This film made Nora Aunor the first best actress winner in the annual Gawad Urian. Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is another significant war movie. It is an important movie, however, especially since it was directed by National Artist for Film, Eddie Romero. In 1968, there was Manila: Open City, which can be tedious viewing and contains a lot of inconsistencies in the production design department. The film tackles the “hanggang piyer” phenomenon that saw a lot of Filipino girls left crying at the pier - love-struck and even pregnant, no thanks to their cavorting with GI soldiers. Victory Joe may be light and superfluous, but as it turns out, it is a commentary on the so-called “jeep girls” - Filipino women who were easily swept off their feet by American servicemen during the liberation period. In 1946, for instance, LVN Pictures bankrolled Victory Joe! It is tempting to say that it is a post-war movie, except that its story occurs at a time when parts of the archipelago had yet to be liberated. Thankfully, there were other more substantial war films that were produced after liberation. The action scenes were basically inspired by Combat, the very popular World II series that aired on Channel 7 in the 1960s and had a rerun on the same network a decade later. Most of these films were actually mindless bang! bang! action pictures with endless gun-fighting and grenade-throwing, especially at the climax. Were Filipinos such masochists that they wanted to relive their sufferings at the hands of Japanese invaders on the big screen? Or did they derive sadistic pleasure seeing the Japanese brutally killed by Filipino guerrillas?

More than two decades after the country’s liberation from Japanese forces, local filmmakers continued to churn out movies about the Second World War in this side of the globe.

Scorpio nights 2