Like the title of that coffee table book about them, we always though Bond Girls were forever.......
We encountered the stunning Dor long before she turned her hair flaming red to menace Sean Connery in "You Only Live Twice".......through the wonderful world of UHF TV stations.....
For those of you who didn't live through the Jurassic eras of television, UHF stations popped up in the 70's.....you can think of them as sort of prehistoric, cheapo cable channels.....
You needed a separate antenna to bring them in and once you did.....oh my, what an avalanche of junk programming.......roller derbies, wrestling, long forgotten l950's TV shows, ancient Hollywood films.........and best of all.....
Euro-Trash!
Desperate to fill up their schedules, UHF station programmers purchased loads of syndicated packages of the junkiest 1960's movies imaginable.......sword 'n sandal imitation Hercules flicks, spaghetti westerns, the cheesiest Italian would-be James Bond knockoffs.....(with titles like "Super Agent 009: Mission Beirut").
Personally, we binged on this video sludge before anyone thought to use the word 'binge'. We couldn't get enough......especially the really strange stuff thrown into the mix......West German westerns and 'Krimi' films......
And that's where we came across the beauteous Karin Dor, who traipsed across all these international genres, flashing her huge expressive eyes. (For easy comparison, we usually referred to her as the Germanic Barbara Steele.....)
The 'Krimi's' were bizarre, grotesque little murder mysteries based on novels by British author Edgar Wallace........invariably set in fogbound London and old mansions with lots of secret passageways. They all blend into one film for us.....with the wide-eyed, horrified Dor chased around the castle grounds by the ever nutty Klaus Kinski.....
The German westerns she appeared in were even crazier.......unlike the spaghetti oaters filmed in the arid Spanish deserts, the wienerschnitzel westerns leisurely unfolded among the lush rolling hills and forests of Yugoslavia. They maintained the antique innocence of 1930's Hollywood westerns.......they resembled an elementary school pageant, except with grownups instead of kids dressed up as cowboys and indians. Pretty unwatchable on every level......until we spotted Dor in one of them....as..(we think).....an Indian princess.
In the middle of nursing a crush on her, imagine how delighted we were when she hit the big time with a double-whammy of major parts......the SPECTRE assassin in the Bond film and a few years later, a doomed, anti-Communist Cuban rebel in Hitchcock's lugubrious "Topaz".....(a film that only briefly develops a pulse during Dor's elegantly photographed murder, with her red robe billowing out on the floor like a spreading pool of blood....)
Sadly, neither of these roles propelled her into mainstream stardom.......she wandered through a few American TV series episodes and mostly forgettable, worthless movies.
But the BQ will always remember those piercing brown eyes of a true international movie star.......a woman who managed to add a sense of style and class to all those low-rent, dues-paying junkers she appeared in.
Rest In Piece, Ms.Dor......from a fan.
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