Come Spy With Me
Dean Brierly dons his Nehru jacket and straps on his
Walther PPK as he explores the diabolically swinging espionage world of Dick Malloy,
Agent 077.
The 1960s gave the world a new kind of cinematic hero, one
who redefined conceptions of morality through his indulgence in casual violence
and unrepressed carnality. He operated in a fantasy world of spy vs.
counterspy, had a license to kill and carried out supercharged adventures in
such Technicolor playgrounds as London, Paris, Rome and Istanbul. His adversaries
were ingenious, formidable and frequently megalomaniac; his playmates were
numerous, voluptuous and frequently duplicitous. He was known by many names.
Among the most familiar and enduring were Bond, Solo, Drake, Palmer, Flint.
In addition to these celluloid titans, there was a vast
contingent of second-tier spies, overlooked and unheralded by critics, but
cheered on by audiences the world over who couldn’t get enough kiss kiss, bang
bang. Literally hundreds of cheap but potent European spy films were churned
out in the mid-to-late sixties to feed the demand. Like the contemporaneous
spaghetti western genre, the Eurospy misses outweighed the hits, but not by as
great a margin as is generally assumed. Unfortunately, many of these gems have
yet to be rescued from the Siberia of cinema
history.
A wave of the Beretta, therefore, to Dorado Films, which
recently brought to DVD one of the most notable figures of the Eurospy genre,
CIA agent Dick Malloy. Also known as Agent 077, he was played by cult film icon
Ken Clark, whose screen persona was at once rugged and graceful, heroic and
hedonistic. If Roger Moore and Peter Graves had somehow trumped the laws of
nature and produced a love child, it probably would have looked a lot like Clark. Tall and muscular, he radiated manly mojo and
looked like he could have kicked Sean Connery’s ass if the occasion ever arose.
Even his chest hair looked tough. The athletic actor performed all of his
often-dangerous stunts with rare enthusiasm and total commitment. Perhaps more
important, Clark was the undisputed master of
the action man stance. Nobody, but nobody, posed with such intensely stylish
affect. With feet planted shoulder-width apart and torso angled slightly
forward, his entire body radiated lethal prowess as he dispensed brutal punches
and stylish karate chops. Clark looked equally
convincing handling a wide variety of firearms and females, projected an
engaging cockiness and, topping it off, looked pretty damn suave in a tuxedo.
Veteran peplum director Sergio Grieco, who also made a
fistful of Eurospy films under the pseudonym Terence Hathaway, helmed the first
two Dick Malloy films, with Alberto De Martino directing the third. While
obviously lacking recourse to Bondian production dollars, they overcame budget
limitations by relying on dazzling European locations, hyper-voluptuous
actresses, breathless pace and continental swagger. They also benefited
enormously from swinging soundtracks courtesy of cult composers A. F.
Lavagnino, Piero Piccioni and Bruno Nicolai. Each film in the Malloy series
features a blazingly cool theme song and highly atmospheric music cues that
help drive the furious action and smooth over narrative rough spots. And while
the 007 epics eventually began to sag under the weight of their pretensions,
the makers of the 077 films never took themselves seriously. Their sole purpose
in life was to bring pleasure to spy cinema junkies from Brazil to the Bosporus.
Mission Bloody Mary (1965)
Considering that the inaugural Dick Malloy adventure was
made during the pinnacle of Bondmania, it’s not surprising that it poaches
several narrative tropes from 007. A criminal mastermind named the Black Lily
sets the plot in motion with his theft of the Bloody Mary, a portable nuclear
warhead that he plans to sell to the Chinese. (Shades of Thunderball.)
Upon learning the bad news, Malloy’s avuncular, bowtie-wearing superior Heston
(Philippe Hersent) places an urgent call to his number one agent and dispatches
him to recover the bomb. The film scores huge points as it introduces Malloy
nuzzling a half-naked blonde strumpet in his bachelor pad while listening to
the Mission Bloody Mary theme song and fortifying himself with
between-coitus champagne. Pure style. Reluctantly dragging himself away from
this sexual sanctum, Malloy embarks upon a perilous quest that takes him from
Paris to Madrid to Athens as he tangles with assorted Black Lily henchmen,
tricky Russian agents and duplicitous females. The plethora of double crosses
and false identities may leave first-time viewers a bit confused, but what the
hell. Narrative linearity was never one of the defining hallmarks of the Eurospy
genre. Nonstop action, groovy music and ridiculously sexy women are the only
ingredients that really matter, and Mission Bloody Mary has them all in
glorious excess.
Umberto Raho headlines the supporting cast as the Black
Lily. As diabolical masterminds go, he may not project the menace of, say, Dr.
No or Goldfinger. In fact, the unprepossessing, bespectacled actor looks more
like a banker than a criminal. An evil banker, to be sure. He does, however,
have a nice line in cruelty and sadism, especially when it comes to meting out
discipline to troublesome employees. In a standout scene, he traps one such
malcontent in a room with specially equipped flame jets and smugly sets the
dial to broil. There’s no better way to keep the troops in line. If Raho registers
as a somewhat less-than-imposing presence, the actresses on display more than
compensate. Top-billed Helga Liné, who effortlessly conveys equal amounts of
poise and pulchritude, is Dr. Elsa Freeman, a fellow CIA agent whom Malloy
suspects of playing a double game. Which doesn’t prevent him from macking on
her at every opportunity. When she accuses him of having only one thing on his
mind, his well-spoken retort conveys the essence of his profoundly sybaritic
nature: “It’s the basis of my life.†The film is also blessed with the
enigmatic allure of the Eurasian actress Mitsouko, who plays a striptease
artist blackmailed into helping the Black Lily steal the Bloody Mary. While
demonstrating her act in a posh Parisian nightclub, she makes a rendezvous with
Malloy, but pays the ultimate price for her disloyalty before she can reveal
the Black Lily’s identity. Mitsouko doubtless drew on her real-life experience
as a stripper to lend verisimilitude to her erotically revealing number. Bond
fans will recognize the actress as the French secret agent in the teaser
sequence in Thunderball, although her appearance in that film was,
sadly, all too brief. As an added frisson, the nightclub scene features a nice
cameo by real-life singer-actor Nino Ferrer.
The
excellence of the film’s cast is matched by the authority of its action scenes,
staged by director Grieco with satisfyingly kinetic panache. These include a
corking rooftop gun battle that rivals anything in the Bond canon, punctuated
by a startling low-angle shot as one of the bad guys tumbles to his death
directly into the camera. The scene gains added impact from the realization
that Clark is doing it for real, risking life and limb on the steeply angled
roofs with the whole of Paris
spread out in the background. There’s also an extended brutal fight sequence in
a cramped railroad carriage that recalls the similar dustup in From Russia
With Love. This is one of several brawls Malloy has with Tiger, a Black
Lily henchman played by Peter Blades. This obscure, hulking character actor was
the perfect foil for Clark: He looked like a
mean son of a bitch and he fought with feral abandon.
The
film’s only real flaw is a rather anticlimactic showdown between the CIA and
the Black Lily’s gang. In terms of action, things peak just a bit too soon. But
despite jettisoning its payload prematurely (a condition that Malloy never
seems to suffer), Mission Bloody Mary firmly established the template
for succeeding Dick Malloy adventures, much like Dr. No did for the Bond
films. The filmmakers took care not to deviate from the basic formula while
managing to devise some intriguing and entertaining variations on the theme for
the next series entry.
From the Orient with Fury (1965)
While Mission Bloody Mary has a gritty, hard-edged
tone and a plot more or less grounded in reality, the second Malloy adventure
has its tongue firmly in cheek and its scenario comfortably rooted in fantasy.
Following the cool rotoscoped credits, the film opens with a brilliant
scientist named Kurtz giving a press conference about his latest invention, an
unstoppable disintegration ray. He’s obviously never seen any spy films, or he
would realize that he’s just made himself catnip to any would-be international
kidnappers. Sure enough, before you can say “sitting target,†Kurtz finds
himself snatched up by minions of the decadent and vicious Goldwyn (Franco
Ressel). The slimy super criminal plans to sell Kurtz’ weapon to the highest
bidder, presumably to keep his mistress, Simone Degas (the stunning Fabienne Dali),
dripping in ill-gotten jewels. Malloy is summoned to recover the professor and
his death ray and terminate Goldwyn’s dolce vita lifestyle. He’s partnered with
a fellow CIA agent played by the very fetching Margaret Lee, who’s got her own
kind of disintegration ray, one that melts men’s inhibitions with a mere glance
from her bedroom eyes. The film faithfully adheres to its blueprint, as Malloy
throws himself body and soul into many a fistfight, gun battle and bedroom
skirmish before eventually running down Goldwyn at the latter’s opulent island
headquarters. Cue the crazy Hammond
organ music as a swinging battle royale ensues involving deceitful daughters,
pimped-out KGB agents, Turkish secret police, and a big dose of patented Dick
Malloy mayhem.
As in Mission Bloody Mary, the film doesn’t exactly
startle the viewer with sophisticated repartee, although the awkwardly dubbed
lines do provide a certain measure of amusement. Clark
once again reveals his usual aplomb whether he’s dodging bullets or dogging the
opposite sex. He does have one out-of-nowhere line that perhaps hints at other
aspects of his sexuality, telling a flunky who’s packing his suitcase: “I’d
like some lavender among my linen.†Unfortunately, the narrative never follows
up this intriguing non sequitur. Malloy’s chief, Heston, again played by
Philippe Hersent, has an enjoyably absurd exchange with one of his agents:
“You’ll get in touch at once with Dick Malloy.â€
“But he’s on vacation, sir.â€
“Even if he’s in paradise, I want to speak to him in one minute.â€
In keeping with its outlandish plot, From the Orient with
Fury abounds with crazy gadgets no self-respecting spy should be without:
cigarette lighters that shoot poison needles, belt buckle mini-cameras, cigar
lock picks, Morse code-sending suspenders and a car with rear-mounted machine
guns. It’s got Simone Degas in negligee seduction mode, Malloy in enemy
agent-slapping interrogation mode, and Goldwyn in zapping the forces of law and
order with the disintegration ray while laughing maniacally mode. It’s even got
a climax-capping harpoon killing. The decision to push things in a more outré
direction works quite well, even if the film looks like it was made on about
$100. In its inimitably low-rent fashion, From the Orient with Fury delivers
one of the most compelling and mindlessly enjoyable Eurospy statements of the
sixties.
Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966)
Special indeed is the final
entry in the 077 trilogy. Directed by Alberto De Martino with sleek style and
breakneck pace, it’s arguably the best of the bunch, high praise considering
the level achieved in the previous two films. For starters, Special Mission
Lady Chaplin features the most outrageous criminal plot—the theft of 16
Polaris missiles from a shipwrecked atomic submarine. This daring scheme is
masterminded by Kobre Zoltan, the wealthy, jet-setting owner of an underwater
salvage company. Played by Jacques Bergerac, Zoltan is far and away the most compelling
villain in the Malloy series. Urbane, rapacious and cruel, he has
discriminating taste in wine and women, can get away with wearing sunglasses
indoors, and owns a pet scorpion that he pits against other scorpions for
high-stakes wagers. This guy knows how to unwind.
As entertaining as Zoltan is, however, the film is stolen by
ex-Bond girl Daniela Bianchi, just three years removed from her role in From
Russia With Love. As Zoltan’s chief operative, Lady Arabella Chaplin, she’s
the film’s major catalyst, the straw that stirs this espionage cocktail. Lady
Chaplin makes an immediate and indelible impression during the opening credits,
which are set to another memorably trippy theme song. Fetchingly dressed as a
nun, she arrives at a remote island monastery, greets a pair of seemingly
benign monks, then suddenly whips out a machine gun and sends them to their
just rewards. (Said monks are eventually revealed as industrial spies.) She
carries out another assassination disguised as an old woman in a dart-shooting
wheelchair, hijacks a train carrying a shipment of missile propellant, plays
Zoltan and Malloy against each other for her own financial gain, and takes part
in the frenzied finale as a sky-diving, machine-gunning angel of death. She
indulges in all of this skullduggery looking at all times as if she’d just
stepped out of the pages of Vogue. Lady Chaplin is definitely a villainess cut
from the most ruthless and resourceful cloth, and Bianchi plays her part for
all its worth. In evil efficiency, she’s outclassed only by Elke Sommer and Sylva
Koscina in Deadlier Than the Male.
The screenwriters can’t allow Malloy to be totally upstaged
in his own film, of course, so they test his mettle with a nonstop barrage of
turtleneck-wearing killers, helicopter assaults, exploding dresses and bruising
encounters with Zoltan’s hook-handed henchman Tiger (played by the wonderful
Peter Blades in his penultimate film appearance). In the film’s most
spectacular set piece, Malloy is lured into a deserted bullring where a number
of Zoltan’s goons attempt to take him out with guns, knives and banderillas. De
Martino makes use of fantastic camera angles and rapid-fire editing that lend a
visceral rush to the carnage. Clark
demonstrates his action skills by leaping over railings, trading punches and
showing off some wicked judo. At one point, he tears across the ring, dives to
avoid a bullet and comes up firing in one smooth move. As he dispatches a
knife-wielding assassin with a handy rope hoist, the viewer shares the would-be
killer’s perspective as he’s rapidly jerked upward to his doom, a visual
flourish that helps lift this sequence to heights comparable with any spy film
of the era.
Fittingly, the last film in the Malloy saga boasts the most
spectacular conclusion—a bruising Malloy-Zoltan throwdown set amidst a blazing
inferno that threatens to blow the Polaris missiles and America’s
favorite CIA agent sky-high. While the boys settle their differences (with
Zoltan’s scorpion playing an unexpected part in the outcome), Lady Chaplin
pulls off one final gambit, ripping off the missiles’ prospective buyers,
donning another impeccable disguise and booking a sleeper on a getaway train.
There’s no escaping 077, however. The tenacious agent cottons onto her latest
scheme, quietly steals into her cabin, handcuffs the two of them together, and
commences a full-body search as the end credits roll. Rarely has a film series
ended on such a satisfyingly kinky note.
Kudos to Dorado Films for releasing all three films in their
original widescreen ratio. The sound and picture quality is excellent,
considering the age of the films and the condition of the prints Dorado had to
work with. Their Dick Malloy Eurospy series represents the best DVD collection
of its kind to date, one other labels would do well to emulate.
For more information, visit www.doradofilms.com