Corrida pour un espion

Bond second hand imitation with ugly bad actors, without any charm and a confusing plot. The director, Maurice Labro made one year before, a better Bond imitation, "Coplan prend des risques", with the beautiful Virna Lisi as a Coplan(the French equivalent of Bond) girl. Ray Danton, former Sandokan, was good at remaining Sandokan and not trying to mimic Sean Connery. The charm of Wolfgang Preiss and Charles Regnier (both formerly in Mabuse) and Horst Frank, does not save the cheap script. Pascale Petit is too petite(small, in French) for sex appeal. And Roger Hanin, I never liked him in anything.

This is the most serious of the three contributions Ray Danton made to the sub-genre of European spy movies, the other two being Secret Agent Super Dragon (66) and Lucky the Inscrutable (67). While still being light-hearted in nature, this film at least acknowledges the deaths of human beings in the line of duty. Danton is Jeff Larson, who, his boss says can be trusted `with anything except, of course, my own daughter.'

If you're in the mood for a fast moving, enjoyable adventure with a good cast, check this out. You won't be disappointed in these Bondian antics. Larson is. uhm, well as he would put it, `Don't strain yourself, baby. No one's come up with the right word yet!'

This very campy picture contains thrills , action , phantasmagoria , absurd situations , but being professionally developed . The security at a naval base in Spain has been compromised. There's a slight security problem at a US Naval Base just outside Alicante on Spain's Mediterranean coast. News of the unscheduled surfacing of a submarine in coastal waters has got back to the Russians via film of the event, seemingly shot on the base. Enter super agent Jeff Larson (Ray Danton) being assigned to a risked mission that has him attempting to discover the whereabouts of a new Russian spy device that is at present costing his organization a good deal of precious information to leak into the wrong hands. Discovering how it keeps happening is a priority, of course, but he also needs to uncover the traitor in their midst . Super spy Larson arrives in town to find the obligatory mysterious woman in his hotel room. For a change, he's the one in the shower while she's sorting through his luggage. After a quick bout of energetic wrestling, a short password exchange reveals that Pilar Perez (Pascale Petit) is his local contact . Relations are predictably frosty at first, especially with Danton hitting on anything in a skirt, but there are no prizes for guessing where that story thread is going. The investigation begins with Danton, aided by old friend Bob Stuart (Roger Hanin), who's been relegated to a desk job due to a leg injury sustained in the line of duty. Danton's first port of call is the Flamingo nightclub in town because manager Lina Calderon (Helga Sommerfeld) just happened to be taking a boat trip when the sub surfaced. It looks like a respectable enough place, apart from the brutish Karl (Horst Frank), who's hanging out at the bar with 'Enemy Spy' tattooed on his forehead. Danton becomes suspicious that a Polish trawler anchored in the bay might be the transmitting station the Reds are using to send their intelligence to Moscow, so he decides that a little midnight swim is in order. Unfortunately, Frank apart, villains Simon Walter (Charles Regnier) and Vassili Golochenko (Carl Lange) are colourless at best, simply vaguely robotic, professional enemy agents going about their everyday espionage business. Things are a little more interesting on Team Danton . Navy Captain Parker (Wolfgang Preiss) starts to unbend and step outside his comfort zone as he associates with maverick Danton and incurs the displeasure of 'by the book' commanding officer Luis Moreno (Conrado San Martín).

Typical Italian/Spanish/French/German spy film dealing with an American secret agent and his adventures , misfortunes , dangerous investigations and sexy romances . Colorful and acceptable rendition about European spy subgenre , an usual genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously and with budget enough which allow director Labro to mount some spectacular set pieces that are a little more ambitious than many of his cash-strapped companions at the era . This ordinary spy sub-genre borrows heavily from the OO7 series that at the time starred Sean Connery , such as : Dr No, From Russia with love , Thunderball, and Goldfinger . Acceptable Euro-spy movie with usual components : pursuits , crashes , struggles , fantastic gadgets , strange artifacts , international conspiracy , explosive women , and pursuits and struggles across sun-drenched Spanish rooftops and some shooting on a real boat . None of it is remotely startling, but it does help to give a measure of scale to the proceedings and at least convey a sense that the stakes are high. This is one of the countless spy-spoofs made in the 1960's and 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 . This is a very energetic and enjoyable film apparently filmed all over Spain . Stars the sympathetic Ray Danton as a top investigator who's dispatched to plug a leak and find out a twisted Russian conspiracy. This American actor starred a number of US productions as Portrait of a Mobster (1961), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond , Bat Masterson, The George Raft Story , I'll Cry Tomorrow , The Longest day ; then he emigrated to Italy where played adventure movies as Terror of Sandokan , Sandokan against the leopard of Sarawak , and Euro-spy movies as New York chiama Superdrago , Hello Glen Ward, House Dick , Lucky the intrepid , Ballata da un miliardo (1967) and Si muore solo una volta (1967) . The hero Jeff Larson being nicely played by Ray Danton, then an actor but later the director of the 70's cult film "Psychic Killer" and other 3 films in Italy and Spain including Deathmaster (1972) and Crypt of the living dead (1973), and also TV episodes of series like Dynasty (1981), and also ran his own production company in Barcelona, Spain. He married the famous actress Julie Adams and his sweetheart at the time of his death was actress Jeannie Austin, who was cast in a couple of TV episodes Ray directed, including Magnum, P. I. (1980) . Here Ray has collected a whole bevy of voluptuous Euro-beauties like Pascale Petit and Helga Sommerfeld. He puts them in sexy, scanty costumes and towels and gives them all fast-paced flirtation and/or seduction scenes with the valiant agent . Being a Spain/French/Germany co-production shows up actors from these countries , such as : Spanish players as Manuel Gil, Conrado San Martín, Antonio Pica , Roberto Rey , Lorenzo Robledo , Alfonso Rojas ; Italian ones as Pascale Petit , Roger Hanin , Charles Regnier , and German ones as Horst Frank , Wolfgang Preiss , Carl Lange ,Helga Sommerfeld, Gunter Meisner , among others.

Der Spion, der in die Hölle ging (West Germany) or Persecución a un espía (Spain) Code Name: Jaguar (Canada, English title) or Code Name: Jaguar (United States) or The Spy Who Went Into Hell (United Kingdom) packs atmospheric cinematography in Panavision and Eastmancolor by cameraman Roger Fellows in terrific locations from Levante Coast , Andalucia , Sevilla and Alicante , Spain. And moving and lively musical score in the Sixties style by composer Michael Legrand . This decent motion picture was professional and ordinarily directed by Maurice Labro who provides a bright and breezy Eurospy project boasting adequate production values, and it definitively worth checking out if you are a hardcore fan of Euro spy genre .

This is one of those many Bondesque ersatz which Europa made by the dozen after Sean Connery hit the big time on the planet.There was OSS 117,Coplan ,and a lot of others.

It would be unfair,though,to write that Maurice Labro jumped on the bandwagon:he made a Coplan movie in the fifties ("Action Immédiate" ) and another one in 1964,the same year as "Goldfinger".

This one takes place in Spain and is ,like the sub-Bond flicks ,terribly dated.The Russians are the villains,period.Whereas the hero is loyal ,witty (would be witty more like) ,and almost invincible (in a fight against three bulldozers ,he wins hands down),the Soviets are treacherous,they do very nasty things such as brainwashing,which makes some of the final scenes sound like a poor man's "Manchurian candidate" .As the traitor goes on repeating "I saw the light! I believe in socialism!" there's a strong anti-commie feel .Virgin Mary is more reliable though (particularly La Maquarena) Like in many spy thrillers of the era,the cast is international:the "Larson girls" are French (Pascale Petit ,whose career was on the wane at the time)and Spanish, the hero's pal is French (Roger Hanin) and the hateful aliens are often German (Horst Frank,who was almost always cast as a villain ,cause he really looked the part) Those who feel nostalgic for the spy thrillers of the sixties can have a look.It's harmless.

"Code Name: Jaguar" is a lot like its lead: it gets the job done, but doesn't stand out in the crowd. Ray Danton is athletic enough to play a superspy, but he doesn't have the flair of some of his competitors in the field. Roger Hanin is much better here as a sidekick to Jaguar than as agent Tiger in his two Chabrol-directed spy flicks. Pascale Petit (Code Name: Kitten!) and Helga Sommerfeld are gorgeous; their (verbal) antagonism for Jaguar's affections is very funny; Petit's character seems to be trained in judo, but she barely gets to use it - a damn shame! None of the other characters stand out particularly, and the same goes for the action sequences, which are, however, adequate. And that's probably the right word for this entire film: adequate. ** out of 4.