SPIES, SPIES, AND MORE SPIES

SPIES, SPIES, AND MORE SPIES. 

This week we look at a round up of spy movies and novels, including the latest James Bond feature, Spectre; two recent James Bond novels, Solo and Trigger Mortis (love that title!); three eurospy movies featuring Tom Adams as Charles Vine, Tony Kendall as Kommissar X, and Gordon Scott as Bart Fargo; a spy spoof, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, starring Vincent "Just give me the money" Price; and The Girl from Rio, which is not a spy movie as such but certainly borrows all the conventions of the genre. Some of these movies are fun; others are just dreadful, not "so bad they're good" but just bad. But that's what you get with this genre: either a slick piece of entertainment or pure schlock!

KOMMISSAR X: ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS

Tony Kendall and Brad Harris

KOMMISSAR X: ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS (aka Three Golden Serpents/Drei goldene Schlangen/1969). Director: Roberto Mauri.

Those adventuresome daredevils, private eye Joe Walker (Tony Kendall) and Captain Tom Rowland (Brad Harris), are back in another "Kommissar X" adventure set in Thailand. ("Kommissar X" is a nickname for Walker.) Tourist Maud Leighton (Loni Heuser) contacts the two men when her daughter, Phyllis (Hansi Linder) is kidnapped in Bangkok. Phyllis has been taken to an island where captive women are held to be sex slaves for wealthy perverts. Armand Landru (Walter Brandi), is a French agent who is actually in the employ of  Madame Kim Soo (Vilaiwan Vantanapanich, a supposedly benevolent woman who has numerous charitable interests and is apparently above reproach. Petra (Rotraut de Neve) is assigned to watch over the ladies, but makes a break for it and tries to get help. There is also an ice princess, Kathin (Monica Pardo), who makes poisons for Landru and paralyzes Joe at one point, placing a cobra near his bed. The cultists employed by Madame Kim Soo all have tattoos of three snakes (hence the alternate title Three Golden Serpents), and her handsome associate Frank (Carlos de Castro) has a mean way with a knife. Island of Lost Girls boasts some colorful locations and has a fast pace. The basic plot actually deserves a better movie. Everyone in the movie is dubbed, including the two lead actors. An Italian-West German release.

Verdict: Average, modestly entertaining Kommissar X feature. **1/2.

KOMMISSAR X: SO DARLING, SO DEADLY

Tony Kendall and Brad Harris

KOMMISSAR X: SO DARLING, SO DEADLY (aka Kommisar X -- In den Klauen des goldenen Drachen aka Agent Joe Walker: Operation Far East/1966). Director: Frank Kramer/Gianfranco Parolini.

"You're just like a man -- cynical, cold, heartless." -- Sybil.

"That's true." -- Joe.

In the third of several movies teaming Joe Walker, aka "Kommissar X" (Tony Kendall), with New York police captain Tom Rowland (Brad Harris), the boys are sent to Singapore to report to a man named Apollo. Apollo turns out to be elderly Professor Akron (E. F. Furbringer), who is working on a deadly laser that uses an "eradica filter." An organization called the Golden Dragon, run by a mysterious man in a red mask with eye holes, has his operatives do their best to acquire the filter, even going so far as to kidnap the professor's daughter, Sybil (Barbara Frey). There are several female assassins in the Golden Dragon, including busty blond Stella (Gisela Hahn), her sister Serena (Margaret Rose Kiel), and nasty brunette Shabana (Luisa Rivelli). So Darling, So Deadly features some excellent Singapore location work, a couple of exciting chase sequences, and two suspenseful death traps: one involving an elevator shaft and a descending car with spikes on the bottom of it; and the other involving a cage wherein spears keep descending on a captive Walker. The English voices chosen for our heroes are not appropriate, the musical score is terrible (a different score would have vastly improved the movie), and the whole production is second-rate, but the movie is not altogether awful and has several quite entertaining moments. The women in the cast are attractive, but hardly the raving, super-sexy beauties of some of the Bond films. Harris, who does a mean frug at one point, also supervised the stunt work in the film. Italian-German co-production.

Verdict: Acceptable europsy feature with two efficient leads. **1/2.

KISS KISS KILL KILL

Brad Harris and Tony Kendall

KISS KISS KILL KILL aka Kommissar X -- Jagd auf Unbekann/1966). Director: Gianfranco Parolini (Frank Kramer).  

Not to be confused with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, this movie is another dubbed Eurospy action flick. Despite the fact that the hero, Joe Walker (Tony Kendall), is a private eye and not a secret agent, the movie is still an imitation of Goldfinger with its megalomaniac villain, named Oberon [actor unknown], and his plan of hoarding all the world's gold on his private island. Oberon also has a force of cold-eyed blondes with the same hairdo whose minds have been made blank and only follow his specific orders. Like something out of Boston Blackie and innumerable films and TV shows afterward, our adventurer has a friendly but adversarial relationship with a cop, in this case Captain Rowland (Brad Harris). What's unusual in this situation is that the cop may be even better-looking than the private eye. Walker is hired by Joan (Maria Perschy), who works for the sinister Oberon, to find a missing nuclear scientist and uncovers a much more bizarre plot; both Walker and Rowland, with the help of Joan, team up to take down Oberon and save the world. This is the first of several "Kommissar X" films that Kendall, actually an Italian actor, appeared in. Harris was a handsome American actor who appeared in more of the Kommissar X films, as well as other Eurospy features, and was also on Falcon Crest and other US TV shows. Harris and Kendall [The Whip and the Body] make a good team. This is essentially a dubbed German film made with Italian and Yugoslavian co-financing.

Verdict: Not terrible, and a more elaborate production than usual, but Goldfinger it ain't. **1/2.

THE WHIP AND THE BODY [AKA WHAT]

THE WHIP AND THE BODY [aka What/La frusta e il corpo1963]. Director: Mario Bava [attributed to "John M. Old"].

The Menliff family is disturbed by the reappearance of errant son Kurt (Christopher Lee), who went away after his dalliance with a maid led her to take her own life. Her mother (Harriet Medin), another domestic, keeps the bloody knife her daughter used to kill herself under glass as a morbid memento, and it is used when people in the Menliff castle start getting murdered. Is someone human behind the slayings, or is it a ghost from beyond the grave? The title is apparently explained by more than one sequence in which Kurt whips his sister-in-law Nevenka (Daliah Lavi), who was once affianced to him but then married his brother Christian (Tony Kendall), and who seems to enjoy the sadomasochistic foreplay. Like most of Mario Bava's movies this one has atmosphere, good photography and settings, and is drenched in the usual bizarre and colorful lighting schemes, but it's also a bore, with lots of walking around and brooding that amounts to very little; there's nothing remotely scary about it. However, the film has one of the best dubbing jobs of an Italian import, and the voices are well chosen, especially the actor who dared to dub Christopher Lee.

Verdict: Another bad Mario Bava movie. Watch his superior Blood and Black Lace instead. **.