'OSS 117 : 'MISSION FOR A KILLER' & 'MISSION TO TOKYO'........A NEW GUY AS THE BOUILLABAISSE BOND.....

OSS 117: Mission For A Killer (1965)  & OSS 117: Mission To Tokyo (1966)   

           He's baaaaaaack..........

           After being played by our own American-as-apple-pie Kerwin Matthews in two previous adventures, that devil-may-care, French bon-vivant secret agent.....the endlessly named Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, shows up in two more movies......now played by Czechoslovakian, all around international leading man Frederick Stafford.

            Stafford's the quintessential Eurospy.......he looks like he was precision assembled in a Leading Man laboratory........tall, impeccably dressed, traditional movie star handsome, he's like a department store mannequin come to life.

             As perfect as he seems in cheeseball romps like the OSS 117 films, put him in a real movie, as Hitchcock did in "Topaz", you realize he's just another slab of beefcake with as much acting range as the walls behind him.

            But Fred's okey-doke with us in "Mission For A Killer", which sends him to Rio to uncover another nefarious super secret society.  This particular bunch uses a drug to turn normal people into subservient political assassins.......

             If they remade this today, the gang wouldn't have to resort to injections......they'd just use Facebook posts.......

              Once again, director Andre Hunebelle still doesn't know how to edit or pace a movie......but we will credit him and his stunt directors with putting together some crackerjack fight scenes for their hero........some truly wacky donnybrooks here, some of them equal to what we'd seen in Bond films.

              Freddy-Hubert tangles with one of the drugged assassins in a fine set-piece done in a hospital room......and has another splashy brawl with two thugs in an office, with one of the guys equipped with a spewing blowtorch.  Yeah, baby.....hot stuff. Literally.

              Along the way, he gets kissy-kissy time with two prime Euro-babes (Mylene Demongeot, Perrette Pradier) before the perfunctory firefight mop-up of those secret society jerks.

              Maybe ole OSS should have take a longer vacation between gigs, cause a year later "Mission To Tokyo" sinks like stone in comparison to the rumble in Rio.

              This time our man Stafford's off to Japan, dapper as ever and on the trail of a gang who's got a hold of a super-bomb. After using it to blow up a military base, they're demanding a 100 mill payoff for not using it on anything else.....(a scenario co-written by Bond director Terence Young)

              To maintain, we guess, consistency, new director Michel Boisrond gives the film the same glacial, oil-painting pace as Andre Hunnebelle.  This guy directs as if he did it long distance.....via telegram.......

               What's even worse, the movie has nowhere near the amount of action of the previous entries.....for a Eurospy movie, it barely gets off the ground....

               One lone standout sequence we must mention, however.......Stafford's funny, inventive and thrilling bash-o-rama with an invincible, seven foot tall Japanese henchman.  Yes, it's very much in the style of Sean Connery's slugfest with Harold Sakata's Oddjob in "Goldfinger" and his tumultuous tussle with Dwayne Johnson's grandfather, Peter Fanene Maivia in "You Only Live Twice".  Great stuff, one of the few scenes in "Mission To Tokyo" where the movie remembers what friggin' genre it's supposed to be.

               We just loved how the behemoth thug has neither respect or visual recognition of Japanese paper screen doors as he chases our hero from room to room......

              As an unrepentant Eurospy fanboy, we'll generously give "Mission For a Killer" 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)......so sorry, "Mission To Tokyo"....only 1 & 1/2 for you (*1/2).....and that's primarily for Freddy's free-for-all with the Japanese Frankenstein......