‘I don’t think I can overcome my misconception.’
An American agent is killed in Singapore while trying to track down a missing nuclear scientist and his son. The West’s best agent is assigned to find the boffin and prevent his latest invention from falling into the wrong hands…
Italian-Spanish-French Eurospy adventure with Stelio Candelli running around Singapore as this week’s ‘Bond on a Budget’. Ferdinando Baldi writes and directs, and Annabella Incontrera and Juan Cortés fill the co-starring roles.
The global balance of power is threatened when Professor Wong Lee and his son go into hiding somewhere in Malaysia. The scientist has invented an atomic fission process that can reduce a nuclear bomb down to the size of a ping pong ball, and the governments of the world are desperate to acquire it. Western authorities believe it’s a job for only one man, special agent Kurt Jackson (Candelli, billed here as the far cooler-sounding Stanley Kent). Sent to Singapore, he joins his colleague, Jean Debrix (Juan Cortés), to begin his mission.
Taking in the tables at the local casino, Candelli encounters ice queen Evelyne (Incontrera), who has links with local crime boss Chan Tu. When he follows her back to the mobster’s villa, he gets confirmation that they are brokering a deal to sell Lee to an unfriendly government, even though they are unsure of his precise location. Teaming up with agent Annie Wong (Yôko Tani), Candelli attempts to thwart the enemies of the free world and save the Professor.
At first glance, this looks like another conveyor belt Eurospy, one of dozens that rolled off the production line in 1960s mainland Europe as an attempt to cash in on the James Bond phenomenon. In actuality, it’s more of a crime thriller, the kind of international 1960s co-production that some have unkindly labelled as ‘Euro-Pudding’. Candelli could just as easily be working for Interpol as for a spy outfit, and the object of his search might as well be a suitcase full of money or a shipment of illegal drugs. It’s only a McGuffin to move the action. There’s no Bond villain, no secret base and no gadgets except some surveillance gizmos and a multi-functional musical instrument that also works as a gun and a bomb.
The absence of a featured villain is a curious choice and one that handicaps the movie severely as nominal Mr Big Chan Tu only appears briefly in a couple of scenes. Although the actor’s anonymity is probably down to credits being missing from the available print, he hardly makes enough of an impression to justify his inclusion anyway. Some of the evil business is left to Incontrera, but she doesn’t get much screen time either, and most of it rests on the shoulders of a couple of dozen faceless stuntmen firing off guns in the lacklustre action scenes. These goons badly need to clock some more hours on the practice range. They can’t even hit Candelli when he’s running around at night wearing a white tuxedo! Given his stellar choice of camouflage, you could be forgiven for beginning to doubt his status as the world’s number one secret agent.
There are only a few significant nods to the spy craze and the Bond template. A half-hearted effort is made to show Candelli as a ladies’ man, but this mainly involves him indulging in some mild doses of casual smirking. Colleague Cortés even gets more action in this department, given that his cool pad is overrun by babes in bikinis. They lounge lazily around his pool and offer the occasional full-body massage, and no, that’s not a euphemism for sex; it is just a massage. So, it falls to composer Carlo Savini to establish the film’s Eurospy credentials. His soundtrack is a fun, breezy concoction that tries hard to provide the necessary flamboyance and pace, but it struggles under the lead weight of the events unfolding on screen. However, it was popular enough to be issued on CD in 2019, a brief 53 years after the movie died a quiet death. There’s also a semi-hilarious theme song, with Iva Zanicchi attempting to register on the Richter scale as she delivers her best full-throttle Shirley Bassey impression.
Although the pickings are pretty slim, there are a few unintentionally funny moments for enthusiasts. When Candelli arrives at the airport at the start of the film, elaborate arrangements are in place to throw off anyone waiting to follow him. These culminate in a ride on an open rickshaw where he’s completely visible to anyone who happens to glance in his general direction. Just seeing Incontrera at the casino is enough for Candelli to bug her car and follow her to her chief’s house. There are no grounds for thinking she’s involved in the case, so how he works it out, I don’t know, but I guess that’s why he’s a super spy, and I’m not.
Tani holds a microphone as she wanders around the customer tables during her nightclub number. It’s a refreshing change from the usual movie convention when the club’s resident chanteuse needs no amplification to deliver their siren song. However, how Tani avoids getting the cord tangled around all the chair and table legs is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps she does a magic act after the intermission! The climax features a brief fistfight and minor gunplay in the Temple of a Thousand Buddhas, where Candelli finds the formula hidden (somehow) inside a living snake. Which has been painted gold. Because title of movie. Honestly, I’m surprised the filmmakers even bothered.
Baldi’s career as a director followed the usual path in Italian cinema during the middle of the 20th Century. He began with a handful of projects, including historical adventures such as ‘David and Goliath/David e Golia’ (1960), which starred Orson Welles. As Hollywood film crews and money began flooding the country, he snagged co-director credits on productions such as ‘The Tartars/I tartar’ (1960) with Victor Mature and the woeful ‘Duel of Champions/Orazi e Curiazi’ (1961), which starred Alan Ladd. However, Italian directors who worked on such films were often elevated to co-director status to release funding from the government, so their input was likely more in an assistant type of role.
He did fly solo on two ‘sword and sandal’ features with American actor Mark Damon, though before his brief brush with the Eurospy. Afterwards, he mostly made Spaghetti Westerns but did deliver a few films in other genres, notably Giallo ‘Nine Guests for a Crime/Nove ospiti per un delitto’ (1977). He also directed an unsuccessful early attempt to revive the 3-D format with the Western ‘Comin’ At Ya’ (1981). His penultimate film, the terrorist drama ‘Missione finale’ (1988), was shot in North Korea and starred Mark Gregory, who had found a measure of fame early in his career as the star of Enzo G Castellari’s ‘Bronx Warriors’ films.
A dreary drag through some half-baked spy games. Best avoided.