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Wednesday, May 21, 2008Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs Year: 1966Directed by Mario Bava Vincent Price, Fabian, Franco Franchi, Ciccio Ingrassia, Francesco Mulé, Laura Antonelli, Movana Tahi, George Wang Music by Les Baxter Programmed For Love And Destruction Now this one is really hard to explain. In fact I needed it explained to me a few times before I really got it. Firstly in the United States, in 1965 there was a film called Dr. Goldfoot and The Bikini Machine, which starred Vincent Price as a villainous character called Dr. Goldfoot. In that film, Goldfoot made ‘girl-bots’ (it would be a few years until the term ‘fembot’ was coined) to seduce the world’s wealthiest men, and acquire their fortunes. Also in Italy, during 1965 a film was released called Due Mafiosi Contro Goldginger (AKA: Two Mafiosi Against Goldfinger), which starred Italian comedy duo, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs (1966) or Spie vengono dal semifreddo (The Spy Who Came In From The Semi-Cold) as it is known in Italy was made to be a sequel to both of them. Obviously, they were edited slightly differently to make the content more relevant to their specific audiences. I have never seen the Italian version, but I have been told that it is slightly better than the American version. But that couldn’t be hard as the American version is pretty terrible. Granted, the Goldfoot films were never intended to be more than cheesy light-hearted fair, but film lacks the one essential ingredient for all comedy films – namely comedy. This is the type of film that attempts to get laughs by speeding up the film and adding cartoon sound effects. But I’ll be brave and soldier on. Seven NATO Generals are due to meet in Rome for a series of wargames. But before each of them arrives, each of them is sent one of Dr. Goldfoot’s Girl Bombs. The Girl Bombs are beautiful, life-like girl robots, but if you kiss them, they explode. And this is exactly what the NATO Generals do. Boom. One assassination takes place at a hotel where Franco and Ciccio are working as doormen. When Goldfoot walks in, he is discreetly followed by Bill Dexter (Fabian). Dexter is an agent for the Security Intelligence Command (S.I.C.). Franco and Ciccio, for reasons known only to themselves, beat up Fabian, bind and gag him, and then drag him into the hotel’s bathroom. Meanwhile Goldfoot’s Girl Bomb explodes upstairs. Franco and Ciccio realise they have made a mistake and release Dexter, and follow him back to S.I.C. Headquarters. Here Franco and Ciccio get inducted into a spy recruit program. Later, Colonel Benson (Francesco Mulé), the head of S.I.C. utilises the latest computer technology to select the two best operatives to investigate the deaths of the NATO Generals. Unbeknownst to Benson, Dr. Goldfoot is watching and listening to his every move. Goldfoot, crosses the wires in the computer, so rather than spitting out the names of the best agents, it gives the names of the worst, yep, Franco and Ciccio. So now, Franco and Ciccio have to stop Goldfoot, whose plan involves impersonating the last NATO General, who he happens to be a dead ringer for. Buried under all this mess, there is a spy story. It’s a plot by the Chinese to take over the world. It’s the usual America and Russia destroy each other, leaving China as the dominant world power to take over. But having said that, if you’re a fan of spy movies, I wouldn’t go hunting for this one. Even if you’re a Mario Bava fan, I’d steer clear. This isn’t worth your time.  Labels: Director: Mario Bava, Espionage, Eurospies posted by David at 9:33 PM | 3 Comments | Links to this post Saturday, April 26, 2008Assassination In Rome (1965) Directed by Silvio AmadioCyd Charisse, Hugh O'Brian, Mario Feliciani, Alberto Closas, Juliette Mayniel, Philippe Lemaire, Gina Rovere Music by Armando Trovajoli Assassination In Rome is a solid enough thriller, but it is far from outstanding. What it does have going for it, is that European travelogue feel that so many sixties films possessed. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, the story in this little adventure takes place in Italy; mostly in Rome, but there is a brief excursion to Venice. Above you would have heard me describe this film as a little adventure, and that is exactly what everybody believes has happened to Shelley North’s husband, William. They believe he has run off with a beautiful young Italian girl. Apparently that happens a lot to American men on holiday in Rome! The film opens with Shelley North (Cyd Charisse – who you may remember from The Silencers, and a few musicals) phoning the American Embassy to report her missing husband. She is fobbed off. Meanwhile a dead body is found beside the Trevi fountain. In the man’s pockets, is a packet of heroin. The body isn't Shelley's missing husband, but there may be a connection between the dead man and William North. Adding to the story is a couple of bumbling crooks, who break into the dead man’s apartment. One of the thieves steals a pair of shoes. The shoes have a false heel, and inside is a mysterious package. The thieves don’t care what it is. If it was hidden, it must be valuable, and they hatch a plan to sell the package back to its owner. Little do they know that the owner is dead, and before the movie is over, several other people will die, all because of this mysterious package. Also working in Rome, as a newspaper reporter is American, Dick Sherman (Hugh O’Brian). Sherman is your standard, square-jawed American hero type, a role that suits O’Brian to the ground. Sherman once had a relationship with Shelley, and when he hears her name in the reports from the Embassy, he volunteers to help his old flame track down her delinquent husband. And as a reporter, who knows, there just may be a story in it?  Along for the ride, as Shelley and Dick piece together the details surrounding William’s disappearance, are the chief detective on the case, and Erica a fellow reporter, who has a crush on Dick.The first sixty minutes of this production are in a methodical detective style as our gang of heroes follow the clues. The film could almost be described as Chandleresque. But after the hour, the film picks up pace and the story jags sharply towards over-ripe psychodrama, in the Hitchcock tradition. The music gets louder; the red herrings become more prominent; and the story becomes, well to be honest, rather silly! There is a hint of a spy story, the MacGuffin being a top-secret microfilm containing military secrets. The villains are a virtually unseen secret organization who deals in secrets, torture, and death! Despite these familiar trappings, I wouldn’t really call this a spy film and recommend it to aficionados of espionage cinema. The music by Armando Trovajoli is worth mentioning. The score is very good, but subdued in the first half. As the music soars in the second half it adds to the mystery of the film. In fact, it is a little bit deceptive – deliberately so. Possible spoiler: If the music is loud and pounding, you’re probably witnessing a red herring. If the music is subtle, then the story is progressing normally and its heroes are heading in the right direction. Assassination In Rome is not a lost classic. It is a decent ‘B’ picture with interesting location shooting. And for most of its running time, it is a fairly good thriller. It’s only at the denouement that the film falls from favour. I do not like endorsing any particular company or product, but Dark Sky films have this movie paired with Espionage In Tangiers as a double feature DVD. The DVD is presented as a ‘Drive-In’ double feature, with old adverts for fast food (that doesn’t look appealing at all), and previews for coming attractions. It’s a good, fun package.
posted by David at 12:19 PM | 0 Comments | Links to this post Sunday, April 6, 2008Operation Kid Brother (1967) AKA: OK Connery, Operation Double 007, Secret Agent 00Directed by Alberto De Martino Neil Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Adolpho Celi, Anthony Dawson, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell Music by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai Song ‘OK Connery’ performed by Khristy “I’m a surgeon, not a secret agent!” Of all the European spy films made in the sixties to cash in on Bondmania, Operation Kid Brother is probably the best known. Not because it was one of the better examples of the Eurospy genre, but because it featured Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil, in the title role. And there you have the joke, the movie hangs it’s plot on. Secret Agent 007’s brother, Dr. Neil Connery (he uses his real name in the movie) is a plastic surgeon, lip reader, hypnotist and archer extraordinaire. It is these skills that help him once he gets drawn into a tangled web of intrigue, when one of his patients gets kidnapped by an evil organisation called Thanatos. But I am getting ahead of myself. The film opens with a boat, crewed by a bevy of scantily clad ladies, pulling into Monte Carlo harbour. Below deck, Thayer (Adolpho Celi - who played Emilio Largo in the Bond movie Thunderball) is receiving a massage, while watching a movie on a naked back on one of his girls. More about Thayer later… Meanwhile Miss Maxwell (Lois Maxwell - who played Moneypenny from 1962-85) is waiting at the Aero Club of Monte Carlo, for a plane to land. And not just any plane. Coming in for landing is an agent named Ward Jones, who is carrying a very important little box. But as the plane lands and begins taxiing down the runway, a remote control car, guided by Thayer (naturally), is sent into a collision course with the plane. Both car and plane explode in a fireball. As emergency crews attend to the wreck, during the commotion, Maya (Daniela Bianchi - who played Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love), clothed in an asbestos fire suit, retrieves the box from the flaming wreckage and disappears with it.  We then move to a lecture theatre where Doctor Neil Connery is holding a lecture on plastic surgery and facial reconstruction. His lecture is disrupted when a group of men burst in an attempt to steal Doctor Connery’s patient. You see, she was Ward Jones girlfriend, and everyone believes that he has left some vital intelligence information with her.The kidnapping attempt is foiled by Miss Maxwell, who spirits the girl away. Unfortunately, Connery was distracted in the commotion, and has accidentally killed an man. The authorities have him in custody. It’s here that Doctor Connery is recruited, or rather blackmailed, into working for M.I.6. The head of M.I.6 is another familiar face. It is Bernard Lee, who played ‘M’ in the Bond series (from 1962 – 1979). Here he plays Commander Cunningham. Connery's mission is to stop Thanatos. As I briefly mentioned earlier, the villains of the piece, are an evil organization called Thanatos. The leader of Thanatos, Alpha, is played by Anthony Dawson, another Bond alumni, who played Professor Dent in Doctor No. Alpha’s number two man, is Thayer. But Thayer is not happy about being Number two, or if you prefer ‘Beta’, and has his own plan to take over Thanatos. But what are Thanatos’ up to? They plan to blackmail the world with a device that freezes anything with moving metal parts. Naturally Thanatos need a secret underground lair, to carry out their dastardly plan, and theirs is hidden under a castle a few miles outside Munich. As you’d expect it is up to Doctor Connery, with a bit of help from some Scottish archery champions to stop Thanatos and save the world. Obviously a trait that runs in the family. Operation Kid Brother has some over-the-top sequences. A favourite has the girls from Thanatos stealing an ‘atomic nucleus.’ They do this, by disguising themselves as stranded dancehall girls, with car troubles. Then they overpower the men in an army convoy. And if that wasn’t enough, to smuggle their ill-gotten gain back to their headquarters, they disguise the army transport as a moving advertisement for ‘The Wild Pussy Club’, featuring the girls dressed in cat costumes. Grrrrr!  Another over-the-top scene is at the climax, after Thayer begins his two minute countdown to firing the dreaded freezing weapon. Within the 120 seconds, Maya has time to escape from a castle, steal a helicopter, fly back to the nearest city and raise the alarm. Let’s just say Miss Bianchi is certainly a very sprightly agent.Many articles have been written about Operation Kid Brother, most of them are negative. But the film is actually a great deal of fun. It was never intended as a taut thriller. It is a sly send-up, with outrageous stunts, garish costumes, and performances by a group of actors who are extremely familiar to avid fans of the Bond series. It is a pity that the movie is not more readily available. 
posted by David at 12:54 AM | 0 Comments | Links to this post Monday, March 24, 2008From The Orient With Fury (1965) AKA: Fury In The Orient, Agent 077 Operation Istanbul , Fury In Istanbul, Fury On The Bosphorus, Storm Over The BosphorusDirected by Terrence Hathaway (Sergio Grieco) Ken Clark, Fernando Sancho, Margaret Lee, Philippe Hersent, Franco Ressel, Vitorrio Sanipoli, Mikaela Music by Piero Piccioni Songs ‘Before It’s Too Late’ and ‘You Wonderful You’ sung by Lydia Macdonald From The Orient With Fury (or any of the myriad of other names that this film goes by), is the second in the Ken Clark 077 series, and while being a slight step down form the first, Mission Bloody Mary, it is still a fairly slick Eurospy production. The film opens with a nice pop art rotoscope title sequence and Lydia Macdonald singing ‘Before It’s Too Late’. In Istanbul, Professor Franz Kurtz (Ennio Balbo) arrives at a hotel, with a coterie of reporters at his heels. He has just invented a Beta Ray that disintegrates metal. Accompanying the Professor is C.I.A. agent McFlint, whose job is to protect the Professor. As they pass through the hotel lobby McFlint is called to the telephone. As he takes the call, the Professor makes his way up to his room. Waiting for him inside are a handful of burly gorillas dressed as the house band. The Goons kidnap the Professor, smuggling him out, hidden in a case for a double bass. When McFlint finally makes it up to the Kurtz’s room, all he finds is a dead body slumped in an armchair. As McFlint investigates, the bomb goes off destroying the hotel room. Naturally, the authorities believe the dead man in the armchair was Professor Kurtz, and the newspapers of the world are filled with reports about his demise. Meanwhile in Paris, the Head of the C.I.A., Heston (Philpe Hersent) is meeting with Kurtz’s daughter, Romy. He explains that he had the fingerprints checked and is positive that her father is alive. Now he intends to put his best man on the case to find the Professor. That man is Dick Malloy – Agent 077 (Ken Clark). When we catch up with Dick Malloy, he is involved in a bar fight. For what reason, we never find out. As he is on holidays, maybe that is how he relaxes? Mid fight he is interrupted by a telephone call from Heston, and is sent to Paris for a briefing. Malloy’s mission is to pick up the trail of the kidnappers and the Professor. His first task is to meet with one of the Professor’s colleagues, Preminger, at a night club called Martignon. Malloy is at the club at the allotted time. But unfortunately Preminger is followed by the hoods who kidnapped Professor Kurtz. Before he can talk to Malloy, he is silenced by a poison needle. With his dying breath Preminger says to Malloy, ‘Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’. With barely a lead to go on, Malloy proceeds to Preminger’s house in a black Chevolet. Naturally enough for this sort of film, the villains of the piece, follow Malloy and a car chase takes place. As it is a spy film, Malloy’s car comes equipped with rear machine guns, and he disables his pursuers vehicle. And since we are talking about cars, one thing puzzles me about the appearance of Malloy’s black Chevy. I realise the 077 films do not have the budget of a Bond or a Flint, and sometimes things have to be done on the cheap. What I find strange though, is that the film-makers were too lazy to clean the bird-shit off the car windows before shooting the scenes. It is quite strange to see an urbane, sophisticated secret agent driving with two giant ‘splats’ on his driver’s side window, next to his head – classy stuff! A spy film like this, would be complete without a bevy of beautiful women, and this film has three. The first, I have already mentioned, is Romy Kurtz (Evi Marandi). She’s also a scientist like her father, but unlike him, she has been completing her work in Moscow, and she is not so keen for her father’s work to be handed over to the American’s if Malloy should succeed. Next we have the evil villainess, Simone Coplan (Fabienne Dali). She gives as good as she gets, and for her trouble she gets slapped around a little bit. Not only does she have to put up with some violent treatment, she has to put up with Malloy saying clumsy dialogue like: ‘Out with it, baby!’ as he crudely tries to interrogate her. After two thirds of the film have passed, a favourite for fans of Eurospy films, Margaret Lee makes an appearance. Her character is also a secret agent called, Evelyn Stone. When we first meet Stone, she is in Malloy’s hotel suite and taking a shower. She teams up with Malloy at the end to track the villains to their lair and find the Professor. But mostly, she gets to play her signature role, another ditzy blonde. But hey, that’s why we like her! What makes this film the weakest of the three Ken Clark, Dick Malloy films is that the villains role and character are hardly defined. Goldwyn (Franco Ressel), the architect of this evil plot is barely seen throughout the picture till the very end, and then he is hardly menacing. In fact, Simone Coplan would have been better as ‘the chief’. From The Orient With Fury is not a complete waste of time, and is a fairly slick Eurospy production, but it does seem to lack direction and a climax worthy of the preceding hundred minutes. It is not my policy to endorse any particular company or product, but if you searching for a copy of this film, rather than scouring the grey market, Dorado Films Inc, in the United States have released a nice clean copy on DVD. Labels: Espionage, Eurospies, Stars: Ken Clark posted by David at 12:22 AM | 0 Comments | Links to this post Saturday, March 22, 2008Mission Bloody Mary (1965) AKA Agent 077 Mission Bloody Mary Operation Blue Lotus Directed by Terrence Hathaway (Sergio Grieco) Ken Clark, Mitsouko, Philippe Hersent, Helga Liné Music by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino Mission Bloody Mary is one of the best entries in the Eurospy genre. Ken Clark is Dick Malloy, Agent 077, on the trail of The Black Lotus, an evil organisation who have stolen a nuclear warhead. Sure, the film borrows heavily from Thunderball and even From Russia With Love but is done fairly slickly and paced so rapidly, you don’t have time to notice the holes in the plot. Let’s look at the holey plot. It’s an absolutely miserable night. As the rain teems down a military jeep makes it’s way toward the Strategic Air Command base in Coatbridge (near Glasgow) A loan airforce officer is driving. As he approaches the base, a young lady, Kuan (Mitsouko), all dressed in red and soaked to the skin, flags him down. Her car has broken down. He offers assistance (who wouldn’t?) For his trouble he ends up with a knife in his belly. Two other men emerge from the shadows. One on them dons an airforce uniform and takes the officers place behind the wheel. He proceeds to the base and past the sentries. The movie cuts to a montage of newspapers from around the world. Each proclaims that a U.S. aircraft carrying nuclear warheads has crashed in France. In Washington intelligence chiefs have gathered and are discussing the incident. The plane was carrying a new nuclear weapon, the B-32, also known as ‘The Bloody Mary’. When the crash site was examined, the weapon was gone. It is agreed the weapon has be recovered discreetly. The head of the C.I.A., Mr. Heston (Philippe Hersent)assigns his best agent, Dick Malloy. Agent 077 (Ken Clark). Clark is a big hairy mountain of a man, which is a bit of a plus. When he gets into a fist-fight (which happens quite a bit), you can actually believe if he hit you, it would hurt. On the negative side (and this might just be the dubbing), he doesn’t seem too bright. He walks into a lot of traps set by the enemy. When we first meet Malloy, he is entertaining a young lady. Barely dressed, they are rolling around on the bed, drinking champagne, and listening Nat King Cole records (well that’s the record sleeve beside the player - although it sounds remarkably like an instrumental of the title tune). His nocturnal activities are disrupted when he is called into the office. In the best sense of sixties style and fashion, Malloy slips on a snazzy red turtleneck (and trousers) and heads into the office. His briefing takes place on the target range, where he is being fitted with a new range of weapons. Heston explains that The Black Lily, an evil organisation, is behind the theft of The Bloody Mary. Their headquarters are in France at the Betz Clinique. Malloy’s contact there will be Dr. Freeman. And in the best tradition of spy movies, there is a code phrase that Malloy will use to identify himself: ‘I am an old friend from San Francisco’. Sooner rather than later, Malloy turns up at the Betz Clinique and makes his pre-arranged rendezvous with Dr. Freeman. Malloy is delighted to find out that Dr. Freeman is in a fact Elsa Freeman (Helga Liné), a woman. Mission Bloody Mary has some good scenes. There’s a roof top gun battle, a sequence on a train (what good spy film doesn’t have a train scene?), a barroom brawl, and a stoush in the cargo hold of a ship. And there’s the usual double crossing, and false identities that you’d expect in a spy film. The movie also features a good musical score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. It’s a brassy trumpet sound, which at times seems like it would be better suited to a Spaghetti Western than a spy film. But all in all, this is a pretty good Eurospy package. It is not my policy to endorse any particular company or product, but if you are searching for a copy of this film, rather than scouring the grey market, Dorado Films Inc, in the United States have released a nice clean copy on DVD. Labels: Espionage, Eurospies, Stars: Ken Clark posted by David at 7:23 PM | 0 Comments | Links to this post Thursday, March 6, 2008Ring Around The World (1966) Directed by Georges Combret, Luigi ScattiniRichard Harrison, Hélène Chanel, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Dominique Boschero, Bernard Blier Music by Piero Umiliani Songs, ‘I Told Her’ and ‘Mary Lou’ performed by The Bumpers. Ring Around The World is a very good Eurospy production. If you can find a good print, it is well worth checking out. The story goes like this: An unnamed Killer (Jack Stuart / Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) takes the components of a snipers pistol from a case and assembles it. Into the chamber he inserts an ice bullet. As the credits roll, he goes on a global killing spree. First he guns down a man seated in an outdoor café in Italy. Next he shoots a man on a beach in Rio. Then he moves to a temple in Thailand where his target is on holiday. After all this carnage, we meet out hero. His name is Fred Lester (Richard Harrison), and he is an investigator for an insurance company. He has been called to London by colleague John Wild. Wild has been investigating the deaths of the three men in the title sequence. It seems that each of the three men had substantial insurance policies, and have listed financial institutions as their beneficiaries, rather than their families. And they all died rather suspiciously from heart attacks. As Lester enters the insurance company’s headquarters, there is an ear piercing scream, and a man falls to his death in the elevator shaft. No prizes for guessing that this is John Wild. Next, Lester is called into a meeting with the heads of the insurance firm. The men seated around the table are Mr. Sanders, Viscount Berry, Sir Joseph Ashley, and Sir Anthony Queen. They assign Lester to continue the Wild’s work. Lester starts his investigation at Wild’s apartment at South Eaton Place. On the desk he sees a flyer for the Le Macabre Nightclub. As he examines it, the phone rings. Lester answers it, pretending to be Wild. On the other end of the line is an elderly gent called MacMurray. He says, ‘They’ve got Yo-Yo. They’re looking for me. I can’t stay here. I’ll give back all the money, you’re right, they don’t want it. They want to kill me.’ Once MacMurray realises it isn’t Wild on the phone, he panics and hangs up. Lester returns to headquarters and digs up MacMurray’s insurance policy. Sure enough, it is for one hundred thousand pounds. Lester gleans the address and makes his way there, only to find that MacMurray doesn’t live there anymore. It appears that MacMurray is a bit of a rapscallion. He has abandoned his wife, who he only married for money in the first place, and has now run off with a nightclub singer called Yo-Yo. Lester puts two and two together and works out that Yo-Yo must perform at Le Macabre, so he makes that his next port of call. Le Macabre is a swingin’ sixties go-go pad, and Lester’s job is made incredibly easy when Yo-Yo (Dominique Boschero) approaches him on entry. She wants to dance. He wants information. They go to her room backstage. After a bit of gentle intimidation, Yo-Yo gives Lester MacMurray’s address at Embankment Gardens. Lester is on the move again, but this time he is being tailed by the Killer. As Lester steps into the elevator at MacMurray’s apartment, the Killer steps in also. Lester is a pretty smart cookie and knows he has been followed. “We’re looking for the same person,” he says. At MacMurray’s apartment, both men are ushered in by a servant. But all is not as it seems as the servant is working with the Killer. He bids the men to sit down and wait, and offers to make them a cup of tea. Naturally, Lester’s has poison in it. Lester chooses not to partake in the tea ritual and pulls a gun, but as the Killer distract Lester, the servant sneaks up on Lester from behind. Lester is clubbed unconscious. Lester remains unconscious as the Killer and his henchman drive out of town until they come to a railway crossing. The plan is to leave Lester in the car, in the middle of the tracks and, well you can guess the rest... As the train approaches, Lester awakens and with a well placed kung-fu chop knocks out the henchman. Then he leaps from the car as the train collides with it. The Killer is nowhere to be seen. Upset by his experience, Lester returns to Le Macabre to find Yo-Yo. Not surprisingly, she has packed up her things and scarpered. But after a bit of biffo with two burley bouncers, he discovers her address and heads around to her apartment. She isn’t home, so he waits in the dark for her to arrive. Upon arrival, Lester asks her once again about MacMurray’s whereabouts, but this time at gunpoint. He isn’t too happy. He is told that MacMurray has fled to Rio, and staying with a man called Hernandez, who has a store in the Old Bazaar section. Lester lands in Rio and makes his way around to Hernandez’s store. Hernandez says that another man (The Killer) has already been to see him regarding MacMurray’s location. Lester thinks he is too late. MacMurray is hiding out in the Hotel Americano, in the village of Gabia. The village is one hundred miles from Rio and only accessible by airplane. Luckily, Hernandez knows a pilot with a small plane who can get him there quickly. So Lester is off once again. It is dizzying keeping up with him. At the back of the shop MacMurray is held at gunpoint by The Killer. And the man Lester thought was Hernandez is really another of The Killer’s minions, and at the airfield another plot is being put in place to eliminate Lester. A bomb is fixed to the engine of the plane, with a timer set to go off at two o’clock. Lester arrives at the airfield, boards the plane. Once they are in the air, he finds it strange that the pilot is already wearing a crash helmet and a parachute. The pilot explains that it is ‘company policy’. As two o’clock approaches, the pilot tries to leap from the plane, but as he jumps, Lester latches onto him and free-falls with him. Once the parachute has been deployed, Lester strangles the pilot mid air, and then glides down safely. On the ground, Lester continues on to the Hotel Americano in Gabia, but it is deserted. The caretaker explains that it went out of business a year ago. Lester’s next move is to phone Hernandez. This time he gets the real one, who says that MacMurray was at the Hotel Americano in Brasilia. You guessed it. Lester’s on the move once more. In Brasilia, the local police explain that MacMurray is dead. They found him in the hotel swimming pool, cramped up. They say it must have been an accident, but Lester knows better. That’s the end of the race to save MacMurray, but back in England there’s another policy holder who has gone missing. His name is Brightford and his daughter Mary (Sherrill Morgan) is worried about him. Lester is assigned to find Brightford, and naturally Mary tags along. I’ll leave the synopsis there, but let me asure you, there’s plenty more to come, and it is well worth your time. With a title like Ring Around The World, you’d expect the film to feature some impressive locations. And the film doesn’t let us down. The first of note is the city of Brasilia. For those interested, the city was designed by Brazilian architect and urban planner, Lucio Costa. Major buildings were designed by Oscar Niemeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx planned the layout. The movie features the uniquely shaped buildings, art and sculpture and wide streets as a backdrop, particularly during a car chase sequence. For those who’d like to see a bit more of the city will strangely have to go to Rio (746 miles away). Or more precisely watch That Man from Rio (L’Homme de Rio) with Jean Paul Belmondo or The Girl From Rio (The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru) with Shirley Eaton. The other noteworthy location is used in the denouement. The final shootout takes place in the Tiger Balm Gardens, also known as Aw Boon Haw Gardens, a popular tourist attraction in Hong Kong. The gardens were created by Aw Boon Haw, who made his fortune from the sale of Tiger Balm. It’s a great setting and visually gives the movie and organic yet slightly surreal feeling. A quick word about the soundtrack by Piero Umiliani. It is an absolute knockout. It is pounding, it’s jazzy, it’s swinging sixties. It’s almost worth watching the film for the soundtrack alone. This review is based on the Retromedia Entertainment Inc DVD. This is part of a Richard Harrison double feature which also includes the movie Terminal Force 
posted by David at 10:55 PM | 0 Comments | Links to this post Wednesday, March 5, 2008The Champions
Late last year, spurred on by a marathon viewing session of The Avengers, I became obsessed with learning more about the many other British spy and adventure series from around the same time. Some of them have been released on DVD in the US, making the exploration rather easy going. But many others were available only in the UK or Australia, and given the soaring power of the American dollar against the British pound, buying DVD box sets from England was a a mission of significant financial difficulty. Luckily, England gets into a real post-Christmas high, resulting in places like Amazon UK having sales during which you can buy British goods for 70-80% off their list price -- making them affordable even to us suckers still trading in American greenbacks.
 So I bought up a whole bunch of great stuff, including The Baron, Honey West, the Man from UNCLE movie set, Man in a Suitcase, and a show called The Champions. Aside from UNCLE, and aside from having seen a photo of Anne Francis in her slinky Honey West catsuit, I knew very little about any of the series, but most of them came from the same minds and production team that gave me stuff I already knew I liked, so I was game to gamble a few pounds. Most of these series were produced in the wake of The Avengers, by a studio called ITC. At the time, there was a political mandate that British television programming should be educational and important, resulting in a parade of dreary, black and white dramas that I'm sure were full of political and artistic merit but hardly made for a compelling reason not to go see the latest James Bond film. After The Avengers bucked the trend, ITC decided to follow suit and produce a string of big budget adventure series, filmed in color to make them more appealing both to viewers and (more importantly, perhaps) to American TV channels, and boasting superb production values in order to compete more evenly with movies. Most of the shows also starred an American so as to increase their chances of distribution in the US. To put it succinctly, it was a good time to be watching British television. Among these shows, Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner stood out from the pack as the most ambitious -- and certainly the most bizarre, even when measured against the quirkiness on display in The Avengers. Both of these shows blended familiar espionage adventure tropes with science fiction, and in the case of The Prisoner, with rather bold social and political messages. Apparently inspired by the innovation of The Prisoner, prolific adventure series creator Monty Berman decided he wanted to do a spy series with science fiction and fantastic overtones. The result was The Champions. While returning from a mission in China, three spies (Stuart Damon as Craig Stirling, Alexandra Bastedo as Sharron Macready, and William Gaunt as Richard Barrett) are shot down over the Himilayas, where they are rescued from certain death by a mysterious monk who happens to be a member of a lost race dwelling high in the mountains and possessed of incredible superhuman powers. In healing the three agents, the monks also imbue them with super powers, including increased resilience, strength, jumping ability, and ESP. Armed with their new powers -- but also struggling to figure out how to use them -- the trio returns to Europe and undertake a series of adventures that would, obviously, become the television show. It's a pretty good premise, and although these fantastic elements set the show apart from other spy series of the time (at least until the Brits started pairing up cops with the ghosts of their murdered partner), they don't push it entirely into the realm of the fantastic. For the most part, it's a straight-forward espionage thriller series, albeit one where we occasionally zoom in on someone's eyes while they make "ESP face" or jump over a big rock. It's not nearly as political or intellectually challenging as the series that inspired it, but that doesn't mean it isn't a rollicking good time. The exploits of our three heroes take them all over the globe -- realized through the usual mix of location footage and sound studios -- including Tibet, China, across Europe in pursuit of Peter Wyngarde (himself a major star of these types of series -- but we shall come to Jason King in due time), and even to the Antarctic. Plenty of action, plenty of suspense -- an all-around great show that keeps a frothy, breezy pace. posted by Armando at 10:34 AM | 5 Comments | Links to this post Thursday, October 11, 2007Lightning Bolt
Eurospy films are like any other continental knock-off of a popular American or British genre. Some are very good and quite lavish, managing to rise above small budgets to deliver a slick looking little thriller full of beautiful women, sets, and locations. Others are threadbare pieces of junk that will bore you to tears. And some are utterly bizarre and incompetent in the most wonderfully enjoyable of fashions. Lightning Bolt falls closer to the last description.
 Just about every Eurospy film that got made during the craze that began right after the death of peplum and right before the rise of spaghetti westerns got made because of the success of the James Bond films, and most of the Eurospy movies aren't shy about wearing their influences on their sleeve. For some, it was by way of casting one of the many European actors who played a villain or a love interest in a Bond film. Thunderball's Adolfo Celli appeared in several Eurospy productions, as did Bond girls like From Russia With Love's Daniela Bianchi. Bernard "M" Lee and Lois "Miss Moneypenny" Maxwell actually both starred as characters very similar to their Bond characters in a Eurospy film starring Sean Connery's younger brother, Neil, who was passed off as 007's brother in a way vague enough to avoid being sued by the producers of the Bond films. For most, however, it was simply a case of repeating the formula and mimicking the ad campaigns. Lightning Bolt is particularly obvious about its intentions to compare itself to Thunderball, which came out in the same year, right down to the tag line, "Lightning Bolt -- He Strikes Like a Ball of Thunder!" The main villain, however, is straight out of Goldfinger with a dash of the Matt Helm film The Ambushers, of all things, thrown in. The original Italian title, in fact, works as hard to recall Goldfinger as the American one does to recall Thunderball. Unless you think Operacione Goldman is a coincidence. The plot -- in which a nefarious arch villain is using laser waves to misguide and blow up moon rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, is actually quite similar to the plot of the Nick Carter novel, Operation Moon Rocket, which was published in 1968. Although it seems unlikely that an obscure Italian spy movie would have been an influence on the Nick Carter novels, it's certainly still a possibility. The Nick Carter stable of authors was varied, after all, and they were drawing ideas from everywhere. So here we go. NASA is in trouble. Every moon rocket they've tested has exploded into a great, fiery ball, though whether or not it's a thunderball remains debatable. The scientists are convinced that computers and technology behind the rockets are sound, so the only answer must be sabotage. Lt. Harry Sennet (American actor Anthony Eisley) is called in to get to the bottom of things. His cover, naturally, is that of a rich, womanizing playboy looking for good times and big boobs along Florida' coast, which has been visited by just about every 1960s spy from James Bond to Matt Helm. Assisting Sennet on his mission is bombshell captain Patricia Flanagan, another genre stalwart who had appeared in everything from The Awful Dr. Orloff to Superargo and the Faceless Giants. In between gratuitous but welcome scenes of Sennet cruising around the bikini-clad babes lounging about the hotel swimming pool area and frequent grainy stock footage of rockets from NASA, our tale of intrigue is woven, and it leads to a powerful, um, beer brewer (thus the Matt Helm movie similarity). But this is a Eurospy film, and one of the wackier ones at that, so this particular evil brewmeister (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe), has a laser he uses to blow up rockets from his -- get this -- space age underwater lair where he keeps his biggest enemies frozen in a state of suspended animation so he can thaw them out from time to time to taunt them and get them up to speed on the success of his mad, evil schemes. Although the production is cheap and the plot is outlandish, this is actually a pretty fun little adventure. Anthony Eisley looks tough and handsome, and he's probably one of the few spies in any of these movies who begins his mission by trying to buy off the bad guys -- with a check! Imagine Sean Connery asking Robert Shaw how much money he'd need not to kill Bond, then saying, "OK, mind if I write you a check?" They don't even accept checks at the grocery store where I shop! The women surrounding Eisley are ridiculously gorgeous, which is one of the things even the cheapest of Eurospy films could get right. The set designs are actually pretty impressive considering the budget and have a swanky 1960s pop art feel to them. There's plenty of fist fights, lots of clumsy sexual innuendo, shoot outs, sea plane flying, and then the whole finale in the undersea fortress. A-ha! James Bond producers must have paid this movie back by stealing that idea for The Spy Who Loved Me. A lot of the film's energy undoubtedly comes from director Antonio Margheriti, possibly the most prolific of all Italian action and thriller directors. Margheriti, who was often renamed "Anthony Dawson" when his films were exported to America, directed his fair share of clunkers, but the bulk of his career is filled with perfectly acceptable genre films, and a few genuine classics. Lightning Bolt, like most Eurospy films, is completely ludicrous, but it's not as if anyone involved with the film doesn't seem aware of that. There's a playful sense of fun, almost tongue in cheek, that makes the film a great deal more entertaining than it might otherwise be.  Labels: Director: Antonio Margheriti, Espionage, Eurospies posted by Armando at 10:53 AM | 0 Comments | Links to this post |
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