Spies Strike Silently (1966) Eurotrash knockoffs of the James Bond movies flooded the international market throughout the mid to late 1960's.....what we think of as the Golden Age Of Eurotrash Eurospies.
The quality of these films ranged all over the map.....from Pretty Good to Not Bad to Meh to Abysmal to Laugh-Out-Loud to You Gotta Be ****in' Kidding Me.......
To our everlasting joy, American TV stations purchased entire packages of them to as perfect programming for 3 in the morning insomniacs......
And BQ wallowed in 'em. Ridiculous and formulaic as they were, God help us, we couldn't get enough of 'em......
Here's one of the better ones we stumbled into on Tubi, available as an uncut, but poorly formatted version taken from a widescreen print.
Anyone familiar with this genre knows these films came about as Italian-French-Spanish-German co-productions, populated with actors from all the participating countries. So of course, they arrived on TV clumsily dubbed in English.....(except for the James Bond-ish hero, usually played by some down-on-his-luck American actor in desperate need of cash....)
Lang Jeffries, already slumming his way through sword 'n sandal peplums, switched from togas to spiffy suits as Secret Agent Mike Drum. If nothing, else, he sure as hell looks like a dashing, dangerous Sean Connery clone....
Secret Agent Mike's on the trail of a mad mastermind who's killing off assorted scientists and their immediate relatives. (One poor girl takes a knife in the back during mid-swan dive into a pool.)
Along the way, multiple pop-up assassins get Drum-beaten during regularly scheduled fight scenes......but these punch ups, though frequent, lack that propulsive punch of Bond films.
Our man Mike finally tracks down the megalomaniac responsible, a ranting loony-toon who stole his world domination plot directly from "Dr. Mabuse Vs. Scotland Yard" (see our review of 12/5/24).
(And oh my did we adore the unintentional dubbing blooper where the loquacious loon suddenly starts delivering his lines in German....)
Though Mikey endures not one, but two brain-washing injections from the Supervillain, there simply ain't no stoppin' him. Just as he's rescuing a babe-in-distress, armed forces show up for a 'Goldfinger' style pitched gun battle with the bad guy's black-clad goons.
But wait! The World Dominating fiend has one more try to beat the Drum, and tussles with the Mike-inator in a '59 Chevy perched half off the edge of a cliff.
Let's credit the film here for its one and only inventive action sequence, as Mike and Mastermind show us that duking it out inside a '59 Chevy ain't easy......what with the limited leg and arm room available. And the car wobbling over a cliff doesn't help either......
Sorry, but we never did free ourselves from our permanent addiction to goofball Eurospy movies.....among our favorite Guilty Pleasures.....
You either embrace the glorious cheese on display or don't come anywhere near these films.
For us fans, "Spies Strike Silently", one of the better ones, earns 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) For everyone else who can't comprehend this genre, you shouldn't waste your time.
No comments:
Post a Comment