When Hollywood Came to Aklan

By: Ro Akeanon

Long before Boracay became an international tourism icon, the island was already appearing—albeit largely unnoticed by audiences—as a tropical setting in American cinema.

In 1969–1970, two American war films were produced in the Philippines:

🎬 Too Late the Hero (1970)
🎬 Nam’s Angels / The Losers (1970)

Their production history provides a fascinating glimpse into Boracay before the tourism boom.

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🎬 TOO LATE THE HERO

Directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson and Henry Fonda, Too Late the Hero was a World War II drama set in the Pacific.

Although the story takes place in the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, the production was filmed in the Philippines.

Filming began in February 1969, and the bulk of the movie was shot on Boracay Island. The opening and closing sequences were filmed outside the Subic Bay Naval Base.

The film was completed in April 1969 and released in 1970.

For modern Aklan historians, its importance goes beyond cinema.

The movie preserves images of Boracay’s landscape before the island’s transformation into a mass-tourism destination.

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🏍️ NAM’S ANGELS / THE LOSERS

The second film is even more intriguing.

The Losers (1970) was originally titled Nam’s Angels and was directed by Jack Starrett.

Its cast included:

* William Smith
* Bernie Hamilton
* Adam Roarke
* Paul Koslo

The film follows a group of motorcycle-riding American outlaws—the Devil’s Advocates—who become involved in a rescue mission during the Vietnam War.

AFI’s authoritative catalog records that the production was originally titled Nam’s Angels, with principal photography scheduled to begin in Manila, Philippines, in January 1970. AFI also records that filming had wrapped by March 1970.

The film was released in the United States in 1970 as The Losers.

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🏝️ WAS THE LOSERS FILMED IN BORACAY?

Here the historical record requires a little caution.

Several historical accounts of Boracay explicitly state that in 1970, Nam’s Angels—released in the United States as The Losers—and Too Late the Hero used filming locations on Boracay and Caticlan.

A contemporary Boracay historical account therefore places The Losers among the films associated with the island during this period.

There is also a significant production connection between the two movies.

The production history of Too Late the Hero states that the film was made on Boracay by the same crew and using many of the same sets as Jack Starrett’s The Losers.

However, there is an important scholarly qualification:

The American Film Institute’s catalog lists Manila, Philippines, as the location for The Losers and does not independently identify Boracay.

IMDb likewise currently lists Metro Manila as its filming location rather than Boracay.

Therefore, the most responsible formulation is:

Historical accounts of Boracay identify Nam’s Angels / The Losers among the films that used locations on Boracay and Caticlan, while the AFI record independently confirms the film’s Philippine production but identifies Manila rather than Boracay as its documented location.

This distinction is important when reconstructing Aklan’s film history.

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🎥 TWO WAR FILMS, TWO DIFFERENT WARS

The coincidence is remarkable.

TOO LATE THE HERO

Released: 1970
Director: Robert Aldrich
Stars: Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Henry Fonda
Subject: World War II
Story setting: New Hebrides
Philippine location: Boracay and Subic Bay
Filming: 1969

THE LOSERS / NAM’S ANGELS

Released: 1970
Director: Jack Starrett
Stars: William Smith, Bernie Hamilton, Adam Roarke, Paul Koslo
Subject: Vietnam War
Philippine production: Manila; Boracay/Caticlan is identified in Boracay historical accounts
Filming: 1970

Both productions used the Philippines to portray tropical war environments.

And both belong to the remarkable story of Boracay before mass tourism.

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🌴 BORACAY BEFORE THE RESORTS

Today, it is difficult to imagine Boracay without its hotels, restaurants, roads, commercial establishments and millions of visitors.

But the Boracay encountered by these filmmakers was very different.

The island’s beaches and tropical vegetation provided filmmakers with a landscape that could stand in for a remote Pacific or Southeast Asian battlefield.

Hollywood was looking for an exotic war-film setting.

It found one in the Philippines.

And in the case of Too Late the Hero, it found one in Boracay.

The cameras captured a landscape that would soon undergo one of the most dramatic transformations in Philippine tourism history.

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📽️ A MOVING IMAGE OF THE OLD BORACAY

Historical photographs are often used to reconstruct the appearance of old Boracay.

But films provide something photographs cannot:

movement.

They show the shoreline, vegetation, terrain and human activity as they appeared in real time.

For this reason, Too Late the Hero is particularly valuable as a visual source for the study of Boracay’s landscape in the late 1960s.

And the historical accounts connecting The Losers with Boracay and Caticlan add another intriguing layer to this cinematic history.

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🏝️ BEFORE BORACAY BECAME BORACAY

The films did not, by themselves, create Boracay’s tourism industry.

Tourism began developing during the 1970s, followed by the island’s growing international reputation in subsequent decades.

But these films belong to an earlier chapter—the period when Boracay was still relatively undeveloped and largely unknown internationally.

That makes their connection to the island historically significant.

The filmmakers came looking for a landscape that could represent another place.

What they unintentionally recorded was Aklan’s own landscape at a particular moment in time.

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🎞️ FROM WAR MOVIE SET TO WORLD-FAMOUS ISLAND

There is a remarkable historical irony here.

In Too Late the Hero, Boracay portrayed a fictional Pacific battlefield.

In The Losers, the Philippines became part of a cinematic Vietnam.

But decades later, the same tropical landscape would become famous not as a movie battlefield, but as Boracay.

The island went from:

remote community → film location → emerging tourist destination → international tourism icon.

And somewhere in that transition, Hollywood’s cameras captured fragments of the old landscape.

Before the world came to Boracay, Hollywood came looking for it.

That is a story worth remembering in Aklan’s history.

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RO AKEANON | HERITAGE & HISTORY

This feature distinguishes between independently documented film locations and claims preserved in later Boracay historical accounts. The Boracay connection of Too Late the Hero is substantially documented; the Boracay connection of Nam’s Angels/The Losers is reported in Boracay historical sources but is not independently confirmed by the AFI location record.

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