Operation Kid Brother (a.k.a. O.K. Connery) (1967)
Given that one of this blog's sacred missions is to seek out and unearth the strangest, craziest, most ridiculous obscure films ever made we can only ask ourselves.....
How in the holy hell did it take us this long to get around to this one??????
Really, this should've been one of the first movies, if not the first to start off BQ our long and winding pulp cinema yellow brick road.....
In the universe of cheap, knock-off EuroSpy James Bond imitations, this film shines as the Holy Grail of loony toon faux-007 madness.
Italian produced (as were the bulk of the EuroSpy canon), the film doesn't merely offer Sean Connery's younger non-acting brother Neil as the....what else, younger brother of Britain's top secret agent....
There's more! This movie offers nothing less than a plethora of Bond movie actors in supporting roles.....Bernard Lee ('M'), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Adolfo Celi (Largo from 'Thunderball') Anthony Dawson (Professor Dent from 'Dr. No' and Blofeld from 'Thunderball'), and Daniela Bianchi (Tatiana from 'From Russia With Love').
(Also wandering around the film is a character named 'Lotte' and obviously made up to look like Lotte Lenya's 'Rosa Klebb' villain.)
And even more icing on the cake..... an Ennio Morricone score!......which starts off the main titles with the title tune 'O.K. Connery' warbled and shrieked by a singer billed as 'Khristy'......(she sounds like she'd auditioned to become one of the screaming howlers from Morricone's 'Navajo Joe' soundtrack.....)
But now let's get down to business. How good, bad, or awful is 'Operation Kid Brother'?
Well, in the pantheon of euro-trashy Euro-Spies, the film's much better than most of them, not quite as good as a few others and more than fulfills its goal to provide check-your-brains-at-the-door, guilty pleasure joy.
Unintentionally, it's at least as funny as the Austin Powers trilogy....but then again, those films were designed to make you laugh on purpose. 'Operation Kid Brother' doesn't have to work that hard for its giggles......it just is what what it is.....
Connery the Younger, an Edinburgh plasterer fired for losing his tools, wasn't much of an actor, but with a striking resemblance to his Big Bro, he cut an imposing enough figure....lookin' good as he beat up minions and smooched the girls. And that backup cast of beloved Bond vets turned the film into an instant one-of-a-kind.
We won't bother explaining the usual ludicrous EuroSpy plot, involving an 'atomic nucleus' and a magnetic ray that renders all the world's metal weaponry useless.....if you're a fan of these films, you know the drill....
Every so often though, you will see some unique screwball stuff......a remote control driverless car, a yacht crewed by beautiful Bond-ian babes, and a factory producing (don't ask) radioactive rugs, manned by blind beggars sustaining radiation burns as they work the looms.
(We bet Dr. NO never thought of that....._
For all EuroSpy devotees, great, great 3 Star jollies await you. (***).
For MSTK-3000 fans, there's an episode devoted to the film, but chances are, given enough beer and popcorn, you could throw in your own comments just as withering.......
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