OPERATION POKER (1965)

 

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

Here's another Eurospy with a one-shot protagonist essayed by familiar spy-face Roger Browne. The angle that the hero sometimes gets engaged in high-risk poker-games seems like an attempt to channel Ian Fleming and his endless fascination with card-playing. Thankfully the producers of this Italian-Spanish opus never allow games of chance to interfere with the more dangerous games.

Agent Glen Foster has two concerns here. First, he has to deal with a scientist with a Great Marvelous Invention-- for once, not the usual explosive or death-ray, but an X-ray device small enough to fit on a tie-clip. Second, Foster is supposed to protect a Vietnamese envoy, some of whose protectors have already been mysteriously killed. While Foster goes around romancing hot women and getting into some (unusually well choreographed) fights, we see two more agents knocked with uncanny "diabolical devices" such as a gas-bomb hidden in an agent's shower (yes, it's a lady agent) and a remote-controlled boat that runs down a swimmer and explodes all over him. Foster doesn't carry around any special weapons himself, but he does drive a customized car designed to compete with the ejection-seat version of Bond's Aston-Martin from the GOLDFINGER movie. When a bad guy stows away in the back seat of Foster's car, the whole back end of the auto breaks off, consigning the villain to a timely demise.

Two of Foster's femmes are played by well-known Euro-babes Helga Line and Jose Greci. At the end there's a slight reveal with respect to the unknown mastermind, though I can't claim that it's a major surprise-- and the reveal still doesn't palliate the Eurospy genre's sad lack of memorable villains.

CYBORG 2: GLASS SHADOW (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Here's a rarity: a sequel-in-name-only that's better than the film on which the latter film is trying to coast.

CYBORG was just another desert-based post-apocalyptic flick, notable mostly for being an early success for Jean-Claude Van Damme. CYBORG 2 takes place in a big future-city dominated by mega-corporations. One of them, Pinwheel, specializes in producing cyborgs for everything from war to love-- that is, fighting in men's wars or serving in men's brothels.

Pinwheel has a competitor, the Asian-based Kobayashi Corporation, but the chairman of the board thinks he has the perfect solution to competitors: blow them up. Pinwheel plans to send a particular cyborg, dubbed Cash Reese, to the rival company as a gift, but with an extra added attraction: without her knowledge the cyborg has been loaded with "glass shadow," a chemical that can explode on command and doom all of the recipients of this living Trojan Horse.

Apparently before making this decision, Pinwheel was having this cyborg trained as a soldier, for we first see Cash-- played by Angelina Jolie when she was short of twenty years-- having a practice duel with her human trainer Colt (Elias Koteas). Cash is deeply concerned that her roommate, a fellow cyborg, has gone missing-- not knowing that the roommate was an early test case for "glass shadow."

Cash and Colt aren't obviously a couple at this point, but they bond quickly when a mysterious informer named "Mercy" (Jack Palance) informs them of Pinwheel's intentions. The two go on the run, intending to get out of the big city to some bucolic refuge. Pinwheel sends an assassin (Billy Drago) to take them out, while the Kobayashi bigwigs, who have been spying on Pinwheel, hire another assassin (Karen Shepherd) to bring Cash into their purview. 

Director/co-writer Michael Schroeder brings visual verve to the action-scenes, and the cityscape, while indebted to the usual BLADE RUNNER template for futuristic cities, is not slavish in its design. Jolie and Koteas both handle the fight-scenes well, providing a anticipation of Jolie's later career as a cinema tough-girl in SALT and in the Lara Croft series. Mercy is almost always heard over intercoms, with the Palance face only seen partially, and he provides an interesting vibe in that he often speaks in peculiar quasi-poetic dialogue. If I thought Schroeder and his fellow writers had managed to tap into real poetry, I might grade the movie's mythicity higher. But the ending, in which Cash and Colt escape but have to deal with their differing aging-rates, provides a more dramatic conclusion than one usually gets from most sci-fi cyborg-flicks.

NEON CITY (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

When looking for stills with which to illustrate this review, I noticed a fair number like the one above, in which the actors are mostly just standing around. This makes a fair amount of sense when you know that the director/co-writer of NEON CITY was actor Monte Markham, who, one would expect, would be intimately concerned with what his fellow actors in the project would need.

As many online reviewers have observed NEON CITY is basically a reworking of 1939's STAGECOACH for a post-apoc film. It's 2050, and human abuse of the environment has led to many barren areas of the U.S., over which authorities in the large cities wield only provisional power. Motorcycle-riding mutant raiders range the barren lands like wild Indians, and some travelers are afflicted by bizarre weather conditions like poisonous sand storms and solar phenomena called "brights." 

The law in the cities is far from even-handed. Ex-cop Harry Stark (Michael Ironside in a rare lead role) quit the force long ago due to personal grievances, but now he can only use his skills as a bounty hunter. He captures an accused murderess, Reno (Vanity), but when he takes her in to get his bounty, an old enemy, Raymond (Markham) rigs the situation so that Stark can only get his bounty if he takes Reno to Neon City. And the only way to get there is by "riding shotgun" on a stage-- I mean, a special armed transport. Various other passengers are also traveling to Neon City, and one of the travelers is the daughter of a rich man. Her welfare is the reason Raymond is so determined that Stark go along as added security, even though the transport's driver is Stark's old enemy Bulk (Lyle Alzado). 

I won't spend very much time on the various passengers, who are all simple stereotypes, though I may as well note that one traveler is Stark's ex-wife, now a prostitute (and thus a loose parallel to the female lead of STAGECOACH). However, the destined romantic arc for Stark is one with Reno, which one should anticipate just because they argue all the time. In addition, one mysterious older fellow will eventually prove to be Doctor Xander, infamous for having run experiments that made the pollution problems worse. 

The bulk of the film is episodic, as the transport either seeks to fend off the attacks of the cycle-riding mutants or tries to find shelter for repairs and/or provisions. There's no surprise when the warriors of the group-- Stark, Reno, and Bulk-- largely work together to preserve their lives and those of the passengers. Oddly, while Bulk never attacks Stark, he tries to get busy with Reno, who manages to escape him. But there's no dramatic result of this incident, except that Reno, who refrains from accusing Bulk, suddenly breaks her tough-girl pose and explains to Stark just why she's innocent of the murder-charges.

Eventually a fair number of the characters make it to Neon City, little of which is seen beyond a receiving area. Yet for all the nastiness of the journey, some characters have some personal growth, and there's some hope that Xander may be able to reverse the climactic problems. Most post-apoc stories are downbeat in the extreme, but since I get a mild sense that Markham was trying to draw parallels between the redemption of the travelers and that of the world, I rate NEON CITY as "fair" in mythicity.

THE INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES (1963)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical*

Due to a very slow and rambling first half-hour, the sequel to Miguel Morayta's BLOODY VAMPIRE doesn't score quite as highly as the first film, to which INVASION is a direct sequel with essentially the same cast. The biggest change is that the wife of vampire Count Frankenhusen, originally played by Erma Martha Bauman, died in BLOODY, so this time Bauman plays the couple's grown daughter Brunhilda. There's some suggestion that the daughter may get pulled into the aegis of her bloodsucking father, but the two never share an extended scene together, so it would appear that Morayta wanted to avoid that particular can of worms.

Once again the lead vampire hunter Cagliostro provides long lectures to his followers about his specialized weapons against the vampire threat, once more emphasizing "clannic acid" but adding this time that his vampires are particularly vulnerable to fire, which I didn't think was much of a thing in previous vampire films. 

Things finally pick up toward the end. One of Cagliostro's younger hunters penetrates the Count's sanctum, and Frankenhausen assumes the form of a giant bat to attack the crusader. The bat's role is played by a large-eared dummy that can't help but look risible, but the scene itself is played straight, and it leads to a better one. The hunter manages to impale the bat with a spear, which simply immobilizes the vamp. In response to his plight, all of Frankenhausen's undead minions rise from their coffins-- though all of them have stakes through their innards! I guess Cagliostro's servants had been busy finding the bloodsuckers out? But here the stakes don;t immediately kill vampires, as in Bram Stoker's DRACULA. My impression is that the stakes do nothing more than pin the undead creatures to their coffins-- which notion may be closer to the folkloric idea of what stakes were supposed to do. At any rate, the scene of the stake-bearing ghouls wandering through dry-ice graveyards is the film's high point, and well worth waiting for.

ONCE UPON A SPY (1980)

 

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

Ted Danson completed this failed TV-pilot about two years before he was cast for CHEERS, so I' ll bet few people were happier than he was when the show did not result in a series. Much as I like to give unmade series the benefit of the doubt, a "Once Upon a Spy" show probably would have tainted the careers of any up-and-comers associated with it.

Jack Chenault (Danson) works for an American spy agency as a computer expert, but one day he gets called into "field work" despite his lack of training by the all-knowing agency head "The Lady" (Eleanor Parker, stuck in a nothing role). It seems that the agency is investigating a stolen NASA computer and suspicion has fallen upon eccentric scientist/millionaire Marcus Valorum (Christopher Lee). Chenault has a history with Valorum, in that the former once beat the latter out of some high-level science-award, and the agency figures that Valorum might let something slip to an old enemy out of bragging rights-- I think. Eventually 'twill be revealed that Valorum has taken a permanent ride on the crazy train, having invented a shrinking ray with which he plans to shrink Hoover Dam, just to cause lots of chaos and be generally a mean guy.

Since Chenault is not a field guy, he's teamed with a total of one field agent, Paige Tannahill (Mary-Louise Weller). Tannahill is in theory extremely skilled in both gunplay and hand-to-hand combat, but the script skimps on action in favor of far too much romantic chatter between the teammates, so the viewer has no chance to be impressed by the lady agent. Even Tannahill's climactic fight-scene against a small coterie of henchmen in the standard "villain's maze" is underwhelming.

Writer Jimmy Sangster was far better known for horror than for adventure, but he'd done far better than this knockoff in 1967's DEADLIER THAN THE MALE. As for director Ivan Nagy, I'd previously noted that his CAPTAIN AMERICA II TV-film was a little better than the previous TV-film with the hero, and SPY is a letter better than either of those. But it's a measured choice at best.

AGENT FOR HARM (1966)

 

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

After I've bagged on many of the Eurospy flicks, I suppose I should be just as harsh on this American-made low-budget double-o-ripoff. And I did bag on at least one such U.S. agent, dissing A MAN CALLED DAGGER pretty thoroughly. However, as it happens, I rather like AGENT FOR HARM despite its many shortcomings.

One shortcoming is in the name of his organization, whose acronym I won't trouble to detail, and which sounds fatuous on the face of things. In addition, HARM was originally budgeted as a television pilot, and then reworked into a one-shot feature film, and the actor playing main hero Adam Chance, Peter Mark Richman, was rather bland. 

Nevertheless, despite a paucity of location work, director Gerd Oswald keeps things looking like SOMETHING interesting is going on, and not only when there are gorgeous women on camera. Eschewing the usual death-ray, this time all the spies are chasing around a gun that shoot alien spores, which in turn can devolve human beings into gooey globs. Despite that sci-fi angle, Chance runs around fighting enemy spies with mostly ordinary weapons. His villains include familiar faces like Martin Kosleck and Robert Quarry, and though there's not a great main villain, these secondary figures add a little extra pizzazz.

There are also some cute goofup-lines, such as when Chance tells a female agent, who's just flipped him, to "meet him on the judo range." 

It's not exactly good, but it's at least a decent timewaster.

DANGER! DEATH RAY!

 

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

Though this boring Eurospy made for a better-than-average episode of MST3K, by itself DEATH RAY isn't nearly as exciting as the above poster makes it look.

The routine setup shows us a good mad scientist who invents a death-ray in the hope of advancing world peace. A spy-ring abducts the scientist, in the hope of forcing him into re-creating the weapon for their dastardly uses. It's up to the risibly named "Bart Fargo" (Gordon Scott) to save the world from the barely described evil spy organization.

Though Scott is suitably dashing, even he can't inject much interest into the rambling plot, which mostly consists of Fargo walking into various settings and pissing off locals so that he can beat them up and get info from them. This incidents are broken up with a few liaisons with beautiful women, no better or worse than a billion others. 

In addition to a bouncy musical score, which seems to be one of the few merits everyone agrees upon, I'm at least gratified that since the opening displays a death-ray test, the movie concludes with a duel between the hero's machine gun and the villain's big but unwieldly death-ray cannon. That's about it.