FIRST thing you’d come to know when you met “Mother” Lily Monteverde was her laugh.
It was loud. It was raucous. It was her head tilting back, wide mouth opening wider, and that voice — a little low, a lot rough, barking out a sound that was half-aggressive half-accepting of the absurdity of the world. Sound of a woman who holds nothing back when she laughs, same way she’d hold nothing back when giving her opinion or judgment or whatever needed expressing at the moment. It was the sound of a queen on her throne, ruling her little fiefdom with lively and inimitable style.
Lily Yu Chu, professionally known as Lily Yu Monteverde, popularly known as “Mother” Lily, wasn’t the only female producer in Philippine cinema — there was Narcisa (“Dona Sisang”) de Leon, who established LVN Pictures and was grandmother to Filipino filmmaker Mike de Leon — but Mother was possibly as influential, and more prolific.
The head of Regal Entertainment had two reputations: first as a mercenary film producer, alert for the next popular trend, constantly trying to suss out audiences’ taste. She liked a director with a track record of hits, loved sequels, remakes, variations on a concept, cunning parodies, or plainly bizarre titles (Underage, Underage Too; Teenage Marriage, Teenage Mama; Playgirl, Pabling (Playboy); Starzan, Bobocop, Horsey-horsey Tigidig-tigidig). Her Shake Rattle and Roll horror series (1984-2023, 16 features and counting) is brilliant for several reasons: a regularly presented product in a commercially proven genre; said product in a familiar format (an omnibus of horror shorts), yet varied enough to keep interest relatively fresh; and said series is often an opportunity to field-test new talents for relatively little money.
One of her most successful projects though was oddly also one of her most personal, the Mano Po (Bless Us) series (seven movies and three TV series, from 2002 to 2023): comic or dramatic stories taken from the Filipino-Chinese community, her way of giving back, and (in the way they feature strong-willed Filipino-Chinese women) telling her own story — honoring her own story? — in fictionalized terms.
Second, she seemed to have a soft spot for artists, on occasion would put money in less-than-commercially-promising projects, sometimes backing fledgling filmmakers in the hopes that their careers would take off, later backing the same filmmaker-turned-veteran when he’d propose some head-scratching project. “But it’s got to make money!” she’d warn, the filmmaker only half-listening: truth is she’d put in money because she believed in them.
Her filmography on IMDb lists over 600 titles; Roger Corman managed less than 500. It is debatable whose productions look better — Corman’s budgets were bigger on paper but if you factor in exchange rates and the cost of making films in each respective country; considering that a chunk of the titles are films Corman imported from Europe… this might be fodder for another article, where we compare careers side-by-side.
But if we’re talking new filmmakers we can start with Jeffrey Jeturian, who began his career with Mother. His Sana Pag-ibig Na (Enter Love, 1998) was a no-budget debut feature about a young man who confronts the mistress of his deceased father, and featured a lovely late-career performance by LVN star Nida Blanca as the mistress. His Pila Balde (Fetch a Pail of Water) — script by Armando Lao, and far as I know their best collaboration to date — is a seriocomic sketch of a squatter community situated beside a housing project, squatters and residents living off each other in a symbiotic/parasitic relationship.
Rico Maria Ilarde started with an inventive science-fiction independent production (Z-Man, 1988); did Dugo ng Birhen: El Kapitan (Blood of a Virgin, 1999) — Taekwondo champion Monsour del Rosario vs. an undead Spanish captain —; did Babaeng Putik (Woman of Mud, 2000), about a writer-warrior (think Stephen King only badass) both seduced and menaced by a woman literally made of mud. Ilarde has made a career out of working the line between arthouse and horror — in a way, his films hit what to Mother’s mind may have been a sweet spot: commercial, but with a touch of the weird.
Lav Diaz also started with Mother but their relationship was knottier. A little context: Mother established Good Harvest films under the immediate supervision of producer-director Joey Gosiengfiao, and the outfit made the following offer: production of any script from any filmmaker regardless of experience (or lack of), but with a tight schedule of seven shooting days, seven days of post-production, and a budget of P2.5 million (roughly $43,000). The pito-pito films as they became known put out some clunkers, a handful of good films, a few precious gems — Jeturian’s Sana Pag-ibig Na was one; Diaz’s Serafin Geronimo: Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion (1998) was another. A Dostoevsky-inspired drama filled with amber lighting and possessed by a preternatural stillness, the tiny film suggested an outsized talent straining at its budget. Diaz reportedly struggled with the meagre resources; he managed to eke out three more extraordinary pito-pito films — the surreal Burger Boys (1999); the dreamlike Hubad sa Ilalim ng Buwan (Naked Under the Moon, 1999); the dystopian Hesus Rebolusyonaryo (Jesus Revolutionary, 2002) — before shifting into full-time independently financed filmmaking.
More established filmmakers have worked with Mother, resulting in some of their finest works: Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Laman (Flesh, 2002), an erotic melodrama about married couples exchanging partners; Chito Rono’s Eskapo (Escape, 1995) about political prisoners in the time of Martial Law; and Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. The latter (from a script by Jose “Pete” Lacaba) was maybe Mother’s most daring production, made at a time when folks began to question Marcos’ then 12-year reign but before anyone could actually see the cracks forming.
Peque Gallaga began his career with the wartime epic Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death, 1982) but flowered under Mother — for Regal he directed Unfaithful Wife (1985), a self-contained one-set drama about an extramarital affair; Virgin Forest (also in ’85), about folks struggling to survive the Philippine-American War; and the excellent Scorpio Nights (also in ’85 — Gallaga was apparently on a roll), a gritty erotic noir about a college student having an affair with a security guard’s wife, complete with political subtext (student and housewife in effect defying repressive patriarchy).
Joey Gosiengfiao is one of Mother’s longest-running collaborators; she produced his camp melodrama Bomba Star (Bold Star) back in 1978, when Regal Entertainment was five years old. His Temptation Island (1980) — about a gaggle of beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert isle — has enough melodrama and makeup and bizarre imagery to make Pedro Almodovar sit up and take notice (frankly I prefer Gosiengfiao).
Mario O’Hara worked with Regal on a few commercial projects: To Mama with Love (1983), one of Mother’s better Mother’s Day offerings; Uhaw sa Pag-ibig (Thirst for Love, 1984), an underrated crime noir; Prinsesang Gusgusin (Raggedy Princess, 1987), an underrated young-girl fantasy; and The Fatima Buen Story, an again underrated — and occasionally jaw-dropping — true-life crime noir featuring what may be the best-ever performance of presidential daughter Kris Aquino.
But O’Hara’s most singular work may have been under the Good Harvest banner, a pair of pito-pito productions: Babae sa Bubungang Lata (Woman on a Tin Roof, 1998), both a condemnation of and eulogy to the Filipino filmmaking industry; and Sisa, a wonderfully inventive (if woefully underfunded) fantasy-biopic about Filipino patriarch Jose Rizal — both shot back-to-back in 14 days straight, for a total budget of P5.5 million ($94,000).
Then there’s Pangarap ng Puso (Demons, 2000), a combination love story, horror fantasy, political drama, and celebration of Filipino poetry, crammed into a single genre-bending package. One of my favorite O’Haras, it bombed at the box office despite the minuscule budget. Mother saw it as a love story, and she was not wrong; but the film may have been too strange, too eccentric to market as anything but a lovely if indescribable one-of-a-kind.
The Philippines’ best-known filmmaker Lino Brocka worked with Mother, but to mixed results: Caught in the Act (1981); Hello, Young Lovers (’81); Mother Dear (’81); Adultery (1984) — maybe his finest work there was Ina, Kapatid, Anak (Mother, Sister, Daughter, 1979) a finely wrought multigenerational melodrama.
More fruitful was rival filmmaker Ishmael Bernal’s relationship with Mother, which produced the Wildean comedy Salawahan (Opposites Attract, 1979 — maybe his finest comedy); the kitchen-sink dramas Relasyon (The Affair, 1982), and Broken Marriage (1983); and what may be Bernal’s masterpiece Manila By Night (1980) — an Altmanesque tapestry of narratives that rivals in intensity Brocka’s better-known Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975). And while Brocka’s Maynila may be a straightforward descent into urban hell, Bernal’s Manila is more of a picaresque romp, a darkly comic dance across Manila’s neon-lit streets where no one remains innocent and everyone comes to some kind of ironic end.
And that’s only the partial list; haven’t even begun to cover everyone Mother has discovered, or championed, or feuded against and then championed (and then feuded against). A long and varied career, to put it mildly, and for better or worse an unforgettable one; she may or may not be missed by everyone, but she certainly won’t be forgotten.
