Rezension von lazarillo

This is an early film from the indefatigable Jess Franco (you just can't defatigue the guy). Franco is interesting in that he has had the exact opposite career trajectory of most low-budget filmmakers. Most filmmakers, especially these days, start out doing amateur shot-on-video stuff, then perhaps dabble pseudononymously in the hardcore porn industry, before eventually making a career in fairly decent low-budget films. Franco, however, made his decent low-budget films from the mid 60's to early 70's, then dove (apparently quite willingly) head-first into the porn industry, and nowadays he does amateurish SOV fan-boy type stuff. His stuff after 1975 is usually to be avoided (often with extreme prejudice), but some of his stuff before 1975 is pretty good.

This is one of the countless spy-spoofs made in the 1960's. It was obviously made on a fraction of a fraction of the budget of a James Bond spy flick or even a Matt Helm spy-spoof. Still, Franco always gets the most out of his very low budgets. This is movie also has elements of the then-popular "Batman" TV series with its kind of campy, pop-art sensibility (although it was probably much more inspired by European serials and "fumetti" comic strips than the American TV show). The hero "Lucky" (Ray Danton, then an actor but later the director of the 70's cult film "Psychic Killer") often wears a Batman-type costume as he becomes involved in some ridiculous spy caper to blow up a counterfeiting factory for some reason. (The plot actually makes little sense, but it doesn't really matter).

This is a very energetic film apparently filmed all over the world (Rio, Europe, America). The music is good and it is occasionally funny. It is sexy, but in a whole different way then his graphic post-1975 work (which too often seemed to involve VERY long scenes of Franco basically giving his actress-wife Lina Romay a gynecological exam/colonoscopy with his beloved zoom lens). Here though he has collected a whole bevy of voluptuous Euro-beauties like Teresa Gimpera, Barbara Bold, Beba Loncar, and my perennial favorite, Rosalba Neri. He puts them in sexy, scanty costumes and gives them all fast-paced flirtation and/or seduction scenes with the hero. I'm not sure about the title though. Somehow they went from a Spanish title that translates to "Lucky, the Fearless" to an English-language title "Lucky,the Inscrutable" (an adjective usually applied to the Chinese). By any title though, this movie is surprisingly entertaining.