This is another film that’s been shown several times on late-night Italian TV; I hadn’t bothered with it until I realized that it was made by the same director of a Gothic Horror title I’d just watched – via the Mondo Macabro DVD – and been impressed by, namely THE BLOOD ROSE (1969)! As can be assumed from the title, it’s a comedy-adventure with our protagonists (Charles Southwood of Mario Bava’s Spaghetti Western ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK [1970] and Nathalie Delon, the stunning-looking ex-wife of French superstar Alain) meeting cute in a San Francisco police station, after which they join forces to get rich quick and generally buck authority.
Actually, the film starts off with a staid Southwood getting fed up with his bourgeois lifestyle while on a busy Paris street and retiring to a South Sea island. He happens upon a string of valuable pearls, as well as a half-crazed Japanese soldier who had been stranded there since the end of WWII (after obviously failing to elicit his superiors’ support, the latter promptly commits hara-kiri in Southwood’s presence)! Unexpectedly, the tone here is agreeably satirical (with much criticism of Nixon-era America during the above-mentioned Frisco scenes – to where our disheveled hero arrives on a raft). Southwood wants to go back to the island, but he and Delon end up first in Peru; here, they immediately run into a couple of blackmailing customs officials (one of them “Euro-Cult” regular Venantino Venantini). The landlady of the hotel they lodge in helpfully sends them to see wealthy Curt Jurgens – who mistakes Delon for a call girl!; this, however, leads to a job for the woman in his casino – where Southwood (whom Jurgens had been unaware of so far) decides to take advantage of Delon’s presence to clean up the joint, but their ruse is discovered and Southwood is beaten up by Jurgens’ lackeys and subsequently taken for a ride by Venantino and his associate. Even here, though, providence comes to his aid – he’s rescued in the nick of time by a band of revolutionaries!
Going back, Southwood finds Delon in Jurgens’ company (the latter told her he had paid off the young man) and obviously thinks she has betrayed him. Following this, Jurgens and his chief associate – a corrupt judge – decide to make amends by contriving to have Southwood exchange places with a political prisoner who had intended fleeing the country; however, the couple soon find themselves targeted by sinister-looking twin hit men who indiscriminately mow down passersby – including, in perhaps the film’s most amusing bit, a family man with an unfortunate penchant for photography! The whole, then, culminates in a shoot-out at the docks in which the two hit men and the judge all wind up dead; Southwood and Delon promptly take off in Jurgens’ yacht, in which (unbeknownst to our heroes) he’d just left a suitcase containing two million dollars!
But there’s still more to come: as they approach Southwood’s island, where he hopes to find more pearls, they are shocked to learn that it’s being used as an A-Bomb test site – arriving just in time to see it blown up! Meanwhile, Delon has absent-mindedly left the gas turned on and, disheartened, they go back down thinking that at least they’re left with the boat; Southwood opts to have a cigarette just then – Delon lights a match and they find themselves in the water…except that Jurgens’ hidden money is swimming all around them! After which, the film concludes just as it began – Southwood (with Delon in tow) is back in the stuffy dog-eat-dog Parisian environment and, once again, quits everything and causes a traffic jam. After an uncertain opening, the film settles down to be an engaging romp (despite a washed-out look and an overly brusque 75-minute duration) – made all the more palatable by a couple of nice songs (one mellow and bouncy and the other, heard during the San Francisco sequences, a rollicking number in English).
