Once upon a time in the 1960s a handsome young Canadian with no discernible acting ability called Stephen Forsyth, arrived in Europe seeking spaghetti movie stardom. His career lasted 10 movies before he gave up and returned to his homeland, where he enjoyed greater success as a photographer and composer. In 1983 he even composed a theme song for Sean Connery's James Bond comeback movie "Never Say Never Again" (sung by Phyllis Hyman), however it was rejected.
This movie stands as a tribute to the ingenuity of the human spirit and a demonstration of what can be achieved even with a shoe string budget. Some productions that have small budgets manage to disguise that limitation in such a way that the audience hardly notices, this is not one of those. The lack of money is always glaringly obvious, yet I can't help but admire the effort.
The story, such as it is, revolves around a stash of Nazi era counterfeit dollars and pounds, which are so good no-one can tell them from the real thing. The villains have got hold of it and plan to make a bundle disseminating it. Dominique Boschero steals some of it from them and begins passing notes at the World's Fair in New York. Her activity is spotted by the CIA, who decide to assign Stephen, their least experienced agent, to the case (that's not a typo, they assign their "least" experienced operative). Later, better known performers, veteran French actor Jack Ary and former Bond girl Mitsouko, turn up to help him out, in significant supporting roles, and boy does he need helping out, being one of the more inept secret agents I've come across.
The alluring "Mitsouko" was a model of French / Chinese ethnicity, who also had a brief career as an actress, mainly in Eurospy movies and generally in very minor parts. She appeared in "Mission Bloody Mary" with Ken Clark, "Code Name Jaguar" with Ray Danton, "Thunderball" with Sean Connery, "Challenge The Killers" with Richard Harrison and "Z7 Operation Rembrandt" with Lang Jeffries, but this is the by far the largest role she ever got the opportunity to play, as attractive rival agent and ally, who gets plenty of screen time and action, most of it involving skiing, and memorably includes wearing a belt holding sticks of dynamite, which she throws at chasing villains causing havoc. This also turned out to be her Swan-song on the screen. Presumably she went back to modelling.
And so away we go, from Guadeloupe, to the New York World's Fair, to Marrakesh, Morocco, and finally on to the slopes of the Matterhorn outside Zermatt, Switzerland. The one thing this movie is not short of is exotic locations, which are all quite well utilised (perhaps that's what used up most of the budget).
The director achieves mixed results in his attempts to hide the lack of quality fight choreography, by the use of editing. Also foot chase scenes are clearly of the actors gently jogging through busy locations among the general public, who are unaware what is going on. Car chases are also filmed slowly and then "cranked" a bit, in order to create the illusion of speed, with only some minor side to side bumping of the vehicles. One shed is demolished by driving through it early in the film and later one car is rolled off a cliff and blown up. More often the real vehicles are substituted with mock-ups before cutting to explosions. During the finale further editing is used to create the illusion of an aerial duel between a plane and a helicopter, but the technique is often amateurish and clumsy.
The script is complete nonsense, with more holes than Swiss Emmental cheese, but now and again a random scene pops up that may contain some entertainment value for the viewer. One of these highlights is the extended "Q Branch" scene, which is of the "so bad it's good" variety.
As Stephen enters the room a man in a lab coat is launching firework rockets, which give off showers of sparks as they wobble through the air, at some human silhouette targets. Laster (i.e. "Q") is up on some scaffolding testing a balloon harness which can be inflated instantaneously and acts like a parachute. He then proceeds to demonstrate a pen which fires a heat seeking missile around corners (in reality another firework skyrocket, which ricochets of a door and down into the floor), a car with a flame thrower in the exhaust pipe, a more compact flame thrower in a cigarette lighter, a radio capsule for a tooth, which you use to communicate by clicking your teeth to make Morse code (but the same tooth also contains cyanide, so don't bite down too hard!), bullets that contain radio transmitters, a shoe that contains a bomb in the heal and a missile in the toe, and, best of all, an infrared viewer that somehow allows you to see though surface coverings (such as women's dresses) in order to reveal the presence of objects of interest beneath. All credit to the screenwriter for also managing devise opportunities for Stephen to deploy most of these items later, during the course of his mission.
The musical theme is also worth noting, boisterous and memorable, suitable for a spoof movie, which is probably what this film is trying to be, although deliberate humour is hard to spot in amongst the unintentional mirth. The standard of acting is such that everyone appears to be playing things straight and serious most of the time. The epilogue is definitely meant to be funny, but is so unconnected to anything that has gone before that it is more bemusing than amusing.
This one is only to those enjoy sifting for tiny granules of obscure pleasure amongst the dross.
