El tigre

It's a good thing that Claude Chabrol only made two of these "Tiger" films in the mid-1960s, because it's clear that secret agent thrillers are just not his type. Chabrol doesn't hide his goals (there is even a shot of a "From Russia With Love" book with Sean Connery on the cover near the start), and he tries to give the film some quirks (killer dwarf!), but he can't really stage fight scenes, and he lets some sequences (driving, opera singing, pro-wrestling, etc.) play on and on purposelessly. Of course it doesn't help that Roger Hanin is one of the least charismatic spy leads of the period, more closely resembling George Lazenby in the way his judo chops are his strongest point. "From Russia With Love" Bond girl Daniela Bianchi is also here, but her role is strictly (and almost demeaningly) to look beautiful and get captured by the bad guys. She can't have more than 10 lines of dialogue in the entire picture. Oh, and not to sound biased or anything, but a black & white 1960s Eurospy movie is like a color 1940s film noir - it just doesn't feel right. I will give it credit for one novelty, however: the gun that fires backwards. I wonder if "The Silencers" with Matt Helm stole this idea from "Code Name: Tiger". *1/2 out of 4.