Gemini 13 - Todesstrahlen auf Kap Canaveral

If you grew up watching late 50s and 60s TV shows, chances are that you would recognize Anthony Eisley but not his name. While Eisley never became a big star, he was rather ubiquitous on TV. I remember him from "Dragnet", "The FBI" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" but he's more remembered for "Hawaiian Eye". However, in "Lightning Bolt" he's given the chance to be a star--albeit in a very low-budget Italian spy caper. Often American 2nd and 3rd tier actors were brought in to star in Italian films of the era. Since few knew Italian, the films were completely dubbed and marketed internationally. Many were horrible, some were classics (such as "La Strada" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly") and most were somewhere in the middle--like "Lightning Bolt".

In "Lightning Bolt" (a.k.a. "Operazione Goldman"), Eisley (who is inexplicably red-haired) stars as Lt. Harry Sennett--an American James Bond-type hero. His mission is to discover what's causing the rockets at Cape Kennedy to go off course and explode. This means lots of pretty girls, fast cars and danger. The plot is very similar to two films--"You Only Live Twice" (a Bond film about Blofeld capturing manned rockets) and "Strange Brew" (since the evil boss-man turns out to be an insane brewmeister!!).

So is it good? Well, yes and no. The film looks like they wanted to make a Bond film but only had about a tenth the budget. Some of the sets are impressive but all too often the stunts and action scenes come off as not quite ready for the bit screen. As for Eisley, he isn't bad as he isn't meant to be as smooth or sexy as Bond and is pretty decent in the action scenes. The print is often poor. In some cases you cannot blame the filmmakers--such as the scratchy or grainy sections. But, in others they obviously used lousy stock footage. "Lightning Bolt" is a movie with much to dislike. Yet, it also has a certain kitschy fun that makes it worth seeing. It certainly is NOT a film for everyone--but for the right audience it's worth seeing. For a much better Italian action/adventure film, try watching the much more slickly made "Danger: Diabolik"--especially since Diabolik dresses EXACTLY the same as the brewmeister's henchmen. Overall, bad but quite enjoyable.

Someone is destroying U. S. missiles as they are launched. An intelligence team, headed by agent Harry Sennett (Anthony Eisley), is sent to the Hotel Florida to investigate. The area, Sennett discovers, is a nest of spies, and another important missile launch is sabotaged, despite Sennett's effort to warn authorities.

He tracks the saboteurs to a brewery that fronts a criminal mastermind. His lugubrious adventures also take him to a secret installation located in pressure domes beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He finds super-criminal Rhett (Folco Lulli), who tells him the missiles are test targets for an experimental laser weapon. Rhett intends to take the laser to the moon, where he can blackmail Earth's governments. Unless there was any doubt, Sennett halts this routine world-domination plot.

LIGHTNING BOLT is a slightly dog-eared and low budget spy-sci-fi, Italian- and Spanish-produced mixture. It is nonetheless enormously entertaining due to the tongue-in-cheek attitude of Eisley's agent-hero, who rattles off an seemingly endless series of quips as he goes about saving the world.

Eisley, who is the unsung hero of countless low budget movies, has a stiff male model look that doesn't translate well to these super-agent shenanigans. But that fact only adds to the fun. LIGHTNING BOLT fits somewhere behind those boozy Dean Martin-Matt Helm spy parodies of the 1960s. Abundant newsreel footage of crashing missiles and a lot of miniature model shots are also laughably entertaining.

1965's Italian-Spanish "Lightning Bolt" (Operazione Goldman) was picked up by Woolner Brothers for a double bill with Stewart Granger's "Red Dragon," TV veteran Anthony Eisley popping up mostly in low budget features like "The Wasp Woman," "The Navy vs. The Night Monsters," "The Mighty Gorga," and Al Adamson's "Dracula vs. Frankenstein." FSIC (Federal Security Investigation Commission) is assigned the case of American rockets drawn off course by radiation on their way to the moon, an obvious echo of the debut James Bond feature of 1962, "Dr. No" (the original title and Florida settings also recall "Goldfinger"), Eisley's Lt. Harry Sennett posing as a frivolous American playboy with checkbook always ready, his smarmy narration of every little detail quickly wearing out its welcome. Folco Lulli plays the villain Mr. Rehte, whose likeness adorns his own brand of beer, safely hidden near Cape Kennedy in a subterranean stronghold, one that the Bond series would adopt a decade later for "The Spy Who Loved Me." A science fiction element is added with hibernation chambers keeping his enemies in a state of suspended animation, all reduced to skeletons during the explosive climax, an impressive display of set design and special effects for director Antonio Margheriti. An unlikely chase scene at the halfway mark finds our hero trying to prevent the latest launch by driving headfirst toward the site, reminding one of Robert Loggia in 1957's "The Lost Missile." Eisley just doesn't look the part of suave secret agent, and for once the girls aren't much help, though brunette captain Diana Lorys scored a 1961 triumph with Jesus Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orlof," later appearing in Amando de Ossorio's "Fangs of the Living Dead," Christopher Lee's "The Bloody Judge," and Paul Naschy's "The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll."

The Plot. A U.S. agent goes undercover as a rich playboy to stop a madman from destroying a NASA moon project. I saw this under the title of Lightning Bolt.

Made in Italy and Spain, this 1966 movie takes it's plot from the James Bond / spy craze of the 60s, with a bit of NASA space work thrown in to make it interesting.

It is by no means a great movie, however I can see how this could be fun as a midnite grind-house screening. It's wide screen and technicolor and there are relatively decent special effects. There's also some fun 60's misogyny.

What brings the experience down a notch is that it seems like the whole movie is dubbed even though they are speaking English. It gives the film a cheaper feeling.

A lot of the sets look very Bond-ish. The acting and directing is a few notches above most cheap-o Italian movies. Although it's a bit slow paced.

This is one cheesy movie and a lot has been written about it (mostly bad) since it is widely available on the gray market but there are things (mostly bad, again) worth mentioning.

Lightning Bolt features smart-ass hard-boiled narration by Eisley and many moments of unintentionally laughable dialog, the kind that would make Ed Wood proud. Nonsensical situations and actions abound in this movie and the special effects are as to be expected; not very special, like the old yarn-for-the-laser-beam trick made famous in Italy.

Though the movie has a few charms they are outweighed by too much silliness, a weak villain and the sense that one's time is worth more than the budget spent in making it.