ELECTRA ONE (1967)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


Though I enjoy Eurospy flicks, they tend to be undistinguished visually. Thus I was rather surprised when I saw director Alfonso Balcazar's ELECTRA ONE making far more use of artful close-ups to create his Bond-on-a-budget.

Balcazar did most of his directorial work on spaghetti westerns, at least one of which was a collaboration with ELECTRA'S central actor George Martin. Martin never made another Eurospy film, which is a minor shame, since he projected a little more charming insouciance than most actors in similar roles. His character is a little different, too, for he's not a spy, but an international thief known as "the Lynx" (though he goes by the single name "Gary" during mundane encounters). Moreover, he actually has a romantic arc atypical of Bond-imitators.

ELECTRA ONE is named for its villain, though there's no explanation as to why a middle-aged schemer would use a code-name modeled on an archaic Greek heroine. The film opens by quickly establishes the nature of the villain's menace: he uses an insidious formula to make a U.S. military officer go berserk and almost trigger a nuclear-missile launch. Many Eurospy films toss out some devilish device or fiendish formula to motivate the hero against the villains, and then they proceed to forget about it. Some films, like THE SPY WHO LOVED FLOWERS, content themselves with just talking about the gizmo. ELECTRA ONE's opening at least establishes the possible peril of the dingus, even if most of the rest of the film has the hero chasing around after an antidote.

While the Lynx is performing a heist-job, he crosses paths with the henchmen (and one henchwoman, the gorgeous Rosalba Neri) of Electra. They've killed the scientist who concocted the antidote, but his lovely female assistant Monica (Vivi Bach) has the formula with her. Gary the Lynx gets hold of the formula and tries to get as many bidders as possible to pony up for it. However, Gary's also more than a little smitten with Monica, so that he ends up defending the formula against Electra instead of merely turning it over to the highest bidder.

The action is nicely handled, but there are no gadgets aside from the insanity-formula and its antidote, though Electra does have a secret base. Neri, despite her status then as a prime Euro-babe,  doesn't get to do much of anything.