Chinos y... minifaldas (1967) or Der Sarg bleibt heute zu or Death on a rainy day is a routine , typical Euro-spy movie with usual components : pursuits , crossfire , struggles , state-of-art gadgets , strange artifacts , international conspiracy , explosive women and other tippings that used to show up in the genre. Two two-fisted agents (Adrian Hoven and the unknown Barth Warren) from the French counter-espionage fight a Chinese sect that aims to control the American Secretary of Defence via high-tech medicine . So our two secret agents try to seize a perfume contained in a flask that has been taken by a nasty criminal organization called Red Scorpion led by a villainous Chinese , Dr. Kung (George Wang) . The goal of this dangerous organization is to take over the world by injecting important politicians with a ribonucleic acid liquid . So it turned out that in Paris to take place a meeting between the leaders of NATO, participating world politicians and is among them the secretary of state of defense of the USA, the same Robert McNamara (in archive Footage Self -1960-1968 Secretary of Defense) , so the evil ones try to inoculate the acid in order to change his mind and administer his will at their own command so that they would start a world war.
Euro-spy movie with ordinary ingredients : thrills , noisy action , plot twists , several villain roles , bare fists fights , various international locations , shootouts with high body-count and being middlingly entertaining from start to finish . The story is a mess of mutual spying and silly confrontations with a lot of fights and crossfire . Colorful and so-so rendition about European spy subgenre , a prolific genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously . A fashion and run-of-the-mill spy film at the time, meaning it stuck to a lot of what was currently popular , but here including some embarrassing and nonsense scenes . Inspired by the success of the James Bond films, as this spy sub-genre borrows heavily from the OO7 series that at the time starred Sean Connery , such as : Dr No, From Russia with love , Thunderball, and Goldfinger . The content remains the same as the title : villain chinese , beautiful mini-skirt girls , along with ridiculous , uptight and silly action set pieces from a today's point of view . A Sixties-style film usually has a short sell-by date , and this flick isn't exception . Ultimately , as possible trivia , both the story and actors are doomed to fail from the start . The leading roles were played by Adrian Hoven and Barth Warren , both of whom forming an amusing buddy couple , while Gérard Landry is the demanding Chief Commander Ferni . The German Adrian Hoven was a popular as well as untalented player at the time , a mediocre actor who couldn't carry a rickety product like this . The script doesn't help him either , as it consists of the habitual intrigue a take a powerful formula , while our agents go around the world and actually tells no more than different people spying on and beating up each other in the hope of getting the doomed potion . Of course , with such a film from nostalgic and botcher ways , one does not count on high art work . It is staged in a hopelessly amateurish way , it shows us rows of bare fights and several confrontations with a number of dead people in the worst choreography and degrades agents to big children who visibly enjoy fighting , like teenagers in the schoolyard among buddies . They don't show the shred of maturity that would go into making them seem like believable agents . They behave in such an infantile activity and so stupid manners so that they are committing usual mistakes on their own way . The screenplay works with unnecessary contradictions and implausibility , including hilarious moments , and the story is thinner than it usually is in works of this kind , the Euro-spy sub-genre . There are colorful outdoors by cameraman Eloy Mella showing sightseeing from Hong Kong, China, Madrid, Spain , München, Germany , New York City, USA , Roma, Italy , Paris with sights from Seine river, and establishing shots of Champs Élysées and Eiffel Tower , but most of them are stock-shots . However , the worn-out cinematography spoils the spectacle , being really necessary a perfect remastering .It has some flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , including repetitive nature of some fight scenes , and excessive nonsense , but it has a bit of fun , so it cares . The main and support cast -with everyone having fun- are regular , slightly adequate to their functional characters . Appearing some familiar faces from the Sixties as Gérard Landry , Wolfgang Preiss and George Wang as customary Chinese villain . As well as some gorgeous girls in mini-skirt as Claudia Gravy , Karin Feddersen and Teresa del Río .
The motion picture was middlingly written and directed by Ramón Comas. This unknown director was a craftsman who worked as a writer , production manager , producer and finally filmmaker . As he wrore some international co-productions such as : "Rififi in Amsterdam" , "Operacion Mogador" , "La Ley Del Colt" and directed four films as "Chinos y minifaldas" , "Nuevas Amistades", "Historias de Madrid" and "Padre Coplillas" . Rating : 5/10. Entertaining but average flick .
