Random Movie Reviews, Volume 5

Eurospy: 

Agent X-77 Orders To Kill (1966): This Italian-Spanish production is only marginal, mostly elevated by supersexy Italian actress Sylva Koscina as a saucy nurse who hooks up with the hero, Vadile, and helps him take on a group of Commie plotters who are looking to steal the plans to an experimental fuel called Agent X-77. As for the hero, he is a French dude with zero screen presence, and Koscina easily steals the show from him. Anyway our hero Vadile is a French agent sent to Italy posing as an airline investigator. A plane crashed in the Itallian mountains and we viewers know it was sabotaged, the men onboard killed for the documents they were carrying. Vadile sort of lurks around the countryside and investigates; it’s all very slow-going, with only an occasional fistfight or car chase in the first hour. But as mentioned there is Sylva Koscina sexing things up; with her chin-length ‘60s hairdo and big eyes she looks like a living Japanimation character. At the hour mark Vadile is captured, strung up, and mercilessly whipped, and you still care little for him. I didn’t really enjoy this one, but I did get a chuckle that the two main villains looked like Walter Mathau and James Coburn. Also of note is the annoying soundtrack, which sounds like something out of a Buster Keaton comedy.

Electra One (1967): When the protagonist isn’t a spy but instead is a jewel thief, does the movie still count as Eurospy? This is of course the same question that plagued the ancients. At any rate “Electra One” doesn’t have enough to recommend it either way. Our “hero” is a square-jawed type with the bland good looks of a paperback cover model; he is a Hamburg-based thief who runs into a scheme involving an experimental gas called Electra One which unleashes inner impulses or something. Not that much is made of it; we only see it at work in the beginning, where villainous Electra, a Blofeld-type who plans to blackmail governments with the gas, uses the drug to mess up the mind of a US colonel who then attempts to launch missiles on Russia. But from there on the movie devolves into one chase after another as our hero inadvertently saves the pretty blonde assistant of a murdered doctor who has come up with an antidote to the drug. There’s a grating comedy element courtesy a pair of American and Russian agents who do nothing but eat up the running time. However, always-sexy Rosalba Neri appears as a villainous babe, one working for Electra. She doesn’t do much, though, other than sit around and look sexy. But you take what you can get in meager films like “Electra One.” The finale isn’t bad, with our hero armed with a subgun and being chased by a small plane.

O.K. Connery (1967): Unlike Danger!! Death Ray, which was also given the MST3K treatment, this film is improved by watching the uncut version. The story behind this one goes that, when Sean Connery briefly quit the Bond franchise after filming “You Only Live Twice” in 1966, some genius in Italy wondered, “What if we hired Connery’s younger brother Neil in a bunch of pseudo-Bond films – and also hired a bunch of other actors from those movies to play similar roles?” From the real Bond films we have Bernard Lee, playing “Commander Cunningham,” a variation of M; Lois Maxwell, playing “Max,” a more ass-kicking variation of Miss Moneypenny; Anthony Dawson (who played Professor Dent in “Doctor No” and the behind-the-camera Blofeld in “From Russia With Love” and “Thunderball”) as a variation of Blofeld; Daniela Bianchi (Tatiana in “From Russia With Love”) as a sort of Pussy Galore; and Adolfo Celi (the villain in “Thunderball”) as a variation of Emilio Largo. Where they couldn’t get the original Bond actors, they got lookalikes and gave their characters similar names: Lotte Lenya, who played Rosa Klebb in “From Russian With Love,” is replaced by a lookalike actress whose character is named “Lotte Krayendorf!”

The movie is often referred to as a spoof, but this isn’t really true. For the most part it plays it straight, with only the occasional humorous aside. In that manner it’s not much different than the actual Bond films. But this isn’t a “Matt Helm” movie or anything. The movie has Neil Connery as “Neil Connery,” a doctor with mental mastery along the lines of Doctor Strange. He’s the brother of Commander Cunningham’s “best agent,” and is drafted by the Commander to handle the latest plot of Thanatos (aka SPECTRE), an international criminal organization which plans to steal some atomic maguffin. Connery (who didn’t dub his own voice) is okay if bland in the lead role, bringing none of the rakish charm of his more famous brother. The most enjoyable aspect of the film is seeing the actors from the Bond movies have fun with roles that give them a bit more opportunity to stretch their acting wings – Bernard Lee gets a few laughs, and as mentioned Lois Maxwell gets to do all sorts of action stuff.

There must have been a nice budget in play, as “O.K. Connery” goes all over Europe and down to Morocco, Connery researching various leads and getting in the occasional fight. He’s more superheroic than even his brother’s character: in addition to being able to control minds, Neil Connery is also an expert archer. He keeps bumping into the lovely Bianchi (dressed in the most outrageous fashions), who is one of Thanatos’s members, though not as evil as the others – and interestingly, we get to see a lot of evil women who work for the organization, in particular Mildred, a curvy brunette Eurobabe who at one point wears this crazy-but-awesome leather catsuit/miniskirt deal – that is, right before some dumbass kills her. Bummer!

Action scenes are plentiful, and sometimes go beyond the typical, low-budget fistfights of the average Eurospy. That being said, the money must’ve run out at some point, as the climax features that maguffin atomic device rendering firearms useless, thus Connery and comrades must raid Thanatos’s lair armed with bows and arrows! Connery handles the action scenes okay, but the hand-to-hand fights usually seem awkward and clumsy. Make no mistake, this film is no patch on the real Bond films, and indeed isn’t as good as many regular Eurospy flicks; it’s more enjoyable as a funhouse mirror reflection of the Bond franchise, one with a wild spyghetti overlay. My understanding is this was planned as the start of a franchise, but either it didn’t do well or more likely Danjaq, then-owner of the Bond franchise, probably stepped in and curbed anymore films. And I’d love to know what Sean Connery thought of it! Supposedly the producers asked him if he’d do a two-minute cameo, but he turned them down. This is surprsing, as Connery – by his own admission – hated the Bond film producers. You’d expect he would’ve relished the chance at sticking the knife in.

OSS 117: Double Agent (1968): OSS-117 was a recurring character in a series of French movies (and novels), usually played by a different actor each time. I checked this one out because it was a co-Italian production, and as everyone knows Italians just do it better. Coming out after the Eurospy boom of ’65-’67, “Double Agent” has the look and feel of a Bond film, but lacks the gadgets and sci-fi wackiness of earlier genre entries. Speaking of Bond, the actor playing OSS-117 this time is John Gavin, a brawny, dark-haired, virile type of dude who looks so much like Bond that he was actually chosen to be Bond; he was signed on to portray 007 in “Diamonds Are Forever” in 1971 but obviously backed out once Sean Connery decided to return to the role. But Gavin looks very much like a young Connery, with the same sort of build, looks, and mannerisms. Perhaps he could’ve become “the” Bond if he’d kept the role.

So far as the female leads go, for one we have an early (and sadly too brief) appearance by always-gorgeous genre mainstay Rosalba Neri (“Superseven Calling Cairo”) as one of 117’s early conquests. Later we have busty Italian redhead Luciana Paluzzi, who played the sexy henchwoman Fiona Volpe in “Thunderball” (I’ll take her over Oddjob any day!). As if that weren’t enough, finally we have Margaret Lee (“Dick Smart 2.007,” etc), as gorgeous as ever, but here with an “exotic” makeover courtesy lots of eye liner, given that she’s playing a Middle Eastern gal.

OSS-117 goes undercover as an infamous assassin, hired by a supervillain played by Curd Jurgens. “Double Agent” really has the vibe of a pseudo-Bond film due to the casting; Gavin as mentioned was Bond for a while, Paluzzi was in “Thunderball,” and nine years later Jurgens was the main villain in “The Spy Who Loved Me.” But the movie doesn’t properly exploit any of them; while it starts off promising, with 117 in Jurgens’s headquarters (where he boffs Paluzzi’s character, here serving as a doctor/henchwoman for Jurgens), it soon veers astray as 117 is sent by Jurgens to Istanbul on an assassination mission. Now the plot is a jumbled confusion of 117 trying to pretend to kill a man associated with Margaret Lee’s character. Action is sparse and undermined by cranked-up film speeds. T&A isn’t much exploited, either, though Rosalba Neri apparently sheds her clothing. Again, it’s really just the gals and main actor Gavin that recommends “Double Agent;” even the finale is underwhelming, with Paluzzi’s character totally forgotten, Jurgens dealt with by a random character, and 117 engaged with a non-threatening henchman in an overlong fistfight.

Password Kill Agent Gordon (1966): Roger “Superseven Calling Cairo” Browne stars as dashing “super secret agent” Douglas Gordon in this bland but spirited Eurospy cheapie that goes from Paris to Tripoli to Madrid. Browne’s assignment has him posing as a talent agent for a bevy of beauties, one of whom is super-sexy Rosalba Neri (who appeared with Browne in “Superseven”), with another played by ever-sultry (and duplicitous) Helga Line. The first half is a bit talky and slow-going, before the inevitable endless fistfights expected of Eurospy break out. Gordon does well for himself, scoring with Rosalba Neri’s character early on – a scene which begins with him “torturing” her with a feather to the soles of her feet. As ever Neri shows off as much skin as possible, traipsing around in lingerie; one can almost suspect many of these Eurobabes were just waiting for the ‘70s, when they could go full-on nude in their films.

Once the action moves to Madrid we get more of a sci-fi angle, with Helga Line (who turns out to be a Russian spy who ends up working with Gordon) sporting a lipstick tube that shoots lasers (shown via animation drawn on the film). There’s also lots of cheap spy-fy tricks, like Browne “talking” into his wristwatch. The villain is a wheelchair-bound transvestite who manages to capture both Gordon and Helga Line’s character, putting the former in a chamber with poison gas and strapping the latter onto a bed while being dunked in water and shot with electricity – while wearing nothing but a teddy and panties, naturally. More spy-fy ensues with the revelation of a previously-unmentioned special ring Gordon wears. Action-wise we get periodic shootouts, but this one was certainly cheaply made, as the guns don’t even spout flame when firing. Overall “Password Kill Agent Gordon” is okay, but nothing great. Admittedly it might come off a lot better if we were able to see it in a better print than the current faded, blurry, pan-and-scanned job that’s available.

Sicario 77: Vivo o Morto (1966): Rod Dana is Ralph Lester, a freelance agent currently taking an assignment from British intelligence which has him going from a fixed boxing match in Soho to a villain’s headquarters hidden in a renovated cathedral in Madrid. “Sicario 77: Vivo o Morto” (aka “Killer 77: Alive or Dead”) benefits from nice production values and a plot that’s lifted directly from “Dr. No,” which was of course the template for most of the better Eurospys – the film starts off a basic spy yarn before progressing further into sensationalism. It also has a great surf guitar theme song that will get stuck in your head. Action is sparse for the first 40 or so minutes, but the plot isn’t as complicated as most other entries in the genre, and there’s some fun with Lester’s comrade on the assignment, “The Priest” – a busty, beautiful blonde so-called by her fellow agents due to her prudish views on sex. That being said the director gives us enough lecherous moments, like the Priest shedding her clothes and walking toward the camera until her panties-covered crotch is in super-extreme closeup. Eventually Lester is captured, after a long chase sequence and a fight in an elevator shaft that could come right out of one of the Dalton 007 movies. He wakes up a prisoner of V-3, an organization of “old Nazis” who look to take over the world.

The Budget Bond vibe is at full effect, complete with a Blofeld-esque main villain, several armed guards in identical black outfits, and a sadistic, leather-garbed henchman who is an expert with the barbed whip, slashing apart a female member of the organization for the viewing pleasure of the leader (an act which is kept off-camera, but later we see the scars on the woman’s back – along with the insinuation that she enjoyed it!). Gadgets are relegated to a special bullet Lester can fire which emits radiation that can be tracked by a command center or somesuch; we’re informed just one bullet costs a few hundred thousand pounds, but in this way Lester is able to alert British intelligence where he is. We also have a micro-recorder in the heel of Lester’s shoe, complete with antennaed earpiece for long-distance audio surveilling. After some unsurprising betrayals we move to an action finale, which occurs in the villain’s villa rather than the expected cathedral. On a motorcycle a toting a subgun, Lester guns down several uniformed henchmen before whipping out this bizarre-looking bazooka-type deal which he uses to blow up scads more of them in a rousing action finale. Apparently never dubbed into English, “Sicario 77” currently exists in a nice-looking widescreen print sourced from some Italian broadcast, graced with English subtitles.

Tom Dollar (1967): This late-era Eurospy almost has more in common with the Italian crime flicks of the ‘70s; even the soundtrack occasionally sounds like a Blaxploitation score, with copious wah-wah guitars. But titular Tom Dollar is a CIA spy, and his assignment has him trying to stop an Iranian villain from stealing uranium. Tom Dollar is played by an Italian actor but he’s apparently meant to be Japanese-American – the actor wears subtle eyeliner to heighten the “Oriental” look – his father mentioned as having been a samurai and his mom an American. He also has a Japanese sidekick who engages Tom in impromptu Pink Panther-esque fights to test his mettle.

The movie is a bit sluggish and undone by periodic attempts at comedy, particularly courtesy a fellow CIA agent whose speciality is disguise. There’s an overlong sequence where this guy, an artiste, makes up the female lead of the film, an Iranian princess whose father was murdered and who is next on the death list. As is typical for Eurospy, the plot is jumbled and overly complex, livened up by sporadic, patience-testing fistfights. Given the Japanese angle, most of the fights are of the karate and judo variety, however the director speeds up the film during the fights, so that it almost looks like Benny Hill. We aren’t treated to nearly as many Eurobabes as is standard for the genre, again indicating that the movie was made in the twilight years. Even the finale lacks the action climax one could want, again degenerating into brawls, though we do get to see a few of the villain’s stooges gunned down by a commando squad.

The Defector (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #38)

The Defector, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1969  Award Books

George Snyder turns in his first installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster, and it’s the only one he wrote in third-person; after The Defector was published, the series took its unfortunate turn to first-person narration. But Snyder’s third-person narration still feels like first-person…despite the genre this guy writes in, his books, at least to me, still have the feel of hardboiled detective pulp.

As is the case with The Defector, which has Nick Carter venturing around the US and China tracking down various leads in his quest to uncover the mystery behind a US scientist’s sudden intention to defect to Red China. Dr. John Loo, the titular defector, is a Chinese-American scientist who has developed a top-secret “skin compound” which NASA plans to use to protect the skin of astronauts; it offers protection against very high levels of heat. But the Red Chinese covet the compound because it could theoretically be used to protect skin against radiation, thus they could protect their people from any retaliation while unleashing nuclear hell on the world. Or something.

The compound is the maguffin, clearly, and it sends Nick from his one-month vacation in Acapulco (where he enjoys the company of a woman who is “an expert at making love,” but Snyder here and throughout provides zero details) to DC, where boss Hawk gives him the expected briefing. Disguised as a portly scientist – one who still elicits open invitations of lust from horny stewardesses, naturally – Nick heads down to Florida to interview Loo’s wife and son, who claim to have no understanding why Loo abruptly deserted them and fled to Hong Kong, where he made his announcement to defect.

The wife and kid – who are also Chinese – seem a bit off to Nick, as does the whole situation. Here we get a bit of Snyder’s customary observations on women: “[Nick] disliked pants on women. They belonged in dresses or skirts.” Nick, still disguised as a chubby scientist, flies to Hong Kong (hit on by yet another horny stew during the flight) and promptly meets with Dr. Loo, who is being held in a hotel with armed guards. Faking his way in as Loo’s assistant, Nick gets the truth out of Loo: the scientists’s real wife and son were abducted six months ago, and are being held somewhere in China. The “wife and kid” Nick met in Florida were doubles (though Loo grudgingly admits he slept with his fake wife – why not??). Nick has less than a week to get into China, find the real Mrs. Loo and son, and prevent the latest global catastrophe.

This leads to the novel’s first action scene: a tense knife fight on a deserted street. The hardboiled pulp feel is strong here; despite having his ever-present Luger, Nick instead goes in for the close fighting of knife and fists. He’s nearly killed by one of the thugs, a massive Chinese who continues to strangle Nick even after the Killmaster has blown off the dude’s head, Nick whipping out Wilhelmina, his Luger, at the last moment: “[Nick] had never been quite that close to death.” There’s more knife-fighting and chasing, including an abritrary bit where Nick loses his tail in a bordello and waits outside why the burly red-headed boncer beats him to a pulp(!?).

Eventually Nick finds himself hiding on a junk, planning to ride it into China; this junk is apparently owned by the people who have been monitoring Nick in his hotel, and he discovers that their leader is a sexy Chinese lady with green eyes and a curve-clinging silk dress. Those with rat phobia should skip this section, which finds Nick fending off rats “as big as alley cats” in the storage hold of the junk, using a dying lighter and Hugo, his trusty stiletto. But Nick is at length caught and taken topside, where he promptly becomes the green-eyed babe’s latest conquest. Her name is Sheila Kwan and she studied at Berkley, hence her perfect English, and also she was Dr. Loo’s girlfriend back in those days and knew he was working on a skin compound. Thus, the entire plot has been her idea. 

Snyder gets a bit more explicit with the Nick-Sheila sexual shenanigans, in particular a part where, after enjoying Nick’s services all night, Sheila hefts a .45, orders Nick to get on his hands and knees and crawl to her like a dog – and then to pleasure her orally, all while her brutish servant Ling watches! And once Nick’s skilled tongue has gotten Sheila “ready,” she pushes Nick aside and tells Ling to hop in bed with her! In fact Snyder ramps up the sleaze quotient throughout the junk voyage, with Nick even lashed to the mast, forced to watch another Sheila-Ling humping…and then Sheila wakes Nick up the next morning to have him there on the mast. Throughout she keeps saying it will be “such a shame” that Nick will ultimately have to die, given his skills at lovin.’

In a desolate patch off the Chinese coast, Nick is taken into a camp surrounded by Red Chinese soldiers, where he’s subjected to light and sound torture. While it sounds gruelling – Nick, in a cell, is plunged into darkness and then bright light, with loud noises blasting throughout – Snyder has Nick nearly breaking humorously fast, like in just a few paragraphs. This does lead to one of Nick’s more memorable kills: Sheila, wanting one last tussle with Nick, orders him to hump her while Ling watches – and then Nick activates Pierre, the little gas bomb he usually tapes between his legs “like a third testicle.” Thus Sheila dies mid-hump and Ling never does get to carry out the “Me kill!” desire he often voiced toward Nick.

The longest action sequence in the book sees Nick with a Tommy gun and grenades running roughshod over the camp, where he frees the real Mrs. Loo, aka Kathy, and her son, Mike. But Snyder’s dialog here is curiously flat and lifeless, relegating things almost to the feel of an outline. Snyder is an unusual writer, as he puts more focus on mundane things than on exciting things: while his writing in this action scene is spiritless and perfunctory, Snyder’s writing insticts more so come to life in boring patches, like Nick scaling a wall to get into a closed window, for example. In that case we’ll read tense description of Nick struggling to get up the wall, desperately hoping the window ledge will hold his weight, etc. And yet when Nick’s armed with a Tommy gun and taking out an entire Red Chinese camp, Snyder just sort of goes through the writing motions.

The last quarter reminded me of the climax of the previous Killmaster installment, 14 Seconds To Hell; it’s a too-long sequence of Nick, Kathy, and young Mike escaping the Reds, hiding in the jungle and attacking patrols when necessary. Here Mike and the somewhat-hot Mrs. Loo learn to kill! And Snyder builds in this unecessary subplot where Nick’s starting to develop feelings for Kathy, who turns out to be an able gal and not just your average “housewife.” Nick keeps reminding himself she’s got a husband and etc, etc. But it just goes on and on, until the expected finale arrives and the trio safely escape communist territory.

Snyder has none other than Hawk himself showing up in Hong Kong, along with Dr. Loo, who is happily reunited with his family. Meanwhile Hawk tells Nick he’s going to take him out to get drunk! Not sure if anything like this has ever happened in the Killmaster mythos, as I thought Hawk rarely if ever left his desk; he certainly wouldn’t just to take Killmaster out for a few beers. Anyway The Defector is pretty good, but my favorite Snyder installment would still be the sci-fi tinged Moscow.

Vic Merritt: Man of Justice: Death On The Boardwalk

Vic Merritt: Man of Justice: Death On The Boardwalk, by Jake Cafferty
No month stated, 1986  Critic's Choice

J.C. Conaway surfaces as “Jake Carfferty” for this one-shot courtesy Critic’s Choice, likely yet another Leisure imprint. Billed as the first volume of a series titled Vic Merritt: Man Of Justice, Death On The Boardwalk was the only installment ever published. The spine labels it as “men’s action,” which is a laugh and a half. One could likely find more action in a cookbook. This one’s a slooow-moving affair that, as usual with Conaway’s work, is more of a tepid mystery.

There are also a few interesting paralells to Conaway’s earlier Shannon series. For one, the “sidekick” hero Vic Merritt is graced with: a Filipino cook/karate master named Joe-Dad, which was also the name of Shannon’s sidekick. (However this Joe-Dad doesn’t speak in the pidgin jive of the previous one.) Merritt himself is different from Shannon: he isn’t a spy, secret agent, vigilante, or anyting – he’s just a mega-wealthy owner of a global chain of hotels and buildings. Seriously, folks, Vic Merritt: Man Of Justice is like ‘80s Donald Trump starring in a TV mystery movie.

Sounds promising, but Conaway isn’t up to the challenge. This book is a snoozer. While we’re at times reminded that Vic Merritt, 32 and good-looking, has studied karate and whatnot, he doesn’t do much more in this book than fret over his newly-opening Atlantic City hotel, the Boardwalk. As is typical with Conaway, the novel is stuffed to the gills with incidental characters, and mundane dialog runs rampant. Death On the Boardwalk has more in common with a glitzy ‘80s trash novel, only most of the sex is off-page and there’s nothing racy about it.

The novel spans August through October of 1985; the Boardwalk is scheduled to open in early September and it’s been plagued with accidents that seem to have been intentional. Vic shows up from his New York penthouse to oversee the final days. We get lots of digressive stuff about various characters, including the Madonna-esque singer Suzi Harrington, who is almost burned alive in the run-through for her opening night act. She isn’t too hurt, though, as Vic manages to have off-page sex with her in her hospital room a few days later; she’s an old flame of his (lame pun alert), and Vic wonders if maybe her old boyfriend Bart Bartolucci, notorious Mafia boss, might be behind the Boardwalk attacks, as vengeance for stealing his girl way back when. 

Most time is spent on walk-throughs of the deluxe Boardwalk, with an endless tide of one-off characters trolled out to fill the pages. If we read that there’s a girl group named Glitter hired by the hotel, Conaway will introduce us to each and every member, even give us a few lines from one of their songs. The novel in no way, shape, or form is “men’s action.” It is mostly a soap opera with a slight mystery overlay, as eventually one of the musicians is killed during a rehearsal, thus Vic must try to find out who has been behind these intentional attacks.

Along the way Vic meets lusty redhead Kay Harrington, a reporter for an Atlantic City paper who has “voluptuous lines” and “nicely rounded buttocks.” Their inevitable coupling is the one sequence where Conaway gets slightly risque, but it’s all pretty tame for an ‘80s paperback. These two trade lots of exposition as Vic gets all lovey-dovey with Kay; here we also get slight more detail on Vic’s background. His parents, who ran the global business before him, were “killed by terrorists” at Kennedy airport (an incident almost humorously unexplored), and if that wasn’t sad-sack enough, his fiance was also murdered a few years ago.

Who knows what Conaway’s plans were, but it appears that if the series had progressed there would have been recurring characters, in particular Lila, an old lady who was a famous singer in the ‘40s who now lives across from Vic on the penthouse floor of the Boardwalk; there’s also Caledonia Brown, Lila’s maid, “a Negro woman of sixty.” (If that isn’t enough for you, there’s also Carmen, head of Boardwalk security, who is a “big, beefy broad.”) But mostly it’s about the one-off characters, like Sike Deacon, sleazy manager of a Sex Pistols-esque British rock group who runs afoul of Vic given his bad attitude. Then there’s Charles Deacon, flamingly flamboyant night club actor.

As mentioned Death On The Boardwalk is mostly a mystery story, and it builds to a slow boil, with Vic not as driven to uncover the murders as you might expect. There’s no part where he whips out a pistol and takes justice into his own hands. Indeed he puts pieces together thanks to off-hand dialog from one of the bajillion characters who overstuff the novel. The killer turns out to be two unlikely culprits, with Conaway doling out that hoary old cliché that one of them’s actually insane and suffers from a sort of split personality disorder. The novel ends on a bittersweet note, with Vic determined to make it as big in Atlantic City as he has around the rest of the world.

More indication that this was a Leisure joint is the puzzling goof halfway through where a character refers to Merritt as “Jake Cafferty,” which is of course the pseudonym Conaway used for the book! Even more puzzling is the fact that the book is copyright “James Callahan.” One begins to wonder if Conaway was in the Witness Protection program or perhaps the CIA or FBI – pseudonyms upon pseudonyms. In fact this element is more interesting than the book itself; shed no tears that there were no more volumes of Vic Merrit: Man Of Justice.

The Sword Of Genghis Khan (Mark Hood #7)

The Sword Of Genghis Khan, by James Dark
October, 1967  Signet Books

At this point the Mark Hood series has ventured far from its roots. While the early volumes were slow-moving espionage tales (arduosly slow, in some instances), The Sword Of Genghis Khan is straight-up pulp, a fast-moving yarn that comes in at a mere 127 pages of big print. There’s little of the time-wasting of those earlier installments; indeed, one wishes for a little more meat on the bones, as J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell delivers what for the most part is a glorified outline.

But still, one can’t complain, especially when one compares this volume to, say, Assignment Tokyo. It starts with a bang and keeps up the pace till the very end. In fact, the opening is the most crazed yet in the series, as we read about three top satellite scientists being abducted by some mysterious organization. The abductions are all pretty unusual, with the most insane one being a French scientist taken while he’s having sex with some good-looking babe he just met in a bar! Also here we see that Dark is getting more and more explicit as the series progresses; it’s not full-on porn, but at least it’s not “fade to black” such as the earlier sex scenes were. Oh, and one of scientists is abducted by a dude on a rocket pack straight out of Thunderball.

Mark Hood doesn’t show up for a while, and when we meet him he’s already being briefed by Intertrust boss Fortescue. Hood’s usual ally Tommy Tremayne is “still in the hospital” from the wounds he received last volume, so Fortescue tells Hood he’ll be pairing him up with karate master Murimoto. As a reminder, Dark has abruptly made Murimoto an Intertrust agent, whereas the earliest volumes specified that he was nothing more than Hood’s karate trainer, and indeed didn’t even know that Hood was really a secret agent. While Murimoto is an okay sidekick (as the back cover copy refers to him), one misses the chatter of the usual Hood-Tremayne pairing; Murimoto is just a bit too laconic.

Fortescue wants Hood to head over to Russia, as it develops that the three kidnapped scientists were from three of the four contries that comprise Intertrust (ie the US, England, France, and Russia). Since “the top Russian satellite scientist” hasn’t been kidnapped yet, Foretescue wants Hood and Murimoto to go over there, work with the Russian Intertrust agent, and prevent any possible kidnapping. Hood meanwhile has a hunch he should be going to Mongolia – in another wild opening scene, we’ve seen a part of the Yellow Sea boiling, as well as half of a US destroyer. While Fortescue believes this is unrelated to the scientist abductions, Hood feels otherwise.

If you’d need a reminder that the Mark Hood series is nothing like Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, look no further. Whereas Fleming would’ve elaborated on the trip to Russia, with copious cultural details, Dark has his characters in and out of Russia within several pages. Hilariously enough, when Hood and Murimoto get to the desolate base where the Russian scientist, Drobsky, does his work, they find that he’s already been taken, his guards shot in the head! But this is indication of how streamlined The Sword Of Genghis Khan is. Very seldom does James Dark elaborate or exploit a scene, and description is kept to a minimum.

Hood gets his way and convinces Fortescue to allow him and Murimoto to head to Mongolia – on nothing more than a hunch! They ride the Trans-Siberian Express, but Dark again does little to bring the exotic setting to life. To further the pulp feel, coincidental plotting is prevalent; Hood and Murimoto just happen to ride the train out with a super-sexy Chinese babe in Western clothing who is escorting the coffin of her recently-dead uncle. A horny Hood, who didn’t bring along any books (one wonders what he’d even read – Mark Hood by the way has remained a cipher since the first volume), heads off to the bar to get her drunk.

Her name is Khan Teh Fah, and while we are informed a few times she’s quite attractive, Dark doesn’t do much to bring her to life or to exploit her ample charms. A few mentions of her clothing sticking to her nice curves and whatnot. Early on she displays some fervent Communist beliefs, but this gradually fades away. She and Hood strike up a repartee on the long, long train journey, which culminates with abrupt, unexpected violence when the train is hit by lightning or something in Mongolia. Hood and Murimoto free themselves from their cabin, which has plunged along with the rest of the train into a river, and after saving a comatose Teh Hood also rescues her uncle’s coffin, which is floating downstream.

But inside it a curious Hood finds not a dead Mongolian, but the unconscious form of Drobsky, abducted Russian scientist. (Remember I mentioned the coincidental plotting?) Hood has been suspicious of Teh and her party all along, so tries to lie that he didn’t look in the coffin. Despite which her goons surround him and Murimoto with guns drawn and force them to come along to far off Lop Nor, which Hood knows is where Red China does all its atomic bomb testing. It’s also the home of Teh’s mysterious and powerful father, General Khan.

The reader will already gauge that The Sword Of Genghis Khan is James Dark’s ‘60s updating of a Fu Manchu story. Wily General Khan is Fu Manchu and Teh is Fu’s sexy villainess of a daughter, Fah Lo Suee – even her full name, Khan Teh Fa, has a similar ring to it. But talk about that lack of meat on the bones – Dark does little to bring General Khan to life. He lives in a medieval castle in Lop Nor, surrounded by loyal soldiers, but what these people or even the place looks like is left entirely to the reader’s imagination. Khan himself is merely described as “dressed like Genghis Khan,” so let’s hope you already have that visual stored in your head, because Dark doesn’t elaborate.

General Khan, blithely revealing everything to the newly-arrived Hood, says that he discovered the fabled lost treasure of Genghis Khan, his forebear, after an atomic test here in the rugged mountains of Mongolia. But despite his massive wealth, General Khan wants power – he wants Mongolia to take over China, and to kick Russia’s ass due to the USSR’s treachery with Red China. Like a regular Bond movie villain, Khan has loyal scientists at his disposal, ones who have made for him a satellite with a large mirror on it, which directs the rays of the sun. This is the cause of the boiling Yellow Sea in the opening, as well as that light attack on Hood’s train.

But this last attack was a mistake, and because Khan’s daughter was almost injured in it, he had all of the specialists killed. Thus Dark exlains away why Khan keeps Hood and Murimoto alive; Hood has a little medical training, and is able to fool Khan into thinking he’s a specialist in sleep studies(!). So Khan figures to replace him with the recently-killed doctor he previously employed. This provides further convenient plotting, as Khan has been “cryobiologically” freezing those captured scientists, but the resuscitation method is faulty, with all of them waking up as mental incompetents. But Drobksy’s cryo process has went well, and he’s the sole scientist who comes to with all his faculties. 

Rather than a slam-bang finale, Murimoto instead informs Hood that he will need to “dishonor” Khan’s daughter, “by force if necessary.” Teh, whose name means “virtue,” is the uber-protected virginal daughter of Khan, despite her obvious burnin’ yearnin’ for Hood. So Hood does the deed…and Dark leaves it off page! Earlier I should mention we also read as Hood boffs some blonde pickup in a Moscow bar; a sex scene slightly more risque than any previous ones, but as arbitrary as you can get, as it turns out to be a blackmail scheme that goes nowhere thanks to Hood’s karate skills with the dudes who come in with the camera.

But Teh enjoys it, we’re at least informed – and then Hood guts proud Khan with the info of his dauther’s “loss of honor” moments after leaving her room! An enraged Khan yanks the titular sword of Genghis Khan from its wall mounting and we get a brief sword fight…and then Hood has a seat on the floor and watches as Murimoto fights Khan to the death!! I couldn’t believe what I was reading, friends; our “hero” literally has his “sidekick” fight the main villain, due to the reasoning that Khan’s too good at martial arts and Murimoto’s more skilled at karate than Hood is. Oh, and meanwhile Drobsky has set Khan’s satellite to blow up. So in other words Mark Hood himself does nothing in the novel other than take out a few unarmed scientists in the satellite-control center and then screw the villain’s daughter.

Dark rushes through the finale, with the plummeting rocket wiping out the castle and Hood et al escaping in a commandeered plane – flown by Murimoto, given that Hood doesn’t know how to fly(!). Anyone else think this should be re-titled the “Murimoto” series? Meanwhile Teh is bleeding to death, thanks to a sword cut from her dad, who wanted to kill her in his rage over the loss of that “virtue.” To save the poor girl the trouble of being tortured in Russia (Teh you see was the murderer of Drobsky’s guards during his abduction), Hood unties her tourniquet so she’ll bleed to death in her sleep during the flight, and then settles down for a nap! The end!! 

While it’s not perfect by any means, The Sword Of Genghis Khan at least offers plenty of that ‘60s spy pulp vibe I enjoy, and moves a helluva lot faster than earlier volumes of the series.

The Spider #18: The Flame Master

The Spider #18: The Flame Master, by Grant Stockbridge
February, 1935  Popular Publications

The Spider features its wildest villain yet: Aronk Dong, the Lion Man of Mars, who threatens the world with his man-made lightning. It’s up to Richard “The Spider” Wentworth to stop this latest threat to humanity. Dong claims to be the vanguard of a Martian invasion, but ultimately author Norvell Page ignores the sci-fi aspect and delivers what you expect from the average Spider yarn: endless sequences of Wentworth gunning down gangsters.

It’s a month after the previous volume, which I don’t have. Looks like it was a momentous volume, as we’re informed at the outset of The Flame Master that Jackson, Wentworth’s loyal ally, “laid down his life” while in the guise of the Spider. Thus the world now believes the masked crimefighter to be dead, and also Wentworth is no longer suspected of being the Spider. We meet Wentworth as he’s chasing leads in his latest caper; he wants the world to continue believing the Spider is dead, but Page will eventually drop this subplot as well.

The latest gang to plague ‘30s New York has been using artificial lightning to rob banks and kill cops; Wentworth has tracked them here to the rural home of Brandon Early, a young scientist who specializes in lightning. Instead Wentworth, in his Spider disguise, meets Aronk Dong, the Lion Man, “six feet one of whipcord manhood,” with a leonine mane and the face of a lion. (The interior illustrations make him look more like The Wizard of Oz’s Lion Man rather than the fierce creature shown on the cover.) He also has claws, which he uses to occasionally rip off heads – and also to inflict some serious damage on Wentworth, slicing his shoulder.

Aronk Dong is the most memorable Spider villain yet, I think, but unfortunately as is with the case with all other such villains, Page doesn’t spend nearly enough time with him. Following the usual template, Dong only shows up in the opening, a handful of times later, and then for the harried finale. That being said, Page does something in this book I don’t think I’ve seen him do before – he relays a few sequences from Aronk Dong’s perspective. Usually Wentworth is the sole star of the narrative show. Anyway, Dong’s servants believe his story that he’s from Mars, but Wentworth instantly disbelieves it, particularly given Dong’s claim that he perfected his artificial lightning on the red planet. As Wentworth later says, the air on Mars is “too thin for clouds of any kind, much less storms!”

The opening sequence is pretty good, with Wentworth already in desperate battle within the first few pages. Here he meets headstrong Bets Decker, fiery-tempered assistant of Brandon Early, who remains unseen – as usual, Page fills the novels with red herrings, keeping Aronk Dong’s identity a secret. Could it be Early himself, as Wentworth suspects? He guns down various thugs who work for the Lion Man, but as mentioned is clawed in the shoulder and then tied up – but manages to free himself and come in blasting again, delivering one of the greatest pulp lines ever: “I have more bullets to plough through your putrid flesh!”

Wentworth is so injured that he wakes up in the hospital, where he remains for two days, even getting four blood transfusions, one of them courtesy ever-suffering fiance Nita van Sloan. He spends a further ten days recuperating, during which the Lion Man sows more chaos – 200 dead so far around the US in “unconnected” attacks, each of which employ the artificial lightning. Gradually Wentworth will determine that Aronk Dong is hiring out his manmade lightning and attacking these places for pay. Humorously, Wentworth’s injury will be forgotten well before novel’s end; Page only mentions it a few times, making it sound like the most horrific wound our hero has ever endured, before abruptly dropping all mention of it.

Researching leads with best friend/worst enemy Kirkpatrick, police commissioner, Wentworth meets Horace Jones, a pulp writer aquantaince of Kirkpatrick’s. Unfortunately Jones is in the novel even less than Aronk Dong himself. It’s a lot of fun to read about a pulp writer in a pulp novel, particularly when he’s defending the genre – and even Wentworth offers a defense of pulp, saying “there’s a lot of truth” in many of the tales, no matter how outrageous they may seem. Nevertheless, Horace Jones is a one-off character, there long enough to talk about his own research on Mars, stating that he believes Aronk Dong’s wild story.

As usual with a Spider book, the middle changes direction. With the appearance of a French arms dealer named Toussants Louvaine, Page goes into a subplot in which the wily Frenchman seeks to use Wentworth as bait to capture Aronk Dong. Louvaine knows he’ll make a mint on that artificial lightning, and given that he like all other criminals knows that Wentworth is really the Spider, he’s gone to the trouble of abducting Nita to ensure Wentworth obeys his orders. It’s all very old-hat and a bit disappointing given the sci-fi angle we were promised in the opening chapters.

We do get some of that patented Norvell Page insanity; after a long sequence in which Wentworth fights gangsters and then tries to evade the cops, our hero takes his shot-up sedan – which Page has carefully informed us earlier looks like a hearse – and “hides” it in a funeral procession that just happens to be passing by! Otherwise I found the middle half of The Flame Master to lag, other than periodic sequences which hop over to Aronk Dong as he wages war on hapless citizens; here we learn that Bets Decker, whom Wentworth thought was such a swell gal, is actually the Lion Man’s moll.

It gets back on the crazed path with Wentworth at one point standing on the girder of a half-constructed skyscraper, far over the sidwalks below, blasting away with a machine gun at the “doom balloons” of Aronk Dong. While Wentworth staves off the villain’s schemes, the novel ends with everyone a prisoner of the Lion Man, tied to electric chairs in a penthouse apartment – this after Wentworth has even ditched a plane on the penthouse itself in a desparate attempt at gaining entry to the place. Here Page delivers another of those stellar sequences of bravery he specializes in: to free himself with the knife Aronk Dong has left behind, Wentworth will cause the death-by-electrocution of Kirkpatrick. The Commissioner accepts his fate, urging Wentworth to grab the blade – a stirring scene, one ruined by the deux ex machina (but necessary, as these characters don’t die) realization that there’s a way around the entire setup.

Once again though Page denies Wentworth the luxury of killing the villain himself; instead, Wentworth and Aronk Dong battle it out with swords as Louvaine watches – there follows the most gory scene yet in the series, as Wentworth hurls his sword through the Frenchman’s throat to prevent him from tugging a cord which will shine a light on Dong’s followers below, signalling them to begin their destruction of New York’s dam. But Aronk Dong is taken out off-page by another character – only for it all to turn into a Scooby Doo finale, as Wentworth deduces that the dead “Aronk Dong” is just an imposter…and the real one is really so and so!! Unsurprisingly, Wentworth has already figured all this out, despite being in constant action for the past few days with no sleep.

Overall The Flame Master is as enjoyable as the average Spider yarn, but the outrageous villain had me expecting something more…well, outrageous. Instead, it’s business as usual – though to be sure, there’s a lot of action and thrills. My favorite volumes are still The Corpse Cargo and The Red Death Rain, though.

The James Bond Dossier

The James Bond Dossier, by Kingsley Amis
July, 1966  Signet Books

Published in hardcover in 1965, The James Bond Dossier was one of the first studies of the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming, following O.F. Snelling’s 007 James Bond: A Report by one year. Unlike Snelling, Dossier author Kinglsey Amis was not only friends with Ian Fleming, but also benefited from having all of Fleming’s published Bond novels at his disposal; Snelling’s book went to press just as penultimate volume You Only Live Twice was being published.

This is a cogent, humorous, and engaging overview of Fleming’s Bond novels; Amis’s enthusiasm for them carries through the page. While he’s never critical of the books (he admits at the outset that he’s a huge fan), Amis does occasionally poke fun at things, but in a way that would even make the most ardent Fleming defender chuckle. In many ways, The James Bond Dossier is more entertaining than the Bond books themselves; Amis’s wit and keen eye bring out so many details that multiple readings would no doubt be rewarding.

In a brief preface Amis states that his original intention was to write an article about Bond, but in the end decided to produce a short book on the subject. This is to every Bond fan’s benefit, but be forewarned that the Dossier has become collectible on the second-hand market (it’s long out of print, sadly). A little researching will no doubt turn up an affordable copy; I got this Signet edition, which follows the design of Signet’s Bond paperbacks of the early ‘60s, at a nice price. The book could also be read while reading the novels themselves; Amis occasionally gives away big details, but most people are familiar with everything thanks to the film versions (which are no doubt seen a lot more than the original novels are read); thus, no concerns about “spoilers.”

“The Man Who Is Only A Silhouette” is the first chapter, and gives a brief rundown on Bond and his literary ancestors. Warning for American readers: Amis refers quite often to British character Bulldog Drummond and his exploits. It’s clear that, at the time of this book, Drummond must’ve been more popular to the average reader in England than perhaps Bond himself was; throughout Amis will make references to this or that moment in Drummond’s history with little embellishment or explanation, as if assuming his readers know what the hell he’s talking about.

The first three chapters go over Bond, from personal details to his life as a secret agent, and on this latter point Amis makes the argument that Bond is not and has never been a “spy,” given that his assignments usually entail everything but spying. Amis argues that Bond would more accurately be described as a secret agent. Amis also looks into the supposed superpowers of Bond, arguing that, within the context and world of the novels themselves, his abilities are not so unbelievable – it would be common sense, for example, to accept that a top British agent would also be a top marksman. Bear in mind that throughout Amis solely refers to the literary Bond, with only a few mentions of his film counterpart; Amis was no fan of the films nor star Sean Connery, at one point even mentioning “Sean Connery’s total wrongness for the part” of Bond.

In these opening three chapters (“Sit Down, 007” and “Going Slowly To Pieces” being the titles of chapters two and three), Amis defends the “wish fulfillment” of the Bond novels, mocking critics who bemoan the pulpy nature of the series. “No adult ought to feel adult all the time,” Amis asserts, in just one of the book’s many quotable lines. Amis also makes the valid point that we readers want to be Bond, not invite him over for dinner or have drinks with him – the fact that Bond himself is almost a cipher is beside the point. He is the man all other men aspire to be. This includes Bond’s herculean smoking and drinking habits; despite being written long before the anti-smoking movement held sway, the Dossier admits that Bond’s 60-cigarettes-a-day habit might be pushing things a bit, but hell, Bond goes through a lot and deserves his indulgences.

Amis also defends Bond’s views on women in the fourth chapter, “No Woman Had Ever Held This Man” (the chapter titles cribbed from Fleming, obviously). Every Bond reader is familiar with Bond’s attitudes on women, as shown for example in Casino Royale. Amis excerpts four such examples from this novel, then defends them within the context of the book itself – Bond’s mood at the time, etc. Even Bond’s “the bitch is dead” line from the end of the book is defended as justifiable, given the revelation of Vesper’s traitorous duplicity. It goes without saying that this chapter would raise the hackles of the modern (or at least progressivised) reader. But Amis is never funnier than when he’s defending Fleming’s more “outdated” views, like Bond’s one-woman-a-novel track record:

Bond’s success with women is totally explicable within the terms of the novels. Women take to him because he likes them and knows how to be kind to them. He has, of course, further advantages. Other things being equal, women prefer handsome men to ugly and brave men to cowardly. There seems nothing to be done about that. Any number of us, however, could afford to take a couple of leaves out of Bond’s book. Unlike many heroes of more ambitious fiction, Bond is good-tempered and not moody. Women appreciate that in a man. And as Tatiana [in From Russia, With Love] notices at once, Bond looks very clean.

As can be seen, Amis here too defends the “fantasy” nature of Bond’s appeal to women; this element, apparently criticized by reviewers at the time as more of that “wish fulfillment,” is proven to be no big deal; Bond becomes intimate with one woman a novel, and given that Fleming wrote one novel a year, this is easily believable – it isn’t like we’re talking about the three or more women Bond conjugates with per movie. Amis also points out that Bond, despite his “sexist” attitude, is seldom ever mean to women (other than, he specifies, ugly villainesses Irma Bundt and Rosa Klebb; but they deserved it!). In general, Bond treats women with kindness and respect.

The wonderfully-titled fifth chapter, “Beautiful Firm Breasts,” is all about the “Bond-girl,” as Amis refers to Fleming’s central female characters. “Bond-girl shows a strong tendency to make her debut naked or half-naked,” Amis writes, and “Her most frequently mentioned feature is her fine, firm, faultless, splendid, etc, breasts.” (“I find this inoffensive, too,” he adds.) We have a rundown of the Bond-girl archetype, including Fleming’s apparent favored hair and eye colors, as well as the recurring motif that, despite her beauty and curves, Bond-girl usually has some impediment – Honeychile Rider (from Doctor No) with her broken nose, Domino Vitali (from Thunderball) with her one leg shorter than the other, etc. “Honeychile Rider is the most appealing incarnation of Bond-girl,” Amis asserts, and I agree with him. Despite talk of the magnificent curves and looks, Amis also details how Bond-girl has her own heroic makeup, and how she brings more to her respective novel than just being Bond’s latest good time. He also mentions how Kissy Suzuki in You Only Lives Twice actually saves Bond’s life.

Chapter six, “A Glint of Red,” focuses on Bond’s enemies. Amis again proves his keen eye with the observation on the “peculiar unpleasantness” of the mandatory Bond-villain confrontation in each novel, as in each case there is a father vs son dynamic at play. Amis nominates Doctor No as the “most archetypal Bond villain,” not to mention “the most fun” (and I agree on both counts). But Doctor No isn’t Amis’s favorite, as he finds him a bit too pulpy; Amis himself prefers Hugo Drax, from Moonraker. Amis likes how Drax can go from insane to casual in a heartbeat.

“Damnably Clear Gray Eyes,” chapter five, is dedicated to M, Bond’s cantankerous boss. Make no mistake, Kinglsey Amis hates M. Indeed, it would appear Amis wrote the later Bond continuation novel Colonel Sun (1968) precisely so he could abuse M in the opening chapters. We get a rundown of how poorly M treats Bond, usually sending him off into horrible situations with hardly enough information. Again and again M has Bond risk his life, usually not even giving him a “thank you” for his troubles. The observation that M’s world is like a family is compelling, particularly Amis’s notion that Miss Monneypenny and the other girls in the office are like Bond’s “sisters,” thus Bond’s relationship with them can never go beyond harmless repartee. Amis wraps up the chapter with a laugh-out-loud observation that, given the frequency of M’s ignorance, the reader must gradually come to the conclusion that “no thought is taking place behind those damnably clear eyes.”

“Warm Dry Handshakes” follows, this time looking at Bond’s allies in each novel. Amis finds Darko Kerim of From Russia, With Love the “most appealing” of them all. You Only Live Twice’s Dikko Henderson is also okay, “but goes on and on.” Better yet is the following chapter, “We May Be Slow, But…”, in which Amis defends the colonialist attitudes of Fleming, particularly his frequent use of foreigners as villains: “Some forms of prejudice may be sinister, but not these.” While “unenlightened,” it’s “perfectly harmless to lump people together by nationality.” My favorite observation is that, in Fleming’s world, Americans are only “semi-foreigners, very nearly as good as ourselves.” Otherwise this entire chapter would send today’s PC advocates into fits of rage, meaning of course it’s a blast of a read.

“Elegant Scene” details the luxury settings and opulent foods of the Bond novels, though here Amis sees no snobbery, and only occasionaly the “copywriting” vibe critics often complained about in Fleming’s work. This chapter also features one of the few mentions of the Bond movies; Amis states that, as of the time of his writing, only the first three films had been released, Goldfinger being the most recent. He calls the movies a “send-up” of Bond, which I think is a bit unfair; anyone who has seen the first two films will know they aren’t send-ups at all. They play it straight and stay true to Fleming’s novels. It’s only with Goldfinger that the movies began moving toward camp. Regardless, Amis ends the chapter with another notable observation: that, even though Ian Fleming might’ve laughed when he came up with his stories, he “didn’t laugh in his writing. I approve.”

On to “The Shertel-Sachsenberg System,” which looks at Fleming’s love of shoehorning technical terms and equipment into his narrative; here too we are reminded of the occasional copywriter vibe. Amis asserts that these technical details make Bond’s fantasy world more believable; we might not know what the hell a “Shertel-Sachsenberg System” is, but if Fleming writes that it’s the best there is we’ll take him at his word. In this chapter Amis coins the phrase “the Fleming effect,” which he defines as Fleming’s “imaginative use of information.” Amis names Thunderball as being filled with the Fleming effect. For the effect to work properly, Amis stipulates that it “has to be geared into the action,” otherwise it comes off as bland info-dumping.  The chapter also discusses the increasingly fantastical nature of the villains’s plots, with another humorous observation: “Blofeld’s schemes...were never conceived in a fit of caution.”

“Y*B**NNA Mat!” (the title taken from an apparently-unprintable Russian oath in From Russia, With Love) discusses how “Putting Fleming to right has become a minor contemporary sport.” This chapter I didn’t find very compelling; it goes and on about various mistakes in Fleming’s novels, with Amis at one point detailing his own theory on how Fleming goofed up with the entire SMERSH concept, claiming that such an organization wouldn’t be doing any of the stuff Fleming has it doing. The chapter “Upas-Tree” follows suit, Amis stating that “Every writer of action stories sooner or later finds himself with an implausability on his hands.” Here Amis defends the “conventions” of the Bond novels (ie the Bond-villain confrontation, the appearance of Bond-girl, etc) as a catering to an accepted form.

The fourteenth and final chapter, “The Beautiful Red And Black Fish,” is one of the longest in the book and is comprised of a solid defense of Fleming’s style. This too was an interesting read, implying that in his day Fleming’s work was apparently considered subpar, at least when compared to other espionage fiction, in particular Deighton’s work. However today Fleming’s Bond novels come off as downright literary, to the point that you figure the haughty style might be off-putting to someone coming to the books from the movies. Here Amis reveals that the majority of his text was written just before Fleming died; Amis knew that, even though the critics of his day dismissed Ian Fleming, history would remember him and his work – not to mention his style, which Amis also knew no other author would be able to duplicate. “He leaves no heirs.”

Amis includes three brief appendices: “Science Fiction” details the use of gadgets in the novels, and only here did it occur to me that, in Fleming’s world, it was the villains who most often used them – Mr. Big’s desk-gun in Live And Let Die, Rosa Klebb’s poison-blade shoes in From Russia, With Love, etc. “Literature And Escape” doesn’t have much to do with Bond at all, and is more so about how one can seek escape in the world of fiction. The final appendix, “Sadism,” speculates on if Fleming himself got off on writing about violence (Amis having earlier made it clear that Bond himself doesn’t get off on being tortured!), and contains lenghty excerpts from the work of Mickey Spillane, an author whom Amis states really did get sadistic in his work. We also get brief rundowns on all of the Bond novels, with locales, villains, Bond-girls, and highlights listed for each.

In sum, The James Bond Dossier is required reading for the Bond fan, and I’d say it should be mandatory reading for anyone hired to write a Bond continuation novel, at least one that’s set within the timeframe of Fleming’s original novels. Amis throughout naturally captures the pre-PC mindset that has disappeared from today’s mainstream thriller writers but should be a necessity for any author trying to duplicate the vibe of Fleming’s work; most of the new Bond novelists, in particular Sebastian Faulks and Anthony Horowitz, have taken great pains to remove themselves from the politically-incorrect world of the Fleming originals. However, I’m wondering if Faulks did read this one, as Amis uses the phrase “devil may care” throughout, and that’s the title of Faulks’s Bond novel. (Amis also uses the phrase “carte blanche” at one point, a phrase which Jeffrey Deaver used for the title of his own Bond novel.)

In 1965 Kinglsey Amis published another Bond study: The Book Of Bond: or Every Man His Own Bond, released under the pseudonym William “Bill” Tanner (ie, the name of M’s chief of staff in the novels). I also have this one, but haven’t read it – it’s even more collectible than The James Bond Dossier. By all accounts it’s is more jokey than the Dossier, but no doubt still compelling and certainly worth a read.

More notably, Amis was the first author contracted to continue Fleming’s legacy: Colonel Sun as mentioned was published in 1968, when Gildrose (owners of the Bond books) briefly attempted to start a new line of novels under the house name “Robert Markham.” That’s another one I have but haven’t read, though I do recall flipping through a library copy many years ago. While well-regarded by Bond fans today, it appears that Colonel Sun didn’t do very well at the time (Fleming’s widow hated it, by the way), and was the only “Markham” book ever published. But at least Amis wrote a Bond novel of his own, and if The James Bond Dossier proves anything, it’s that Kingsley Amis was the man for the job.

The Avenger #4: Manhattan Massacre

The Avenger #4: Manhattan Massacre, by Chet Cunningham
October, 1988  Warner Books

The fourth and final volume of The Avenger finds unhinged hero Matt Hawkee slightly less unhinged as he ventures to Los Angeles to wipe out “a new Oriental syndicate.” The “all druggers must die” vitriol of the previous volume is a bit whittled down this time, Chet Cunningham for the most part leaving the sadism to the villains. This is the New Connection, a conglomerated triad which takes heroin-hooked whores off the street, gussies them up, and has them play Russian roulette in front of a betting audience!

Some unspecified time after volume 3, Hawke is in Los Angeles, looking into the recent rash of hookers who have committed “suicide.” All of them were teenaged runaways, heroin addicts despite their youth, and Hawke’s drugger senses are alerted. There’s no attempt at making Hawke an empathetic character this time; he baldly exposists his sad-story background to one dude early in the book, and then on page 114 we get an arbitrary flashback. But otherwise he’s just your typical men’s adventure protagonist, out to use his endless arsenal against the drug-dealers in a variety of firefights.

As mentioned we get a good glimpse of how evil Hawke’s latest target is. In a long opening sequence, we meet a 15 year-old street hooker/heroin addict from Chinatown who is taken into an opulent “palace” in Chinatown and pampered. She is to be the latest roulette victim, offered a hundred thousand dollars for the bet – if she survives, the money is hers. Cunningham makes us feel for the poor girl as she is taken into the betting room on a grand throne, dressed up to the nines by a staff of makeup and wardrobe artists. The sequence ends as expected, with the girl blowing her brains out.

Hawke tracks down David Wong, older brother of the dead girl; a successful businessman in Chinatown, Wong tried to keep his sister from taking to the streets but failed. He becomes Hawke’s first accomplice in the novel, eager to get vengeance on whoever was behind the girl’s death; he too disbelieves the newspaper stories that these have all been unconnected suicides. However he is very fearful of the New Connection. He also has another sister, this one a hottie named Jasmine who dances for a living and who surprisingly does not become one of Hawke’s conquests.

Hawke also reconnects with an old ‘Nam pal while in LA. This is Buzz Yuan, former ‘Nam chopper pilot, current Wall Street type. An interesting note throughout Manhattan Massacre is that Vietnam is given a lot more focus. Whereas most men’s adventure heroes in the ‘70s were also ‘Nam vets, very seldom did we actually read anything about the war – the focus instead was on their current, lone wolf activities of the characters. But in the ‘80s the memories of Vietnam were brought to the fore – no doubt catering to the rash of action flicks which featured Vietnam vets – so we have many arbitrary reminsices from Hawke or Buzz about “that time in Huey” or whatnot.

Together these two get in a bunch of firefights throughout the novel, traveling around the New York area and taking out various New Connection operations. Buzz gradually drops his businessman makeover and becomes more at home in the chaotic bloodshed he once experienced daily in the bush; it’s all entertaining but increasingly unbelievable, like when Buzz even rents out a chopper so he can more completely recreate his ‘Nam days, above the streets of Manhattan.

Cunningham gets a little pulpy with New Connection’s leader, the mysterious Mr. Chu of Hong Kong who uses three gorgeous, miniskirted Chinese ladies as his personal bodyguard. However Cunningham doesn’t exploit this; the bodyguard gals are hardly featured, and arbitrarily sent to take out Hawke at one point, who almost perfunctorily wastes them without the proper exploitation factor the scene requires. But Hawke does score with another gorgeous Chinese lady: Lin Liu, herself a former heroin addict who was roped into the Russian roulette scheme and actually survived. Now she’s a high-ranking New Connection member, but, as Hawke discovers, she’s eager to leave.

Posing as a heroin dealer himself, Hawke does business with Lin Liu, who for no reason at all abruptly tells Hawke she can tell there’s something different about him; she blabs her entire lifestory to this veritable stranger, desperate that he might help her escape Mr. Chu and his people. Cunningham leaves the sex scene off-page, but afterwards Hawke has feelings for the girl – and posthaste she’s abruptly removed from the narrative, captured by a suspicious Mr. Chu. She’s basically in the book long enough to exposit to Hawke about the syndicate, have sex with him, and then get caught!

Most of Manhattan Massacre is comrpised of Hawke and Buzz raiding various places and killing all the druggers within. Cunnigham doesn’t get too crazy with the violence. He also adds arbitrary stuff like the sudden presence of a DEA agent whose partner – a Chinese guy – turns out to be a traitor. Meanwhile Buzz is the one who falls in love with Broadway dancer Jasmine Wong, thus it’s Buzz we’re to empathize with when Jasmine is also caught by Mr. Chu in the climax – Lin Liu has been gone so long we’ve already forgotten about her. However Cunningham brings her back just long enough to gut us with her sad fate.

The finale sees Hawke and Buzz raiding the opulent palace in which the Russian roulette takes place – humorously, Hawke arrives just seconds after the latest victim inadvertently blows her own brains out – and while by this point the constant action scenes have lost a bit of their novelty value, or at least their excitement, Mr. Chu is delivered a very Hollywood-esque sendoff: Hawke jams a primed grenade in his mouth.

Speaking of Hollywood, Hawke announces his intention to head there and root out the rampant drug-dealing at the end of the book, thus the unpublished fifth volume likely occurred there. I think I read somewhere – was it Brad Mengel who wrote about it? – that this fifth volume was eventually epublished, but I’ve never bothered looking it up. At any rate, here ended the Avenger series, at least so far as the paperback run went.

Live And Let Die (James Bond #2)

Live And Let Die, by Ian Fleming
April, 1964  Signet Books
(Original UK edition 1954)

The second volume of Ian Fleming’s James Bond is worlds better than the first one, in my opinion. While I found Casino Royale a tepid bore, Live And Let Die offers everything one thinks of when one thinks “James Bond.” Everything is here, from the pulpish main villain with his assorted henchmen and deadly gadgets to the exotic babe Bond tangles with. And Bond himself comes off as the Bond we all know and love, less the dandified wuss of the previous book.

This is another Bond I’d never read, as I was never able to find a copy of it when I was a kid. I’d seen the movie many times, though, as it was one of the few I owned on VHS. Even then I somehow was aware that Live And Let Die the book was much different than the movie, in particular some nasty things that happen to Bond’s CIA pal Felix Leiter (things which didn’t occur until the ’89 Bond film License To Kill). Reading the novel for the first time, what most surprised me was how similar it was to what eventually became “the” Bond template, of our hero starting out in the “real world” of espionage before venturing further into adventure pulp. In many ways this novel is similar to the later Doctor No.

It’s early January, not too long after Casino Royale (the events of which are barely and only vaguely mentioned, as if Fleming too wanted to forget about them), and Bond has fully recovered from the injuries he endured, even getting skin grafted on the back of his scarred hand. He has a burning yearning to harm SMERSH; the stated reason is revenge for the operative who cut up the back of Bond’s hand, but one could figure it’s more so because Bond is still grieving over Vesper Lynn’s betrayal and wants to lash out at her employer. So M figures Bond will be thrilled at this latest case. 

The Bond-M meeting, which is given a little more spotlight this time, sets the pace for future volumes, and these have always been some of my favorite moments of the series. I think O.F. Snelling in his 1964 book 007 James Bond: A Report was spot on when he said that M is “something like that hoary old martinet of an English gentleman created and played by C. Aubrey Smith in so many Hollywood films before and during the War.” I can easily picture M as looking like C. Aubrey Smith in my mind’s eye (and certainly I’ve never pictured him as a woman!), and I’ve always enjoyed the occasional father-son dynamic between him and Bond.

Anyway, this brings us to the villian of the piece, Mr. Big, who in the novel is more like Doctor No than the almost caricature of a villain we got in the Live And Let Die film. This Mr. Big is a giant with “gray-black” skin like “the face of a week-old corpse in the river.” M’s briefing has it that Big, who is “half Negro and half French,” got his start in the crime world in Harlem before working for the OSS in WWII. During these years he became friendly with a Russian operative, after which Big apparently spent five years in Moscow. Now – and this is the carrot M dangles in front of Bond – Big is apparently an operative of SMERSH. He’s also a self-styled voodoo leader of his superstitious followers, proclaiming himself as the zombie of voodoo god Baron Samedi.

The book is a bit longer than Casino Royale but moves a lot faster, save for the odd moments where Fleming lets his newspaperman past get the better of him, like when he shoehorns in a long excerpt from some travel book on voodoo. Thus M’s briefing is pretty concise, and goes that Big is financing Communist activities via ancient coins he’s pillaged from a pirate treasure possibly somewhere in Jamaica. Off Bond goes to New York, tracing the coin pipeline from where it first appeared in Harlem. He’s reunited with affable Texan CIA agent Felix Leiter, and Fleming again does a nice job of making the Americans seem like good guys; Bond clearly likes Leiter, and there’s none of the now-mandatory “America is the source of all evil” bullshit you’ll see in modern thrillers.

Black characters play a big role in Live And Let Die, from Mr. Big, who proclaims himself as “the first of the great Negro villains,” to a host of underlings and one-off service industry personnel. While modern reviewers might bitch that Fleming makes some of them come off as dumb with overdone “black dialect” dialog, it also must be said that Fleming doesn’t go out of his way to discriminate against them. Indeed, Felix Leiter proclaims to Bond that he’s “always liked” black people, and there are long bits of exposition from him about ‘40s and ‘50s jazz, including the intersting tidbit that Leiter wrote a series of articles about jazz music.

Fleming brings to life early ‘50s New York, also providing the info that it was only around this time that Harlem was becoming the crime-ridden district of later years; I found particularly interesting Leiter’s off-hand mention that in the pre-War years Harlem was a safe place to go hang out at night. Fleming also does a good job of catching American vernacular, but there are a few parts where he has Leiter say “shall” or other such Britishisms which don’t come off right. Leiter and Bond have a veritable Harlem nocturne on Bond’s first night in the city, checking out the sights and trying to root out Mr. Big from the superstitious and paranoid locals. It’s an extended setpiece that is the essence of the “reporter’s eye for detail” you’re always reading about Fleming.

In one of the few moments that made it into the film version, Bond and Leiter are caught via trap chairs in a Big-owned club; after watching a striptease act (where Fleming gets a bit more risque than anywhere in Casino Royale), the two find their chairs suddenly descending to a hidden bottom level. They’re accosted by Big’s henchmen and separated, and here Bond has the mandatory face-to-face with the villain. Big is a very cool villain at that, proclaiming that he’s bored with life and that he approaches his villainy with the air of an artiste. Here we also meet this volume’s Bond Girl: Solitaire, “one of the most beautiful women Bond had ever seen,” a raven-haired French girl of stupendous curves who is supposedly telepathic.

The goofy tarot cards of the movie are nowhere to be found as Solitaire monitors Bond for Big, using her gift to tell if he’s lying. However Solitaire, unseen by Big, keeps her eyes off Bond’s; later she will tell Bond that, as soon as she saw him, she knew he would be the man for her. While this sort of thing is snidely dismissed in today’s progressivised world – modern Bond continuation author Anthony Horowitz in fact claimed in interviews that he specifically set Trigger Mortis after Goldfinger so he could set to right Fleming’s “offensive” idea that Pussy Galore the lesbian was only waiting for a real man all along – I for one thought it was just another enjoyable indication of how Fleming’s Bond books are nothing more than “fairy tales for adults,” as Fleming himself once defended them.

Here, around 50 pages in (and this Signet edition by the way is deceptively slim, with the ultra-small print of these early ‘60s paperbacks), James Bond makes his first kills of the series. After getting his left pinky finger broken in a grueling sequence, Bond frees himself while he’s being dragged off – using his favored method, as displayed in Casino Royale; kicking at his opponent’s shins. But this time Bond’s wearing steel-toed shoes, and ends up bashing the hell out of Tee-Hee, the Big henchman who broke Bond’s finger. After Tee-Hee falls to his death, Bond appropriates his .38 and blows away two more goons (“Bond shot straight into the screaming mouth”) before escaping. Now this is more like it!

Whereas the Bond franchise is known for exotic locations, Live And Let Die plants Bond in the American southwest, as he travels by train with Solitaire, who has fled from Big. I found it humorous reading about James Bond eating in diners and truckstops. Solitaire proves to be a great Bond Girl, much more interesting than the film version; the expected chemistry between the two is slowly built, but when it leads to the expected shenanigans Fleming surprises us by having Bond incapable of doing the deed, due to his broken pinky finger. Despite the lack of sex Fleming still gets more risque than previously, with juicy detail on Solitaire’s “hard breasts” as Bond cops a feel while making out with her – and Bond even informs her, “You kiss better than any other girl I’ve known,” which is something I bet every woman would just love to hear.

When the action moves down to the Everglades of Florida, Live And Let Die loses its way for a bit. Suddenly the novel is comprised of extended rants about this or that: the bad food of American diners and how horrible American boiled eggs are (Bond), the gross “oldsters” of Florida and the young wolves who fleece them for their cash (Solitaire); how boring and impersonal American cars are (Bond again). In particular this ranting sounds strange coming from Solitiare, who previously was an enigmatic figure; when she’s suddenly going on and on about the “rackets” in Florida and how they take advantage of the seniors down there, it’s like a totally different character. 

Things pick up when Solitaire is abducted right on cue by Big’s omnipresent henchmen. But here we get a reminder of the dandified wuss of Casino Royale. When Bond discovers Solitaire has been taken…he goes out for dinner and gets drunk. Whereas your average spy yarn hero would immediately go off in hot pursuit, chasing leads even if there were none, Bond does nothing – and in fact, it’s Felix Leiter who goes off looking for her. (That’s why America saved England’s ass in the war, I guess – we get things done!) This leads to one of the more memorable moments in the Bond novels – Leiter is caught and turned into shark bait.

“He disagreed with something that ate him,” goes the letter that accompanies Leiter’s bandage-covered body, which is deposited in Bond’s room the next day (a line that would also feature in License To Kill). Eventually we’ll learn that Leiter has lost “one of his arms” and the lower half of his left leg. This actually compels Bond to do something; off he goes to the headquarters of Big’s local rep, the shotgun-wielding Robber. A scene that brings to mind moments from the film franchise ensues as Bond engages the Robber in a shootout in a large aquarium stocked with exotic fish; Bond employs the .25 Beretta which in Doctor No would be branded “a woman’s gun.” This proves to be Bond’s third kill in the book (and series), as he makes the Robber fall prey to his own trap, tumbling into the same shark tank he earlier placed Leiter.

The final quarter continues in the more pulpy direction. Now in Jamaica, Bond meets up with local MI6 rep Strangways and native swimmer/fisherman Quarrel (both of whom would return in Doctor No). Mr. Big is on an island off Jamaica surrounded by the long stretch of Shark Bay; Bond has decided he will, alone, swim over there, take out Big, and save Solitaire. To do this he spends a week training with Quarrel, cutting his three-pack-a-day habit down to a few cigarettes a day and swimming a few miles each morning. By the end of the week his pinky finger is healed and he’s lean and mean, more like the Bond of the movies.

Future Bond continuation author Raymond Benson in his The James Bond Bedside Companion (revised edition, 1988) calls out Bond’s nighttime journey through Shark Bay as one of the highlights of Live And Let Die, and it certainly is, though as typical with Fleming it’s a bit digressive and overly poetic for a thriller. Bond, suited up in black frogman gear courtesy Q Branch and armed with a Champion harpoon gun, navigates the bizarre underworld of the sea as he makes his own commando raid on Big’s headquarters. There’s lots of wonderful aquatic description, but at the same time it sort of gets in the way of the suspense. However this is part of what makes Fleming appealing to so many readers.

Hopes for an underwater action scene are dashed; after planting a limpet mine beneath Big’s ship, Bond is attacked by a barracuda and then quickly abducted by two of Big’s frogmen, who spotted Bond’s scuba bubbles during a brief fight with an octopus. In a scene that reminded me of something Manning Lee Stokes would’ve delivered, a half-nude Bond finds himself in an cave, surrounded by Big and his army of “Negroes” while voodoo drums blare from a turntable. In a gripping finale that didn’t reach the film franchise until For Your Eyes Only, Bond and Solitaire are stripped, tied together, and pulled behind Big’s ship over the jagged corral reefs – but Bond’s mentally counting the seconds until that limpet mine explodes.

While Fleming provides a great sendoff for Big (Bond watches from the safety of a reef as “the Big Man” is torn apart by sharks), Solitaire sort of fades away; she’s developed as a great character and then removed from the narrative, only appearing again in the final few pages. M has granted Bond two weeks “passionate leave,” and Bond plans to spend it here in Jamaica with Solitaire – though curiously, he also declares that Quarrel will be staying with them, apparently as a cook.

Despite the periodic digressions and sometimes-overwhelming scenery decription, Fleming keeps Live And Let Die moving, and provides periodic bursts of action. Even when things don’t pan out the way the action enthusiast wants – ie Bond’s scuba raid on Big’s lair – Fleming still has a knack for expertly setting everything up and making the reader eager to see what happens. His novels are really odd when compared to the average thriller (they’re almost like Mike Hammer as written by Proust or something), yet at the same time they’re very engaging. It’s a strange magic, and no doubt the reason why none of the Bond continuation novels have ever been held in the same regard as Fleming’s originals.

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 4

Eurospy: 

Agent 505 Death Trap Beirut (1966): I really enjoyed this one, a bright and colorful German-Italian production shot entirely in sixties Beirut, a much different place than today. The movie has a great opening as a few lovely young women are shot by the poolside, their killer using a C02 gun that fires frozen air bullets! The killer himself is soon done away with, his dying words that the girls “knew too much” and that by tomorrow everyone in Beirut will be dead. Enter Agent 505 of Interpol, a suave spy-type who looks similar to Roger Moore. This dude quickly informs us he operates by his own rules: he knows killers will be looking for him, so sets up a gullible traveling salesman as bait! At least he ensures the guy isn’t killed. As with most West German productions there’s a focus on comedy here, mostly through ironic one-liners, which gives the film more of a Bond feel than most Italian Eurospy efforts, which usually fail at the ironic comedy. That being said, the middle half derails a bit with the bungling efforts of a group of criminals 505’s Interpol colleague gets involved with.

This does pay off, though, as the criminals work for the mysterious Sheik, ie the villain of the piece, a master criminal with only four fingers but who is never seen. The reveal of who the Sheik turns out to be is actually well done, if implausible. There could be more gals on display, though: the only two main ones are a blonde trickshot artist with bouffant hair who is the ex-wife of the Sheik, and another blonde, this one a reporter who falls for 505. The story takes place over two days and the action keeps moving, with more C02 guns, a telephone-gun, and other gadgets, plus a lot of stunts, including 505 hanging off a helicopter. The finale is the highlight, as 505 and pals infiltrate the villains’s lair, and like “Coplan FX 18 casse tout” we have a miniature “Dr. No” riff, with the heroes and villains all wearing shiny silver radiation suits and blowing each other away with submachine guns. This flick features the most brutal killing of a main villain yet in Eurospy, with the hearltess bastard’s face wrapped up in barbed wire before he gets blown up!

Cifrato Speciale (1966): Apparently the English title for this German-Italian production would be “Special Cypher,” but it was never brought over to the US, and thus the only print we have of it is from a widescreen German VHS which some helpful fan has subtitled in English. Like most West German co-productions this one seems to have had a nice budget, but it’s undone by constant action scenes, with more fistfights randomly and arbitrarily breaking out than in one of the Bruceploitation flicks of Bruce Le. Seriously, hero Lang Jeffries (as a US agent posing as a formerly-insane pilot…!) can’t go five minutes without someone jumping out of the shadows and taking a swing at him. The flick opens in 1945 as two Nazi pilots drop special crates into the ocean. Twenty years later various factions are looking for these crates, which apparently hold the plans for anti-gravity tech. Jeffries poses as the lone survivor of the flight, who has spent the past two decades in an insane asylum, escaping as the movie opens. Everyone thus believes that Jeffries knows where the crates are, so everyone looks for him.

There are a few Eurobabes in attendance, one of whom is a treacherous spy for the main villain faction, a SPECTRE-type cabal that apparently resides in an underwater city (we only see the inside of it). Here various henchman stalk around in shiny black jumpsuits, toting submachine guns. There’s a fair bit of “Thunderball”-inspired underwater photography, with Jeffries in scuba gear getting in a few scrapes beneath the waves (even here there is constant fighting) while riding around on an underwater sled. It climaxes in the villain’s lair, but hopes for a big battle are dashed as a deus ex machina poison gas does the hero’s job for him. But the sets look cool and the movie certainly keeps moving, even though it’s all so convoluted. Like many German productions this one also mocks itself throughout, with “witty” asides making fun of the events. Also a great bit where the treacherous spy babe strips down to bra and panties to prove she isn’t wearing a wire, but the bastards cut away when she doffs her bra. I wept bitterly.

Coplan FX 18 casse tout (1965): This one’s supposedly a French-Italian joint, but it seems a bit too French to me. Sluggish pace, self-conscious camera angles, lack of a good Eurobabe. As usual the Italians just did it better. Also, it’s very humorless. This is surprising given the star, the Roger Moore-looking dude who showed up two years later in the slapstick-esque “Dick Smart 2.007.” Here he’s dour and merciless Coplan, top French agent. The convoluted plot has him going to the Middle East for something about a missing scientist or whatever; stuff just happens in the movie and characters react like it’s a big deal, whereas the viewer has no idea what’s going on. There’s a lack of gadgets and as mentioned a lack of Eurobabes, with only two or three of them showing up in minor roles. Action is occasional, like a long motorbike-car chase. The final thirty minutes improves with an underground complex where a nuclear missile is being built. It’s all very Bond-esque, complete with goons in sci-fi radiation suits a la “Dr. No.” But even this can’t save the film, which just lacks the spark and fun of an Italian spy-fy flick.

Danger!! Death Ray (1967): You’d think watching the uncut version of this flick in widescreen would result in a movie better than the one so capably mocked on MST3K, but nope! It really sucks. “Special effects by Timmy” does sum up the film, but you have to respect how the filmmakers just said the hell with it and clearly used toys in various shots. Superbuff Gordon Scott as “Bart Fargo” can’t really carry the film, and the plot lacks much logic, even considering the standards of the Eurospy genre. Highlight is the finale, which almost prefigures Arnold’s “Commando,” with buff Bart blowing away scads of henchmen at the villain’s villa. The annyoing, repetitive “Watermelon Man” theme song drives me crazy, and I say this as a guy who actually collects Italian soundtracks from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Otherwise this one didn’t thrill me, but the widecreen/English-dubbed print I saw looked great.

Dick Smart 2.007 (1967): A strange hybrid of a comedy film and a gadget & action-heavy Eurospy movie, “Dick Smart 2.007” is a spoof of Bond that sometimes takes itself seriously. Dick Smart is a suave, very Roger Moore-esque superagent, one more interested in picking up chicks than solving cases. Like Moore he’s also very fond of gadgets and has a motorcycle/helicopter deal. Whereas most of these Eurospy movies are all about the European babes, the hotstuff female lead in this one is blonde British babe Margaret Lee, who is extremely pretty. She plays the villainous Lady Lister, who is trying to steal jewels or some such, but one of her own employees turns out to be the main villain. Dick Smart of course hooks up with her, as well as other babes throughout, but the “comedy” angle is grating and too low-brow, like cranked-up film speed in the fight scenes. But there is a lot of action, and the finale is especially nice, with Dick Smart and Lady Lister united in a raid on the villain’s compound, complete with Lady Lister blowing away a bunch of villains. Usually the women are just eye candy in these movies, but she holds her own, and not in the generic “touch chick” cliché of modern action movies. She also looks damn great in a bikini-type scuba suit.

From The Orient With Fury (1965): The second film in the “Dick Malloy” trilogy features studly, hirsute Ken Clark returning as Agent 077. This one unfortunately is about as drab as the first film, “Mission Bloody Mary,” and nowhere as great as the last one, “Special Mission Lady Chaplin.” This despite a premise concerning a death ray. At any rate Malloy is called on to look into a missing, perhaps dead scientist who was working on a laser-based ray. Off Malloy goes to Madrid, where he gets in one brawl after another. Seriously, this film wins the contest for most barroom brawls in a Eurospy flick, with two of them breaking out just minutes apart, in two separate bars. One of them goes on forever, complete with a tourist Spaniard or something who eagerly joins in the festivities, adding a bit of unfunny “comedy.”

As far as the Eurospy-mandatory Eurobabes go, we have a return of the treacherous brunette who also played a bad girl in the much superior Superseven Calling Cairo that same year. There’s also megababe Margaret Lee, who shows up in the last half hour as a fellow secret agent; her voice is dubbed this time and she’s got beach-bottle blonde hair to her chin. The film doesn’t do much to exploit its actresses, though, save for a busty Spanish beauty Malloy scores with midway through the film. Otherwise this is a tedious, generic film, clearly shot on a budget. Only the finale shows any spark, so to speak, with the main villain busting out that raygun, which is also low budget but still fun. When a person or thing is hit by the ray they glow blue and then disappear. Also this flick features one of the more annoying soundtracks, from a recurring theme song which quickly grates on the nerves to a recurring big band cue that does the same.

Fury In Marrakesh (1966): Bob Dixon, Agent 077 (an annoying ass who bears a disconcerting resemblance to infamous Saturday Night Live loser Charles Rocket), heads to Marrakesh on his first assignment. At times this movie encapsulates the “Budget Bond” aesthetic of Italian Eurospy; there’s even a Q who has a roomful of dangerous gadgets which he shows off for 077. But this is a more randy pseudo-Q; he produces a pair of X-ray glasses and calls in his sexy secretary to try them out on! Agent 077’s mission is to find a sexy gal who lifted a bunch of counterfeit cash that itself was looted from Hitler’s war stash. A SPECTRE-type cabal is also after her.

Bob Dixon 077 is not only annoying but also arrogant, which is pretty funny when you consider he’s as green as you can get. He gets knocked out and captured more times than any other Eurospy hero I can think of. Also his life is sometimes saved via sheer deus ex machina, something you’d never see in a genuine Bond film. There are a ton of gadgets in this one, though, which adds to the fun. But 077 himself ruins it, and the finale seems rushed. Also the dubbing in this one is notable, particularly 077’s; I wonder if the actor himself dubbed it. At any rate it’s all dubbed very amateurishly. Another demerit for this one is the lack of Eurobabes; what few women are here are relegated to the background. The only notable one is the blonde who played the stewardess/evil spy in Operation Atlantis, who here plays the evil spy babe Heidi.

Mission Bloody Mary (1965): The first of three films brawny American actor Ken Clark did as “Dick Malloy, Agent 077,” the other two being “From The Orient With Fury” and “Special Mission Lady Chaplin.” This first one is okay but is more of a “realistic” espionage picture. Malloy heads across Europe and to Greece to track down the titular Bloody Mary, an experimental and highly-dangerous atomic device that’s been stolen. Clark got his start in Italian flicks in the sword and sandal movies due to his bodybuilder physique, thusly the fistfights are given more focus in this one. Clark is one of the Eurospy actors who could hold his own against Sean Connery, at least in the athletic category, but again he sorta looks like Roger Moore, like so many other Eurospy actors.

The film is very slavish to the Bond formula, complete with a theme song that’s almost lifted from John Barry. However I thought the movie was for the most part marginal; the fistfights get old after a while and the “surprise” reveal of who main villain Black Lily is can be seen coming halfway through the movie. The gadgets aren’t as prevalent this time, but 077 does have a special revolver with 9 rounds (it’s quickly lost, though), as well as an attachment for it that apparently gives it super-caliber properties (this showed up again in the much-superior “Special Mission Lady Chaplin”). He also has a kit that can recover burned messages. The movie is fast-paced and again comes very close to capturing the look and feel of a Bond movie, but it just lacks that special something more expected of spyghetti.

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966): The third of three films with Ken Clark as “Dick Malloy, Agent 077” (not to be confused with Bob Fleming, Agent 077, of course!). This one co-stars the lovely Daniela Bianchi, the svelte blonde who had the female lead in “From Russia With Love” (and she also had the female lead in “O.K. Connery,” to be reviewed next time, as the villainous blonde who later went good). She is the titular Lady Chaplin, yet another henchwoman-type character. The film is filled with great imagery, like the opening shot of Lady Chaplin, disguised as a nun, pulling a submachine gun out of her habit and blowing away a bunch of priests. (Turns out later they were really spies.) The film is very much in the vein of the Connery Bond movies, with lots of action and gadgets and a decent budget. Ken Clark is good as the hero, and he gets to pull his own “Thunderball”-type finale, donning a scuba suit and coming to the aid of Lady Chaplin, who as you guessed goes good before film’s end and helps fight her old boss. This is considered one of the classics of the Eurospy genre, and rightly so. Plus it’s available in a fairly nice widescreen print.