The Devil Came from Akasava (1971)

AKA: Der Teufel kam aus Akasava
Director: Jess Franco
Starring: Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Horst Tappert

Jess Franco is a looming monolith that casts a long shadow over the cinematic landscape, a monolith constructed purely out of sheer force of volume. This Spanish-born director, who has worked in Spain as well as Italy, France, Germany, and on occasion, the United States, made roughly seventy-three million films. If you break down the cinema of the world based on number of productions per nation, Jess Franco alone qualifies as a sovereign film-producing state. Like any good European cult film director, Franco has worked in every genre conceivable, and perhaps more than a few you of which you wouldn't want any conception whatsoever. There's really no effective way to describe Jess Franco to the uninitiated. He is something they will simply have to discover on their own, in small bits and pieces, perhaps completely unaware of the fact that they are learning things about Jess Franco, until the day they wake up and realize they understand him, though they may not like him, and they certainly won't be able to articulate their comprehension to others. If anyone tries to puzzle you with one of those Zen koans, your reply should be to simply show them a Jess Franco film.

Coming out in 1971, The Devil Came from Akasava (which is based on a story by mystery writer Edgar Wallace) was a bit late to jump the Eurospy bandwagon of the 1960s, which Franco had previously entered with his thoroughly ridiculous and highly entertaining Danger! Death Ray. Still, when a movie is this utterly strange, we can forgive it showing up to the dance a little late, especially since it shows up looking like Soledad Miranda clad in silver boots and a see-through black tunic.

Our action, if you want to call it that, begins in the fictional country of Akasava, where a geologist discovers the fabled Philosopher's Stone that can turn any metal into gold. The only problem with the stone is that exposure to it causes one's face to fry. Oh, and it also turns you into a zombie. So, right away, we're going to have zombies, spies, and Soledad Miranda striptease performance art? I guess you can see why Franco has his admirers. No sooner has the geologist found the stone than he is getting shot at. He manages to deliver the stone to Doctor Thorrsen (German cult movie mainstay Horst Tappert, who would work with Franco on a regular basis during the 1970s), but it isn't long before someone show sup to off the assistant geologist and steal the stone. Then Thorrsen himself mysteriously vanishes while, at the same time, back in London, a mysterious man is lurking behind the curtains in Thorrsen's office, just long enough to kill a man sneaking in to try and crack a safe. How's that for intrigue?

It's enough to get sexy British intelligence agent Soledad Miranda assigned to the case, and like any good female operative, she ascertains that the best way to approach the case would be to travel to Akasava and immediately get a job as a stripper in one of those arty, weirdly-lit strip-jazz clubs that only exist in Jess Franco films yet exist in every Jess Franco film. Here is the first, most noticeable, and most enjoyable of Franco's reoccurring obsessions. It kills the man to go ten minutes without inserting a performance art striptease at a jazz club full of swirling lights and candy colors. He should have made a Bollywood film, because he shares the same affection for cutting to the musical number and the hot dancing girl, regardless of whether or not it has anything at all to do with the scene before or after it, or with the movie in general. Though these scenes were often gratuitous asides, it's obvious that Franco (himself an avid jazz fan and musician) adores them. They are shot and choreographed beautifully, and Franco's taste in groovy sixties cocktail lounge jazz is impeccable. I've certainly had worse times at the movies than watching Soledad Miranda dance (if you want to call it that; it's more a series of stylized poses -- "voguing," I suppose) while breezy lounge music from some of Europe's most accomplished composers of swanky bachelor pad music go wild.

Miranda teams up with Fred Williams as Rex Forrester, a detective from Scotland Yard, who all things considered, seem a little out of their jurisdiction operating in a fictional African nation, but jurisdictional squabbles are really the least of anyone's concerns in a movie with magic stones, Lugers, zombies, and avant-garde jazz-strip clubs. Together, at a very languid and meandering pace, they get around in one way or another of working on the case at hand, tracking down Thorrsen and recovering the stone.

Like most Franco films, The Devil Came from Akasava walks to its own idiosyncratic beat, and it takes its sweet time getting anywhere, allowing Franco to linger on whatever catches his fancy. Luckily, more times than not, that's Soledad Miranda. Franco populates his film with a cast of experienced B-movie actors, all of whom turn in exactly the performance you expect from a band of such professionals -- which is to say, some are good, and some are just weird. Besides, Soledad, the real star of the film is the zoom lens, which Franco employs with almost gleeful abandon, zooming slowly, zooming rapidly, on any and every thing that happens to catch he camera's eye. It gets disorienting after a while, as the mere act of walking down a hallway seems to justify Franco zooming in and out. The end result is that a rather run-of-the-mill trashy James Bond knock-off like The Devil Came from Akasava becomes suddenly hallucinatory. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere is the primary goal in many European cult films, but while we expect it from a vampire or zombie or ghost film, seeing the same technique applied to a straight-forward spy thriller is really odd. Pleasant, though, and along with Soledad Miranda, it's that quirky approach to filmmaking that saves an otherwise dull spy film from going on the scrapheap.

The action, when it does come, is pretty clumsy and not the least bit thrilling. The espionage isn't particularly engaging, either. But the film appeals to me never the less, perhaps because I can sympathize and relate to Franco's weird pacing and personal quirks. There are times when I simply can't struggle through one of his films, but The Devil Came from Akasava is much breezier, eye-catching and fun, helped in large part by Franco's dwelling on Soledad Miranda, a goofy spy plot, and some really good Euro-lounge cocktail music, which gets better when it's employed at really inopportune times that should be tense and exciting save for the breathless "la de do za zu!" female vocals accompanying the action.

Make or Break: I hope you like long, arty stripteases to cocktail jazz and featuring a stunningly beautiful woman, because this movie is going deliver them.

MVT: Soledad Miranda. She possesses not just the beauty but also a hypnotic charm and an incredible array of pop-art outfits.

Incredible Paris Incident (1967)

AKA: Fantastic Argoman
Director: Sergio Grieco
Starring: Roger Browne, Dominique Boschero, Eduardo Fajardo

Incredible Paris Incident begins with the daring burgling of the Crown of England, which a guy steals by dressing up as one of those Beefeater chaps and hiding the crown under his big tall furry hat. The police are baffled, as they often are. For all their big reputation, every time Scotland Yard appears in a movie, it's usually in a newspaper headline followed by the phrase "Is Stumped!" They look cool and all, with their tweed jackets and London Fog overcoats and pipes, but when is the last time they successfully solved a crime in a movie? "Scotland Yard Baffled!" "Scotland Yard Left Without a Clue!" "Scotland Yard Mystified!" Hell, even the Scotland Yard guy in this film goes, "What? They expect us to solve these crimes?" What's the deal with Scotland Yard?

Meanwhile, on his own private island somewhere in the Mediterranean, we meet our hero, code name: Argoman. Don't confuse him with Super-Argo. Argoman is your typical ultra-smooth European spy guy. He has his own island and one of those cool space-age bachelor pads. Everything is hooked up to remote controls and computers. While relaxing poolside in his villa and chatting with his very European looking Indian servant (we know he's Indian because he's tan and has a turban on), Argoman senses something unusual. That's right, Argoman has various psychic abilities, one of which allows him to detect when sexy women are piloting their own private hovercrafts near his island. Being a sly devil and all, he uses his psychic powers to the hovercraft to his island, and then levitates the sexy woman across the beach and right into his lap. He follows this act of kidnapping with the line, "Please forgive me, but when I sensed you passing by I couldn't help but dabble in a little telekinetics."

The woman (Jenabelle) who we recognize as the woman behind the thievery of the Royal Crown (the hat, not the soda -- no one would steal RC Cola), is annoyed at first that this total stranger has mentally hijacked her boss hovercraft and levitated her across the island into his lap. However, when she is witness to a display of his rapier-sharp wit and charm, she can't stay mad at him. Argoman's servant is nervous, and reveals to us that after having sex, Argoman loses his powers for six hours. Argoman just laughs and says he is safe because he's on his own secret island. Plus, he hasn't gotten laid in a while.

But this is a Eurospy film, so our two potential sex partners can't simply retire to the boudoir for a night of tender passion and animal lust. No, they must play a little game. Argoman gives the woman a bow and arrow. If she can hit the bull's-eye on a target, he'll give her an assorted gift pack of precious jewels and a brand new Rolls Royce. If, however, she misses, well then he hits the button on a remote control to slide open the wall, revealing his rotating suspended bed. Jenabelle in full Jackie-O beachwear, takes the bow and arrow and just narrowly misses the target. Darn! But, something crafty seems to be going through her head as she and Argoman head toward the bed. After they do something behind closed doors, presumably playing Boggle, she comes out, nonchalantly picks up the bow and arrow and nails the bull's-eye with no problem. She then thanks Argoman for the sweet lovin' in the rotating suspended space-age bed, takes the sapphires, and says she won't need the Rolls as she already has one. Never one to be outdone, Argoman has to huff, "Well, I have several." Then she hops back in her hover craft and darts off across the sea.

Meanwhile, back in England, Scotland Yard is still stumped by the theft of the crown. They have decided to blame Argoman, who we learn is sort of like Batman in that he does heroic things but everyone thinks he is a criminal. However, the inspector seems to have some secret knowledge about Argoman, and soon contacts him. Argoman is annoyed that the same guy who tells the press Argoman stole the crown is the one calling him for help in solving the case, and who can really blame him? It's like saying, "Well, I ordered your execution today, but I was hoping you could drop by beforehand and help me move a couch." Luckily, Argoman is a sport, plus he can levitate sexy women across and island and right into his lap, so he's probably in a good mood most of the time. He agrees to leave his plush sub-tropical private island in order to help the bumbling buffoons of Scotland Yard get their stupid little crown back. When reviewing security photos of the museum, Argoman recognizes Jenabelle in the crowd. He then begins to think something fishy is going on. Could Jenabelle possibly be the dreaded "Queen of the World" who has been taunting Scotland Yard via telegrams? Speaking of which, Scotland Yard must have a palace full of "letters from master criminals taunting Scotland Yard."

Meanwhile, Jenabelle returns the crown, just to further taunt Scotland Yard. She also demands that they turn over to her a giant diamond that was created by a nuclear blast. With the human head-sized diamond as the centerpiece of her giant computer, she will be able to harness untold powers! Meanwhile, Argoman is on his way to Paris to stop her diabolical scheme. Right off the bat, Argoman catches her men, who are dressed in matching leather outfits. He uses the old "distract the guard with a naked woman" shtick that we've probably all used a thousand times and then sneaks into their truck to find her secret layer, and soon finds himself getting his ass kicked by out-of-shape guys in form-fitting leather Buck Rogers outfits. So he does what any man would do -- he instantly transforms into a laughing super-hero in yellow and black underwear and a cape that is three sizes too small. He thing proceeds to stand with arms akimbo, laughing that manly laugh as he tosses lackeys about with his mind powers.

This is what makes this film so special. Oh sure, it could have been a straight-forward Eurospy film, but they decided to go on and throw the whole superhero thing in for good measure. It's the little things that make these things so special. For instance, Darth Vader had to wear the sexy leather outfit and helmet so he could breathe, but he just went ahead and threw the cape on for the hell of it because he knew it looked cool. Likewise, Argoman could have just been a slick undercover spy with psychic powers and a private island and a sexy secretary and glowing green eyes, but he goes ahead and puts the superhero costume on just for the hell of it.

Incredible Paris Incident is indeed one of the most incredible damn things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of incredible things. It has a good sense of humor, tons of action, and more weirdness than you can shake a walking stick at. Director Terence Hathaway, also known as Sergio Grieco, directed several Eurospy films, including Password: Kill Agent Gordon, Operation Istanbul, as well as the Eurocrime film Beast with a Gun, but this is far and away his weirdest, and probably one of the weirdest the genre has to offer. It's also cooler than I could ever hope to be. I wish I could be more like Argoman. In fact, this movie is so astoundingly good that it has inspired me to do more than just sit on my ass. I am going to take control of my life. I am not going to wish I was swanker. I am going to make it happen!

And I am going to begin by wearing bright yellow spandex and a little red cape everywhere I go.

Make or Break: The moment Argoman levitates a woman out of her private hovercraft and into his lap, you know you are in for something special.

MVT: DAT ARGOMAN COSTUME!

Episode #294: Daryl Firefox

Welcome to a special GGtMC episode!!!

This week Brinn from the Hammicus Podcast and Mike step in for Large William and Sammy as the Gents couldnt get their scedules to coincide for an episode this week. Brinn and Mike bring you coverage of D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) directed by Simon Wincer and Firefox (1982) directed by Clint Eastwood!!!

We want to thank the guys for stepping in on short notice and putting together this episode!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_294.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Adios!!!

Lightning Bolt

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 tagline, "Lightning Bolt -- He Strikes Like a Ball of Thunder!" Which makes even less sense than just the word "thunderball," which already doesn't make any sense. What the hell is a thunderball? But hey -- that was just for American audiences, right? It's like when shifty distributors insisted on forcing Bruce Lee's name into the title of every kungfu movie ever made during the 1970s. You can't blame the filmmakers for that, right? Sure, except that the original Italian title for the movie makes the Bond exploitation even more obvious. The main villain 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, 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?" 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.

Eurospy films are like any other continental knock-off of a popular American or British genre. Some are very good and 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. 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.

MVT: The set design. For a movie that had a tiny budget, they get the most out of matte paintings and cardboard when they designed the villain’s underground lair. And even the worst Eurospy productions were usually full of cool suits and bikini models.

Make or Break: The hero attempting to end all this intrigue by offering to buy the villain off with a check. If you can’t roll with that concept, this movie will try your patience.

Covert Action

Between the release of Goldfinger in 1964 to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, the James Bond films inspired hundreds upon hundreds of spirited, colorful, often nonsensical European spy films about smarmy super-agents trotting the globe to foil the dreams of assorted madmen megalomaniacs. These films took the Bond template and ran with it, and thanks to the inexpensive access to glamorous locations that Europe offers, even the films that couldn’t afford a proper office set could still afford to pop down to the Amalfi Coast or Monte Carlo or Paris for a couple days of filming. By the end of the 1960s, however, even though the Bond franchise was still going strong, the Eurospy films inspired by 007 all but vanished from screens, much in the same way as the sword and sandal films of the early 1960s.

It was no mystery where they went. Part of it was simply a case of over-saturation, the gluttonous overkill European cult cinema (usually led by the Italians) always bring to the table when a genre becomes popular. But even more so, the social and political climate of the 1960s rendered these frothy, goofball spy fantasies not just anachronistic, but even insulting to a generation that was now in the midst of civil unrest, warfare, and terrorism. When Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof are running through the streets, it’s hard to work up much interest in some smirking spy in a sharkskin suit chasing after a dude who invented a spore gun. In 1972, against the backdrop of Black September terrorists massacring Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich, the breezy fun of the Eurospy era gave way to the grim, nihilistic vision of the poliziotteschi film.

Still, much of the crime in Europe was politically motivated -- or at least so the criminals claimed -- and although tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had relaxed a little, there was still a Cold War on. The spy films of the 1970s were a very different beast than those spy fantasies of the previous decade (even though that previous decade had seen the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis). More paranoid, more realistic, reflective of a world in which authority figures were no longer trusted or given the benefit of the doubt. Given the cross-over potential, it’s surprising how few times poliziotteschi and espionage met. Covert Action (Sono stato un agente C.I.A.) is one of the higher profile examples, if not one of the better ones, because it stars Maurizio Merli, the poster boy of the entire poliziotteschi genre.

American David Janssen (The Green Berets, O’Hara: U.S. Treasury) stars as retired CIA man Lester Horton, who spends his disgruntled retirement as a failed fiction writer and occasional author of scandalous tell-alls about the CIA (the character was allegedly based on real life CIA dirty laundry airer Philip Agee, who even sued the production company). When he pops up in Greece, for vacation he says, the CIA gets nervous, and before too long Horton is caught up in a convoluted plot revolving around murder and a taped confession that would be particularly damaging to the CIA.

Despite coming from two action-packed genres, and having “action” in its title, Covert Action isn’t an action film. It’s more of a brooding espionage thriller, paced slowly but not boring. Director Romolo Guerrieri was fairly low-key in the world of Eurocrime, compared to the big names like Lenzi, Massi, and Castellari, but he directed a few really good crime films in the 1970s (The Police Serve the Citizens?, City Under Siege, and Young, Violent, Dangerous), and Covert Action is similarly low-key. It’s about the paranoia and hopelessness one faces when trying to get out from under an organization that basically has carte blanche to do anything, anywhere in the world. When the action does heat up, it’s pretty damn good, including a good car chase, a harrowing interrogation scene, and a fight between co-star Maurizio Merli and a gang of hired killers. Merli co-stars as Lester’s friend, a man who is finding himself pushed out of the CIA and targeted for permanent retirement. Merli brings the intensity for which he’s known from cop movies, but this a more complex and vulnerable role than what’s he’s known for.

Covert Action isn’t essential viewing except for Maurizio Merli completists, and unless you’re predisposed toward appreciated slow burn spy films and character studies, it might try the patience a little. But if a measured pace doesn’t stick in your craw, then Covert Action is a deceptively intense thriller with some great performances, a few good stunt sequences, and a relentlessly bleak and exhausted mood. If you enjoy films like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or Three Days of the Condor, Covert Action will slide in nicely as a lesser but still plenty enjoyable example of the genre.

MVT: Although I’d love to give it to Merli for getting to do something other than grimace and box ears, it has to go to David Janssen. “Understated” is sometimes used when people don’t want to say “dull,” but it truly applies here. Despite maintaining his cool as best he can, Janssen’s performance bristles with a mix of intensity, frustration, and weariness. If James Bond was the spy who made people want to go out and have adventures, Janssen’s Lester Horton is the one that makes you want go home, collapse on the couch, and stare pensively at a tumbler of J&B.

Make or Break: Merli slaps some fools in a Greek amphitheatre. We all love watching Merli smack around criminals in his many cop films, but when he finally gets to bust out the backhand in Covert Action, it’s an entirely different sort of experience. Instead of the aggressor, he is the defender, and there is a savage desperation and sense of “the good man’s final stand” doom that lends the scene a melancholy air.

Episode #276: Blood xXx

Welcome to another episode of the GGtMC!!!

Thies week Sammy and Will were detained due to personal schedule conflicts so Dr. Zom and Jake stepped in to cover xXx (2002) starring Vin Diesel and Blood (2012) directed by Nick Murphy!!! We want to thank the guys for helping us on such short notice, True Gents!!!

Direct download: bloodxxx.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!

The Doll Squad (1973)

What the fuck happened to the Space Race?  It was only forty-five years ago that we made it to the Moon (let’s take for granted that the Moon landing wasn’t faked, shall we?).  There were some satellites launched (actually, A LOT of satellites launched), and we even put that Moon-Patrol-looking thing on Mars, but we as a collective nation (speaking only for America) have seemingly lost the desire to move ourselves into space.  Why?  Well, if I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s because space travel became sexy enough for entrepreneurs to want to monetize it (and naturally discounting the collapse of the Soviet Union, our big competitor).  Unfortunately, it also became unsexy enough for our tax dollars to fund it (and that’s about as political as this review will get; relax).  So, the odds on you or I jetpacking around the universe with a woman proportioned like a Wally Wood or Frank Frazetta bombshell have pretty much evaporated.  But maybe whatever billionaire who weekends on Uranus (which I now and forever will pronounce “Your Anus”) will want to take you along sometime.  And maybe Michael Ansara will fly out my ass.  Outside of my wild Science Fiction fantasies, though, I honestly can’t say I’m all that disappointed.  Number one, humans have always had a habit of turning whatever pristine environment they come upon into a junkyard.  Number two, I don’t like flying.

Senator Stockwell (John Carter) and Victor Connelly (Anthony Eisley) sit down to watch the latest space rocket launch, but a mysterious phonecaller upbraids the Senator for not heeding his previous (unforeshadowed) warnings and the rocket explodes.  The two men make their way to the room-sized computer “Bertha” to find out who they can send to bring this villain down.  “Bertha” spits out The Doll Squad, and before you can say “Jack Robinson,” team leader Sabrina (Francine York) is collecting her team members.  Will this be the squad’s toughest assignment yet?  Sure.  Why not?

Ted V. Mikels’ film is a melding of the Superspy and Assemble The Team subgenres, with the twist being that the team consists solely of women.  The first thing most folks would think of then (okay, maybe just me) is whether this is a feminist film or not (and I’m not the world’s foremost scholar on feminism, so let’s allow for some wiggle room here, hmmm?).  I think I can honestly say, to absolutely no one’s astonishment, that it really isn’t.  It has feminist elements in it.  The women are all strong and treat their jobs with the same sort of calculated precision an audience would demand of something like The Dirty Dozen or Le Cercle Rouge.  None of the women are man-crazy or defined by their desire for a man to want them.  The women all make free choices to decide their own fates.  Sabrina can even shoot skeet as well as or better than her male superiors.  Nevertheless, she is in charge of her team, but men are in charge of her.  Also, there is an abundance of scenes featuring all of the girls in bikinis or skintight jump suits.  Of course, this is for the benefit of the more lusty audience members and has no purpose other than to appeal to the prurient interest, and it does so quite well.  Had the group dressed in fatigues and been loaded down with equipment, the film would have had a different flavor entirely, but it also likely wouldn’t have made a penny at the box office.  I don’t mean to imply that the only way for women in films to represent equality is by dressing them sexlessly, but it makes an interesting point:  Would an audience take these characters more seriously had they dressed in a more masculine fashion?  At the end of the day, I suppose the point is moot.  Mikels knows his audience well enough to not let it bog him down.

Now that I’ve successfully misinterpreted an entire civil rights/societal movement for the purposes of a film review, let’s move on to how this stacks up in two of its respective subgenres.  In the realm of Assemble The Team movies, it hits all the numbers, and it even starts off the process with a nice twist which I won’t ruin here.  You have the initial recruitment scenes, where we are introduced to the various agents.  Intriguingly, all but one does something completely unrelated to their Doll Squad work in their civilian lives, and that one is, arguably, the most intellectual of them (maybe not most intelligent, though).  Aside from seeing Lavelle (Tura Satana) doing a little burlesque dance and revealing some rather fetching tassels, these scenes aren’t very engaging dramatically.  None of the women puts up much resistance to joining the mission, except for one, and it’s token resistance at best.  Also, the women don’t really have specialties the way we would expect of them.  Consequently, they’re only slightly distinguishable from one another, though the differences between their non-government identities and what they contribute to the team is much more noticeable.

 So, how does The Doll Squad…um…stack up as a Superspy film?  Well, you have a sort of Bond-ian villain with Ansara’s Eamon.  He, in turn, has a sort of Bond-ian villainous plan.  One of the baddies (okay, his squeeze) infiltrates the squad with a lifelike disguise.  There is a large compound manned by faceless lackeys in uniform (you would never confuse any of them with any of the protagonists regardless, I assure you).  There is a briefcase loaded with improbable gadgets and weaponry.  The antagonists, ostensibly, threaten the safety of the American Space Program, so it’s not a localized menace.  If nothing else, it’s an ambitious premise.  It’s also on a miniscule budget, but that doesn’t keep Mikels down, and in fact, aside from the pulchritude, this is the biggest appeal of the film.  Every explosion is done in superimpositions.  There is a flamethrower effect done in (you guessed it) superimposition.  The men get gunned down but appear to fall even before guns are fired.  The action scenes are executed with a nimiety of ease and a paucity of suspense or tension in that telltale style reserved for friends of the filmmakers who are being paid in ham sandwiches.  And ham is the name of the game.  Now, I love ham, and this is pretty forgettable ham, but it’s still tasty. 

MVT:  There wouldn’t be The Doll Squad without the dolls, and they are the main attraction at this sideshow.  Mission accomplished, ladies.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the assault on Eamon’s compound.  It’s fun and keeps the pace up, despite its various shortcomings.  There’s just enough violence and red-paint-loaded squibs to keep butts in seats.  And did I mention that it’s all carried off by pretty women in tight jump suits.  Well, it is.

Score:  6/10

Matchless (1966)

The opening credits of Alberto Lattuada’s Matchless (aka Mission Top Secret) consist of shots (mostly closeups) of various beakers, flasks, and so forth churning with all manner of colored “chemicals.”  It’s a setup straight out of the Mad Scientists’ Playbook, though at the time this film was made, it would probably be more familiar from Jerry Lewis’s The Nutty Professor to the younger viewers in the audience (and Lattuada would most likely be more familiar to cinephiles of the time for something like his adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat).  But I thought of neither of those during the film’s start.  My first thought was of Professor Julius Sumner Miller.  In my youth, our local PBS station, WVIA, would show a program called Science Demonstrations, and it was hosted by Miller.  On the program, he would wander around his low-rent lab set and give short lectures and demonstrations on physics (one of the first things he would say on each episode was, “…and physics is my business”).  The shows were informal and fairly crude, and most people who remember Miller at all probably do so because he had a distinctive look about him which was topped (quite literally) by a scraggly head of hair that would have made Mark Blankfield in Jekyll And Hyde…Together Again weep. 

However, my fondness for Miller goes a bit beyond the real-world trappings which most people view with a sense of kitsch or irony.  I truly admire Miller, because he was enthusiastic.  Here was a man who thrilled at the concepts of Newton’s Third Law of Physics, who delighted in the idea that water behaves as much like a lens as it does a hydrating element (The Professor appeared on the Canadian program Hilarious House Of Frightenstein, as well).  More than that, he was delighted to share his insights with people.  His desire was to inspire learning, to actively engage young minds and stimulate them to see the world through a new set of eyes, and he dismayed at the failures of our educational system.  “We are approaching a darkness in the land. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor."  Now, I’m sure there those who would take the preceding statement as corny or archaic, but as Euripides wrote in The Bacchae, “Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish.”   Frankly, I think Miller was right back then and even more so today.  But I also think that, if there were more teachers like Julius Sumner Miller, this would likely not be the case.  There is a difference between hearing and listening, and Miller was one of those people who got you to listen and thus to learn.

Journalist Perry Liston (Patrick O’Neal) is being tortured by the Communist Chinese for information as to why he is in their country (evidently not much).  Liston proves resilient, and the Reds chuck him back into his cell, which he shares with actual spy Hank (Henry Silva) and an elderly, moribund Chinese peasant who Hank wishes would die more quietly.  Perry shows the old man compassion, and in return the peasant gifts Perry with a very ugly ring.  However, the ring has the unique ability of making its wearer (but not his/her clothes) completely invisible for twenty minutes once every ten hours.  Perry effects his escape back to America (kind of involuntarily) and is enlisted by the military (including Boss Hogg himself, Sorrell Booke as Colonel Coolpepper) to steal a vial-stuffed briefcase from one Gregori Andreanu (Donald Pleasance).  But even with the help of artist-cum-spy Arabella (Ira von Fürstenberg) and his own distinct advantages, the job may not be as easy as it seems.

There is an interesting juxtaposition going on in Matchless, and it is one of sides; not sides as in planes which make up an object but sides as in “whose side are you on?”  We are introduced to the Red Menace villains of the piece as they torture Perry on a centrifugal motion device.  We then see they have given four soldiers plastic surgery to appear as WASPs for a Battle of the Bulge sort of infiltration of America.  After Perry is drugged by O-Lan (the gorgeous Elisabetta Wu), the film cuts to the same opening shot from Perry’s POV, and we assume he is on the same centrifugal motion device, about to be interrogated again by the Chinese.  Well, he is on the same device, but he is now in America, and he is being tortured and interrogated by the American military.  Coincidentally, the Americans also have four soldiers who have been given plastic surgery and are ready to be sent to infiltrate China.  This equation of the Chinese and Americans sets up a question of trust (and of brains, since neither side can come up with any ideas better than their enemy’s).  Both sides think and act exactly the same, and they distrust anything outside their basic purview. 

Even the agents working for America cannot be trusted by Perry as is setup in his encounter with O-Lan, and this will shade the relationship with Arabella to some degree (though her being an artist separates her in the viewer’s mind from the regulation-oriented military somewhat).  Hank is a venal opportunist who will betray his sworn allegiance for some money and a chance to save his own skin.  The Americans refuse to tell Perry what’s in the vials he is supposed to snatch (turning the case into a MacGuffin a la Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man, etcetera, though we do see the vials rather than just an enigmatic glow), baldly displaying their distrust of a man they are entrusting to carry out an extraordinarily important mission.  Unlike so many other films in the Superspy genre, there is a cynical, antiauthoritarian streak going on in the film.  There is no beneficent government looking out for “the good side’s” best interest, just the same as there is no evil empire intent on dominating the world.  The two are one and the same; the only real difference being their map coordinates.  Essentially, all governments are bent, and the only person Perry (read: common folk) can truly trust is Perry. 

Perry’s invisibility schtick is also meaningful outside of its narrative function.  Whenever he uses the ring, he must be completely unclothed.  Thus, he is both well-defended as well as completely defenseless.  He is literally stripped bare, and this fits with O’Neal’s casual attitude toward everything that happens in the film, funny enough.  The invisibility also provides a counterpoint to the villainous Gregori’s outlook on the world.  Andreanu believes “in science and accuracy,” his estate populated by serving robots with clocks for heads (a play both on the idea of clockwork men and Gregori’s obsession with precision).  Also, when Gregori gets upset (despite his deep belief that he leads a “Zen” lifestyle), he insists on putting on a pair of sunglasses to make his eyes invisible to anyone who happens to be looking.  Perry, by contrast, takes everything off and goes with the flow of things, embodying more of the Zen philosophy than Gregori could ever buy or build.  The two symbolize the opposites of everything versus nothing, technology versus primitive, intellect versus instinct.  Perry wants to blend in, Gregori wants to stand out.

The film’s sense of humor is broad but never egregiously so (Hank watches The Man From AUNTIE on television, just to give you a taste).  Lattuada’s direction is solid, and his shot choices provide for interesting viewing, by and large (and there are healthy doses of tastefully enticing T&A throughout).  The Superspy elements are handled rather well, and the action elements (with the exception of a dull-as-shit car chase at the end) are tense and exciting (especially the central set piece at the bank).  At times, the film dips from the realm of Superspy/Super-Science into almost pure fantasy, but it never feels disconcerting.  In fact, I would argue that the film would have benefited by going just a step or two further down that road.  The visual effects, especially those involving invisibility, are surprisingly accomplished, and there are only a few times when an object appears to be just suspended on fishing line.  Matchless is a light adventure, nonetheless.  No one’s life will be changed by watching it for either good or ill, and as an entertainment I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the film’s title, but I would go so far as to say it isn’t joyless.

MVT:  Superspy films of this era have a certain flavor, whether they like it or not, and that Swingin’ 60s aesthetic is the thing I liked most about this movie.  The “Space Age” technology, the hiphugger fashions, the “everything’s a happening” attitude all add up into a decent little ambience package that fits the film nicely.

Make Or Break:  The Make for me was the first scene with Silva in the Chinese prison.  Here’s a guy who is so self-centered, he cannot bear having to listen to another man quietly drawing his final breaths because they’re keeping him awake.  It’s pure Silva doing what Silva does best, and it fits the odd-yet-blithe timbre of the picture.

Score:  6.25/10