Contraband Spain

A slow-moving but engaging adventure story with Richard Greene as an FBI agent on the trail of a gang dealing in smuggling and counterfeit currency, responsible for the murder of his brother, and finding romance with a chanteuse, Anouk Aimee. The unusual backgrounds and colour photography, as well as avoidance in casting the usual suspects as villains, help mark this co-feature out from similar British crime films of the time. Not so the convention of the hero having to be an American and Richard Greene's accent fluctuates with every other line. In every other respect though Greene, who was to start his long-running stint as Robin Hood shortly after finishing this picture, makes an admirable hero, having something of the easy-going charm of Roger Moore.

I wasn't aware that this movie existed until Channel 5 screened it one afternoon recently, so I set the video and taped it and was pleased I did.

Robin Hood actor Richard Greene is an agent whose brother is murdered on the Spanish-French border and he goes out there to look for the killers. While in the process, he meets a woman played by singer Anouk Aimee and she helps him and, not surprisingly, they fall in love with each other. They come across a smuggling ring and it seems they killed his brother.

This movie is beautifully shot in colour, despite the low budget. This surprised me.

The scenes that were shot on location in Dover were very impressive. This gave you an idea what life was like in the 1950's

I rather enjoyed this movie and is worth watching if you get the chance, as it is rather obscure.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

From the trough in British film making post WW2, comes this thrill-less British thriller with suit wearing uperclass heroes (Greene is supposed to be American so he says "All this is a bit of malarkey" in his RADA accent) tracking down murderous counterfeiter gangsters who have a line in buying Euro gold with fake US Dollars.

Opens with them stealing watches in Burgos and offing Greene's gang member brother. The leads standing round in drab studio interiors are butted onto Barcelona and Dover location shooting with doubles which is just as boring. Most of the action occurs off screen till we get to a tame final punch up with Nieto in the ship's hold.

The only class element is Anouk's performance as a French chantoosie involved with the dead brother. Once again (Simone Signoret in AGAINST THE WIND, Marcel Dalio and Simone Simone in TEMPTATION HARBOR) the continentals steal the picture.

This is the type of co production that flourished in Europe in the fifties. It was distributed in the UK by Associated British Pathe.

Given that this was filmed in East man colour one can only conjecture that this was meant to be a co feature of even top of the bill.

It stars Richard Greene with an extremely dodgy and fluctuating American accent.

The problem is that this is a thriller without the thrills. It moves at a snail's pace to its very predictable conclusion.

This marked the end of Richard Greene film career with the exception of Tales From The Crypt.,and his Robin Hood screen outing.

Game awaited with Robin Hood.