‘We must assume that Commander Stevens has been robotised.’
Two dimwitted photographers are tricked into assassinating a prominent NATO official. However, an evil mastermind brings the corpse back to life, planning to use it as part of his army of robots to start another global war. Recruited by the intelligence agencies to bring the villain out into the open, the blundering duo must attempt to save the world…
This week’s ‘Bonds On A Budget’ are Italian comedy phenomenon Franco and Ciccio. Their continuing domestic popularity supported a run of over 100 films in total, with around 70 released in the 1960s alone. Spoofing current movie trends also allowed their work to gain international distribution. This comedy riff on ‘Goldfinger’ (1964) was released in some European territories and eventually made its way to the United States.
Hapless petty criminals Franco Pecora (Franco Franchi) and Ciccio Pecora (Ciccio Ingrassia) are hired to gatecrash an exclusive house party and take photographs of NATO Commodore Stevenson (John Karlsen). Unfortunately, their equipment has been tampered with, and they kill him instead. On the run, they cross paths with Agent 007 (George Hilton), who has been assigned by spy boss Col. Herrman (Andrea Bosic) to investigate a strange and worrying state of affairs. All over Europe, previously trusted officials and politicians have been committing acts of treason, almost as if acting under another’s control.
The top brass doesn’t take Bosic very seriously until he guns down General White (Tom Felleghy) during a meeting in his office! Then he shows them the tiny electronic device implanted behind the ear of the corpse. Unfortunately, Hilton doesn’t get very far in his mission, killed by the reanimated Karlsen while Franco and Ciccio watch. Almost immediately, they are kidnapped by the brutish Molok (Dakar). Interrogation follows at a secret base in Madrid, home of the evil Dr Goldginger (Fernando Rey) and his beautiful Girl Friday Marlene (Gloria Paul). Escaping with the aid of Agent 0024 (Rosalba Neri), they’re recruited by Bosic and sent to spy school. Despite displaying staggering levels of incompetence in every department, Bosic sends them to Paris as bait for Rey, who he believes has relocated his organisation to the French capital. Bosic doesn’t trust our heroes to come good, though, following along with his assistant Mary (an uncredited Elisa Montés).
More than half a century later, it can be hard to grasp the sheer productivity of the Hollywood studio system in its prime. Feature films were turned out at a rate that seems almost unbelievable now, but the Italian film industry of the 1960s attempted to give the Americans a run for their money, in quantity, if not in quality. Producers on the Tiber were also very single-minded, with both eyes fixed firmly on the box office, so hit trends were slavishly followed and successful stars relentlessly promoted. In 1965, comedy clowns Franco and Ciccio had 14 pictures in theatres, so the need for new material to feed the production line must have been intense. Given these circumstances, it’s inevitable that this film was not the first time they’d had the Eurospy in their sights, nor was it to be the last.
This is probably the best of Franco and Ciccio’s espionage capers, although that’s mainly due to factors other than the duo’s familiar antics. In their defence, they knew what their audience wanted and were prepared to provide it. So they bicker, shout at each other, pull silly faces, take pratfalls and embrace every comic banana skin the script has to provide. It’s not exactly subtle, but it worked at the box office. Unfortunately, there’s very little creativity to any of the gags or situations and running a joke into the ground doesn’t turn a tumbleweed moment into a nugget of comedy gold. Even worse for those of a more sensitive nature, our heroes spent the last quarter of an hour of the film disguised as African diplomats, and yes, that does mean that they’re acting in blackface.
What pleasures the film has to offer lie elsewhere and mainly centres on the rest of the cast. Hilton is excellent in the few moments he has filling Sean Connery’s shoes, and Rey makes for rather a good stand-in for Gert Fröbe. Sexy femme fatales don’t come much slinkier than Paul and real-life Argentinian wrestler Dakar is an impressive physical presence. One of the script’s few creative moments is giving him an exploding shoe as a signature weapon instead of the lethal bowler hat favoured by Oddjob. On the other hand, Neri is completely wasted as the agent working undercover as one of Rey’s ‘Gingergirls’. She only gets a few lines of dialogue and hangs around in the background of a few scenes. Sure, she gets the Shirley Eaton patented full-body gold paint job, but she’s almost unrecognisable under a silly blonde wig.
Other positives include more production value than usual and some good set design and decoration from Ramiro Gómez and Nedo Azzini. Rey gets to play with chess-playing cardboard box computer Pythagoras, and replicate Goldfinger’s laser beam torture with a circular saw. As for spy gadgets, our heroes get a hairbrush dagger, a soapdish camera, a hairdryer gun and a toothpaste tube that sprays a paralysing gas. Of course, when they come to use them, their suitcase has been swapped out by mistake, and all they have are the usual bathroom accessories. The action is accompanied by a lively, fun score by composer Piero Umiliani, who enjoyed mainstream international success when the Muppets took his song ‘Mah Nà Mah Nà’ into the pop charts all over the English-speaking world.
Journeyman director Giorgio Simonelli regularly worked with the comedy duo at the end of his career. His journey with the megaphone had begun way back in 1934, and projects had included a large number of comedies but also the usual mixture of historical dramas, romances, and even Peplum with ‘Ursus in the Land of Fire/Ursus nella terra di fuoco'(1963). Some of his work with Franco and Ciccio embraced the emerging Spaghetti Western craze, such as ‘Two Sergeants of General Custer/I due sergenti del generale Custer’ (1965). Curiously, he had also directed similar Old West shenanigans for Walter Chiari and Ugo Tognazzi, which, it could be argued, follow the Franco and Ciccio formula pretty closely, but predate the more famous duo’s popularity by a couple of years. However, the same basic story setup was present when Renato Rascel and Tino Buazzelli hit town in ‘Il bandolero stanco (The Tired Outlaw)’ (1952). A film most remarkable for one of the supporting cast playing his entire part in blackface for no discernable reason.
Clik here to view.
Franco and Ciccio had already visited the spy world the previous year with ‘Oh! Those Most Secret Agents/002 agenti segretissimi’ (1964) and went back for more with science-fiction crossover ‘002 Operation Moon/002 operazione Luna’ (1965). It could also be argued that Mario Bava’s dismal ‘Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs/Le spie vengono dal semifreddo’ (1966) qualifies, in which they shared the screen with the legendary Vincent Price. The Sixties were undoubtedly their heyday, but they carried on appearing in films together until 1984, although their last vehicle as a comedy double act was made ten years earlier. From 1970 onwards, they mostly worked separately and sometimes on more serious and dramatic material. Notably, Ciccio had a significant role in Federico Fellini’s ‘Amarcord’ (1973), and the famous director apparently helped out on Ciccio’s debut as a star-writer-director, ‘L’Esorciccio/Exorcist – Italian Style’ (1975). Sadly, it’s still generally regarded in Italy as the ‘worst film of all time’, and he never directed again.
You’ll know exactly what to expect if you’ve ever seen a Franco and Ciccio movie. This example is slightly better than most.