PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Agent 077 Trilogy

Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary 1965 Written by Sandro Continenza, Marcello Coscia and Leonardo Martin, directed by Sergio Grieco. All three films are Italian, Spanish and French productions.

Ken Clark is Dick Mallory, a spy on the trail of the Black Lily, a bunch of criminals who've just stolen a nuclear bomb code named Bloody Mary. Dick tracks the gang from France to Spain and to Greece. I remember a lot of water and plenty of running.

Agent 077: From The Orient With Fury 1965 Written by Sandro Continenza and directed by Sergio Grieco.

Dick's trying to keep a disintegrator gun out of the hands of some baddies. They chase Dick from France to Spain and onto Istanbul in Turkey.

Agent 077: Special Mission Lady Chaplin 1966 Written by Sandro Continenza, Marcello Coscia, Giovanni Simonelli and Hipólito de Diego, directed by Alberto De Martino and Sergio Grieco.

This Dick is on the trail of a man who tried to sell a dog tag from crew member of a sunken nuclear submarine. The man is killed and Dick has to find the submarine on his own. When he does he finds the sub nukes are all missing. Oh oh!

They're all about the same production wise, the actors are good enough for dubbing. There's a fair bit of action, baddies fall left and right but there's nothing overly exciting about them, they aren't James Bond quality and not as entertaining as the OSS 117 series. You can find them all on YouTube, see links above.

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Where The Spies Are 1966 Based on the novel Passport To Oblivion by James Leasor, screenplay by James Leasor, Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. Niven and Guest optioned the next five Leasor novels but only two of them ever got written. I've not read any of them.

David Niven plays Doctor Jason Love, he's been recruited by MI5 to go to a medical conference in Beirut to contact another doctor. John Le Mesurier plays the MI5 guy MacGuillvray, he'd worked briefly with Doctor Love in WWII when they both were in Military Intelligence. Love is reluctant to go but MacGuillvray offers to buy him a rare Cord automobile to get him on board.

Françoise Dorléac plays a spy called Vikki, her day job is that of international model. She's Love's contact at the airport. They start a bit of a romance. Love misses his plane only to see it explode on take off.

There's plenty of spying activity as the Russian spy Stanilaus, played by Ronald Rudd, gets ready to assassinate the pro-British Prince of Zahlouf. Love turns up and nobbles the Russian's plan. The Russkies kidnap Love and plan to take him to Russia.

Vikki turns out to be a double agent. She does redeem herself by shooting Stanilaus but sadly her modeling career comes to an end when Stanilaus returns the favor. I figured she'd die, it's the mid-60s, there's usually payback for blowing up a plane full of people. Doctor Love escapes and returns home.

I liked the movie well enough, it's more a spy movie like Our Man In Havana than a James Bond thriller. The Wikipedia says it's a comedy adventure film, it does OK on the adventure but it lacks a good supply of jokes. Despite that it's got a fairly decent script, perhaps a bit too long at 112 mins, and cast of good British actors. I recognized Cyril Cusack, Eric Pohlmann, Paul Stassino, Noel Harrison, Alan Gifford, Bill Nagy, Basil Dignam and Nigel Davenport. It's different enough from the average spy film that I'd watch it again.

Dr Renault's Secret 1942 Written by William Bruckner and Robert F Metzler and directed by Harry Lachman.

I wasn't certain that I had seen it before but the title was familiar. I looked at my Watched Movie List but I couldn't see it. Well, I couldn't find it due to a typo when I entered the movie in November 2017. The post I did then is linked in the title above. I still feel the same about the movie.

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The Unknown Man Of Shandigor 1967 Written and directed by Jean-Louis Roy. A Swiss spy film originally titled L'inconnu de Shandigor about a scientist who creates an invention that can incapacitate atomic bombs.

That's Daniel Emilfork, he plays the baddie Herbert Von Krantz. He's created the bomb stopper and he's a mad mad scientist. He holds up in a big house with his daughter Sylvaine and an albino assistant called Yvan. Herb keeps everything locked up and he watches over the property with his surveillance cameras. There's also an unseen and under used creature living in his pool. Occasionally someone stops by the pool to throw bits of dry ice into the water. Disappointingly we never see the creature.

Several countries have spies watching him. Sylvaine runs off and is kidnapped by one of the spy groups. She spends a lot of time running around places with Gaudi architecture with one of the spy guys.

It's an odd film, someone commented it was shot like a Berman film and I could se that. One of the two reviews on the IMDb said:

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is far more whimsical than any James Bond film. Yet, it is neither a parody nor a satire of spy films. It is just a bizarre take on one. I would compare this film to Alphaville in the way the film is a delirious style piece. It even shares one actor from the Godard film, the always welcomed Howard Vernon. I might also mention Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, director Seijun Suzuki's two takes on the yakuza film from the same time period as The Unknown Man of Shandigor.

It's an unusual film, not for everyone. I liked it well enough and I am tempted to pick up a copy.

The Liquidator 1965 Based on the novel of the same name by John Gardner, screenplay by Peter Yeldham, directed by Jack Cardiff. Not a series I ever read. I think I've only read the first of Gardner's James Bond sequels. Like a Bond movie it opens with a big song. Shirley Bassey's alright singing wise and the music by Lalo Schifrin isn't that bad. The problem is the poor lyrics, not good.

Rod Taylor is Boysie Oakes, he saved the life of a man called Mostyn, played by Trevor Howard, in Paris during World War 2. He killed a German soldier who was about to shoot Mostyn. He killed that man by a lucky accident but Mostyn didn't see that, he just saw the dead Nazi. Years later Mostyn is a Colonel in British Intelligence. He's given a project by his boss, played by Wilfred Hyde-White, who wants Mostyn to eliminate security leaks in the agency with deadly force. It's a totally secret and illegal operation but Trevor goes ahead with the project.

He hires Boysie thinking he's a stone cold killer. Tempted by the spy game, the fancy car, the ladies and the lavish apartment Boysie goes along with the program until he learns he's going to be an assassin. Boysie wants to quit but Mostyn has him over a barrel and he can't resign. Boysie doesn't want to kill people, he fails in his attempt on that lady in the hat. Boysie wants keep his lavish lifestyle, so he does the next best thing, he farms out the killing to Griffin, played by Eric Sykes, a freelance professional assassin.

It all works well enough for a while but Boysie is a bit of a rule breaker and he wants to get closer to Mostyn's secretary Iris, Jill St John plays her and she's a handful. The problem that keeps cropping up is there are rules about spy's dating the agency civilian staff. Serious rules that could get rule breakers 10 years in prison. Despite that Boysie and Iris take a trip to the Côte d'Azur on the French Riviera. They get tumbled before the plane leaves the runway and Mostyn is on their trail. Meanwhile in France a secret plan to kill the Duke Of Edinburgh is formulating. Boysie is set up by a fake agent and believes his story about a training exercise. The baddies really have another goal, they want to steal the new test plane that the Duke was to inspect, they nearly get away with it before Boysie finally comes through.

I don't think it's humorous enough to be a spy spoof, it's more a thriller with a dark comedic core. People commenting on the IMDb and reviews can't seem to agree on what it is. Boysie doesn't want to kill people but he's OK with Griffin doing the job. Daniel Emilfork, Krantz in the first film tonight, has a small role as a spy.

I enjoyed it most of the time. It moves along fairly well until the last act when it starts to lag a bit. It's 104 mins could have been cut by 10 mins and it would have tightened it up nicely. I picked up a copy from Amazon for a tenner and I'm not sad about that. I'd watch it again.

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Espionage In Tangier 1965 Story by Herbert Curiel, screenplay by R Belgrozo, directed by Gregg C Tallas. A Spanish Italian production.

 

A mad scientist has invented a disintegrator pistol. Agent S 077 is assigned to the case. We follow him around as he annoys everyone. There's some baddies and some pretty ladies. The dialog makes little sense at times and the fights are often poor. It's a bit of a loser. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Drive 1997 Written by Scott Phillips and directed by Steve Wang. We watched the MVD Director's Cut Blu-ray of the movie, it's got restored scenes and plenty of new extras. When I saw Drive back in 1999 I thought it was a highly entertaining action driven chase film. I watched it several times with other people but hadn't seen it for several years.

Mark Dacascos is an augmented special agent from Hong Kong. He's got a special device in his chest that makes him stronger and quicker than your average martial arts expert. He has decided to leave Hong Kong, he's going to sell the device to a company in Los Angeles for $5,000,000. James Shigeta plays the boss of the company that makes the device, he wants to keep the device from getting into other people's hands.

The baddies catch up to Mark in San Francisco, he's crossed the ocean by stowing away on a ship. He manages to escape and after kidnapping Kadeem Hardison in a bar they race across California. John Pyper-Ferguson and his toady Tracey Walter lead the gang that's chasing them. The pair get a room in a motel that Brittany Murphy is managing for her parents. She helps the guys out and the baddies blow up her motel. It was a darn good explosion. There was nothing left of the motel.

It's got a great script with a great sense of humor. The action, martial arts and stunt work are the equal of any top notch Hong Kong action film. Mark kicks the crap out of a horde of baddies in some entertaining fights. There's some nice scenery as the guys travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles. There's a big ending fight in a NASA themed restaurant. It doesn't survive the fight too well, neither do the baddies. Mark and Kadeem head for LA without anyone on their trail.

Why this movie isn't more popular beats me. It doesn't seem to make any of those best martial arts movie lists I see once in a while. It scores a 6.6 on the IMDb, I gave it a 7, it's easily that good or better.

I liked the director's cut so much I ordered one as soon as I got home. I would have ordered it on my tablet during the movie but I couldn't remember my Amazon password. I'm curious about the commentary and extras, the earlier DVD I have has no special features. 

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Blade Runner 2049 2017 Based on characters from Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, story by Hampton Fancher, screenplay by Hampton Fancher, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Ryan Gosling is KD6-3.7, he's a blade runner for the LAPD, he's also a Nexus-9 replicant, nobody likes him. KD6-3.7 lives in the large LA sprawl and hunts rogue replicants, he retires them. It's a pretty crappy future, most everything is smog bound and it rains a lot. After KD6-3.7 retires a protein farmer a box is discovered on the property. It contains the remains of a replicant that died in childbirth. KD6-3.7's boss thinks this could be a bad thing to let the public know about, he wants the child found and destroyed.

Kd6-3.7 runs about getting into one scrap after another. People are dropping left and right. There are a number of factions interested in the child and the reproduction rights of replicants. The Wallace Corp is the main villain, the CEO has his pet psycho, a cold hearted murderin' lady. KD6-3.7 finds Rick Deckard in Las Vegas. No one goes there, it's all sand and radioactivity. There's a bunch of fighting when the psycho lady turns up, more people get killed, Deckard gets kidnapped and KD6-3.7 is left for dead. He's not. He sets off on a rescue mission.

It's quite a long movie, 164 mins, and there's a lot of slow moving stuff goin' on but it didn't drag too much. There's usually something to see but that future sure looks miserable. I mostly liked the movie but not as much as the first movie. I'd be curious to see a sequel. I see there's a TV show set 50 years in the future coming out from Amazon.

Massacre Gun 1967 Screenplay by Yasuharu Hasebe and Ryūzō Nakanishi, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Hasebe made a good number of films for Nikkatsu  including the Stray Cat Rock series.

Joe Shishido is Ryūichi Kuroda, a yakuza hitman and the eldest of three brothers. That's his brother Eiji on the right and Saburo on the left. Eiji is a yakuza and Saburo is an up and coming boxer. Boss Azakawa orders Ryūichi to kill his girlfriend. He goes home all miserable, Saburo tries to comfort him but fails. He's young and ignorant, he goes to Azakawa and confronts him. Saburo's going to quit boxing for him so Azakawa has both his hands broken. When the other two brothers find out things get out of hand and nearly everyone dies.

It's a familiar story, yakuza vs yakuza, high body count, little learned. The Arrow Blu-ray looks really nice. I'd certainly watch it again sometime but it's no Tokyo Drifter.

Blood For Blood 1971 Screenplay by Hideichi Nagahara, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Another Nikkatu gangster film by the same director as the film above.

Joe Shishido is a yakuza who gets out of prison after 5 years. He returns home to his old gang is being squeezed out by a couple of the local gangs and a gang from Tokyo. It's a blood bath as the rival gangs kill each other in vivid color.Hardly anyone gets out of this alive.

The film looks nice but the story is only about average. No matter, it's still one I'd watch again.

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Buried Alive 1989 Vaguely based on Edgar Allen Poe stories, screenplay by Jake Chesi and Stuart Lee, directed by Gérard Kikoïne, produced by Harry Allan Towers. Filmed in Botswana and Johannesburg. We watched the new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. The image looks alright, there's are interviews with Ginger Lynn Allen and William Butler for extras.

A young teacher, played by Karen Witter, goes to work for Robert Vaughn at his school for troubled young women. These are some annoying bad girls with Ginger Lynn Allen leading the pack. Some women go missing and Robert says they ran away. He tries to come off as caring but he's really a self involved creep. The audience knows that there's someone in a Ronald Reagan mask killing those women and bricking them up in rooms in the basement of the big school building.

Donald Pleasence might be a doctor at the school, the script is unclear. It's generally a poor script. Donald comes off as creepier than Robert. More people die and the new teacher has some weird hallucinations about the murders. She discover one of the bricked up rooms. Arnold Vosloo is a local policeman. John Carradine plays Robert's deceased dad in the teacher's hallucinations.

There's plenty of running about and screaming, a fair bit of violence, a few scares  and an annoying score. Despite that it's somewhat dull at times. I thought it was below average but watchable. Not something I would need to see again.

Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World 1961 Story by Oreste Biancoli, screenplay by Oreste Biancoli and Duccio Tessari, directed by Riccardo Freda. An Italian and French production with Gordon Scott and Yoko Tani. The film was released in Italy under the name Maciste alla corte del Gran Khan. The American release is from AIP and they cut the original by nearly 20 mins. We watched the original Italian version from the fairly new Kino Lorber Blu-ray. The disc also has the AIP version. The picture looks very nice. There's a commentary by Tim Lucas and some trailers.

Gordon made a half dozen Tarzan films between 1955 and 1960. You can find a nice 6 DVD set from Warner Archive. The films look good and I find them entertaining but I'm a big Tarzan fan.

Though the film is titled Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World in the West, it's really one of many Maciste films produced in Italy starting with the 1914 film Cabiria.

In 13th century China with Mongol Warlord Garak leads an invading force that controls part of China. There's a resistance force and Maciste joins them to put an end to the Mongol rule. There's plenty of running about in the countryside on horses with oodles of fist fights and sword play. Maciste provides some Herculean feats of strength. There's a bit of romance between Yoko Tani and the rebel leader.

I thought it was a bit draggy at times. It sure made me less interested in picking up the Blu-ray. I've seen the AIP version, I have a copy in one of those 50 Movie Packs from Mill Creek, but it's been so long since I watched it I've forgotten anything about it.

Electra One 1967

Electra One 1967 Written by José Antonio de la Loma, Giovanni Simonelli and Alfonso Balcazar, directed by Alfonso Balcazar. A Spanish, Italian and French spy film that was originally shot in an experimental 70mm 3D.

Some baddies have invented a mind control drug that they use for blackmail. The US, Russians and the Chinese are after a woman that has the only antidote. A thief helps her out and decides to tag along to see if there's any cash in it for him.

There's a fair bit of action, plenty of running about and a decent body count. There';s some nice locations but generally it's nothing new and not that good, there are many more entertaining 60s Euro spy movies around, like the OSS 117  or Fantomas series.

Fury At Smugglers Bay 1961

Fury At Smugglers Bay 1961 Written, directed and produced by John Gilling. John wrote a fair number of decent movies, some for Hammer Films, he directed a good number of decent movies too, the same can be said for his TV work.

Peter Cushing is Squire Trevenyan and he lives in 18th century Cornwall. Bernard Lee is Black John, a local scumbag who's in the ship wrecking business. BJ is blackmailing the Squire to keep his trap shut. The Squire's son is in love with a local gal who's father is a thief who's being sent to a penal colony. William Franklyn plays a local thief who's a nice guy at heart. He helps the local gal to put an end to Black John's activities.

It's an average movie with a good cast. There's some intrigue, some fist fights, some sword wavin', a bit of romance and a nice rescue. There's a poor copy on YouTube, a better one on Rarelust, and a DVD that I'm not sure I would need at 15 smackaroonies.

Sleepy Eyes Of Death: 8 Sword Of Villainy 1966

Sleepy Eyes Of Death: 8 Sword Of Villainy 1966 Original story by Renzaburo Shibata, screenplay by Diasuke Ito, directed by Kenji Misumi. Music by Akira Ifukube.

Raizô Ichikawa returns as Nemuri Kyoshiro. He's in Edo, when we meet him he's being told a story by a hairdresser, an oil dealer and his family were attacked in their home and tied up. When they get rescued they find nothing seems to be missing.

 

That's the thief, a man called Aizen, while going through the family papers he talked to the family's little girl, he promised to bring her a present. That stick is one many sticks he paints a bit later in the movie. He plans to give them to the little girl. It's one of his many plans.

His big plan is to get back at the government for killing his Master, a political reformer on the side of the poor. The Shogun had him killed and Aizen wants to burn Edo Castle to the ground with a whole bunch of ministers inside. He's going to set off bombs in a couple of oil dealer's warehouses near the castle. It will set fire to much of the city and the castle should be right in the path of the fire. So will the locals. They aren't important to him or his plans.

That's Osoyo on the right, she's a member of a lion dance troupe and she's got vengeance on her mind. She wants to kill a minister who used her to steal from the same man that Aizen followed. Aizen tells her to keep out of his way or he'll kill her. Nemuri helps her not get killed.

Aizen's plan goes forward, Nemuri attempts to stop him but he's tricked by a secret trapdoor in the floor. Aizen sets off his bombs and the fires start. The film ends with a battle between the pair. Nemuri watching the fires at the end of the movie.

 

Kenji Misumi is a good director, he keeps me interested. The fights are pretty good, especially the Nemuri and Aizen fight. Glad to have seen it. There's another 4 films in the series. Hopefully I'll get to those quicker than this one. I watched number 7 last January. For some reason I just can't seem to chain watch the series.

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Innocent Bystanders 1972 Based on the James Mitchell novel The Innocent Bystanders, screenplay by James Mitchell, directed by Peter Collinson. Mitchell wrote several John Craig spy novels under the name James Munro. I've not heard of them before. Not planning to look for them either. Spy books are pretty low down the list of genre fiction for me. Collinson directed The Italian Job in 1969 and Ten Little Indians in 1974. I liked both of those well enough but I've not seen any of his other work that I remember.

Stanley Baker is a spy working for Donald Pleasence, they work at one of the spy agencies in the UK. Donald is a nasty man with a plan to sacrifice Stanley as a decoy for his younger agents. Donald is not happy with Stanley, he thinks the man has passed it.

Stanley has to go to Turkey to find a scientist who's hiding. There's plenty of trouble for Stanley, other agents, including those on his side, want him dead and he's kidnapped Geraldine Chaplin. She has clues on the scientist's whereabouts.

There's all the usual sort of spy stuff going on, punch ups, gun shooting, explosions, and plenty of driving around. The action moves from London to Spain and  then to Turkey. Plenty of fairly interesting locations. There's a bit too much personal melodrama between Stanley and Geraldine, it seems to slow the second act down. The movie runs 111 mins and it's pretty slowly paced.

Stanley turns out to be less than washed up, he manages to beat the baddies and the goodies, get some cash and move on. It's was mostly fun to watch. I'd watch it again, good thing because I've bought the Blu-ray, but I'd be fast forwarding through some of that personal drama.

I thought Stanley was entertaining is this movie but a bit less interesting than he was in Hell Drivers. That's my favorite trucking movie. It's a hell of a movie and I'm no big fan of a drama. This one stands out. Stanley is an ex-con who's gone to work for a gravel hauling company. The cast includes Herbert Lom, Patrick McGoohan, Peggy Cummins, David McCallum, Sean Connery, William Hartnell, Jill Ireland, Alfie Bass and Sid James. Here's a copy of the movie on YouTube.

The Great Spy Chase 1963 I watched this last December on a FNM night when we were all kept at home during a snow storm. You can see the post in the link above. I enjoyed the movie for the second time but both other viewers took a snooze during the last act.