ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER (1965)

 

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

According to a comment on IMDB, ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER appeared at just the right time to profit from the James Bond craze, and it was one of the first of the numerous Eurospy emulations of the Bond formula. This is without a doubt the only distinction of this boring formula flick.

Argentine-born Luis Davila stars as globetrotting agent Mike Murphy (originally Marc Mato), and most of the other actors are either Spanish or from Spanish-speaking countries, including one of Murphy's attractive but underused female leads Perla Cristal. (The other, Jose Greci, was Italian.) Davila handles the heroic chores adequately but with no particular sense of style, and no one else gives more than a cursory performance.

An altruistic professor named Greff invents a hand-held disintegrator ray, expressing his hopes that this will somehow lead to world peace. Of course the mastermind of some criminal syndicate, a fellow named Rigo, steals a major component of the weapon in order to sell it to the highest bidder, and Murphy immediately gets on the trail.

As is frequently the case, the hero performs no real detective work; his appearance on the scene provokes the main villain to send killers after him, and so finds himself drawn into the evildoer's clutches, as well as those of his female assistants, both of whom had previous affairs with Murphy. The script, co-written by director Gregg Tallas, labors to make Murphy seem like a ladykiller over which both ladies are batty, but he's like a dull version of Mike Hammer, slapping around one of the girls and torturing a henchman with an acetylene torch. The ladies are also dull, not even given attire to play up their sexiness. Rigo is a bland villain, who only has a few routine gimmicks-- a water-filling room, a chair with automatic cuffs. No one utilizes the disintegrator ray again until the very end of the movie, and it's with less than spectacular results. 

Tallas directed one other Eurospy, ASSIGNMENT SKYBOLT. I haven't screened it yet, but it's got to be better, 'cause it can't get worse than TANGIER.