"Gumising Ka... Maruja" (1978)
FPJ Productions
Release Date September 14, 1978
Story and Screenplay Tony Perez
Cinematography Conrado Baltazar
Film Editing Augusto Salvador
Production Design Mel Chionglo
Sound Levy Principe, Jun Martinez
Music Lutgardo Labad
Direction Lino Brocka
Cast Susan Roces, Mario O' Hara, Laurice Guillen, Phillip Salvador/ Also Starring Mary Walter, Manny Ojeda/ with the special participation of Fritz Ynfante and Peque Gallaga
Synopsis- Maruja Isabel Sevilla y Mira (1872 - 1890) is in love with the stable boy, Gabriel, but has been bethrothed by her elders to Rodrigo Velasquez, a captain of the Civil Guard. She takes poison on her wedding night and is reincarnated several decades later in the person of Nina Concepcion (Susan Roces), a producer-actress. Nina is mysteriously drawn to the old stone house where Maruja used to live. It stands in the middle of a sugar plantation, the nearest neighbor being ten kilometers away. She buys the ancient abode despite warnings that the place is haunted. She dismisses all this chatter and plans to shoot the life of Maruja in the huge mansion with Marco (Phillip Salvador) as her leading man and Freddie (Mario O’Hara) as her director.
A press conference is held in Maruja’s mansion. Guests are flown in from Manila. In the party, mysteriously veiled women in black mix with the crowd. A drunken guest looking for the comfort room asks for directions from an old couple who are supposed to be dead.
Nina, Freddie and Marco are finally convinced that the place is haunted when they keep seeing the apparitions of ghosts, particularly that of Cristy (Laurice Guillen) who tells them to leave. Events in the past are reenacted like sequences in a play. “Para silang artistang paulit-ulit na lumalabas sa kanilang mga eksena,” exclaims Marco. Slowly they realize that they are being manipulated in a “dance of death”. Rodrigo wants his marriage to Maruja consummated. The company tries to leave but finds that the ghosts have blocked the exits. Terror mounts as the anniversary of Maruja’s wedding and death nears.
(Source: Lino Brocka: The Artist and his Times)
Article written by Billie Jocson
Kislap Magazine, September 28, 1978
Lifted from susanroces.blogspot.com
(From the collection courtesy of Mercy G. Masangcay)
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