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.

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.

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 3

Eurospy: 

008 Operation Exterminate (1965): This was the first Eurospy flick from prolific Italian writer-director Umberto Lenzi, who went on to do “Superseven Calling Cairo” and “The Spy Who Loved Flowers.” The guy really knew his spyghetti because this is another good one. Perhaps the main gimmick of “008 Operation Exterminate” is the fact that 008 is…a woman!! Seriously though, blonde German babe Ingrid Schoeller plays 008, an American agent sent to Cairo to find out the truth behind a rumored radar-blocking station. Unlike the “tough chick” cliché of today, 008 is svelte and self-assured, with none of the aggressively macho posturing of today’s female action characters. That being said, she carries a derringer with “supersonic” rounds in her garter belt and has knock-out mist in her lipstick tube. The actress is certainly pretty and enjoys showing off her impressive cleavage with various plunging-neckline outfits, but one issue I had was the constant vacant expression on her face. She doesn’t look very comfortable in the role at times, perhaps reason why there was never a followup, even though the finale points the way to one.

008 teams up with a British agent (played by an oily and hirsute Italian actor) and together they run afoul of various spy-world types, including a henchman who wears a leather glove that shoots projectile knives. The plot features the usual incomprehensible detours expected of Eurospy, and sometimes it seems to lose its way, but we do get yet another egregious trip to the pyramids. It wraps up in a nice climax in the villain’s high-tech underworld lair, complete with flashing balls of light and whirring electronics. Strangely though the film doesn’t end here, but goes on for another 20 minutes as 008 and partner head to Switzerland to track down the man who has stolen the radar-blocking plans. It all ends with various turnarounds and reversals, but everything wraps up nicely. Overall “008 Operation Exterminate” is another sterling example of the Eurospy genre and would be a great gateway drug into the world of spyghetti.

Devilman Story (1967): Also known as “The Devil’s Man,” this is my favorite Eurospy of all, even though it isn’t technically Eurospy, given that our hero is a journalist. But otherwise it has all the motifs of the genre and delivers them with aplomb. The movie also comes very close to capturing the vibe of a Nick Carter: Killmaster novel; the villain, the titular Devilman, even shares some similarities with Nick Carter’s archenemy Mr. Judas. The movie is very much on the sci-fi tip with a plot about electronic brains, mind control, and human experimentation. It takes a while to get there, though, with a first half that’s more along the lines of typical Eurospy. A sexy brunette Eurobabe named Christine is visiting Rome with her brain surgeon father when he’s abducted; along comes Mike, ruggedly handsome American actor Guy Madison, who looks sort of like a tough guy version of the Professor from “Gilligan’s Island.” Claiming that he’s a newspaperman, one who works for a “scientific journal,” Mike could in fact be a spy in reality – for a reporter, he certainly knows his judo, not to mention how to handle a submachine gun. Mike and Christine follow various leads until they get to Africa, where it develops that Christine’s father has been taken to the desert fortress of a madman who is considered a devil by the Tuareg desert tribes. Christine herself is captured by the “black riders,” ie the black-robed desert warriors who work for Devilman; mind-controlled desert warriors at that, with milky white eyes. Mike manages to infiltrate the place, and here the movie goes full-on sci-fi, with whirring blips and bloops from the bizarre contraptions the villain has stocked his lair with. We have nude men and women in weird red-lighted cryogenic chambers, electronic brains, and even a gizmo that makes a corpse crush a heavy iron ball in his fist.

By far the coolest villain in all Eurospy, Devilman wears a black uniform, leather gloves with blades that are perfect for slicing throats, and a silver mask, so that he sort of looks like the Eurospy equivalent of Destro, from GI Joe. Beneath the mask his face is a scarred ruin, like Mr. Judas. The filmmakers don’t cheat us out of a good finale, either, as is typical for many of these movies; Mike escapes and comes back with those Tuaregs for an action-packed finale that sees hell unleased on Devilman’s fortress, countless men gunned down and a climax that features about a gazillion explosions. Mike even takes on Devilman in a quick judo tussle, before everything quickly wraps up for a happy ending – Devilman’s plot averted (something about becoming a “new messiah” with his electronic brain), Christine’s dad freed from his mind control, and Mike and Christine no doubt about to hop into bed together soon. Previously only available in a poor-quality print, “Devilman Story” is now available on the underground circuit in a nice widescreen print with the English dub. The compilers even included fansubs for the few scenes that were never dubbed into English.

Lightning Bolt (1966): Another of my favorites in the Eurospy genre. It very much has the feel of a Bond film of the era, but it’s interesting because the hero is more along the lines of Roger Moore’s take on Bond. Strangely, I don’t think the dude kills a single person in the film. Instead he busts out a checkbook – he has an unlimited account – and offers to pay off the latest villain whatever he demands! The ass-kicking is mostly courtesy the babes of the film; our hero’s boss is a busty Italian babe whose code numbers are her measurements. The hero narrates the film, which gives it a hardboiled angle, and overall you could be fooled into thinking this was an American movie.

The finale is very Bond-esque, with the villain, who is based in Florida and trying to sabotage a NASA moon launch, capturing the hero and taking him to his underwater lair. The dude’s henchmen are outfitted almost identically to the Cobra soldiers in the GI Joe cartoon. Cool stuff here like a bunch of people the villain has cryogenically frozen; in the finale they melt and we get eerie shots of decomposing skeletons. There’s another ass-kicking babe in the underwater complex, a busty blonde Eurobabe whose father is the villain’s captive and who runs around in a red jumpsuit. Overall this one is a lot of fun and a great example of the genre, but again slightly let down given that the hero doesn’t even shoot anyone, which is very strange given that it’s a spy flick from the ‘60s.

Operation Atlantis (1965): I’ve watched this one twice now and still don’t know what the hell it’s about, yet for all that it’s one of my favorites. A strange, dreamlike film, “Operation Atlantis” doesn’t make a lick of sense. Our American hero, the muscular dude who co-starred in the old “Honey West” TV show (and who would’ve made for a perfect Nick Carter if a film had ever been made from that series), is apparently a spy or somesuch, and he’s hired while on his way to vacation to go to North Africa and look into…something, I’m not sure. Instead our hero gets in one bizarre misadventure after another. At one point he’s taken captive, put on a plane, and ends up with a bunch of desert dwellers in North Africa.

Then around the halfway point the film takes on this unexpected sci-fi angle. The hero and his latest female companion put on these cool leather “space suits” and cross over a radioactive forcefield in the desert (relayed via cheap red lines on the camera)…and enter the lost colony of Atlantis! Here the movie suddenly becomes like a sword and sandal flick, with the “Atlanteans” going around in robes and performing weird rituals. Of course there’s a hot, busty “princess” who takes a shine to our hero – who by the way is the most ineffectual protagonist in any of these movies. The dude does nothing! Turns out the Atlantis colony is really a Red Chinese decoy or something (despite which all the Atlanteans are Italians), its purpose to hide from the world a store of uranium the Chicoms have discovered. (There isn’t a single Chinese actor in the film, by the way…I think we’re only informed the villains work for the Chicoms.) From there it’s back to regular Eurospy territory for a quick action scene in Rome, the end. Strange and perplexing, the film is somehow still compelling, perhaps because it’s so weird. Plus it’s got three very attractive Eurobabes in the main female roles.

The Spy Who Loved Flowers (1966) “Superseven” Martin Stevens (Roger Browne) returns in a sequel to the previous year’s “Superseven Calling Cairo,” with Umberto Lenzi also returning as writer-director. Interestingly Stevens is never referred to as “Superseven” this time, and the gadgetry/sci-fi vibe of the previous flick is for the most part gone. So are the Eurobabes, with Stevens mostly sticking with just one lady throughout, a somewhat-attractive blonde who is a big step down from the previous movie’s Rosalba Neri. But Stevens is still brutal; the flick opens with him poisoning a pretty female agent and casually making off with the blueprints she stole. Stevens’s chief has it that others know of these blueprints and must be killed.

Off Stevens goes around Europe and the Mediterranean, acting as an executioner; the main villain he chases is the titular flower-loving spy, a bearded rake who is more a thorn in the side than an actual supervillain. Another of the villains is a female Red Chinese agent (Yoko Tani); Stevens calls her a “robot” in an effective moment later in the film. During his travels Stevens runs into the aforementioned blonde, who is a magazine photographer. There are a couple firefights and chases here and there, but nothing as fun as in the previous movie, and the gadgets are nowhere to be found. But at least Stevens is dubbed with a British accent this time. We get a brief repeat of that cool negative photography trick from the previous movie when the blonde is trapped in a cell and a special light turned on to torture her, but otherwise the movie just lacks that fun spyghetti spark. Superseven Martin Stevens did not return.

The Spy With Ten Faces (1966): Another one I rank very high on the list. Our hero is “Upperseven,” a superagent for British intelligence (despite which he and his superiors are all dubbed with American accents – but then I believe the actor, who was an American, dubbed his own voice). Upperseven is a master of disguise, and the film has the feel of the “Mission: Impossible” show with latex masks transforming him into a completely different actor. At first I thought this disguise bit was going to result in a more “gentle” hero, like the one in “Lightning Bolt,” but Upperseven is damn bloodthirsty. I think he kills more people than any other Eurospy hero yet; he has a special fondness for breaking necks. This caper has him going from Copenhagen to Italy to South Africa and back again; I’d say the film had a healthy budget. Upperseven also scores often with women, and is bloodthirsty with them, too; when he sleeps with one of them (hotstuff genre mainstay Rosalba Neri) and discovers she’s set him up for a trap, he pushes her out into the street to take the bullets that were meant for him!

Lots of action in this one, including a “Thunderball”-mandatory bit where Upperseven dons scuba gear and blows up a bunch of villains. The main babe is super-hot redhead Karin Dor, a German actress who the following year played the sexy henchwoman in the Bond film “You Only Live Twice.” She is one of the better-looking women in these films, and that’s saying something. The finale sees her and Upperseven in silver jumpsuits, running around in the villain’s high-tech lair in Africa. (During the action Upperseven, disguised as the main villain, finds the time to sleep with the villain’s hot girlfriend! Even Bond wouldn’t have had the courage to pull that one off!) Karin Dor’s character is a CIA agent and another of those Eurospy chicks who gets in on the action, throwing a few fancy judo moves. That being said, she’s easily captured at one point, with her dress pulled over her head, thus showng off her black lingerie. Overall this one was a total surprise and I’d say it’s definitely one of my favorites yet.

Superseven Calling Cairo (1965): The first of two films featuring agent Martin Stevens (played by American genre mainstay Roger Browne), apparently a Canadian working for British Intelligence whose code name is Superseven (ie even better than plain ol’ 007!!). The movie is bright and colorful and a perfect example of the “Budget Bond” of these Italian Eurospy movies. Filmed in Rome and Cairo, the movie makes the most of its location footage, including an arbitrary trip to the pyramids midway through where this dumbass character tries to escape the villains…by running up the Great Pyramid!! Where did he think he was going? Most importanly, the film features some uber-sexy Eurobabes. For one we have the exotic Rosalba Neri (briefly seen in “The Spy With Ten Faces,” above) in a big part, and later we have another that is quite easy on the eyes.

The plot has Superseven chasing around a film camera that has some sort of new uranium metal or something in it; as usual for the Eurospy genre the plot is both preposterous and convoluted. Fairly good action, with some clever gadgets as well, and also cool psychedelic visuals where at one point Superseven is put in a radioactive room that glows red and these dudes with goggles come at him, and he sees them in a cool negative photography shot. The middle loses its way a bit with some dumb stuff (ie the guy running up the pyramid), but it climaxes with good dramatic reversals and action scenes. Superseven returned with the same director in the following year’s “The Spy Who Loved Flowers,” reviewed above.

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 2

Kung-Fu:

The Association (1974): This Gold Harvest flick is clearly inspired by the sleazy Japanese karate movies of the day (“Street Fighter,” “Sister Street Fighter,” etc), with copious nudity and exploitation. It’s Shanghai, apparently the ‘50s or ‘60s (not sure of the date, but one dude does drive a ‘50s Buick in it), and the movie gets off to a sleazy start with a lecherous creep murdering a rich old man – and then raping his pretty young wife! And this ain’t implied, either; it has all the creepy qualities of a Japanese movie of the day, with rampant exploitation factor, as the guy rips off the gal’s robe and starts pawing her boobs while humping her. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more lurid, the dude strangles her while he’s climaxing!!

Daughter Angela “Enter The Dragon” Mao shows ups just in time to see poor mom and dad dead; she kills the rapist/killer with a brutal head chop that makes his left eye pop out (this bit of gore another indication of the flick’s indebtedness to gory Japanese karate movies). But then our hero, an uptight cop with a sort of Chinese afro, shows up, arrests Angela – and has her shot! So what that he’s in love with her, she broke the law! This chump is our hero. The movie proceeds to get more sleazy and crazy, capped off with an outrageous scene where, with no warning, we cut to a roomful of white chicks in diaphonous robes (wearing nothing beneath them), converged before a demonic statue in a pagan temple. A nude (and very busty) Chinese gal lays on an altar, and the lead white cultist chick does a crazy dance while this awesome jazz-funk tune with blistering acid guitar blares on the soundtrack…for a good three minutes! It’s awesome.

Anyway, this is occuring in the titular “Association,” ie the Welfare Association, and the nude Chinese chick wants an abortion, and the nude dancing chicks are the abortionists! The dance is to lure her into a trance, so they can perform their grisly operation on her – but stoic cop shows up just in time to stop them. More sleaze ensues…we later cut, again with no warning, to a nude Japanese gal making out with a nude blonde gal…including closeups of the Japanese gal sucking on the blonde’s nipples! And it goes on and on, the camera lingering…later we will see this same blonde, nude as ever, riding an obese Chinese dude who has paid for her services.

But while the sleaze is phenomenal, the movie itself is lackluster…Afro uptight is a lame protagonist (the actor did nothing else, apparently), and the kung-fu fights are sporadic. Most notable is a fight between our hero and Hwang In Sik, a Korean martial artist most known for his appearance in Bruce Lee’s “Way of the Dragon.” The sleaze and exploitation goes away in the last third, and digressive plots take over, like boring hero staying with some woman who’s in danger of being the latest victim of a notorious brigand. Also, Angela Mao shows up in another role, playing a mainland Chinese cop who is the spitting image of the murdered character in the beginning of the film – this element is not much explained or explored. Also, humorously enough, after beating up the bad guys, stoic uptight cop struts off into the sunset – and is gunned down by two lowlifes!! Whether he lives or dies is not stated by film’s end, but to tell the truth I could care less. Also featuring Samo Hung as “Tiger,” a fellow cop.

Bionic Boy (1977): You’re an 8-year-old karate champion from Singapore visiting the Philipines, when your mom and dad are killed by thugs and your arms and legs are crushed. What do you do? Why, you get bionic replacement limbs and swear vengeance. This Filipino flick stars 8 year-old Johnson Yap, a prepubescent karate champion from Singapore. Don’t be mislead by the child star into thinking this is a childish movie, as thankfully “Bionic Boy” plays it straight throughout. This is funky ‘70s bell bottom fury all the way through, with fuzz guitar jazz-funk playing throughout – even the theme is a subtle lift of Oliver Nelson’s “Six Dollar Man” theme.

The highlight is the English dubbing, with all of the voices familiar from various Shaw Brothers dubs; in particular the gang of crooks are hilariously dubbed, and their bickering throughout is very funny. They’re a gang of American ‘Nam vets – we’re told some of them massacred entire villages of women and children (the memory of which causes the bastards to chuckle happily!) – and now they’re trying to corner the crime market in Southeast Asia.

The movie doesn’t waste any time on maudlin sap; Johnson’s in the car with his folks when it’s crushed by the villains, and the producers spend about 5 minutes runtime on his bionic surgery. There are no bittersweet tears about dead mom and dad, about how he’s no longer a normal young boy, etc. It’s straight to the slow-motion “bionic” running and kung-fu fighting, with a goofy synthesizer providing the “bionic noise” as Johnson beats up the gang members. He kills too, most memorably when he hurls a coconut at some dude with all his bionic might. Surprisingly, his vengeance is unsated by film’s end, with the boss of the gang escaping – we’re given an unexpectedly poignant finale, with the Bionic Boy looking angrily into the distance. And sadly we never DO get to see if he wreaked his vengeance, as the boss isn’t even mentioned in the sequel!

Bruce, Kung Fu Girls (1977): This Taiwanese kung-fu movie features all you could want from a bell bottom fury flick of the ‘70s. And more! Clearly retitled to cater to the late ‘70s Bruceploitation craze, the movie has nothing whatsoever to do with Bruce Lee. It’s about five cute kung-fu vixens who band together against an invisible criminal. Plus along the way they even get to guard the moon rock! There are five of the gals but only the main one, Polly Kuan, really has any kung-fu skills. She plays the niece of a Taiwan police inspector or somesuch, and she and her four pals (apparently visiting from America, though this isn’t revealed until the last few minutes) help out the cops for whatever reason.

The movie fumbles between chop-sockey and romantic schmaltz; Polly saves a gangly dude from thugs early in the film, and both she and her four friends fall in love with him. Cue bizarre scenes of the girls staring off into the distance while treacly Chinese pop plays on the soundtrack. Speaking of which the soundtrack for the most part is awesome, pirated from various jazz-funk LPs of the day. Three tracks in particular I was able to spot were “Whole Lotta Love” by Dennis Coffey, “Living For the City” by Ramsey Lewis, and crazily enough even a snippet of “Calypso Frelimo” by Miles David (a 30+-minute psychedelic funk tune from his ’74 double LP “Get Up With It”), which plays every time we get to see the main villain’s headquarters. The flick also dawdles too long with goofy “comedy” moments as the gals bicker over the gangly guy, who turns out to be a scientist who invented like some Maguffin serum or somesuch.

Fights break out randomly and awkwardly, with the overall cheap appearance mandatory of these kind of films; most every fight takes place outdoors. The finale gives us all we could want as Polly and pals suit up in fetish-type kung-fu gear (leather hotpants, sleeveless tops, knee-high boots, and wrist cuffs) and take on the bad guys; Polly as usual is the only one who does any real fighting. There’s no gory violence or nudity as you’d see in a Japanese karate movie of the day; for the most part “Bruce, Kung Fu Girls” is a lot of fluff, but it’s still a lot of fun. And the English dubbing is great, featuring a host of voice actors familiar from various Shaw Brothers English dubs.

The Iron Man (1975): Jimmy Wang Yu stars in this average chop-sockey from Taiwan. Somewhere I’d read that Wang Yu had a bionic hand in this one, but that’s a crock – it’s a basic false hand which he covers with a leather glove. Anyway this is a basic revenge tale; it opens in a sepia-toned ‘40s, during the Japanese occupation of China, and young Jimmy watches as his dad is murdered by the Japanese and their Chinese compatriots; afterwards poor mom is raped by the Japanese commander while little Jimmy stands there! For his trouble the kid gets his left hand lopped off by the Japanese captain…and then when everyone leaves, Jimmy’s mom blows her head off! Boy, that’s a rough day. 

Flash-forward to the funky ‘70s and Jimmy, now all grown up, is a kung-fu expert given to wearing outfits with some severe collars. He’s working his way up the chain in vengeance, aiming for the captain. Eventually he makes his way to Japan, where he falls in with a local drunk, his blind sister, and another sister, this one a hotstuff who promptly falls in love with Jimmy. Yet the Japanese captain is here as well, pining for the same gal, and in amid the lovey-dovey stuff we have more kung-fu fights than the average Bruce Li movie. And Jimmy’s just as awkward in the fights. Music cues are stolen throughout, most laughably a bit from “The Godfather.” This one isn’t recommended, even for bell bottom fury freaks like myself. Also notable for a variety of familiar voices from various Shaw Brothers movies on the dubbed English soundtrack.

The Return of the Bionic Boy (1979): This movie’s basically two sequels for the price of one – a sequel to “Bionic Boy,” again starring Johnson Yap, but also a sequel to two other Filipino action movies: “They Call Her Cleopatra Wong” (1978) and “Mean Business” (1979), both of which starred pretty, 20-year-old Singaporean actress Marrie Lee as Cleopatra Wong, a tough female cop. The producers introduce the novel concept here that Cleo is actually Sonny the Bionic Boy’s aunt, and apparently he’s visiting her here in the Philipines. This is an odd relationship for sure, though, with Cleo apparently thinking it’s okay to hang around her apartment with her ten-year-old nephew wearing nothing but a teddy! (Not that I’m complaining.) Even stranger: late in the film a captured Cleo is handcuffed to a rotating, X-shaped cross. When Sonny saves her, he first spins the cross around while Cleo’s still handcuffed to it – and starts talking to her from between her spread legs(!?). 

Despite the more comic-booky tone, the presence of Nazi villains, and even a flame-throwing tank with a dragon head, I actually like this sequel less than “Bionic Boy,” mostly because this one makes the mistake of shoehorning a lot of unnecessary “comedy” into the proceedings. This is mostly carried out via “Benny Hill”-style cranked-up film speeds, or Johnson doing goofy stuff during kung-fu fights, or the bumbling antics of the villains, one of whom is a flaming gay Chinese dude who simpers and prances during the fights. But anyway this Nazi force is doing something, apparently forcing Filipino villagers into service or somesuch, and it’s up to Sonny and Cleo to save the day.

The action’s just as firefight-heavy as kung-fu; whereas the first movie starred Johnson Yap and thus focused on his martial skills, this one cuts over just as often to Cleopatra Wong’s storyline, and thus we see her gunning down various henchmen – at one point she even dons an Afro, like a regular Chinese Pam Grier. The soundtrack this time is wholly composed of library music, and again the movie doesn’t come off like a true sequel to “Bionic Boy,” as Johnson Yap will disappear for long portions of the film and is for the most part incidental to the plot. At any rate this was it for the Bionic Boy’s cinematic adventures – and also it was the last movie with Cleopatra Wong. And both Johnson Yap and Marrie Lee also retired from the acting biz after the flick – indeed, these were the only two movies Johnson Yap appeared in.

Stoner (1974): This sleazy Gold Harvest production supposedly started life as a project between Bruce Lee and George “I used to be James Bond” Lazenby; the two became friends shortly before Lee’s passing, and Lazenby signed a contract with Gold Harvest for 3 films. The first of these was to be a part as a “spiritual adviser” in Lee’s ill-fated “Game Of Death,” followed by a larger role in this project, which after Lee’s death was revised as “Stoner,” with Lazenby in the lead role and Angela Mao Ying brought in to play a cop from mainland China. It’s debatable whether the film would’ve been this sleazy had it actually featured Bruce Lee in it; at any rate there’s plentiful boobs and sex throughout, though be warned most of the flesh is provided by unattractive white ladies who don’t sport the loveliest of shapes.

Stoner is a tough Australian cop who conveniently studied Asian languages in college, thus he’s the perfect man to head over to Hong Kong to figure out where this potent and lethal new drug is coming from. Meanwhile Angela Mao is on the same case, but while Stoner just goes around Hong Kong busting heads (and screwing gangster moll Betty Ping Tei, most remembered today as Bruce Lee’s real-life mistress – whose bed Lee died in, by the way), Angela poses as a simple country girl who keeps running afoul of the villains. Action is sporadic throughout, and as displayed in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” Lazenby is very good with on-screen scuffles and throws real-looking punches.

The soundtrack is pretty great, the acid guitar-tinged jazz-funk I so love, and the movie features a memorable opening in which a cult, led by a black dude in a robe, engage in a group orgy – gross stuff here via an egregious shot of one of those unattractive babes deep-throating a popsicle. The Shout Factory DVD, released as part of the Angela Mao Ying Collection, is notable because it combines the Hong Kong version of the film (which features a lot more footage of Angela Mao) with the international cut. Thus when you watch the English dub (in which Lazenby dubs his own voice) there will be frequent parts in which people are suddenly speaking Mandarin, with the English provided via subtitles. Overall this one’s fun but a bit ponderous at times, and the sleaze is almost equal to that of another 1974 Gold Harvest production: “The Association.”

Grindhouse/Drive-in trash: 

The Doll Squad (1973): Low-budget “Charlie’s Angels” prototype about a squad of somewhat attractive, big-haired gals who work for the government. Michael “career on the skids” Ansarra plays the villain of the piece, a “criminal genius” who appears to be in a flop sweat the entire time the camera’s on him. From his South American lair he’s somehow sabotaging US space rocket launches. The CIA runs it through the computer to see who would be best qualified to handle this menace; the computer suggests “the Doll Squad.” If only real life was like this! Surprisingly there’s no nudity, not even any adult shenanigans, but there is a bit of grindhouse gore. In particular the opening half features a few doomed members of the Doll Squad being killed by Ansarra’s men; one of them is shot in the head and we see a gory exploding quib.

The movie is a bit sluggish and horribly acted; most humorous is when the various Squad members try to talk about past missions. Without a doubt every scene in the film was captured on the first take. The producers even rip off “Mission: Impossible” with “masks” that allow some of the gals to turn into other women (complete with different bodies, naturally), but things don’t pick up until the final half, when the Doll Squad launches an assault on Ansarra’s villa. This stuff is pretty good, with the various gals toting submachine guns and blowing away swarms of henchmen. Unfortunately a lot of the action is shot in the dark or awkwardly directed, but it’s better than nothing. The low-budget aesthetics extend to the explosions, with people and vehicles “blowing up” via badly superimposed flames. It’s a mystery why this one never made it to MST3K. The Squad is clearly ready for another mission by movie’s end, but apparently no more were ever filmed.

Policewomen (1974): Offering everything you could want in ‘70s grindhouse/drive-in trash, “Policewomen” is basically a more lurid version of Angie Dickinson’s TV series “Police Woman,” only with cursing, violence, and nudity. Our hero is a busty redhead policewoman who takes a special assignment to stop a female gang. First though she must deal with the usual harrassment a female cop must endure from her male colleagues, but mind you all this is done in a fun spirit and with none of the noxious “female empowerment” mandatory in today’s action crap. For our hero, Lacey Bond, has a sense of humor. The movie does, too, with most of it played with tongue in cheek; save for an egregious part where genre stalwart William Smith shows up as a gym trainer who gets his ass kicked by Lacey, the film never becomes a comedy.

The producers stick with the right vibe throughout, and while the violence is never too bloody they are sure to give us several glimpses of naked ‘70s boobs and butt. Also it must be mentioned that there are some super-foxy ‘70s gals in the female gang, which is run by a decrepit old lady and her young bodybuilder boyfriend. The stuff with the gang is the best, particularly its intro, in which a black member tries to join, much to the dismay of an Asian gal. The racial slurs fly fast and furious, and then so do the feet, fists, and claws in an awkwardly-staged brawl. Sondra Currie, as Lacey Bond, also shows off her very nice bod as she hops in bed with the craggy-faced cop she gradually falls for; the movie ends with these two being set up as permanent partners, but unfortunately there was no sequel.

There are no violent shootouts and for the most part the action is relegated to clumsy “karate” fights, but it must be stated that Lacey sure has an enjoyably ferocious smile on her face when she beats people up! She takes her own beatings too, in particular a somewhat-unsettling bit where the bodybuilder beats the shit out of her for a few minutes of screentime; humorously, all Lacey has afterwards is a small trickle of blood coming from her mouth. Overall this is really fun grindhouse flick, filled with that early ‘70s look and feel I love so much, and I really enjoyed it.

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 1

Horror and Sci-Fi: 

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988): Believe it or not, Elvira actually starred in a feature film during the height of her ‘80s popularity. The movie must not’ve made much of a dent on the public consciousness, as I only recently discovered it. This horror-comedy is all over the map tonally, and appears to try in some spots to retain the vibe of one of the movies Elvira mocked on her “Movie Macabre” show. Playing “herself,” Elvira here is just the host of a local TV creature feature show in Los Angeles, making the same punny, boob-centric jokes as on her real show. The plot kicks in gear when she receives notice that a wealthy aunt in Smalltown, USA has died, leaving Elvira something in her will. The movie appropriates a fish out of water theme as crazy Elvira descends upon puritan, ‘50s-style America, instantly running afoul of the crusty straight-backed types who run the town. 

Interestingly though, the filmmakers don’t make much of an effort to make Elvira likable. She’s snide from the get-go, putting down everyone and mocking everything. There’s hardy any attempt at making her an empathetic character. Rather, more focus is placed on her natural assets, which are spotlighted throughout, with more boobs-centric puns than any other movie you could think of. Some of the comedy is dumb, some of it is funny, like when Elvira gets a bunch of the horny local teens to help repair the old house her aunt willed her, and tells one of them – while swinging her shapely rear in his face – “Grab a tool and start banging.”

A bit of a horror element slowly creeps in, again catering to the campy vibe of Elivra’s real show; turns out her aunt was a witch or somesuch, and within Elvira’s new home is a “cookbook” that is in reality an ancient tome of magic. Meanwhile Elivra’s evil old granduncle has his sights on it, hiring a pair of local thugs to get it for him. Eventually this leads to a finale with a warlock chasing after Elvira, complete with brief monster special effects and whatnot. Elvira also finds love with a square-jawed he-man type who curiously enough seems scared to death of her, studiously ignoring Elvira’s many attempts at bedding him.

Fans of Elvira will be in for a treat; while there’s no nudity, we do see her strip down to lingerie at one point (while a group of those horny teens spy on her from a window), and her body, as mentioned, is usually the focus of each and every scene. We also get to see some of her movie riffing, as she hosts an all-night matinee of horror movies, mocking them for the audience – “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” in this sequence, and a bit of “It Conquered the World” at the beginning of the film. The movie isn’t great nor is it terrible; it just is, and is really only recommended for Elvira fans or fans of horror hosts in general, though admittedly this aspect of Elvira’s character isn’t much dwelt upon. It’s more concerned with Elvira the cool, crazy babe, mocking the fundamentalist attitudes of the old-fashioned town, before becoming a sort-of horror movie in the final 25 minutes.

The Guyver (1991): Based on the long-running Japanese comic series that began in 1985, “The Guyver” is about a dude who comes across a “bio-boosting armor” suit which enables him to fight against monsters. A complete Kamen Rider rip-off, Guyver benefited from a super-cool main character design, which was lovingly captured in this first of two US live-action movies. Co-directed by FX artists, one of whom, Screaming Mad George, was himself Japanese, “Guyver” appears to have been intended as a gory tribute to the Japanese TV shows of the ‘70s, with heroes fighting monsters who were really just dudes in rubber suits. However the studio apparently requested that the film be more goofy, more of a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles thing.  This resulted in a helluva mixed-up film, where the “villains” pratfall all the time and then suddenly we’ll have super-weird shit like Mark Hamill turning into a human cockroach (a sequence Mad George had earlier created in “Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4”).

But “The Guyver” is most notable for having some of the most godawful acting you will ever see – EVER! The main actor is a vapid nonentity who looks eerily like future vapid nonentity Jared Leto. He sports some of the worst acting ever captured on film, but luckily about midway through the film the actor is replaced by a stuntman in the Guyver suit. The same can’t be said of the main actress though, Vivian Wu, “Guyver” being one of the very few Hollywood films of the era to feature an Asian leading actress. Her line deliveries are even worse than the main actor’s, and she isn’t helped by her big late ‘80s/early ‘90s hairdo and her then-fashionable baggy clothes. To give these actors the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were just given poor direction. (As for Mark Hamill, in a supporting role as a CIA agent, he gives his best Michael Biehn impression.) The film somewhat follows the story of the Japanese manga, only our hero is a twenty-something aikido student or something, rather than the teenager of the comic. But really his background and character aren’t much explored. He comes upon the Guyver suit, created by the father of Vivian Wu’s character, and soon enough he’s fighting a team of henchmen who can turn into biogenetic monsters.

The FX here are pretty good, very much in that ‘80s rubber monster look that today has been replaced by pathetic CGI. One of the villains is none other than Jimmie Walker, “Dy-no-mite” himself, and his monster is infamously un-PC, with big lips and buck teeth – and honestly looks a LOT like future infamy Jar-Jar Binks. But while these villains are supposed to be cold killers, the movie features them bumbling and fumbling and bickering, to the point that their threatening nature is robbed. Eventually things devolve into martial arts fights, again calling back to “Kamen Rider” and the like – not to mention calling forward to “Power Rangers” – and the Guyver design shines here. It is without question one of the coolest suits I’ve seen in any comic book adaption, and there’s never a point where it’s replaced by CGI, as would be the case in a film from today.

Only available in a so-called “director’s cut” today, “Guyver” originally was graced with a VHS release that had a bit more gore. This has all been gutted (though admittedly there was only a few seconds of it) in the current DVD, and no one seems sure why this is. Two years later the main director returned, without Mad George, to helm a sequel, “Guyver: Dark Hero,” which thankfully replaced the main actor and forgot about Vivian Wu’s character.

Inframan (1975): This Shaw Brothers production from Hong Kong taps into the Ultraman/Kamen Rider craze, but lacks the unique, bizarre spin of the Japanese originals, replacing it with lengthy kung-fu fights that retain the somewhat-acrobatic nature expected of the Shaws studio. I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen sometime in ’97 or ’98 at a Dallas theater that would run Hong Kong movies on Saturday nights; this was the first I’d seen it since then, and once again I was viewing the English dub. Princess Dragon Mom(!!), a sexy Asian babe with blonde wig and clawed hands, erupts from beneath the Earth with a host of monsters (ie men in rubber suits). These monsters look especially bad, worse even than the ones you’d see on those weekly Japanese shows of the era, which is strange given that this had a movie’s budget.

Our heroes are composed of a science patrol which calls to mind the Monster Attack Team of “UltraSeven;” they wear jumpsuits and blue motorcycle helmets. Bruceploitation fans will be thrilled to spot the future “Bruce Le” among them; he gets in an overlong kung-fu fight with several monsters and henchmen midway through the film. Our hero is Danny Lee, who around this time also starred as Bruce Lee in the Shaw Brothers pic “Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights;” he is turned via science into Inframan, red-suited, metal-faced vanquisher of evil monsters. The movie has more fighting than story-telling, but despite which it comes off as a lot more padded and uneventful than one of the Japanese shows of the era; “Kamen Rider Amazon” is ten times better than this, plus it has the added element of monster gore. Inframan looks cool, though, and he has a variety of special powers and tricks, including the ability to make himself gigantic, a la Jet Jaguar of “Godzilla vs Megalon.”

The English dubbing is intentionally campy and adds to the charm; surprisingly, it is not voiced by the usual crew who did the English dubs of most Shaw Brothers movies. Another difference from the Japanese shows is a penchant for (cheap-looking) optical effects, in particular laser blasts and disappearing characters, etc. But it is all poorly done and just looks bad, and not even in a fun way. Perhaps if I hadn’t spent the past few months watching “Kamen Rider Amazon,” “Zone Fighter,” and the original “Kamen Rider,” I might’ve been more excited by this Hong Kong take on the genre, but as it is I found “Inframan” only somewhat enjoyable and mostly forgettable.

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1959): So much potential is squandered in this drive-in sci-fi yarn. Filmed in black and white on cheap sets and outdoor locations, the movie features some of the craziest, cruellest-looking aliens ever witnessed. These small-bodied, big-headed creeps have big eyes with lizard-like irises and their hands not only have claws that drip a strange-looking liquid but also have eyes on them as well! Also these monsters display the same sort of mindless sadism as the Martians in Topps’ 1962 trading card series “Mars Attacks!,” joyously attacking everything and anything they come across. However their goals are limited by the film’s meager budget, not to mention hamstrung by the baffling insistence upon treating the whole thing as a comedy…sort of like Tim Burton’s 1996 film adaptation of that Topps trading card series.

The movie features a group of “teens” who look to be in their thirties, necking in the woods in their boat-sized cars. Meanwhile the film is narrated by a travelling conman or somesuch whose pal happens to be future Riddler Frank Gorshin. It’s all treated as a big goof as the “teens” keep encountering these weird creatures, who hide in the bushes – the film is photographed in such inky blacks that you can barely see the aliens at all – occasionally venturing out to attack the cows on an old man’s farm. Also the Air Force is afoot, apparently well-aware of these UFOs and keeping knowledge of them hidden from the public. It all seems to be building to something big, but anyone expecting a “War of the Worlds” resolution will be let down. Rather the flick plays out more on a lame drive-in horror vibe, with stupid schlock shock tactics like off-camera characters putting their hands on the shoulders of on-camera characters. Genuine horror stuff occurs when the severed, eyed hand of one of the creatures ends up in a car with our “teen” protagonist and his girlfriend…this time the hand that comes across her shoulder really is one to freak out over. The movie isn’t long, barely over an hour, and does contain a bit of gore, like when one of the aliens gets in a fight with a steer – juicy black blood jets out of the alien’s big eyeball. 

But the hoped-for action finale never happens. Rather, the heroes discover that the aliens’ lone weakness is light, thus all the teens congregate in their boat-sized cars and shine their headlights at the aliens, causing them to wither away. Lame! The movie even ends on the goofy tone, with “comedy music” playing and drawings on the ends credits that look to have been taken from a story book for toddlers. Overall this one sucks but it must be said again that the aliens have a very wicked, very menacing design.

The Monster Squad (1987): It’s “The Goonies” meets “The Lost Boys” in this now-culty ‘80s horror-action-kids’ comedy that was cowritten by Shane “Lethal Weapon” Black (and it shows in the rampant one-liners throughout). I was the same age as the protagonists when this movie came out, but for whatever reason I never saw the film, though I heard of it – maybe because I was never really into horror or monsters, I don’t know. The movie has aged pretty well, with zero CGI and great monster SFX by Sam Winston; his “Creature From The Black Lagoon” Gill-Man ripoff in particular looks great. Basically, the monsters from the Universal horror movies of the ‘30s-‘50s (Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Wolfman, and the Gill-Man) come back to small town, USA (and interestingly the same set/town was used here as in “Back To The Future,” which lends the film even more of neat cross-franchise kind of feel). A group of monster movie-obsessed kids come into posession of an old German book from the 19th Century which foretells Dracula et al wreaking havoc or somesuch.

The movie was PG-13 but wouldn’t be today; there’s violence, cursing, and not only rampant swearing but even some old-fashioned gay-bashing. But the producers understood preteen kids, so it isn’t the sanitized/too cool posturing of today; that being said, one of the squad members is a “junior high” punk with spiked hair and leather jacket, but admittedly he appears to be a spoof of the typical rebel of ‘50s horror/sci-fi movies. The monsters take a bit too long to show up – and conveniently disappear for long stretches of time (plus the dude playing Dracula sucks) – but when they get there they are very cool, if dispensed with a litte too easily. (A shotgun blast takes out the Gill-Man? Come on!) I guess the film didn’t do very well, as despite being geared for a clear sequel or even franchise, this was the one and only adventure of the titular Monster Squad. I bet it would be fun to watch this one on the big screen.

Night of the Creeps (1986): Why am I only just now seeing this movie? A readymade cult film, “Night of the Creeps” is courtesy writer-director Fred Dekker, who gave us the similarly-culty “The Monster Squad” the following year. A tribute to ‘50s horror and sci-fi movies with an ‘80s update, the film opens with a brief Star Wars-esque scene of strange-looking aliens blasting away at each other on their starship. One of them sends a strange cannister off into space. Cut to Smalltown, USA, 1959; Dekker films this sequence in black and white, and he perfectly captures the era. Unlike modern attempts at period pieces, the actors here even LOOK like college kids from the ‘50s. It’s all like a live action E.C. comic as we have an axe-wielding psychopath, a crashing meteor (which is of course that cannister from space), and the introduction of the titular “creeps:” slug-like creatures that throw themselves into human mouths, worm their way up into the brain, and incubate.

From there we go to 1986 (the film now in color), where we meet our heroes: a luckless pair of college dweebs who just want to get laid. The movie isn’t just a love letter to vintage horror and sci-fi cinema; it also captures the teen comedy vibe of the day, and the characters here are not only very likable but also excently portrayed (it doesn’t appear that any of these actors went on to anything else, but they all give great performances). We also get a grizzled cop with a penchant for hardboiled detective fiction who steals every scene he’s in – a witness of the first creeps visitation in 1959, he will eventually aid our heroes in the final battle against them. The film is played straight throughout, with the comedy coming from off-hand comments from the characters, who capably mock the OTT nature of things. The violence is never too gory, though we do have some corpses with exploded heads and whatnot. (The sort of stuf that gets by on modern crime lab TV shows, to tell the truth.) And since this was made in the days when horror movies were actually rated R, there’s even brief flashes of nudity, including a wonderfully-egregious shot of several young women taking showers. The finale is the highlight; the creeps incubate in brains that are alive or dead, and for the latter this results in zombies staggering about. Our heroes pick up a handy flamethrower from the police armory(!!) and start charbroiling them.

There’s even an unexpected emotional depth to “Night of the Creeps;” one of our heroes must be sacrified, per genre madate, and unlike the majority of such character deaths this one actually hits the viewer hard, particularly when you listen to the audio recording he leaves behind. But like “The Monster Squad,” this movie was a commercial flop; Dekker struck out a third time with the abysmal “Robocop 3,” which, per his own admission, ruined his career.

Modern superhero garbage:

Captain America: Civil War (2016): Politics and superheroes make strange bedfellows in this overlong (2 ½ hours) slog from Marvel Studios. Not to mention that the filmmakers muddle their politics. Remember how the Avengers stopped those various invasions in the previous two Avengers films? Well, turns out they inadvertently killed a whole bunch of innocent people during all the fighting, even though it’s never been mentioned until now. But nope, the Avengers and superheroes in general are very bad and hundreds of United Nations countries have signed some treaty to make our heroes agree to act only when ordered to by an official ruling party. But this is only the beginning of the politically-correct mindset of the film; our superheroes are shamed by not one but three black characters during the course of the film, the first the mother of a man who was accidentally killed while Iron Man was fighting aliens in the first film. Later our heroes will venture to fictional African country of Wakanda, where Black Widow will offer an official apology to the king, who of course also takes the opportunity to shame the heroes, as does his son, the prince of Wakanda (aka superhero Black Panther).

The movie is a dire, mostly-humorless trawl of politics and in-fighting; former bad boy Iron Man is retconned into being a government lackey, and my reading of the film had him as a spoof of current Trump proclamations to ban immigrants from certain countries – the Scarlet Witch, you see, has been deemed the most unsafe of the Avengers, and Iron Man insists on her being kept as an unwilling “guest” in Avengers HQ, being that’s she’s a “weapon of mass destruction” and whatnot. According to the current political climate as defined by the mainstream media, the Trump Republicans want to lock up/ban immigrants from certain countries while the Clinton Democrats want to open the borders to practically everyone. However to my surprise I learned that the producers apparently considered Iron Man to be more of a comment on Hillary Clinton, his clinging to ruling bodies and focus groups intended as a commentary on the career politician mindset of the current Democratic party. Captain America, meanwhile, rails against these restrictions and forced imprisonment and will not sign the treaty; while I assumed he was intended to be the radical Liberal (and thus the hero, this being a Hollywood movie and all), apparently he’s intended to be the Republican analog – he especially revolts against the idea of locking up of non-citizen Scarlet Witch.

But ironically enough, Captain America is a man of the 1940s, in particular a man of World War Two (even though the actor portraying him appears incapable of capturing any ‘40s-like sensibilities or mannerisms); anyone who knows their American history knows that the government locked up all Japanese Americans during the war years, whether born in America or not. This incident is never mentioned in “Civil War,” but it leads to a glaring question – if Cap is against superhero internment, was he also against Japanese internment in WWII? It would’ve been nice if this was even explained, and doubtless the majority of viewers never even wondered about it. But at least for me, I had a hard time understanding how a man who, just a few years ago (by his reckoning), was in the 1940s could feel so strongly against locking people up so as to protect the country – again, all of it could’ve easily been explained away with a bit of exposition. But anyway, none of this stuff should have any place in a superhero movie. Sadly though, this proves to be the sole plot, which eventually leads to a full-scale battle between our heroes.

Yes, the characters kids are supposed to look up to spend about a half hour fighting each other nearly to the death; despite which, this is the highlight of the film, as for once we have an action scene where the camera stops shaking (the first hour features a few action scenes that are terrible with the shaky-cam ethic) and you can actually follow the action, which is as expected loaded with CGI. Every character from previous films shows up, save for Thor and the Hulk; even Spider-Man appears, portrayed by a new actor and once again just a teen from Queens. (Not to mention soon to star in his own film, which will likely be yet another friggin’ origin story for the character, and the producers continue the baffling trend of making Aunt May younger and younger, this time casting Marisa Tomei in the role!?) The highlight here for me is Ant-Man, whose film was probably one of my favorites yet from Marvel; this time he briefly becomes his other alter-ego, Giant Man.

But boy, this one just goes on and on, becoming more dire and humorless, with the end result that the Avengers, just formed two movies ago, have for all intents and purposes disbanded. Wasn’t the point of the entire first movie getting them together?? Anyway, even though I grew up reading comics and basically lived for Marvel, I’m not the best judge for these modern superhero movies; I pretty much hate all of them (except for “Iron Man 3,” which I loved), and “Civil War” is more of the same, so opinions as ever will differ. Some people even call it “the greatest superhero movie ever,” which is as baffling as the casting of Marisa Tomei.

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016): This turgid, near three-hour exercise in tedium is not suggested for those contemplating suicide. Director Zach “The Hack” Snyder returns from “The Man of Steel” (a dire, humorless movie that made being Superman seem akin to having terminal cancer) to once again piss on the memory of your favorite DC Comics heroes in a followup that’s just as ineptly-staged, glacially-paced, and poorly lit as its predecessor. And if you didn’t get enough PC messaging from “Captain America: Civil War,” then you’ll be happy to note that this is yet another movie that bashes superheroes for their wanton acts of collateral damage! And before you can cry “cliché in the making!,” within the first several minutes we even have yet another black character shaming Superman for all the mass death and suffering he inadvertently caused in the previous film. But we need to have some feminism, too; in her very first scene, (horribly miscast) Lois Lane corrects a radical Islamic terrorist who calls her a lady: “I’m not a lady. I’m a journalist.” Ooh, take THAT, Patriarchy!

The movie, like most modern films, is shot in such colorless “color” that you could almost think it was black and white; matching the somber tone, our “heroes” mope about. Ben Affleck shows up as a dour Bruce Wayne/Batman who almost makes the viewer misty-eyed for Michael Keaton. The first hour or so is a turgid, horrendously-padded nonevent of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne each trying to deal with all that damn mass carnage Superman accidentally caused; meanwhile Lex Luthor (who looks more like a Millennial Carrot Top) comes upon some kryptonite, which of course he will gradually (everything here being drawn out reaaaaal slow) use on Superman. Our two “heroes,” who apparently only act in their own interests, slowly begin to converge upon one another. Eventually a butch Wonder Woman shows up who displays none of the heroism-mixed-with-femininity of Lynda Cater’s interpretation; this version of the character seems to have stalked out of Snyder’s “300” adaptation. Costume-wise Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight Returns” (and, uh, “Dark Knight Strikes Again”) was clearly used as inspiration, complete with a suit of armor for Batman that is taken directly out of Miller’s art. As is this interpretation of Wonder Woman, now that I think of it. 

Anyway, “Batman vs Superman” represents all that is bad about modern superhero films: it’s humorless, it’s pretentious (even the title is pretentious!), it’s too damn long, it’s confusingly directed in the action scenes, it takes itself way too seriously, it thinks grimness equals maturity, it confuses arrogance with self-confidence, and it’s about as fun as a kick in the crotch.

The Six Million Dollar Man: Season One (1973-1974)

Like any kid of the ‘70s I was a fan of The Six Million Dollar Man; but then, I was so young at the time I thought Steve Austin and Jaime “Bionic Woman” Summers were not only real people but a real couple. I recall watching the show on syndication and the later seasons in primetime – I probably started watching the show shortly before it ended, with its fifth season – but I’ve always meant to go back and check it out again. Now, thanks to the complete series being released on DVD, that’s a possibility; for too long The Six Million Dollar Man was way too hard to find.

The first season only ran for 13 episodes, starting as it did in January of 1974 as a replacement series for another that had been cancelled. However the series was preceded by a trio of telemovies which were each tonally different from one another – and all of them were pretty different from the series itself.

The Television movies

“The Six Million Dollar Man” (1973): The telefilm that started it all is wildly different from the series that ensued – indeed, only Lee Majors himself would be the sole remaining element. The rest of the cast, the production crew, even the soundtrack composers, would all change by the time the series began in early 1974. This grim, leisurely-paced movie faithfully follows Martin Caidin’s source novel Cyborg, with only minor changes, particularly when it comes to the bionic augmentations test pilot/former astronaut Steve Austin receives after a horrendous crash. For one Caidin’s character received a bionic left arm (rather than the right of the show), a metal-covered skull, a finger capable of shooting a poison dart, and legs with all sorts of augmentations (scuba gear, etc). The show whittled it down to a bionic left eye, right arm, and legs. But it takes its good ol’ time getting there; the movie moves at a snail’s pace, focusing more on Steve’s internal plight of grief and remorse – at one point he begs his nurse to kill him. This vibe would be quickly jettisoned, as was the shady motives of the government organization, OSO (changed to OSI in the series), which wants to use Steve as its bionic agent. Represented by a scenery-chewing Darrin McGavin, OSO is not the family-like agency that OSI would become, and Steve Austin is basically considered replacable junk. But the telemovie is very static and only picks up here and there. The highlight by far is when Steve finally goes on a mission; dropped into the desert he must fight off some soldiers and even a tank; he definitely kills the tank driver (by dropping a grenade inside the tank), but it’s left up in the air if he kills any of the others. The best part of this episode is the song composer Gil Melle crafts for this sequence, a two-minute masterpiece that starts off sounding like leftover material from Jerry Goldsmith’s bizarre Planet Of The Apes soundtrack before veering into jazz-funk. (Oliver Nelson – and his famous theme – wouldn’t become involved until the series itself.)

“Wine, Women, and War” (1973): The grim, fatalistic feel of the first telemovie is abruptly gone, replaced by the campy, self-spoofing tone of the Roger Moore Bond films. In the first minutes we already know it’s a completely different beast, with a tux-clad Steve Austin taking on a commando mission on a yacht at sea, spouting double-entrende quips that even Moore wouldn’t touch. The measured pace of the previous film is just a memory, something which is quickly displayed as Steve’s tux becomes a wetsuit and he takes out a bunch of terrorists. The confusing, muddled plot eventually has a grief-stricken Steve (mourning the lost of a female agent killed early in the film) going on vacation – whereas in reality OSI chief Oscar Goldman (the iconic Richard Anderson) has swindled him into taking another mission, Oscar here displaying some of the shadiness of McGavin’s earlier character. The babe factor is nicely improved this time out – this was inspired by the Bond movies, after all – with the appearance of Britt Ekland as a Russian agent. It gets even more Bond-like in the climax, which sees Steve infiltrating the underground base of the villain which is stockpiled with stolen nukes. This movie doesn’t get much love but I actually enjoyed it, despite the goofy camp of it all. Plus David McCallum co-stars as an old Cosmonaut pal of Steve’s, sporting the same pseudo-Russian accent he employed in The Man From UNCLE.

“The Solid Gold Kidnapping” (1973): The third and final TV movie is closer to the spirit of the ensuing series, though still very much in the “Bond for TV” mode of the previous film. The Moore-esque quips have been whittled away and Steve is closer to the laconic but quick-witted character of the series. The plot is also similar to later episodes, with a SPECTRE-like cabal led by Maurice “Bewitched” Evans which specializes in kidnapping notables for exorbitant ransoms. (And as double bang for your Bewitched buck, David “Larry Tate” White also appears!) It’s pure ‘70s TV as Elizabeth Ashley guest-stars as a scientist who has some RNA/memory serum or somesuch which she eventually injects herself with, giving herself the memories of a dead man. On the babe meter we also have Luciana “Thunderball” Paluzzi as a contessa Steve scores with (in the line of duty, of course – the price a secret bionic agent must pay!). The shadiness Oscar Goldman displayed in the previous film is mostly gone, with he and Steve now the “pals” they would be later in the show (you could almost base a drinking game off the number of times these two would go on to call each other “pal”), and Alan Oppenheimer is still playing Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin Balsam played him in the first movie and Martin E. Brooks eventually took over the role in the series). While it doesn’t have the constant action of the previous movie, this one does have a more-grounded tone, and is probably the best of the three telefilms. Plus it’s got John Vernon!

Season 1 (1974)

1: Population Zero: After three TV movies in 1973, the Six Million Dollar Man series proper debuted in January 1974 with this episode, which is basically The Andromeda Strain on a TV budget. This early in the series various elements that would soon become patented are nowhere to be found; for example, when Steve Austin uses his bionics we do not hear the famous bionic sound effect. Also the relationship between Steve and OSI boss Oscar Goldman is more factious here, with Oscar sternly issuing Steve orders – orders which Steve disobeys. The residents of a tiny town have all mysteriously died, and Steve insists on going there, despite Oscar’s orders to stand down; in an unneccessary subplot, the producers have it that Steve grew up near here. Thus he knows everyone; apparently this was intended so as to add a personal layer to the story, but not much is done with it. Turns out though the people aren’t really dead, despite the creepy opening of the ghost town. A somewhat-attractive scientist on the scene informs Steve that the town was hit by ultrasonics. Eventually it will be learned that a former government-contracted scientist is using his ultrasonic weapon on the town; he threatens to really kill everyone if he isn’t paid ten million bucks. Some of the episode is laughable, like when the villain buzzes the army compound with his private plane and the general and the soldiers stand around like morons, just watching. But Lee Majors carries the episode, and he’s perfect for the role of Steve Austin. Here in these early episodes Steve is more laconic and grim, and it’s notable that he kills off the villains in the finale, something you wouldn’t see happen in later seasons – he blows ‘em all up with a hurled metal pole which somehow causes their van to explode. Oliver Nelson’s music is the exceptional jazz-funk expected of the dude, but a bit muted in this episode, as is the theme – only a few bars of it play in the opening credits. Overall this is a fine intro to the series and more of a sign of things to come than the three TV movies that preceded it.

2: Survival Of The Fittest: Cleary The Six Million Dollar Man hadn’t yet figured out what kind of show it wanted to be, for this second episode seems to be a TV version of Airport. Steve and Oscar are somewhere, perhaps Hawaii, boarding a plane filled with military people, when Oscar reveals to Steve that someone’s been trying to kill him. We learn that the plotters are a corrupt Air Force major and a Navy officer played by veteran B-movie villain William Smith. But shortly the episode becomes Lost a few decades early, as the plane enters a heavy storm and ditches in the ocean. Suddenly it’s a survival tale as the passengers find themselves on a barren island and must wait until help arrives. Meanwhile the two assassins, who were also on the doomed plane, continue to plot Oscar’s death. Steve’s bionics are only sporadically used, from ripping open the plane’s escape hatch to running (in slo-mo, of course). The bionic sound effect still isn’t heard, but we do see some hazy infra-red through Steve’s bionic eye, as well as telescope crosshairs. It’s also implied that Steve kills again, hurling a rock with his bionic right arm at one of the would-be assassins. Oliver Nelson provides the score and gets a chance to groove things up with some Afro-Cuban drumming.

3: Operation: Firefly: This episode is for the most part just goofy fun, as Steve contends with a rubber alligator and a somewhat attractive female colleague who dabbles in ESP. Some scientist has devised this laser gizmo but he’s been kidnapped, reported as missing in the Florida everglades or something. Oscar follows the obvious logic: he has Steve team up with the scientist’s young daughter, because she has ESP and might know where he is! The pacing is measured as the two go down the river, with lots of weird jungle sound effects on the soundtrack. The attack by the rubber alligator is pretty great, and the episode gets even campier when the gal falls in quicksand – and her clothes are magically clean the very next scene. Steve only uses his bionics sporadically, like when he breaks out of the jail he’s wrongly placed in toward the climax. All told though this one’s only marginally entertaining for the campy aspects. We also get some early ‘70s psychedelic fades and whatnot during the “ESP” sequences.

4: Day Of The Robot: The series finally finds its footing with this episode based on a story by Harold Livingston, who wrote some of the whackier episodes of Mission: Impossible. This is also the episode which inspired the ‘70s Six Million Dollar Man toy Maskatron. John “Enter The Dragon” Saxon plays two roles: Steve’s old astronaut buddy Sloan, who is now part of some missile development deal which the bad guys want to steal. Enter Saxon’s other role: the robot created in Sloan’s likeness which the villains replace the real Sloan with, monitoring his every move. Steve, assigned to act as Sloan’s bodyguard, slowly begins to suspect something weird about his old friend, though it would be obvious to anyone that something very strange is going on – again, the show has a subtle campiness to it, which adds to the charm. This one culminates in an 8-minute brawl between Steve and the Sloan-robot (in slow-motion throughout, naturally) as Oliver Nelson’s theme song plays over and over again. Also Steve again kills, flipping a car over on a would-be assassin. However the good guys suffer no losses, with a bizarrely happy ending in which Steve, assuming the real Sloan is dead, just sort of stumbles upon him, sitting in confusion at a park bench.

5: Little Orphan Airplane: Greg Morris, of Mission: Impossible (where he played Barney, aka “the black one”) guest stars as an Air Force reconnaissance pilot whose plane goes down over contested area in the new African republics. The episode replicates the feel of a mini-Bond movie, with the Air Force going to Oscar at OSI, requesting their “special man,” and then Steve briefed by Oscar before heading to Africa. He’s to parachute in and rescue Morris and destroy the plane – and look out for a brief appearance by future B-movie lunkhead Reb “Space Mutiny” Brown as an Air Force dispatcher Steve briefly talks to via radio after landing in Africa. The Bond feel is quickly lost as Steve drops into Africa and meets two Dutch nuns who take him in. Coincidence be damned, they’ve also found Greg Morris’s character, and are hiding him from the local army – a group of “Africans” who sound suspiciously American and appear to be familiar faces from Blaxploitation movies of the time. Also their leader seems a bit too affable to be the villain of the episode (“All right, men, move ‘em out!”), which makes later scenes where he threatens the nuns a bit hard to buy. Rather than action this one focuses on Steve’s MaGuyver-esque abilities, particularly how he can use his bionics to fix Morris’s broken airplane using jerry-rigged parts from old trucks. While a bit plodding and certainly padded, this one nonetheless is entertaining, and plus those “jungle noises” from “Operation: Firefly” return.

6: Doomsday, And Counting: This episode’s like The Posidedon Adventure or another of those ‘70s disaster flicks on a TV budget. Steve’s old Cosmonaut pal (the actor speaks with an American accent but a “foreign” diction, which again sounds super campy) comes over to the US to discuss some new projects with Steve and Oscar, when he’s called away to the island base where he’s working on a new rocket or somesuch with his fiance. Turns out an earthquake has hit the island and, when Steve and his pal get there, they discover that the fiance, Irina, has been trapped underground. Here the disaster movie parallels begin as Steve and comrade work their way into a massive factory-type building, navigating through collapsed tunnels and whatnot. Things get more dire when Irina reveals that the computer which guards the base has gone into safeguard mode and is about to launch nuclear missiles. Steve reveals his bionics to the couple, using his arms to pull down girders and etc. Overall this one was pretty tepid, very static, however Irina would return a few seasons later.

7: Eyewitness To Murder: It’s The Six Million Dollar Man meets Mannix as Steve just happens to witness the member of a legal team being gunned down on a street outside the restaurant Steve’s dining in. The assassin is played by Gary “2001” Lockwood, sporting the same awful, shaggy hairdo he wore in his guest appearance a few years earlier on Mission: Impossible. Turns out he was actually gunning for the leader of the legal team, who is preparing a big case against the syndicate. Steve desperately tries to track Lockwood down and uncover his supposedly-solid alibi in another leisurely-paced episode. However this one’s saved by the awesome ‘70s fashions sported by Steve throughout, accessorized with his cool tan-lensed Ray Ban aviators (as seen above, in a screengrab taken from this episode). His bionics are relegated to telescope eyes (the “radar” sound now firmly in use) and the occasional running/stopping a truck with his arm (but still no “bionic sound effects” for this stuff yet.) Oliver Nelson says “to hell with it” and funks up random scenes with some jazzy grooves. Despite the leisurely pace I actually enjoyed this one more than the last few. And like Irina in the previous episode, Gary Lockwood’s character would also return.

8: Rescue of Athena One: Even the Six Million Dollar Man must contend with the Social Justice Warriors, as Steve finds himself having to instruct “the first female astronaut.” Despite her constant screwups (as if!!), Steve’s pressured by NASA/etc to ensure she’s fully capable of piloting her ship into deep space for some “energy research” project; due, of course, to all of the publicity the event’s getting. At any rate the astronaut, played by Lee Majors’s wife Farrah Fawcett, wilts under Steve’s humorously angry orders – the first half of the episode wouldn’t be possible in today’s proggressively-liberalized world…unless that is the instructing astronaut was a woman and the ill-equipped student was a man. Speaking of Farrah Fawcett, she gives a quality, reserved performance, not very recognizable as the pop culture sex icon she would soon become – only at the very end of the episode does she sport her soon-to-be-patented feathered hair. Throughout most of the episode she’s clad in a bulky space suit with her hair tied in a bun, and looks eerily like the future Jodie Foster! Anyway this episode is yawnsville. My guess is someone realized there was all this NASA moon/rocket launch footage lying around and decided to shoot an episode around it. When Fawcett’s ship, Athena One, encounters trouble in space, it’s up to Steve to blast off in a separate rocket to save the day, as apparently only his bionic right arm is capable of pulling off the wreckage which has trapped poor Farrah in her ship. This episode sees the now-recurring bit of someone outside OSI learning about Steve’s bionic parts; I like to imagine that Steve has orders to kill anyone who learns of this, orders which he carries out promptly after the end credits roll. Seriously though, this episode is only heightened by the fact that Steve’s bionic parts go screwy in space, with Farrah having to land the rocket herself. Oliver Nelson really gives an otherwise lackluster episode a rip-roaring fanfare of an ending; otherwise he puts a lot of weird synths and theremins on the soundtrack, sounding at times like the music in The Andromeda Strain. Also we get the hint that Steve scores again, at episode’s end, as Farrah (in an unflattering body-hugging pantsuit) invites him back to her place for “dinner.” 

9: Dr. Wells Is Missing: One of the highlights of Season 1, this episode has Steve venturing to Austria to rescue the kidnapped Dr. Rudy Wells, the character who gave Steve his bionic parts and who hasn’t been seen since the TV movies which preceded the series (and here he’s again played by Alan Oppenheimer, returning from the second and third TV movies, but later replaced by the more iconic Martin E. Brooks in the role). Steve, as usual sporting his awesome ‘70s threads with aviator Ray Bans, snoops around a scenic Austrian village (aka the Universal backlot) and using his smarts he quickly finds the villa in which Rudy is being held. This episode, unlike the past few, really puts the focus on action; after being captured Steve is put through a series of challenges by the Bondian villain, who wants Rudy to create a bionic henchman for him. Steve must fight a handful of the villain’s men; one of them is a black guy who is a master of savate (which looks suspiciously similar to kung-fu, which had taken the world by storm at this point – and the dude’s fighting screams are even dubbed chop-sockey style). The fight goes on and on, in slow-mo, and gets to be annoying because in reality a man with a bionic arm and two bionic legs could rip off the limbs of his enemies and smash their skulls into jelly. But anyway Steve, after throwing them all around, is undone when one of them smashes a lampost into his bionic arm. This long fight is notable for the first appearance of the bionic sound effect which would soon become so famous; it’s briefly heard when Steve twists the arm of one of his opponents and flips him to the ground. The climactic escape is cool and maintains the Bond vibe; Rudy makes off downhill in a jeep and Steve, arm in a sling, jumps out to take care of their pursuers. First he leads them on a chase back up the mountain, running at speeds in excess of 60 mph. Then he flips their car over the cliff, causing it to explode, thus killiing both men; he takes out the final henchman with a bionic kick to the chest which surely ruptured something. This episode is tonally similar to the third (and final) TV movie, “The Solid Gold Kidnapping,” and shows what the series might’ve been like if it hadn’t become progressively campier and more kid-friendly. 

10: The Last of The Fourth of Julys: My favorite episode of Season 1 retains the action focus of the previous episode; this time scene-chewing Steve Forrest is Quail, a very Bond-style villain who has devised “the ultimate weapon” for his nefarious employer. When an undercover agent sends in word that the evil plot hinges around July 4th, Steve’s sent on the job – after that is some training courtesy a paunchy, ill-tempered drill seargent who steals the show. Curiously, most of the stuff Steve’s trained in – including being launched out of a torpedo tube from a submarine – is stuff we already saw him do in the second telefilm, “Wine, Women, and War.” This episode really harkens back to that TV movie, minus the groan-worthy quips, with a sometimes-flippant Steve presented more as a badass spy than the “average dude with bionic powers” he normally was in the series; also, the finale maintains the Budget Bond vibe, with Steve diregarding “orders from Washington” to score with a sexy babe. This sort of stuff would be gone in future seasons, as would Steve’s cold-bloodedness; this episode again sees him killing off a bunch of bad guys, indeed blowing up Quail’s entire fortress. This episode’s really a lot of fun, again providing a glimpse of the show that might have been, with a rousing and funky Oliver Nelson score – and a great stunt when a pole vaulter stand-in for Lee Majors hops a thirty-foot fence. There’s even a bit of Mission: Impossible-type stuff where a captured Steve is strapped to a revolving chair while a light flashes in his face, psychological torture courtesy Quail. And you have to love how director Reza Badiyi really capitalized on the low-cut dress Quail’s sexy henchwoman Violette (Arlene Martel, most known for playing Spock’s wife) wears in the final quarter of the film – particularly when she climbs into Steve’s escape torpedo, a gratuitous cleavage shot if ever there was one. (But who’s complaining?)

11: Burning Bright: Finally, the opening credits present us with the four words we’ve been waiting for: “Guest star William Shatner.” Eschewing the action-focus of the previous episodes, this one’s more of character study, with an emoting Shatner providing the OTT melodrama we love him for. (In 2000 I met Walter “Chekov” Koenig, whom we’d flown into the company I was then working for to narrate an audio book, and I kid you not, the very first thing I said to him was, “What’s William Shatner like?” After a pause his reply was: “Bill is an unusual guy. He’s a good guy, though.”) Shatner plays Josh Lang, another astronaut buddy of Steve’s, who has come back from his latest space mission a little shall we say batshit crazy. Spouting New Age claptrap about “the sun as the origin of the space vector” and carrying on conversations with an unseen entity called “Andy,” Josh is in danger of being removed from the space program. It’s up to Steve, called in to observe his behavior, to give the recommendation on whether he should be or not. Shatner gets ample opportunity to chew scenery as Josh becomes more and more insane; he was affected by some cosmic forcefield or somesuch which all astronauts experience (including Steve), but they usually shrug off the effects. Not so for Josh, who is soon conversing with dolphins at the local aquarium – time for lots of ‘70s-style faux-psychedelic close-ups of Shatner’s face while Oliver Nelson provides goofy bleeps and bloops on the soundtrack. Pretty soon Josh is using his mind to overpower people and, most damningly of all, accidentally kills a kindly old sheriff in Houston – Josh having gone back home, where it turns out “Andy” was a childhood friend Josh accidentally caused the death of by daring him to climb up a power line. I was hoping it would turn out to be some alien intelligence. The finale sees Shatner pulling out all the stops, emoting grandly as Josh goes from pleading with Andy one second to ranting at Steve to “stay back!” the next. All Lee Majors can do is hang there and squint and say nothing, which is pretty much all you can do when you’re in the presence of a master at the top of his form. The two actors reunited many years later, on Shatner’s short-lived sitcom Bleep My Dad Says, but the producers blew the potential. The episode climaxed with Shatner and Majors – each in goofy costumes – getting in a brawl (in other words, Captain Kirk versus The Six Million Dollar Man!), but the idiot producers chose to focus instead on Shatner’s dweeb of a son. This is the course they chose for most every episode, which makes it unsurprising that Bleep My Dad Says was cancelled.

12: The Coward: Last time it was Shatner, this time it’s George “Sulu” Takei, in a much less important role – he has what amounts to a bit part as an Army climbing instructor who trains Steve for his latest mission: venturing into the Himalayas to retrieve intelligence documents from a recently-unearthed American plane which crashed in the mountains in WWII. But “this time it’s personal,” to quote the old cliché; turns out none other than Carl Austin was the pilot of that doomed plane…ie Steve’s dad. This entails a shaken Steve venturing home to talk to his mom – the first we’ve seen her or heard of her in the show (and it turns out Steve was raised by a stepdad, who is unseen this time) – where he learns that Mom never told him of the stories that Dad might’ve been a coward, bailing out of the plane and letting his crew die in the crash. This one, unlike the previous episode, includes action with the drama; when Steve and Takei parachute into Tibet they’re instantly attacked by Mongol warriors on horseback – the leader looks uncannily like Frank Zappa. Poor George is removed from the episode posthaste, and an escaping Steve runs into a grizzled old American expat – a dude who looks sort of similar to Steve. As a double bang for your “Star Trek” buck, this guy happens to be married to a lovely native gal who is played by France Nuyen, who played Elaan of Troyius. Humorously enough, Steve and his new pal never tell each other their names, but the writers don’t take the expected route – after the journey up to the crashed plane (where Steve sheds a few tears), and after a climactic fight with the Mongols – during which the old expat sacrifices himself to save Steve – it turns out that Steve’s dad did in fact die on the plane. The old expat was in fact the copilot, who bailed out and later climbed back up to the plane to switch dog tags, so no one would think him a coward. Or is that what really happened? It’s left intentionally mystertious, with it just as possible that the expat was in fact Steve’s dad, and the dog tag story just a lie.

13: Run, Steve, Run: So it’s come to this: A Six Million Dollar Man clip show. Steve is visiting a pal on a construction site when his elevator goes haywire and almost kills him. Turns out Steve’s being stalked by Dr. Dolenz, the old scientist from “Day of the Robot.” He’s been hired by a new Mafia boss who wants Dolenz to create a robot for him, one which he plans to rob Fort Knox with(!!). Talk about a guy who thinks outside the box. But boy this episode is lame. For one, Oscar, head of a friggin’ intelligence agency, waves off Steve’s concerns that someone is stalking him, and instead insists Steve go on vacation! This Steve does, and suddenly the episode becomes “The Six Million Dollar Hick” as Steve ambles around the ranch of an old friend, riding horses and trying to get a gangly but pretty young cowgirl to come out of her tomboy shell. Meanwhile he flashes back – at length – to previous episodes: “Day of the Robot,” “Dr. Wells Is Missing,” and “Population Zero.” The cheap producers even re-use footage from “Survival of the Fittest” when Steve takes a flight, early in the episode; you can even see the actors from that earlier episode in the background of the plane’s interior. The episode is dull as dishwater, only sparking in the finale, where Steve is caught again and must show off his bionics to Dr. Dolenz. We get more humorous quips from Steve at least, particularly when he insults Dolenz’s Sloan robot, saying it squeaked when it walked. But this is not a strong finale for the first season, and indeed they should’ve placed “The Coward” last.

Overall I really enjoyed this first season of The Six Million Dollar Man. Sure, some of the episodes were a bit static, but the relaxed pace was kind of refreshing when compared to the constantly-moving, cgi-ridden fluff of today. And Lee Majors is perfect in the title role, bringing to it the sort of square-jawed resolve impossible in today’s world, where Steve Austin would need to be bettered/ridiculed by a female partner and also have some sort of debilitating condition/issue which prevented him from being a “complete man.” In other words Steve would be more like the character presented in the first TV movie rather than the self-assured hero of the series. I also really enjoyed the lack of continuity, particularly when compared to the season-long story arcs demanded of today’s shows. Each episode resolves its central conflict before the end credits roll, and I really dug that. Today it’s like nothing can ever be resolved in most TV shows, which dangle subplot after subplot to the point where you figure even the producers have no idea where it’s all headed – and, as was proven by Lost, usually they don’t.

Now on to Season Two!