Thursday, January 9, 2025

SEVEN MINUTES TO DIE (1969)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  This late entry to the Eurospy genre, co-written and directed by Ramon Fernandez, currently occupies the lower rungs of that category. I've often complained about how Eurospy movies often downplay the villains for whatever reasons, but SEVEN MINUTES TO DIE is unique in that I could hardly keep track of the villain's ID or his plot. I know that early in the movie he eliminates another agent and takes his identity and then plots to sell a list of undercover agents to a power hostile to the democracies.  US Secret Service agent Bill Howard (Paul Stevens, a couple of years after he starred in the superhero fantasy FLASHMAN) trundles around Europe, trying to locate the list and getting into a few desultory fights. (I slightly liked a scene where the hero is attacked on a dock by thugs dressed in judo-gis and headbands.) He encounters a few pretty women but doesn't romance them. There are two diabolical devices in the movie. Howard, escaping from pursuers in his car, releases an oil slick from said car so that his foes skid off a cliff to their doom. Later some enemy or other traps Howard and his secretary in a room with crushing walls, but he breaks out with the use of explosives (without causing harm to either himself or the secretary). Oddly, the photography's pretty good, but everything else about the movie is humdrum as hell.    

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