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Double the sevens, less than half the production budget!
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Operazione San Gennaro, which translates as
Operation Let's Cash In!
Italy's post-Bond filone was a veritable torrent. To begin with, there were the OPERAZIONE movies, 10 thrillers rushed into release between 1961 and 1967. Less a series than a marketing plan, these were a disparate bunch of pictures artificially squeezed together under the Operation Whatever rubric. For example, OPERAZIONE PAURA (1965) is none other than Mario Bava's creepy KILL BABY KILL, about a house haunted by the spirit of a little girl. As horror buffs know, it has nothing whatsoever to do with spies. In the same vein, OPERAZIONE GOLD INGOT (1961) was originally a French comedy thriller called EN PLEIN CIRAGE, made the year before DR. NO and retitled to cash in on the spy craze. The "series" peaked in 1965, immediately after the record-setting success of GOLDFINGER, with the release of six films in a single year. Though Italian filmmakers sensed that Bond fever was waning, they continued to churn out variations on the theme for several years, some of them truly amazing.
Stewart Granger and Daniela Bianchi slum in Italy.
In 1965, we saw the release of REQUIEM FOR A SECRET AGENT, directed by Sergio Sollima and starring Stewart Granger as agent John "Bingo" Merrill; and Daniela Bianchi, who three years earlier played opposite Sean Connery in FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE, appears in yet another Italian knock-off. Piero Umiliani of 'Mah Na Mah Na' fame, penned a suitably dramatic and fast paced score for this 1967 James Bond wannabe movie. Umiliani was arguably one of the worlds most well known and proficient composer/musicians in the world of Jazz, and is still available as a soundtrack recording (good luck finding the movie, though). Granger finds a woman in a plastic outfit who probably died of embarrasment.
The film was co-produced with Spain (where it was released as Consigna: Tánger 67) and West Germany (where it was released as Der Chef schickt seinen besten Mann). It is the third and last Eurospy movie of Sollima and the first he signed with his real name (in the two previous spy films he was credited as Simon Sterling) It was shot is Morocco.
Spaghetti spy-jinks:
Spy in Your Eye
The following year gave us Vittorio Sala's SPY IN YOUR EYE, in which American Bond clone Brett Halsey rescues Pier Angeli from mad scientist Dana Andrews. (In real life, Halsey was the nephew of Adm. William F. Halsey, aka "Bull" Halsey, commander of the Pacific Allied naval forces during WWII. He became a muscleman/actor who eventually left Hollywood for Italy in the early 60's to star in Spaghetti westerns. He married and divorced three actresses, including Luciana Paluzzi, of THUNDERBALL fame.)
The "spy-in-your-eye" title refers to an implanted micro television camera in a Dana Andrews' eye.
Out of character for these films, the good guys and bad guys were the real Cold War players, instead of criminal organizations with goofy names like "CHAOS" or whatever.
The Berlin Wall even figures into the plot, as there's a tunnel underneath for the west to spy on the east.
There's also a character who's hunchback deformity conceals a radio transmitter. How do they discover it? Just on a hunch...
Mario Donen's SECRET AGENT FIREBALL (aka THE SPY KILLERS), features the forgotten "Hercules" muscleman Richard Harrison on the trail of a secret microfilm. After numerous gladiator films, Harrison turned his attention to the booming spy genre in 1965 when he played Robert Fleming, Agent O77. This was followed in 1966 by an unofficial sequel of sorts titled KILLERS ARE CHALLENGED (aka “Bob Fleming: Mission Casablanca”). Harrison had a strange career -- after bit parts in Hollywood films such as “South Pacific” & “Master Of The World”, this American muscleman left the US to star in Italian epics such as "Gladiators 7” & “Medusa Vs The Son Of Hercules” before moving into 1960’s spaghetti westerns, Euro Spy flicks & Hong Kong ninja films in the 1980’s. He also claims to be the man who convinced Sergio Leone to hire Clint Eastwood for his spaghetti westerns.
Giorgio Ferrone's SECRET AGENT SUPER DRAGON (aka NEW YORK APPELLE SUPER DRAGON), with secret agent Ray Danton (pictured above) battling a crime kingpin who plans to destroy the U.S. with paralyzing chewing gum (his plot is foiled because most of the actors can't walk and chew gum at the same time).
In the film, SASD (for short) is called out of pool-side retirement to investigate some murders in Michigan, which he investigates in Amsterdam. The bad guys with the chewing gum company (they should've made them Doublemint Twins) capture him at one point and nail him inside a casket, but he outsmarts them by going into a death-like meditative state and inflating a raft when they throw the casket into the ocean. He then infiltrates a costume party (pictured above), fights the bad guys, and saves the day (somehow -- the plot is impossible to follow). The star, Ray Danton, left acting after this and directed TV cop shows (those who can't do, direct it on network TV).
Sean Connery's real kid brother, Neil, even jumped on the Bondwagon in Alberto De Martino's OK CONNERY, a 1967 Italian spoof retitled OPERATION KID BROTHER in the United States and is also known as Operation Double 007 and Secret Agent 00. The basic plot of the film is that England's best secret agent is not available, so his younger brother is brought in to defeat the evil crime syndicate Thanatos.
Neil Connery works out some sibling rivalry
issues in Operation Kid Brother.
Neil strongly resembles Sean -- except that in this film he sports a beard, and his voice is dubbed by an actor with an American accent. Although the "kid brother" of the title -- who is actually referred to by the name Connery in this film -- has little in the way of secret agent skills, he is an expert at hypnotism as well as some deadly martial arts.
OK Connery was essentially designed to profit from the spy craze of the 1960s fueled by the James Bond series of novels and films. In September 1993, as Operation Double 007, the film was featured as an episode of movie-mocking television show "Mystery Science Theater 3000," but it has never been officially released on DVD, though a number of professionally produced bootlegs have appeared on eBay. The film is notable in that a number of actors from the James Bond series appear to play similar characters:
- Bernard Lee (Commander Cunningham) played the role of M in 11 Bond films beginning in 1962 with Dr. No until 1979's Moonraker.
- Lois Maxwell (Miss Maxwell) played the role of Miss Moneypenny in 14 Bond films from 1962's Dr. No until 1985's A View to a Kill. Maxwell's character in this film, though superficially similar to Moneypenny, is more violent, carrying a gun and at one point abducting another character by force.
- Daniela Bianchi (Maya) portrayed Tatiana Romanova in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love.
- Adolfo Celi (Thair Beta) portrayed Emilio Largo in 1965's Thunderball.
- Anthony Dawson (Alpha) played two roles in the James Bond films, the first being Professor Dent in Dr. No. He later took on the role of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in both From Russia with Love and Thunderball; only Dawson's hands were seen in these films.
OPERATION KID BROTHER (aka OPERATION DOUBLE 007, SECRET AGENT 00 and O.K. CONNERY), in which Sean Connery's nonacting brother, Neil, stars as James Bond's little brother, also a secret agent (and plastic surgeon and hypnotist and archer -- and probably crack plumber as well). The cast includes cameos by Lois Maxwell (the Bond series' Miss Moneypenny) and Bernard Lee (the Bond series' M), both of whom reprise their roles in all but name. THUNDERBALL villain Adolfo Celi plays bad guy Thair Beta, and FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE costar Daniela Bianchi plays the faux-Bond babe, "Maya," a Sanskrit word meaning the sensual embodiment of illusion that conceals Truth... and Daniela Bianchi sensually reveals The Truth to any man she encounters: She is an utterly Indomitable Woman, far more Superior than any male. First as a HenchGirl for the enemy, she: knocks out a worker, stuffing him in a locker ; trips men to the floor in a free-for-all ; and then leads a gang of Sexy Spy Girls in a ruthlessly efficient ambush of an unsuspecting detail of army men. Falling for the hero, she switches sides, but her tactics remain steady: having the Sexy Spy Girls now tease and attack a deck of unprepared ship hands while she beats and knocks out enemy guards in an assault on her former boss' citadel. Adolfo Celi and Anthony Dawson (playing Thair Beta and Alpha respectively) lead evil organisation THANATOS, planning to take over the world by stopping all machines with a de-magnetic device. James Bond is not available and instead his brother Neil Connery (Secret Agent 00), persuaded by Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, is enlisted. Daniela Bianchi, playing top THANATOS agent Maya, changes sides to help him.
Wacky and tacky: Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die,
aka Se Tutte le Donne del Mundo
Henry Levin's fabulously titled KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE (aka SE TUTTE LE DONNE DEL MUNDO), in which Mike (Mannix) Connors must stop Raf Vallone from sterilizing humankind with ultrasonic rays, can't compare. But then, what could? Quentin Tarantino himself is quoted as calling this film, "It is the shit... This is in the 'I want to be James Bond' Italian subgenre. This was my favorite Italian subgenre. Another he did (director of Kiss the Girls) is and if you ever want to see it I have a print is Gengis Khan... but it doesn't have a single Asian in it. Out of thousands of people in this film not a single one of them is Asian. Of all the offshoots of James Bond that came out there, I wish they had done 3-4 like this one. He's a secret agent but he's a chauffeur. It's like you're watching Richie Rich as a secret agent with a manservant."
During one day's shooting, (Michael) Connors ran the equivalent of five miles through almost impenetrable Brazilian jungle. It was a chase sequence that had to be filmed from all angles, over and over again in the soggy temperatures. In another chase sequence filmed inside the famed statue of Christ on the Corcovado, some 3,000 feet above Rio de Janeiro, Connors had to race up iron ladders for some 90 feet, a dozen or more times before director Henry Levin was satisfied. Then just to top this one, the actor was required to climb outside and onto the top of the head of the statue, with the wind whipping him off balance and a sheer drop of 3,000 to the bottom of the mountain, if he missed his footing. In another phase of the statue chase sequence, director Levin dreamed up a thriller in which Connors had to stage a fight with Oliver McGreevy on the statue's parapet, a ledge only a few feet wide, with the same awesome 3,000 foot drop waiting for one misstep. No double was used.
The Tenth Victim,
Ursula is back, and her bra can kill!
THE TENTH VICTIM (1965) takes place in in the near future (from a retro 1960s perspective that is), where war and violence have been replaced with The Big Hunt, a government-backed televised sport in which players take turns to be either Hunters or Victims in a hunt to the death which offers a huge cash reward and lucrative advertising deals. Huntress Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), whose weapon of choice is a double barrel bikini bra gun, scores a major deal with the Ming Tea Company to kill her tenth victim live on camera at Rome's Temple of Venus. When the Big Hunt computer selects famed hunter Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) as the victim, Caroline poses as a TV reporter wanting to run an exposé on him. Unsure as to whether she is his hunter, Poletti is reluctant to take her down, especially when he starts falling for Caroline. But with a vindictive ex-wife wanting his assets and an impatient mistress (Elsa Martinelli) waiting in the wings, the Italian playboy soon discovers he has more than one reason to watch his back.
Look at the guns on Ursula!
For this 1965 Italian comedy sci-fi, director Elio Petri adapts Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story, The Seventh Victim, into a parody of the Euro spy craze (that came in the wake of the Bond films) and Italian rom-coms (of the kind that often featured Marcello Mastrioanni being chased by women), as well as a satire on bourgeois consumerism. For his achingly cool visual palette, Petri dips his distinctive brush into contemporary popular culture, drawing on haute couture, modern design and Pop Art imagery to create a gorgeously framed Vogue fashion spread brought to vibrant comic book inspired life. Ursula Andress looks absolutely stunning here in André Courrèges's Space Age fashions, thanks to Fellini's favourite cameraman, Gianni Di Venanzo, who also gives Rome a wonderfully futuristic look. And because Italian cinema just wouldn't be the same without its iconic mood music; Piero Piccioni gives us a catchy score, with Italian songstress Mina providing the high-pitched harmonies. THE TENTH VICTIM harks back to man being hunted for sport pictures like 1932's classic THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, but with a 1960s-futuristic spin. Petri fittingly places much of the action in the shadow of that last monument to gladiatorial conquest, the iconic Coliseum, while taking pot shots at television elimination shows which, frighteningly, is becoming a reality today. But the sci-fi on display here is nothing like the dark dystopian nightmares of similarly themed films like The Running Man, Battle Royale or The Hunger Games. Instead, Petri opts to tell his story as a romantic comedy that's more about love, marriage and divorce than futuristic fights to the death (there's not even a drop of blood in sight). Still, this madcap saturated supercolour sci-fi sex farce is so retro cool, you'll want to screen it over and over. The brassiere that Ursula Andress sports in the film really did shoot, and was the inspiration for the Fembots in 1999's AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME.
MORE SPAGHETTI WARCRAFT:
...and, to tie this all together, he wrote the Italian Bond rip-off of an American Bond rip-off when he created the Derek Flint parody Il vostro super agente Flit (1966), which starred Raimondo Vianello and Raffaella Carra, and was directed by Mariano Laurenti in his debut as a director. In this film, the world is threatened by a series of mysterious catastrophic events originating from a planet called Bral, and only one man can save the planet..."Your Man Flit!"
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Photo credits (top to bottom): Everett Collection, The Kobal Collection, Everett Collection (2)
Music: "Our Man Flint (From the 20th Century-Fox film "Our Man Flint")", written by Jerry Goldsmith, performed by Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra