Showing posts with label spy thrillers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spy thrillers. Show all posts

Tuesday, 25 March 2025

Red Heat (1985)

Red Heat is a 1985 women-in-prison movie starring Linda Blair. I have to be upfront about this - I’m a major Linda Blair fan. If it’s a sleazy, violent, scuzzy 80s exploitation flick and she’s in it I will watch it.

Red Heat is also a very dark spy thriller. The CIA is undertaking a major espionage operation in Germany involving a female East German scientist who has turned traitor and is selling secrets to the West. The CIA, being the CIA, make an unholy mess of the operation which ends in complete failure and with both the lady scientist and an innocent bystander sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in a horrific East German prison.

The innocent bystander is American college student Christine Carlson (Linda Blair). She has zero interest in politics and was not involved in the operation at all. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Christine’s boyfriend is an American soldier, Mike (William Ostrander). In his innocence he assumes. That the US Government will try to rescue his girlfriend. He soon finds out the truth. The CIA doesn’t give a damn about Christine. They’re too busy covering their own asses and trying to cover up their failure.

As a spy movie this belongs the dark gritty cynical school of spy movies. The East Germans are the bad guys, but the CIA are the bad guys as well. There are no good guys in the worlds of espionage and international politics.


This is a women-in-prison movie so of course there are lesbians. At this point I should perhaps say that if you’re the type of person who expects 80s movies to conform to 2020s political ideologies or if you’re a sensitive soul you are going to hate this movie and you’re going to be upset by it. In which case you should watch some other movie.

Firstly there’s the sadistic lesbian chief warder. There’s also Sofia (Sylvia Kristel). Sofia is serving a life sentence and she’s the queen bee. She shares the lesbian chief warder’s bed and she and her lesbian gang exercise a reign of terror over the other prisoners.

That lady spy mentioned earlier is in the same prison. The East Germans want Christine to befriend her to get her secrets out of her.

Sofia sees Christine as a threat. Christine is a sweet innocent girl but she does have an underlying strength of character that Sofia senses, and that makes Sofia determined to destroy her. Somehow Christine will have to survive, and with only the vaguest hope of eventually, maybe, getting out alive.


Christine’s boyfriend wants to find her but he has no idea where she is and the CIA absolutely refuse to help. It all seems hopeless but he really loves Christine and he’s not going to give up.

This movie starts as a spy thriller. Then for most of its running time it’s a very dark women-in-prison movie. And then at the end it becomes an action thriller. The action scenes come as a relief after the relentless grimness.

There is not a hint of camp to this movie. The spy thriller element is cynical, the prison scenes are harrowing and the climactic action scenes are bloody. This is a tough movie.

This is the sort of thing Linda Blair did so well - playing a nice girl who is pushed too far and learns to become a tough chick avenging angel. Blair had a knack for doing this in a totally convincing way.


One thing I love about Blair is that she didn’t look like a movie star. She was attractive, but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than a glamorous movie star kind of way. And she could be sexy in a tough-but-sensitive way, and sexy in the way that a regular woman is sexy rather than in a glamourised supermodel or movie star way. She has to convince us that Christine really is a very ordinary girl who learns to do what she has to do in order to survive. Blair does this successfully.

I have heard it suggested that Sylvia Kristel was miscast as Sofia. I totally disagree. She was a fine actress and playing a sadistic psycho bitch was something she was quite capable of doing and she does an excellent job here.

In order to work this movie needed two actresses with charisma, but with the right sort of slightly unconventional charisma. Blair and Kristel work perfectly together. You know that when these two chicks have their final showdown it will be memorable.


It’s a somber film but it’s well-paced and the tension is built up effectively and relentlessly. It’s gripping and it’s entertaining. A must-see for Linda Blair fans, and I’d say it’s a must-see for Sylvia Kristel fans as well as a demonstration of her considerable versatility as an actress. Red Heat is highly recommended.

Red Heat is included in a Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD set. The DVD transfer for Red Heat is rather dark but I suspect that that is actually how the movie was shot. I like the dark scuzzy look the film has.

Red Heat was a follow-up to the excellent 1983 Linda Blair women-in-prison movie Chained Heat. They’re both delightfully sleazy but with a subtly different vibe. Maybe Chained Heat is slightly the better film but both are worth seeing.

Friday, 31 January 2025

La Femme Nikita (1990)

La Femme Nikita (the original French title is simply Nikita) is a 1990 spy thriller written and directed by Luc Besson but there’s a whole lot more going on in this movie.

Nikita (Anne Parillaud) runs with a street gang. They’re violent murderous thugs. Nikita is vicious and she’s a mess. After a robbery goes wrong she’s facing a life sentence for murder. Then she gets a second chance. She’s a dangerous psychotic but she’s good at killing people and she kills with hesitation or remorse. The government can always use people like that. She is given the chance to work for a government intelligence agency as an assassin.

She isn’t really given a choice.

The idea is far from original. It’s the basis for the greatest TV spy series of all time, Callan. Callan is the world’s worst soldier but he’s very good at killing. He is recruited as an assassin for the British Government. Like Nikita he accepts because he has no other options.

A great movie does not have to be based on an original idea. The best stories are very rarely original. The trick to making a great movie (and La Femme Nikita is a great movie) is to take an old idea and tell it well and give it some fresh twists. That’s what Besson does here.

Bob (Tchéky Karyo) has the job of training Nikita. It’s a challenge. Nikita does not like being told what to do. She has plenty of potential. She’s a natural killer. Eventually she is ready for a mission.


The movie follows her on several missions. This is a movie that can be approached as an action thriller and on that level it’s very good indeed. It has plenty of adrenalin-rush action scenes. It has plenty of suspense.

This is also however the story of a woman. A complicated woman. She becomes more complicated. While she’s learning to be an agent she is also learning to be a woman. She is learning to enjoy being a woman.

She is also learning that she wants things that other women want. She falls in love. Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a seriously nice guy. They would like to get married.

The problem is whether Nikita can have a normal life with a normal relationship with a man while also earning her living killing people. It’s not just the practical difficulties of keeping her two lives separate. She also has to deal with the fact that she kills people she has never met, people she has nothing against, simply because the government orders her to to do so. The government has turned her into a killing machine but human beings are not machines.


There are very obvious echoes of A Clockwork Orange. The government dealing with people who are seen as social problems by re-engineering their personalities.

And there is the same moral ambiguity. We come to feel sympathy for Alex in A Clockwork Orange but he is a vicious thug. Does that mean he no longer has the right to be himself? Does that give the government the right to change his personality? We come to feel sympathy for Nikita, but she was a vicious killer.

At the start of the movie Nikita is a 19-year-old juvenile delinquent who kills by instinct. She is not much more than a wild animal. It’s doubtful that she has ever given a second’s thought to this. Now she is a woman. She has grown up. But is murdering people for the government more moral than just murdering by instinct? Perhaps it is worse. Nikita has become a killer who is capable of thinking about what she does.


I like the fact that she is not a perfect killing machine. She cannot function that way. As a killing machine she develops malfunctions. At one point when things go wrong on a mission she just curls up in a corner sobbing. She has not only developed feelings, she has come to value her own life. She is now capable of experiencing fear, and panic.

Anne Parillaud is extraordinary. She manages, quite subtly, to get across to us that Nikita is not a whole new person. She now dresses exquisitely but she is not really a super-confident sophisticated woman of the world. This is just a mask that she wears. She is not really an ice-cold professional killer. This is just another mask that she wears. The messed-up juvenile delinquent is still there underneath. And the frightened confused little girl that she once was is still there underneath as well. So we’re seeing an actress playing a woman who is herself like an actress playing a part.


Jean-Hugues Anglade is extremely well. Bob is a swine who manipulates Nikita but he is perhaps not entirely a machine either. He may feel some emotional attachment to Nikita. We’re not quite sure. Perhaps he is not sure either. A spy’s life is based on lies and deception. Sometimes they can no longer separate the lies from the reality and can no longer distinguish between the masks they wear and the person underneath.

Luc Besson was associated with the so-called “Cinéma du look” movement. Any accusation that Besson favours style over substance can be dismissed in the case of La Femme Nikita. It has plenty of style and plenty of substance. It’s a superior thriller but it’s also a complex look at the life of a complex woman. Very highly recommended.

Saturday, 16 November 2024

Night of Open Sex (1983)

Night of Open Sex (La noche de los sexos abiertos) is a 1983 Jess Franco movie that springs a few surprises. It’s not quite what it initially appears to be.

This is one of the movies Jess Franco made for Golden Films. This was both the worst and the best part of his career. It was his worst period in the sense that Golden Films turned out to be totally incompetent when it came to securing foreign distribution for his movies. These movies remained entirely unseen and unknown outside of Spain.

On the other hand it was his happiest period because Golden Films offered him an unprecedented level of creative control. He could do absolutely anything he wanted to do. And nothing mattered more to Franco than creative control.

Even when Franco’s cult following later started to build these movies continued to be almost totally unseen and unknown to his fans outside of Spain. This finally started to change some years back and these movies are now available, in subtitled form (they were never dubbed into English) and in remarkably good transfers, on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Their initially very poor reputation among eurocult fans has gradually grown but they are still far too often overlooked.

Night of Open Sex introduces us to erotic dancer Moira (Lina Romay). Through the rather sleazy Vickers (Miguel Ángel Aristu) she has become mixed up in some sort of espionage plot. Her job is to take the place of another girl, Tina Klaus (Juana de la Morena), and deliver a secret message to the General. Vickers has kidnapped Tina and she has been forced to reveal the plan concerning the message.


Al Crosby (Antonio Mayans) appears on the scene. The name suggests that he is going to be another variation on the Al Pereira character who pops up in so many Franco films, usually in the guise of a hardboiled private eye.

Whatever deal is going down, Al wants in on it. He wants Moira to accept him as a partner.

He also wants to sleep with Moira. He has to be very forcefully persuasive at first but Moira seems delighted with the outcome.

Al and Moira have a problem. They have the message but it’s in code and they have no idea what it’s all about. Al figures there’s money involved.

There’s still the problem of Vickers, and there’s another couple who want a piece of this action. There’s plenty of potential here for violence and double-crosses.


It all leads up to a totally unexpected ending which I absolutely loved.

There’s a staggering amount of sex and nudity. Lina Romay is nude for the majority of the film’s running time and you won’t be surprised to see a lot of shots of the most intimate parts of her anatomy. The other actresses spend a lot of time naked as well. The sex scenes are softcore but very raunchy.

The highlight of any Franco movie is likely to be the nightclub act scenes and Moira’s act has to be seen to be believed. When you’ve seen it you still won’t believe it. The things she does with those magazines. And the car. She’s a very imaginative lady.


At some point in this movie you’re going to have one of those “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more Toto” moments. It’s not that anything supernatural or paranormal or science fictional, or impossible, happens. You just know that this is not reality. Maybe part of it is reality. Or maybe none of it. You start to realise that the plot is following dream logic rather than ordinary logic. Characters suddenly do wildly unexpected out-of-character things. It’s clear that this is not a flaw in the script. This is intentional. Uncle Jess is playing with our heads.

Stephen Thrower has suggested that the entire movie is an extended sexual fantasy (or series of sexual fantasies). I think he’s probably spot on. It’s a sexual fantasy rather than a dream or a hallucination or an exercise in surrealism.

Which raises lots of interesting questions. Are we supposed to believe that these people have any actual existence? Is this Jess Franco’s sexual fantasy which he’s inviting us to share? Is it to any extent Moira’s fantasy? And given the close collaboration between Franco and Lina Romay and the fact there was apparently quite a bit of improvising going on, are there any elements that might be Lina’s fantasy? Or a fantasy shared by Jess and Lina?


There is one genuinely shocking scene, but of course if this really is supposed to be taken as a fantasy then that scene becomes much less disturbing. Other mildly disturbing scenes become not disturbing at all.

The sex scenes are very passionate but they’re also just a little jokey. They’re mostly good-natured. You have to love the way Moira starts yelling “Oh Tarzan” as her sexual frenzy increases and in one encounter she gives an actual Tarzan jungle call when she comes. It’s one of the things that is so engaging about this movie - these sudden goofy moments.

The final sex scene is priceless. It may be the culmination of Franco’s career as a filmmaker. It’s not that it’s graphic, it isn’t, but the context is delightfully surprising.

Night of Open Sex is crazy, but it’s crazy in a subtle way. The craziness creeps up on the viewer. I liked it a lot. Highly recommended.

Severin have provided a great transfer with some very desirable extras. As always the pick of the extras is Stephen Thrower’s perceptive video essay.

Thursday, 7 March 2024

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo (1966)

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo (AKA Terror in Tokyo, original title Atout coeur à Tokyo pour OSS 117), is a 1966 French eurospy movie directed by Michel Boisrond and starring Frederick Stafford. This was the fourth of the 1960s OSS 117 movies, based on Jean Bruce’s novels featuring secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codenamed OSS 117.

A mystery organisation claim to have invented a super-weapon which they will use unless governments pay them a hundred million dollars. Military bases will be their targets.

CIA agent OSS 117 is assigned to the case. The best lead is a woman in Tokyo who is being blackmailed by the mystery organisation into providing them with the information they need to target those bases.

The woman is Eva Wilson (Marina Vlady). The plan is for Eva to make contact with the bad guys. Hubert will pretend to be her husband (her actual husband is in Washington).


Hubert and Eva decide that it’s important to make Hubert’s masquerade as her husband convincing so they sleep together.

There’s a meet in a girlie bar where Hubert encounters a pretty Japanese girl, Tetsuko (Jitsuko Yoshimura). Tetsuko might be able to provide a further lead but even if she can’t Hubert doesn’t mind. He doesn’t really need a reason to pursue pretty girls.

Hubert’s problem is that he is now involved with two women and he can’t be sure if he can trust either of them. Maybe he’ll have a better idea of that after he’s slept with both of them.


Hubert’s bigger problem is to find the villains’ secret headquarters, and their super-weapon. He has to deal with lots of heavies who want to do him harm.

This was Frederick Stafford’s second and final appearance as OSS 117. He looks like the kind of guy who might be a secret agent, he’s good in the action scenes and he’s likeable and charming. Hubert is a skirt-chaser, but he only chases girls who like to be chased.

Marina Vlady and Jitsuko Yoshimura are fine as the two women mixed up in the case. Jitsuko Yoshimura in particular is bubbly and cute.

Perhaps the villains could have been more colourful.


The plot is a pretty standard eurospy plot but it’s serviceable enough. The movie moves along fairly briskly. The fight scenes are reasonably good.

The bad guys’ secret lair doesn’t compare to anything from a Bond movie but it’s OK.

Director Michel Boisrond doesn’t try anything fancy but he’s quite competent.

There’s a decent mix of action and romance. Perhaps surprisingly it’s all played very very straight with no comic interludes.


The action finale is fairly exciting. Obviously a lot less spectacular than a Bond movie but for a modestly budgeted movie perfectly satisfactory.

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo doesn’t quite have as much eurospy craziness as I would have liked.

On the whole this is a thoroughly enjoyable rather lighthearted spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the two previous OSS 117 movies, OSS 117 Is Unleashed (1963) and Panic in Bangkok. They’re worth seeing.

Saturday, 25 November 2023

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

Mission Bloody Mary, released in 1965, was the first of a series of three eurospy movies featuring Ken Clark as American secret agent Dick Malloy, Agent 077. It was an Italian-French-Spanish co-production. It was followed by From the Orient with Fury (Agente 077 dall'oriente con furore) and Special Mission Lady Chaplin (Missione speciale Lady Chaplin).

Confusingly it appears that Agent 077 was named Jack Clifton in the European versions but renamed Dick Malloy in the English dubbed versions.

Mission Bloody Mary begins in a typical eurospy way. Someone has been causing US military aircraft to crash and they have stolen a new super H-bomb nicknamed the Bloody Mary.

It’s obviously a case for the CIA’s top agent Dick Malloy, if they can tear him away from the case he’s working on at the moment. That case happens to be a beautiful blonde. Agent 077 hates leaving a job unfinished but he promises the blonde that he’ll be back to finish the job.

Agent 077 finds his contact and of course she’s a glamorous female, Dr Elsa Freeman (Helga Liné). There’s another glamorous female who seems likely to be more dangerous, a Chinese stripper named Kuan (played by Mitsouko).

The bodies slowly start to accumulate. And people are trying to kill Dick Malloy, so he must be getting close to something.


The CIA can’t provide Dick with much information. They know the Black Lily is involved, but they don’t know whether the Black Lily is an organisation or a person, or whether it refers to a man or a woman. The Black Lily might be operating independently, or on behalf of the Chinese or the Soviets. And that bomb could be hidden anywhere.

There will of course be double-crosses. This is after all a spy story. The script provides plenty of twists. Some of them you’ll see coming but some of them you won’t.

There are glamorous women and poor Malloy has no idea which of them he can trust. He gets into plenty of tight corners but he’s a tough guy and he can slug or shoot his way out of most situations.


Ken Clark was one of those American actors who realised that they weren’t going to reach the top in Hollywood but might do a lot better in Italy. He made peplums, spaghetti western, eurospy and action movies. He was the ruggedly handsome American type who prospered in 60s eurocult movies. He makes a more than adequate square-jawed wise-cracking hero.

Helga Liné and Mitsouko add some glamour. The other cast members are all perfectly competent.

The major difference between the Bond movies and eurospy movies was of course money. The makers of eurospy movies did not have the budgets for elaborate sets, fancy gadgetry and spectacular action set-pieces. They had to rely on more conventional action scenes. A lot depended on just how good a director was at staging such scenes. In this case Sergio Grieco proves to be very competent. The action scenes are excellent.


And there are plenty of them. Pacing is crucial to the success of these kinds of movies. The lower the budget of the movie the less forgiving the audience is going to be of slow patches. This movie has no slow patches. It just keeps powering along.

Director Sergio Grieco had a fairly typical career for an Italian genre director. He made peplums, swashbucklers and quite a few eurospy movies. Later he dabbled in poliziotteschi and sex comedies.

This was 1965 so there’s no nudity but there are some witty sexy moments. A good place for a woman to hide a secret message is in her bra, especially if she can be sure that the man for whom the message is intended will get the chance to look inside her bra. And Mitsouko gets to do a strip-tease routine.


At one point Malloy has to make sure that a female agent is not an imposter. To do so he will have to make a careful examination of her left breast. Fortunately one of Malloy’s secret agent skills is persuading young ladies to remove their clothing.

The violence isn’t graphic but the fight scenes are quite full-blooded.

Mission Bloody Mary has relatively few of the outrageous and fantastic elements that populate a lot of eurospy movies, in fact it has almost none, but it manages to provide plenty of excitement, and it’s stylish enough in a slightly gritty sort of way. On the whole this is a top-notch eurospy offering and it’s highly recommended.

The German Pidax Jack Clifton Agent 077 DVD boxed set includes all three 077 movies, with the English soundtracks as well. The transfers are fine.

I’ve reviewed the other two Agent 077 movies, From the Orient with Fury (1965) and the superb Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966).

Monday, 6 November 2023

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Never Say Never Again, released in 1983, is the movie that saw Sean Connery back in the rôle of James Bond twelve years after Diamonds Are Forever. The story of how this movie came about is more interesting than the movie itself but we’ll get to that later.

This is of course a remake of Thunderball which had been the most comercially successful of all the Bond films.

SPECTRE have hatched a plot to steal two American thermonuclear warheads. They naturally intend to use the warheads to blackmail the governments of just about every country on the planet.

Bond meanwhile has been sent to a health farm. There’s a new M in charge of the Secret Service and he’s a health nut. He also disapproves of the unconventional methods of the Double-0 section. Bond witnesses an odd scene at the health farm - one of the female nurses beating up a make patient.

By now SPECTRE’s threat has forced M to recall Bond to duty and send him to the Bahamas. I confess I wasn’t clear why the Bahamas was chosen as his destination.

Bond encounters a beautiful glamorous young woman improbably named Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera). They go scuba diving together, they have sex and she tries to kill him. The audience already knows she’s an assassin working for Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Largo is the SPECTRE agent in charge of the nuclear plot.


Bond meets another beautiful young woman, Domino (Kim Basinger in the rôle that made her a star). There’s a curious connection between Domino and that odd incident Bond witnessed at the health farm. Domino is Largo’s mistress. Largo has a huge yacht on which he keeps his many valuable and beautiful possessions and he certainly regards Domino as a possession. Largo is not pleased when he sees Domino being kissed by Bond and obviously enjoying it.

Largo’s yacht is one of the keys to the solution of the puzzle of the present whereabouts of those warheads. Domino is another. Fatima Blush makes numerous attempts to kill Bond. The story builds to an action finale in a series of desert caverns.

The story of this film starts in 1958 when Ian Fleming wrote a screenplay in collaboration with several other writers, most notably Kevin McClory. The screenplay failed to attract any interest so Fleming turned it into a novel with the title Thunderball. And as a result was sued by Kevin McClory. The rather complicated legal settlement allowed McClory to act as producer on the film version of Thunderball but it also allowed him to make further film adaptations of the novel after ten years had elapsed.


By the late 70s McClory had managed to interest Sean Connery in starring in a new film version, which would become Never Say Never Again. This resulted in more legal battles with Eon Films (the makers of all the other Bond films) determined to prevent the making of a rival Bond film which they believed would damage the box office prospects of their own Bond films. They had Octopussy scheduled for release in 1983 so their concern was understandable. The upshot of the court battles was that Never Say Never Again could be made quite legally, but only under certain conditions. It had to be based directly on the Nobel and could not utilise any ideas from the 1965 Thunderball movie. That caused lots of problems when it came to writing a screenplay and many different writers worked on that screenplay. Eventually a workable script was prepared and shooting began.

The script is not the problem with Never Say Never Again, but it’s a movie that does have a lot of problems.


First off, the music by Michel Legrand is awful and the title song is instantly forgettable. The second problem is Connery. Connery was far and away the best screen Bond because he brought a real edge to his performances that no other actor has even come close to achieving and combined this with a subtly tongue-in-cheek approach. Unfortunately in Never Say Never Again that edge is missing. Connery’s performance, surprisingly, is rather lifeless. He also looks too old. He was actually slightly younger than Roger Moore but he looks older. Connery was 52 but at times he looks 62.

The third problem was studio cost-cutting. Director Irvin Kershner had a couple of very cool gadgets planned for the movie, most notably the flying motorcycle. The studio decided that was too expensive. That’s unfortunate because we get this huge buildup to the unveiling of the secret weapon Bond has stored in a crate but when it’s uncrated it’s basically just an ordinary common and garden motorcycle. The flying rocket platforms are a major letdown as well. The gadgets in this movie are truly lame.


It would have been better to do what was done in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and dispense with gadgets altogether and rely on spectacular stunts. That worked in OHMSS because the action scenes in that movie were superb. The action scenes in Never Say Never Again are rather feeble. OK, the underwater sequence with the sharks is pretty good.

Irvin Kershner claimed that he wanted to focus on the characters rather than action. That’s a valid approach for a spy movie, but in order for it to work you need some interesting divided loyalties and some potential betrayals. There’s none of that here.

The one real plus is Barbara Carrera. She’s sexy and deadly and sadistic and huge amounts of fun.

Kim Basinger looks very pretty. Klaus Maria Brandauer is an OK villain. Edward Fox is amusing as M. Rowan Atkinson adds comic relief as a bumbling Foreign Office flunkey.

Overall Never Say Never Again just never catches fire. It’s not a terrible movie but it’s no more than a very average spy thriller and people expect a lot more from a Bond movie. Maybe worth a look if you’re a Bond completist.

Wednesday, 13 September 2023

OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (1965)

OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117) is one of the French eurospy thrillers based on Jean Bruce’s books featuring secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codenamed OSS 117. It was the third movie in the series to be directed by André Hunebelle.

Kerwin Matthews had played OSS 117 in the previous two films. In OSS 117: Mission for a Killer the role was taken over by Frederick Stafford.

Our spy hero is enjoying a skiing holiday but the holiday is cut short when he is assigned to investigate a series of suicide bombings in South America. The suicide bombers have no political histories and there is a suspicion that they are being turned into human robots through the use of some mysterious drug. OSS 117 soon finds himself on an airliner bound for Rio de Janeiro. He will be posing as a man named Hubert Delcroix.

On arrival he discovers that his contact, Ellis, has had an unfortunate car accident which was unlikely to be an accident. Visiting Ellis in hospital leads to a wild and lengthy (and very well done) fight scene but Hubert is too late to save Ellis from an assassin. Hubert has to beat a hasty retreat from the hospital before the police arrive and he takes the girl with him.


What girl you may be asking? The girl is Anna-Maria Sulza (played by the gorgeous Mylène Demongeot) and Hubert doesn’t know where she fits in but she fits in somewhere.

Hubert has three females to deal with (all of them gorgeous) and he’s by no means sure which of them (if any) he can trust. Of course there are also various people trying to kill him.

There’s an important clue in Ellis’s safe, which suggests that Hubert needs to find out what is happening with a remote Indian tribe. This might lead to an explanation of the hypnotic super-drug being used to turn people into remote-controlled killers. The tribe lives near Anna-Maria’s ranch.


There’s some kind of revolutionary group behind all this. In fact it’s a whole revolutionary army. Their agenda isn’t too clear but they definitely want power and they mean business.

Frederick Stafford makes a fine hero. He’s a fairly typical eurospy hero, quick with the wise-cracks and with an eye for the ladies and he has real charm. Mylène Demongeot makes a terrific sexy heroine.

Eurospy movies naturally couldn’t hope to match the truly spectacular action set-pieces and the outrageous sets of the Bond movies. The most successful eurospy movies tried to make up for this with as many decent fight scenes as they could shoehorn into a movie and the fight scenes in this movie are good and very imaginatively staged. In fact they’re very good indeed. And there’s a well-handled full-scale battle at the end. Lots of stuff gets blown up.


Eurospy movies also relied on style, and this movie has plenty of that.

It manages not to look cheap and there’s some fine location shooting in Brazil. The budget was obviously reasonably generous.

Director André Hunebelle did this sort of thing extremely well. He directed several of the OSS 117 movies as well as the three 1960s Fantomas movies (which are much more lighthearted but just as energetic and fast-moving).

The plot has the touches of outrageousness that the eurospy genre demands but it remains quite coherent.


I’ve now seen three of the OSS 117 movies and this may be the best I’ve seen so far.

Kino Lorber have released five of the OSS 117 movies in a Blu-Ray set (and on DVD as well). The transfers are excellent. This set is an absolute must-buy for eurospy fans. It’s a real treat to see such movies decently presented in their correct aspect ratios and looking terrific.

OSS 117: Mission for a Killer is pure high-octane fun and is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the two previous OSS 117 movies, OSS 117 Is Unleashed (1963) and Panic in Bangkok as well as André Hunebelle first two Fantomas movies, Fantomas (1964) and Fantomas Unleashed (1965). All are worth seeing.

Sunday, 20 August 2023

Modesty Blaise (1966) revisited

When I first saw Joseph Losey’s 1966 Modesty Blaise movie fifteen years ago I had never read a Modesty Blaise novel and had never set eyes on a Modesty Blaise comic-strip. I was of course vaguely aware of her as a comic-strip character but I had no feelings whatsoever one way or the other about the character. Since then I have read several of the novels and quite a few of the comic-strip adventures and I am now a confirmed Modesty Blaise fan. Which means that my reactions to the movie might now be quite different.

The first thing to say is that the comic-strip character Modesty Blaise, as created by Peter O’Donnell in 1963, is most emphatically not a female James Bond. She bears no resemblance whatsoever to Bond. She is not British, she is not a professional spy, she is not in any way shape or form part of the British Establishment. She is a retired super-criminal. She feels no remorse for her very successful criminal career. She does not take orders from anybody. She does jobs for Scotland Yard and for the British intelligence services but she is strictly a freelancer.

She is in fact much closer to being a female Simon Templar. She belongs to the literary tradition of the lone wolf rogue hero. It’s also worth mentioning that the novels and comic-strips are fairly serious spy/crime adventures. They are not spoofs.

It should also be pointed out that Modesty is not English. She is a British subject by marriage but her ethnicity is a mystery, even to herself. She has blocked out all memories of her nightmarish childhood. Given what we learn about her background and give the way she looks in the comic strip we might hazard a guess that she is either Slavic or southern European. Casting an Italian actress in the role was in fact quite appropriate, and Monica Vitti’s accent is not inappropriate either. There are major problems with Miss Vitti’s casting, but her nationality is not one of them.


The plot is wildly incoherent. Losey threw away Peter O’Donnell’s screenplay. O’Donnell had the last laugh - he turned his screenplay into the first Modesty Blaise novel and had a huge success with it while Losey’s movie bombed. Having thrown away the original screenplay Losey then made constant alterations to the new version. It’s possible that Losey thought that having a script that made no sense would be inherently funny.

Such as it is, the plot involves 50 million pounds’ worth of diamonds which have to be delivered as a bribe from the British Government to an Arab oil sheikh. Someone is trying to steal the diamonds. The British intelligence services have achieved nothing save for getting their top agent killed and in desperation they turn to Modesty Blaise and her partner Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp).

The man trying to steal the diamonds is super-villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), with whom Modesty has tangled before. Gabriel makes various attempts to get the diamonds while British Intelligence suspects that Modesty might try to steal them herself. That’s it for the plot.


Of course in 1966 when the movie was made Bond Fever was at its height and there was obviously going to be enormous pressure to transform Modesty into a female James Bond and to make the movie as much like a Bond film as possible.

Director Joseph Losey had other ideas. What exactly his ideas were is difficult to say. He clearly had no understanding of the spy genre or the Bond films or the eurospy movies that had started to appear around this time. It’s also obvious that he had zero interest in making a movie that had any genuine connection at all with the Modesty Blaise comic-strip. It’s as if he decided to satirise the Bond films without actually having seen any of them, and to satirise the comic-strip without ever having read it. To spoof something successfully you need to understand it, and preferably you need to love it.

The movie turned out to be a trainwreck, but it’s a morbidly fascinating trainwreck. Losey was going for a surreal Pop Art confection and his total unsuitability for this directing job perversely makes it more surreal and psychedelic. You don’t know what’s going to happen next because Losey had no idea what was going to happen next either.


There are some wonderful Op Art visuals. The sets manage to look groovy and psychedelic. Modesty’s clothes, hairstyle and even hair colour change without any explanation in the middle of scenes. Losey presumably thought this was incredibly funny and clever. It isn’t. It’s just weird. But the weird elements injected into the movie for no reason at all add to the movie’s perverse fascination.

Monica Vitti lacks the athleticism and energy that the role required but maybe that’s why Losey wanted her - to make the movie an anti-Modesty Blaise movie rather than a Modesty Blaise movie. Terence Stamp is equally miscast as Willie Garvin.

There are compensations. Dirk Bogarde’s outrageously arch and camp performance is delicious. Harry Andrews is excellent as Tarrant, the British Intelligence chief. Clive Revill is very funny as Gabriel’s miserly Scottish accountant McWhirter. Rossella Falk is both amusing and slightly unsettling as Gabriel’s sadistic henchwoman (as possibly lover) Mrs. Fothergill.


The action scenes are not particularly exciting.

On the plus side this is a visually stunning and outrageous movie in a delirious Swinging 60s way. It’s worth seeing just for the visual delights.

Despite its flaws this movie is very much worth seeing. There’s no other movie quite like it. A movie from an era when studios would take risks on wildly unconventional totally crazy movies, and Modesty Blaise captures so much of the craziness of the 60s, a craziness that was so much more fun than the craziness of today. It’s not a Modesty Blaise movie and it’s a deeply flawed movie but it’s flaws are what makes it weirdly fascinating. With those thoughts in mind it’s recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, Last Day In Limbo and I, Lucifer. They’re very much worth reading. And I've reviewed the early Modesty Blaise comics (in the collection The Gabriel Set-Up) which are also excellent

Sunday, 23 July 2023

Claude Chabrol’s Blue Panther (1965)

Claude Chabrol’s Blue Panther (the original French title is Marie-Chantal contre Dr Kha) is a lighthearted 1965 eurospy romp, or at least that’s what you might assume you're going to get. That assumption would be entirely incorrect.

What you're actually going to get is a French New Wave deconstruction of the spy movie. And it gets very meta and very postmodern. If that sort of thing appeals to you then you'll enjoy this movie. If you were hoping for a fun eurospy move you'll be very disappointed.

My full review can be found at Classic Movie Ramblings.

Sunday, 2 July 2023

Kommissar X – Three Golden Serpents (1969)

The seven West German Kommissar X eurospy movies made between 1965 and 1971 were based on the incredibly popular Kommissar X book series. Paul Alfred Mueller (1901-1970) wrote 620 Kommissar X books under the name Bert F. Island. Yes, you read that right. 620 books.

Drei goldene Schlangen (AKA Three Golden Serpents AKA Island of Lost Girls AKA Beautiful Lost Girls in Hell's Island) was the sixth of the Kommissar X movies and was released in 1969.

The Kommissar X films started out as standard erospy movies (albeit very good eurospy movies) but the later entries in the cycle have more to do with crime-fighting than espionage. At least in this one it’s an international crime syndicate so the feel is not too different from a eurospy film, it just lacks the gadgets and the slightly science fictional touches one associates with eurospy flicks. It seems quite likely that the switch to crime-fighting was the result of increasingly tight budgets.

The two lead actors are once again Tony Kendall (as Joe Walker) and Brad Harris (as Captain Tom Rowland). Rowland is on holiday in Bangkok when an American woman, a Mrs Leighton, asks him for help. She believes that her daughter Phyllis has been kidnapped. The mother doesn’t want the police involved. Rowland reluctantly agrees that maybe Joe Walker is the man who can help.


In these later movies Joe Walker is a private eye rather than a secret agent but he’s as cocky and cheerful and irresponsible as ever. Tom Rowland is still pretending to be horrified by the thought of having to work with Joe yet again. He disapproves of Joe’s irresponsibility but of course if you’ve watched the earlier movies you know that these two really are buddies. Tom just likes to complain. It makes him feel better.

Almost immediately there is an attempt on Joe’s life. Followed by numerous additional attempts. It’s obvious that he’s stumbled into something big and he’s up against people who are both murderous and persistent. Fortunately they’re not very competent.

Joe and Tom do have one important clue. Two of the would-be assassins have a tattoo showing three entwined snakes. It sounds like a religious cult or a crime gang.


Phyllis has indeed been kidnapped and her captors intend to sell her into prostitution. First they will break her spirit wth drugs and psychological torture. While being held captive she meets Petra. Petra appears to be working for the crime gang, but she promises to help Phyllis. We don’t know what to make of Petra. Is she planning to double-cross the crime gang or is she intending to betray Phyllis? Either way Petra is definitely one feisty gal. After escaping she steals a boat, and killing the three crew members is like child’s play for her.

Joe and Tom have heard rumours of an island which men can visit, but they have to agree to be drugged for the trip there so that they have no way of knowing where the island is. When they get there they will find an assortment of very pretty girls to entertain them.

The island may be owned by Madame Kim Soo, a very rich very respectable lady active in charity work. The police are sure she would never be involved in anything shady, and would certainly not be running an island brothel.


Joe decides he’d like to visit this island. He’ll pretend to be a Texan millionaire. He’s sure no-one will recognise him.

Nothing can go wrong because he has a radio transmitter in his sunglasses. Tom Rowland will be able to keep in touch with him and the police should be able to use the signal to locate the island (which they do using a groovy machine with a spinning globe on top of it). It’s a good plan. As long as nothing happens to those sunglasses.

Joe’s mission is not just to close down Madame Kim Soo’s sex island. His main task is to rescue Phyllis, presumably held prisoner on that island.

The action is pretty much non-stop and it’s done quite well. The violence isn’t graphic at all but the body count is high.

The Thai locations are used well. By this time the Kommissar X movies were being shot in colour and Three Golden Serpents looks impressive.

There are lots of beautiful women and lots of topless scenes.


The battle on the mud flats is a crazy but effectively weird touch.

Tony Kendall and Brad Harris were working together as a well-oiled machine by this stage. The supporting players are all perfectly competent.

Director Roberto Mauri worked in the usual array of genes and was also responsible for the delightfully goofy King of Kong Island (1968). His work on Three Golden Serpents might not be inspired but he keeps things moving.

Three Golden Serpents isn’t trying to be anything more than pure entertainment and as long as you accept this and don’t try to analyse the movie it works on that level. Perhaps not quite as good as the previous movie in the series, Three Blue Panthers, but still recommended.

The German DVD boxed set offers this movie in both German and English language versions. It gets a pleasing anamorphic transfer.

Thursday, 29 June 2023

Madame Claude (1977)

Madame Claude is a 1977 Just Jaeckin movie.

Just Jaeckin had what was in many ways an unfortunate career as a film director. His first movie, Emmanuelle, was the biggest hit in the history of the French film industry. And that’s what caused the problem. He was always going to be reviled by society’s self-appointed moral watchdogs but Emmanuelle made him a lot of other enemies as well. Film critics and the film industry establishment were outraged that what they considered to be a mere porno movie had made about a hundred times more money than the sorts of serious movies that they thought the public should be watching.

From the point on film critics were determinedly hostile and his chances of breaking into the mainstream film industry were zero. The notoriety of Emmanuelle had also ended his very successful career as a fashion photographer. Jaeckin fund that the only work he was going to be offered was directing erotic movies, which was not really what he particularly wanted to do.

He ended up directing just eight feature films. But his sparse filmography is actually surprisingly impressive. As far as Emmanuelle is concerned he was hired to make a very classy very stylish softcore porn movie and that’s what he did. His next movie is more interesting. The Story of O deals with subject matter, sadomasochism, that pushes people’s buttons just as much today as it did in the 70s. But The Story of O remains one of the very very few movies to approach such subject matter intelligently and non-moralistically. It’s a great movie.

The critics were really gunning for him when he made Lady Chatterley’s Lover but in fact it’s an interesting and very good adaptation of Lawrence’s novel. Gwendoline was considered by critics to be almost beneath contempt but it’s a superb fun-filled sexy adventure romp.


Which brings us to Madame Claude. Madame Claude (Françoise Fabian) runs a very high-class call-girl ring. Not just high-class. These girls are the top of the range. Their clients are generals, diplomats, princes, politicians, CEOs.

Claude is trying to recruit a new girl. Claude caught her shoplifting but thinks she has potential. Claude will remake the girl. That’s how Claude operates.

There is a problem, and it’s going to be a problem for Claude and for a lot of other people. That problem is sleazy photographer David Evans (Murray Head). David is collecting material for blackmail and he has compromising photographs of extremely important men cavorting with Claude’s girls. But there’s something else in those photos, the significance of which David doesn’t yet fully appreciate. Or at least there might be something else in the photos. What matters is that certain people think there’s something in those photos.


The CIA is convinced that the photos contain evidence pertaining to the Lockheed bribery scandal (which was one of the biggest scandals of the 70s). The CIA is obviously determined to cover up that scandal. They want those photos. But other people know about the photos and want them just as much.

The photos are the movie’s McGuffin. Everybody wants them.

This political scandal/thriller plot remains in the background for the early part of the movie but it’s always ticking away, like a bomb.

Mostly the movie’s focus is on Madame Claude and her relationship with her girls. Claude is rather fond of her girls. She expects them to remain focused on the job at all times, but she is generous and mostly treats them like daughters. She never recruits a girl against the girl’s will, the girls make immense amounts of money and she’s honest with them. She is convinced that she knows what’s best for them, and she is probably right. Madame Claude is a rather sympathetic character - she has her faults but she’s a much more moral person than any of the people out to destroy her.


This is both an erotic film and a political thriller. In fact it belongs to a sub-genre of its own, the erotic political thriller. It’s very much in the mould of 70s paranoia movies. Everybody has everybody else under surveillance. Every individual and every agency mixed up in the business is obsessed with damage limitation, and finding a way to double-cross some other individual or agency.

Madame Claude herself is caught in the middle. She has ethics. She has never tried to blackmail a client and never would, but since nobody else in the movie has any ethics they naturally assume she’s as unethical as they are.

This is very obviously a movie about voyeurism, and movies about voyeurism are always themselves voyeuristic. Voyeurism and paranoia always makes an effective combination.


Françoise Fabian is quite exceptional in the title role. The support cast is impressive. Klaus Kinski is excellent as the super-rich Alexander Zakis, a man who lives for power. Amazingly Jaeckin found Kinksi very easy to work with.

Special mention should be made of Serge Gainsbourg’s score, and of Jane Birkin’s wonderful vocals.

The Cult Epics Blu-Ray looks great. Extras include an audio commentary by Jeremy Richey and an interview withe Jaeckin in which, among other things, he talks about his contempt for the French Nouvelle Vague.

Madame Claude is a gorgeous sumptuous movie, it’s very erotic and it’s a gripping intelligent political thriller. This is a great movie. Highly recommended.