'OSS 117 IS UNLEASHED'.........."THE NAME'S BATH..........HUBERT...BATH."

OSS 117 Is Unleashed (1963)    Sure, we had a good enough time with the two updated spoofs of  France's very own homegrown James Bond,  comically deadpanned by Jean Dujardin in "OSS 117:Cairo, Nest Of Spies" (2006) and "OSS 117: Lost In Rio" (2009).

               But we long hungered to see the original 5 films that popped up internationally throughout the 1960's without ever making it over to the United States.  (You regular BQ visitors know of our grand passion for extra cheesy Eurospy co-productions....)

                 Best news ever......we got 'em all in a Blu-Ray boxed set.......so let's start at the beginning...

                  First impression:    Why the *$&%^$* is this in black and white?  It's a frickin' dopey spy movie set in sun-drenched Malta,,,,,,, about 20,000 leagues away from Film Noir.  And yet the mighty Gaumont film company couldn't scrape together a few extra francs for some color film?   Just askin'...

                 Kerwin Matthews?  Interesting choice to introduce Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath to the cinema.......yes, it's none other than that personable young American guy who normally uses swords and spears to battle Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monsters........dubbed into French, no less. Not that we're complaining........Kerwin wears a business suit well enough and and enthusiastically hurls himself around the furniture in his fight scenes......

                 Speaking of which.......

                 Our boy Hubie de La Bath does engage in a fair amount of hand-to-hand tussles with assorted thugs. As in the Bond films, the fighting's a mashup of judo, karate, kung fu and good old fashioned drunken-brawl roundhouse punching.  Nobody appears to ever get seriously hurt, which could be why the fights here seem to last longer than the Bond rumbles.......

                 Big problemo........the pacing, or lack thereof. The director, Andre Hunebelle, has no sense of forward momentum whatsoever. Other than in those lengthy fight scenes, the film pokes along at about 20 miles an hour.......a lethal speed for a Eurospy movie.  And the dull black-and-white just adds to the overall monotonous slowness......

                 Crazy Save-The-World plotline?   Not bad for a start......with Our Man Hubie thwarting villains who plan to submerge an underwater detection device to track NATO nuclear subs. A little bout of shooting and punching wraps them up nicely........

                No widescreen photography either......which is just as well, since the producers wouldn't have a wide enough frame to post the tagline......"Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath will return in OSS 117: Panic In Bangkok".....

                Return he does, though......and so will the BQ to tell you all about it.  For Hubie-Baby's first adventure.......2 stars (**)......but things are lookin' up.....the next one's in ripe color and Franscope!