The Devil's Man (1967)

Destro was easily my favorite of the G.I. Joe cartoon characters.  Here was a guy who wasn’t afraid to wear a high-collared, padded jumpsuit.  He had cool weapons, including wrist rockets attached to his metal gauntlets.  He was, per the original file card by comic book writer Larry Hama located on the back of his action figure’s packaging, an unknown.  He had no name other than Destro, no one knew where he came from, and no one (with one exception) knew what he actually looked like.  It wasn’t until later that he got a name (James McCullen Destro) and a place of birth (Scotland).  Whether these things were known or not at the time of the character’s creation, he works better (as most things do) with the mystery intact, in my opinion.  He had one of the best cartoon voices this side of the original Starscream and Cobra Commander (both played by Chris Latta), especially since, at least retroactively, he was a white Scottish fella with a black man’s voice (the great Arthur Burghardt).  Kind of reminds me of Darth Vader in that regard.  Plus, he got to bang The Baroness, the leather-constricted, Eastern-European-accented femme fatale who undoubtedly launched many a young boy on their way to puberty (she was the only one who knew Destro’s actual identity at the time; a small club to be a member of, to be certain).  More than all that, Destro wore a shiny, silver mask at all times in public (and, I like to imagine, sometimes in the boudoir) and it would even move with his mouth when he spoke; that’s some flexible metal.  He was like a luchador without the tights (for better or worse), a badass baldy with a penchant for destruction and mayhem, and if you saw him coming, you were as good as dead.  The Professor (Giancarlo Cianfriglia) in Paolo Bianchini’s The Devil’s Man (aka Devilman Story) also wears a metal mask, though his looks more like one of the robots from the Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, just without the molded hair.  He also doesn’t have wrist rockets, and there’s nary a Baroness-esque figure to be found.  More’s the pity.

In an ultra-abrupt prologue, some guy escapes from a desert lair.  Next thing we know, we’re watching a bunch of planes landing in Rome.  On one of these ubiquitous Pan Am flights is Professor Becker (Bill Vanders) and his daughter/assistant Christine (Luisa Baratto), who are there for some top-secret meetings and such.  Becker goes missing, and this is the cue for Mike (Guy Madison), a two-fisted journo, to enter the picture.  Together, Mike and Christine set off to locate Becker and stop the villains in their tracks.

The Devil’s Man is essentially two films in one.  The first of these is a hardboiled private eye story, wherein Mike isn’t afraid to get his knuckles dirty to get the info he needs.  He’s squarely in the Mike Hammer mold: tough, cynical, and an opportunistic manipulator.  When he’s introduced in what I’ve taken to calling a “meet cruel,” he completely ignores Christine and any of the panic or horror she’s experiencing and instead inspects a crime scene for clues (Bianchini points these clues out to us by having the camera zoom in on them as Mike discovers them).  Later, he blatantly uses Christine as bait, unbeknownst to her.  He’s not above hanging a guy out of a car to extract information from him, either.  In other words, Mike’s a prick, but this type of character has a certain sort of appeal in how forthrightly prick-ish he is.  At least he’s honest about it.  Christine is a damsel in distress, pure and simple.  She exists in this film to give Mike someone to kiss and rescue.  The funny thing about the mystery angle of the film is that, while we’re given clues along with Mike, we’re not given any context to connect them together.  It’s like a jigsaw puzzle missing the corner pieces: you still get the picture, but it’s just a little bit harder to put together.

The second half of the film is a gonzo, Eurospy, science fiction narrative that livens things up a bit (but only a bit) with some interesting elements.  In line with the Professor’s personal visual aesthetic (and, by extension, his modestly budgeted super-science laboratory), is the facet of the loss of humanity.  His big plan is to create human robots (more or less).  This, of course, means that any personality his subjects had before experimentation vanishes.  Like the Professor’s expressionless facade (which hides, but we are never shown, a horribly disfigured face, thus matching the inhumanity on the interior to both of his exteriors [flesh and metal]), there will be nothing left in his subjects, living machines with no free will.  As he states, “Science goes far beyond physical desires.”  He also tells Christine that she must “surrender [her] will to [his].”  For the Professor, the human brain is so imperfect that he is even willing to further dehumanize himself by planting a mechanical brain in his own body.  There’s a bit of a sleazy component added to all this when Mike is tempted with the possibility of sex with Yasmin (Diana Lorys), an experimentee who is now simply a sex slave.  After refusing, Kew (Luciano Pigozzi), the Professor’s greasy little assistant, suggests that he will gladly have his way with her later.  The film’s villains may believe in “science at all costs” and the obliteration of individuality, but their motivations are rooted much more in the very human desires lying at our base levels (namely, sex and power).

For as intriguing as The Devil’s Man threatens to become, it’s overall execution deprives it of any real impact or enjoyability.  It’s sloppy in its editing, its story is contrived as all hell, and the lead characters come off as flat jerks rather than compelling people (or even compelling archetypes).  Its few moments of brilliance are wasted by remaining largely undeveloped, sparking a smattering of ideas and then dropping them just to get to the end.  As a curio, the film should be a seen as an extremely minor point in the Eurospy constellation that tries to mix things up a bit, like oil and water.  Nevertheless, it’s by no means essential, and it may very well leave you with the same blank expression as the one on the Professor’s visage.

MVT:  The pulpier elements spice things up a little bit, but it could have used a dash more of these along with some complimentary flavors.  It’s an okay stew that could have been a great stew.  Now I’m hungry.

Make or Break:  There’s enough travelogue footage, especially once the characters get to Africa, to kill what pacing the film has not only by constantly being cut to but also by feeling like the exact same shot over and over again.

Score:  5/10    

The Devil Came from Akasava (1971)

AKA: Der Teufel kam aus Akasava
Director: Jess Franco
Starring: Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Horst Tappert

Jess Franco is a looming monolith that casts a long shadow over the cinematic landscape, a monolith constructed purely out of sheer force of volume. This Spanish-born director, who has worked in Spain as well as Italy, France, Germany, and on occasion, the United States, made roughly seventy-three million films. If you break down the cinema of the world based on number of productions per nation, Jess Franco alone qualifies as a sovereign film-producing state. Like any good European cult film director, Franco has worked in every genre conceivable, and perhaps more than a few you of which you wouldn't want any conception whatsoever. There's really no effective way to describe Jess Franco to the uninitiated. He is something they will simply have to discover on their own, in small bits and pieces, perhaps completely unaware of the fact that they are learning things about Jess Franco, until the day they wake up and realize they understand him, though they may not like him, and they certainly won't be able to articulate their comprehension to others. If anyone tries to puzzle you with one of those Zen koans, your reply should be to simply show them a Jess Franco film.

Coming out in 1971, The Devil Came from Akasava (which is based on a story by mystery writer Edgar Wallace) was a bit late to jump the Eurospy bandwagon of the 1960s, which Franco had previously entered with his thoroughly ridiculous and highly entertaining Danger! Death Ray. Still, when a movie is this utterly strange, we can forgive it showing up to the dance a little late, especially since it shows up looking like Soledad Miranda clad in silver boots and a see-through black tunic.

Our action, if you want to call it that, begins in the fictional country of Akasava, where a geologist discovers the fabled Philosopher's Stone that can turn any metal into gold. The only problem with the stone is that exposure to it causes one's face to fry. Oh, and it also turns you into a zombie. So, right away, we're going to have zombies, spies, and Soledad Miranda striptease performance art? I guess you can see why Franco has his admirers. No sooner has the geologist found the stone than he is getting shot at. He manages to deliver the stone to Doctor Thorrsen (German cult movie mainstay Horst Tappert, who would work with Franco on a regular basis during the 1970s), but it isn't long before someone show sup to off the assistant geologist and steal the stone. Then Thorrsen himself mysteriously vanishes while, at the same time, back in London, a mysterious man is lurking behind the curtains in Thorrsen's office, just long enough to kill a man sneaking in to try and crack a safe. How's that for intrigue?

It's enough to get sexy British intelligence agent Soledad Miranda assigned to the case, and like any good female operative, she ascertains that the best way to approach the case would be to travel to Akasava and immediately get a job as a stripper in one of those arty, weirdly-lit strip-jazz clubs that only exist in Jess Franco films yet exist in every Jess Franco film. Here is the first, most noticeable, and most enjoyable of Franco's reoccurring obsessions. It kills the man to go ten minutes without inserting a performance art striptease at a jazz club full of swirling lights and candy colors. He should have made a Bollywood film, because he shares the same affection for cutting to the musical number and the hot dancing girl, regardless of whether or not it has anything at all to do with the scene before or after it, or with the movie in general. Though these scenes were often gratuitous asides, it's obvious that Franco (himself an avid jazz fan and musician) adores them. They are shot and choreographed beautifully, and Franco's taste in groovy sixties cocktail lounge jazz is impeccable. I've certainly had worse times at the movies than watching Soledad Miranda dance (if you want to call it that; it's more a series of stylized poses -- "voguing," I suppose) while breezy lounge music from some of Europe's most accomplished composers of swanky bachelor pad music go wild.

Miranda teams up with Fred Williams as Rex Forrester, a detective from Scotland Yard, who all things considered, seem a little out of their jurisdiction operating in a fictional African nation, but jurisdictional squabbles are really the least of anyone's concerns in a movie with magic stones, Lugers, zombies, and avant-garde jazz-strip clubs. Together, at a very languid and meandering pace, they get around in one way or another of working on the case at hand, tracking down Thorrsen and recovering the stone.

Like most Franco films, The Devil Came from Akasava walks to its own idiosyncratic beat, and it takes its sweet time getting anywhere, allowing Franco to linger on whatever catches his fancy. Luckily, more times than not, that's Soledad Miranda. Franco populates his film with a cast of experienced B-movie actors, all of whom turn in exactly the performance you expect from a band of such professionals -- which is to say, some are good, and some are just weird. Besides, Soledad, the real star of the film is the zoom lens, which Franco employs with almost gleeful abandon, zooming slowly, zooming rapidly, on any and every thing that happens to catch he camera's eye. It gets disorienting after a while, as the mere act of walking down a hallway seems to justify Franco zooming in and out. The end result is that a rather run-of-the-mill trashy James Bond knock-off like The Devil Came from Akasava becomes suddenly hallucinatory. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere is the primary goal in many European cult films, but while we expect it from a vampire or zombie or ghost film, seeing the same technique applied to a straight-forward spy thriller is really odd. Pleasant, though, and along with Soledad Miranda, it's that quirky approach to filmmaking that saves an otherwise dull spy film from going on the scrapheap.

The action, when it does come, is pretty clumsy and not the least bit thrilling. The espionage isn't particularly engaging, either. But the film appeals to me never the less, perhaps because I can sympathize and relate to Franco's weird pacing and personal quirks. There are times when I simply can't struggle through one of his films, but The Devil Came from Akasava is much breezier, eye-catching and fun, helped in large part by Franco's dwelling on Soledad Miranda, a goofy spy plot, and some really good Euro-lounge cocktail music, which gets better when it's employed at really inopportune times that should be tense and exciting save for the breathless "la de do za zu!" female vocals accompanying the action.

Make or Break: I hope you like long, arty stripteases to cocktail jazz and featuring a stunningly beautiful woman, because this movie is going deliver them.

MVT: Soledad Miranda. She possesses not just the beauty but also a hypnotic charm and an incredible array of pop-art outfits.

Incredible Paris Incident (1967)

AKA: Fantastic Argoman
Director: Sergio Grieco
Starring: Roger Browne, Dominique Boschero, Eduardo Fajardo

Incredible Paris Incident begins with the daring burgling of the Crown of England, which a guy steals by dressing up as one of those Beefeater chaps and hiding the crown under his big tall furry hat. The police are baffled, as they often are. For all their big reputation, every time Scotland Yard appears in a movie, it's usually in a newspaper headline followed by the phrase "Is Stumped!" They look cool and all, with their tweed jackets and London Fog overcoats and pipes, but when is the last time they successfully solved a crime in a movie? "Scotland Yard Baffled!" "Scotland Yard Left Without a Clue!" "Scotland Yard Mystified!" Hell, even the Scotland Yard guy in this film goes, "What? They expect us to solve these crimes?" What's the deal with Scotland Yard?

Meanwhile, on his own private island somewhere in the Mediterranean, we meet our hero, code name: Argoman. Don't confuse him with Super-Argo. Argoman is your typical ultra-smooth European spy guy. He has his own island and one of those cool space-age bachelor pads. Everything is hooked up to remote controls and computers. While relaxing poolside in his villa and chatting with his very European looking Indian servant (we know he's Indian because he's tan and has a turban on), Argoman senses something unusual. That's right, Argoman has various psychic abilities, one of which allows him to detect when sexy women are piloting their own private hovercrafts near his island. Being a sly devil and all, he uses his psychic powers to the hovercraft to his island, and then levitates the sexy woman across the beach and right into his lap. He follows this act of kidnapping with the line, "Please forgive me, but when I sensed you passing by I couldn't help but dabble in a little telekinetics."

The woman (Jenabelle) who we recognize as the woman behind the thievery of the Royal Crown (the hat, not the soda -- no one would steal RC Cola), is annoyed at first that this total stranger has mentally hijacked her boss hovercraft and levitated her across the island into his lap. However, when she is witness to a display of his rapier-sharp wit and charm, she can't stay mad at him. Argoman's servant is nervous, and reveals to us that after having sex, Argoman loses his powers for six hours. Argoman just laughs and says he is safe because he's on his own secret island. Plus, he hasn't gotten laid in a while.

But this is a Eurospy film, so our two potential sex partners can't simply retire to the boudoir for a night of tender passion and animal lust. No, they must play a little game. Argoman gives the woman a bow and arrow. If she can hit the bull's-eye on a target, he'll give her an assorted gift pack of precious jewels and a brand new Rolls Royce. If, however, she misses, well then he hits the button on a remote control to slide open the wall, revealing his rotating suspended bed. Jenabelle in full Jackie-O beachwear, takes the bow and arrow and just narrowly misses the target. Darn! But, something crafty seems to be going through her head as she and Argoman head toward the bed. After they do something behind closed doors, presumably playing Boggle, she comes out, nonchalantly picks up the bow and arrow and nails the bull's-eye with no problem. She then thanks Argoman for the sweet lovin' in the rotating suspended space-age bed, takes the sapphires, and says she won't need the Rolls as she already has one. Never one to be outdone, Argoman has to huff, "Well, I have several." Then she hops back in her hover craft and darts off across the sea.

Meanwhile, back in England, Scotland Yard is still stumped by the theft of the crown. They have decided to blame Argoman, who we learn is sort of like Batman in that he does heroic things but everyone thinks he is a criminal. However, the inspector seems to have some secret knowledge about Argoman, and soon contacts him. Argoman is annoyed that the same guy who tells the press Argoman stole the crown is the one calling him for help in solving the case, and who can really blame him? It's like saying, "Well, I ordered your execution today, but I was hoping you could drop by beforehand and help me move a couch." Luckily, Argoman is a sport, plus he can levitate sexy women across and island and right into his lap, so he's probably in a good mood most of the time. He agrees to leave his plush sub-tropical private island in order to help the bumbling buffoons of Scotland Yard get their stupid little crown back. When reviewing security photos of the museum, Argoman recognizes Jenabelle in the crowd. He then begins to think something fishy is going on. Could Jenabelle possibly be the dreaded "Queen of the World" who has been taunting Scotland Yard via telegrams? Speaking of which, Scotland Yard must have a palace full of "letters from master criminals taunting Scotland Yard."

Meanwhile, Jenabelle returns the crown, just to further taunt Scotland Yard. She also demands that they turn over to her a giant diamond that was created by a nuclear blast. With the human head-sized diamond as the centerpiece of her giant computer, she will be able to harness untold powers! Meanwhile, Argoman is on his way to Paris to stop her diabolical scheme. Right off the bat, Argoman catches her men, who are dressed in matching leather outfits. He uses the old "distract the guard with a naked woman" shtick that we've probably all used a thousand times and then sneaks into their truck to find her secret layer, and soon finds himself getting his ass kicked by out-of-shape guys in form-fitting leather Buck Rogers outfits. So he does what any man would do -- he instantly transforms into a laughing super-hero in yellow and black underwear and a cape that is three sizes too small. He thing proceeds to stand with arms akimbo, laughing that manly laugh as he tosses lackeys about with his mind powers.

This is what makes this film so special. Oh sure, it could have been a straight-forward Eurospy film, but they decided to go on and throw the whole superhero thing in for good measure. It's the little things that make these things so special. For instance, Darth Vader had to wear the sexy leather outfit and helmet so he could breathe, but he just went ahead and threw the cape on for the hell of it because he knew it looked cool. Likewise, Argoman could have just been a slick undercover spy with psychic powers and a private island and a sexy secretary and glowing green eyes, but he goes ahead and puts the superhero costume on just for the hell of it.

Incredible Paris Incident is indeed one of the most incredible damn things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of incredible things. It has a good sense of humor, tons of action, and more weirdness than you can shake a walking stick at. Director Terence Hathaway, also known as Sergio Grieco, directed several Eurospy films, including Password: Kill Agent Gordon, Operation Istanbul, as well as the Eurocrime film Beast with a Gun, but this is far and away his weirdest, and probably one of the weirdest the genre has to offer. It's also cooler than I could ever hope to be. I wish I could be more like Argoman. In fact, this movie is so astoundingly good that it has inspired me to do more than just sit on my ass. I am going to take control of my life. I am not going to wish I was swanker. I am going to make it happen!

And I am going to begin by wearing bright yellow spandex and a little red cape everywhere I go.

Make or Break: The moment Argoman levitates a woman out of her private hovercraft and into his lap, you know you are in for something special.

MVT: DAT ARGOMAN COSTUME!

Lightning Bolt

Just about every Eurospy film that got made during the craze that began right after the death of peplum and right before the rise of spaghetti westerns got made because of the success of the James Bond films, and most of the Eurospy movies aren't shy about wearing their influences on their sleeve. For some, it was by way of casting one of the many European actors who played a villain or a love interest in a Bond film. Thunderball's Adolfo Celli appeared in several Eurospy productions, as did Bond girls like From Russia With Love's Daniela Bianchi. Bernard "M" Lee and Lois "Miss Moneypenny" Maxwell actually both starred as characters very similar to their Bond characters in a Eurospy film starring Sean Connery's younger brother, Neil, who was passed off as 007's brother in a way vague enough to avoid being sued by the producers of the Bond films. For most, however, it was simply a case of repeating the formula and mimicking the ad campaigns.

Lightning Bolt is particularly obvious about its intentions to compare itself to Thunderball, which came out in the same year, right down to the tagline, "Lightning Bolt -- He Strikes Like a Ball of Thunder!" Which makes even less sense than just the word "thunderball," which already doesn't make any sense. What the hell is a thunderball? But hey -- that was just for American audiences, right? It's like when shifty distributors insisted on forcing Bruce Lee's name into the title of every kungfu movie ever made during the 1970s. You can't blame the filmmakers for that, right? Sure, except that the original Italian title for the movie makes the Bond exploitation even more obvious. The main villain is straight out of Goldfinger with a dash of the Matt Helm film The Ambushers, of all things, thrown in. The original Italian title, in fact, works as hard to recall Goldfinger as the American one does to recall Thunderball. Unless you think Operacione Goldman is a coincidence.

The plot -- in which a nefarious arch villain is using laser waves to misguide and blow up moon rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, is actually quite similar to the plot of the Nick Carter novel, Operation Moon Rocket, which was published in 1968. Although it seems unlikely that an obscure Italian spy movie would have been an influence on the Nick Carter novels, it's certainly still a possibility. The Nick Carter stable of authors was varied, after all, and they were drawing ideas from everywhere. So here we go. NASA is in trouble. Every moon rocket they've tested has exploded into a great, fiery ball, though whether or not it's a thunderball remains debatable. The scientists are convinced that computers and technology behind the rockets are sound, so the only answer must be sabotage.

Lt. Harry Sennet (American actor Anthony Eisley) is called in to get to the bottom of things. His cover, naturally, is that of a rich, womanizing playboy looking for good times and big boobs along Florida' coast, which has been visited by just about every 1960s spy from James Bond to Matt Helm. Assisting Sennet on his mission is bombshell Captain Patricia Flanagan, another genre stalwart who had appeared in everything from The Awful Dr. Orloff to Superargo and the Faceless Giants. In between gratuitous but welcome scenes of Sennet cruising around the bikini-clad babes lounging about the hotel swimming pool area and frequent grainy stock footage of rockets from NASA, our tale of intrigue is woven, and it leads to a powerful, um, beer brewer (thus the Matt Helm movie similarity).

But this is a Eurospy film, and one of the wackier ones at that, so this particular evil brewmeister (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe), has a laser he uses to blow up rockets from his -- get this -- space age underwater lair where he keeps his biggest enemies frozen in a state of suspended animation so he can thaw them out from time to time, taunt them, and get them up to speed on the success of his mad, evil schemes.

Although the production is cheap and the plot is outlandish, this is actually a pretty fun little adventure. Anthony Eisley looks tough and handsome, and he's probably one of the few spies in any of these movies who begins his mission by trying to buy off the bad guys -- with a check! Imagine Sean Connery asking Robert Shaw how much money he'd need not to kill Bond, then saying, "OK, mind if I write you a check?" The women surrounding Eisley are ridiculously gorgeous, which is one of the things even the cheapest of Eurospy films could get right. The set designs are actually pretty impressive considering the budget and have a swanky 1960s pop art feel to them. There's plenty of fist fights, lots of clumsy sexual innuendo, shoot outs, sea plane flying, and then the whole finale in the undersea fortress.

Eurospy films are like any other continental knock-off of a popular American or British genre. Some are very good and lavish, managing to rise above small budgets to deliver a slick looking little thriller full of beautiful women, sets, and locations. Others are threadbare pieces of junk that will bore you to tears. And some are utterly bizarre and incompetent in the most wonderfully enjoyable of fashions. Lightning Bolt falls closer to the last description. A lot of the film's energy undoubtedly comes from director Antonio Margheriti, possibly the most prolific of all Italian action and thriller directors. Margheriti, who was often renamed "Anthony Dawson" when his films were exported to America, directed his fair share of clunkers, but the bulk of his career is filled with perfectly acceptable genre films, and a few genuine classics. Lightning Bolt, like most Eurospy films, is completely ludicrous, but it's not as if anyone involved with the film doesn't seem aware of that. There's a playful sense of fun, almost tongue in cheek, that makes the film a great deal more entertaining than it might otherwise be.

MVT: The set design. For a movie that had a tiny budget, they get the most out of matte paintings and cardboard when they designed the villain’s underground lair. And even the worst Eurospy productions were usually full of cool suits and bikini models.

Make or Break: The hero attempting to end all this intrigue by offering to buy the villain off with a check. If you can’t roll with that concept, this movie will try your patience.