PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
For some reason Italian filmmakers included the words "gold" and "seven," either separately or together, in about a half dozen sixties movies. The title TARGET GOLDSEVEN means absolutely nothing to this movie, and possibly the West German title above, something about an "atom-alarm," would be closer to the subject matter.
Alan Milner (Tony Russel) is assigned to investigate a uranium theft by the criminal organization "The Snake." (Eurospy movies almost never come up with good villains, and here we see them just as inept in naming crime rings.) While Milner pursues the usual clues, the audience gets to see the sanctuary of the Snake-mastermind "Mister Otis" and what he's doing with the stolen nuclear material. In the movie's one departure for expectations, Otis's scientists are trying to concoct an anti-nuclear serum that will immunize people from fallout poisoning. This actually sounds like a good thing, but the script never extrapolates how the crooks are going to exploit their invention if they perfect it, so that part of the plot goes nowhere.
Everything else follows the usual template. I'll credit one-shot director Alberto Leonardi and his writers will giving the audience a fair amount of sex and violence early in the picture, even if the sex is just Milner canoodling with a lady golf pro on the green. The fights and his later lovemaking with female lead Erika Blanc are okay but unremarkable. Russel is charming when needed but he's far from the most impressive of the Eurospies. As if to make up for the underwritten nature of the lead female's role, Blanc's character gets to be a little unpredictable at film's end, escaping Milner when he makes the mistake of lowering his guard. GOLDSEVEN is a little better than the worst but nowhere near the best of its kind.
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