still makes films for Corman’s Concorde pictures, Bobby was one of the most successful Filipino filmmakers in the world marketplace. Instead of the well-worn, small minded route of making films in Tagalog, making their relatively meager budgets back in Manila and scraping the cream off the top in the provinces, Bobby could picture his movies on screens the world over. Just how he could dream up his ridiculously ambitious projects with such ragtag resources, is Bobby’s art.

BAS Films’ debut was The Bionic Boy (1977), an enjoyably derivative kiddie’s spoof of The Six Million Dollar Man starring an 8 year old Singapore black belt Johnson Yap, produced and written by Bobby but directed by his friend Leody M. Diaz. Flushed with its success on the international market, Bobby directedLaxa fashioned a highly successful film series for his brother Tony Ferrer. Based on the Bond series, the Philippines went bananas for their own superspy: supersuave, white-suited Agent Tony Falcon, code name X44. With Laxa producing and veteran actor Eddie Garcia as director, the X44 adventure Sabotage was the surprise hit of the first Manila Film Festival in 1966, and like its Bond series counterpart, continued with almost 20 films over the next two decades.

The Philippines has a rich tradition of warping Western pop culture stylistics such as the evergreen Darna, the local variation of Wonder Woman by comic legend Mars Ravelo, and of course the miniature Agent 00. It’s not just a Philippines tradition, though. Third World cinema is littered with parodies like For Your Height Only