Sometime later, on the next decade (which was in the 1990s), it was shown on another television channel which was RPN Channel 9 as a Sunday night prime time feature presentation.

The genre or category of the said miniseries was a combination of action, espionage, international thriller and drama.

The cast of characters were played by Steven Bauer, Michael York, Rod Steiger and Lino Ventura among others.

The Mossad, the secret service of Israel, assembled a five man commando team to hunt down and kill the terrorists who were responsible for the massacre of the Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. Avner (Bauer), a military officer in the Israeli Army, was assigned to lead the team.

The team members each have their own respective expertise: demolitions and explosives, documents handling, special driving skills, “sweeping” or making the places of their hits clean and without a trace and other related specialties. Roberts, the demolitions and explosives expert, was played by York.

Samuels (Steiger), the team’s case officer and handler, met them to tell about the overview of their mission which includes their expenses. He told them to make their expenses cheap and if they exceeded certain amount of expenses, they must show him receipts to justify them.

They later underwent specialized training exercises in the use of hand guns and related pistols. The team also had a separate meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel then, Golda Meir. The head of the Mossad later talked to them about the specific details of their mission which include the coverage area of their operations (selected countries under the European Continent where the targets live) and the selected target terrorists marked for killings.

At home, Avner talked to his father heart to heart. His father advised him that once they reached their place of destination and base of their operations which is France, he must contact Papa (Ventura) who would be a very good source of information for their mission because he is a French information broker.

Papa is a man who has a wide intelligence net from all sources even if he is now a civilian. He is also a long time friend of Avner’s father. This was proven by Avner himself and was surprised when he met Papa later in the latter’s home in France. Papa told him that the place where his team chose as their lodging is just right “for a family of five”.

Avner’s team used different methods of killing their targets: by shoot out against the target using handguns, planted explosives in the vehicles and using improvised weapons which cause immediate death. At first, they were very successful in their hits.

Later, their enemies learned about their actions and retaliated against them one by one until two of them, Avner and the expert driver were the last men standing.

One of them was killed by a silencer in his hotel room while Roberts was killed instantly when he was mopping out the explosive wire for a bomb planted in their place of lodging. The latter overlooked the refrigerator, which was also rigged with a bomb, when he opened to drink juice after a tiring task of removing the explosive wire. The expert in documents handling was killed during an encounter against their enemies.

In an earlier scene, all of them were almost killed when they were about to take dinner in a restaurant. The restaurant was bombed and they were just only a few steps away before entering it. Many innocent people were killed in the said bombing.

With the sudden change of events that were not favorable on their side, Avner began to ask himself if the mission his team was tasked to accomplish was logical or was right. His concern is the cycle of revenge between the opposing sides will continue to show which side is wrong and which side is right.

He told this to Samuels and added that he wanted to quit the mission. The latter told him that it would not be easy and they will have to wait for clearance from the higher officials in the intelligence community and in the government of their country before Avner comes home to Israel. Later, the mission was called off, but there was no clearance yet for Avner to go home.

While waiting for his clearance to go home, Avner asked permission from Samuels to go the United States to cool things off. His permission was granted with the option to bring his family to that country.

He went to New York and to earn a living, he worked as a taxi driver. Except for a false alarm (a baseball accidentally broke the glass window on their apartment which they thought was a hand grenade) on their safety, Avner was able to spend quality time with his wife and his child in New York.

The team used as one method of communication with the intelligence officials of their country the safety deposit boxes in Swiss banks because of the bank secrecy laws of the said country.

The handwritten messages were sent and received by the communicating parties through these said boxes. The last message sent to Avner was what he was waiting for: he can go home finally.

The final scene of the television movie miniseries showed that Avner had returned to his duties in the Israeli Army as a tank brigade field commander.

The chosen images that were used for this feature post were taken from the following selected online resources as our references:

• en.wikipedia.org
• youtube.com
• wild-wild-western.over-blog.com
• pinterest.co.uk

That’s all for now.

Until the next feature post.

Happier Days Ahead To All Of Us!

“THE DESTRUCTORS” (1968)

“THE DESTRUCTORS” was a feature length movie which was released in the United States of America in 1968. It was shown in certain Philippine television channels in the late 1970s and early 1980s as film feature presentations in the morning and in the afternoon slots.

The genre of the said television movie can be categorized as a combination of action, science fiction and espionage.

The cast of characters were Richard Egan (1st photo) and Michael Ansara (3rd photo, 4th from the left) among others.

This post is limited to the online materials and online videos reviewed by this blogger about the subject movie. As of this writing, he did not find a full length video about it, but only about a few minutes length.

He tried using as basis the synopsis he found at the imdb.com and tcm websites, a short line about the movie from the online copy portion of the book: “Onscreen And Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage” and the selected compiled photos he gathered from the online sources mentioned below which helped him make a short analysis about the movie.

The synopsis said that foreign enemy agents are after a very unique substance called “laser rubies” that can power a killer laser beam. Government agents were dispatched to protect the rubies and eliminate the enemy foreign agents behind the secret operation.

The three enemy agents blew-up an optical company and stole a tray of laser rubies. The government agents assigned to hunt them were from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) with Dan Street (Egan) as the lead investigator.

The laser ray gun is capable of disintegrating any target from great distances. This was presented in a scene in a short video seen by this blogger online. A secret US government demonstration was conducted in the presence of selected military and civilian officials. When the laser beam was pointed at a US Army truck, the said truck disappeared into thin air.

The stolen rubies that are vital for operating the said prototype laser gun, which is classified as a secret weapon, were sold by a swimsuit designer and mogul named Count Mario Romano (Ansara) to a king (Khigh Dhiegh who played the role of a villain for several years in the television series “Hawaii Five-O”) whose kingdom is hostile to the United States.

The title came from the roles played by Ansara and his team of enemy agents who are expert scuba divers. The tagline said “Professionals In Sabotage And Treason.” In the end, the agent with his fellow NIA operatives thwarted the activities of “The Destructors.”

MELCORE’S COMMENTS:

• In those days, Egan played lead character roles while Ansara played supporting characters or villain roles (of different nationalities) in the movies (cinema and television) where they had appeared.
• The 1960s was the decade of movies about James Bond, 007, a secret agent character created by well known author Ian Fleming. These said movies started the trend for other movie companies around the world to come up with their respective versions which more or less are close or resembled the plots of the Five Bond (Sean Connery) Flicks that were released to the cinemas already.
• There were other novels and stories about various lead characters who are secret agents, spies and detectives (from government and private entities) which were serialized into movies in cinema screens and on television channels. “The Destructors” were one of these. This blogger was not able to watch it during its run in Philippine television channels, hence this limited review made by him.

The images that were used for this feature post were taken from the following selected online resources as references:

• amazon.co.uk.
• en.wikipedia.org
• briansdriveintheater.com
• youtube.com
• historyforsale.com

That’s all for now.

Until the next feature post.

Happier Days Ahead to All of Us!

“The February Pair”

For this month of February (called as “The Month of the Hearts”), this blogger would like to share with his readers the following selected text messages (dubbed by him as “The February Pair”) which were forwarded and were shared to him:

1. ” Be Happy: Do not try to live by standards of this world nor by the expectations of other people. Remember that a person who follows the crowd usually gets lost in it. Just be yourself and do what makes you happy as long as you do no harm to others.”
2. “A bright new day comes again with new blessings, chances, experiences, and trials in our life, but live them all with patience and gratitude. Don’t waste your life with the ugly moods which will deprive you of everything positive.”

The chosen images that were used for this feature post were taken from the following online resources as our references:

• quickcards.ca
• youtube.com

That’s all for now.

Until the next feature post.

Happier Days Ahead To All Of Us!