L'affare Beckett

A half-hearted Eurospy adventure set in Paris and starring Canadian import Lang Jeffries. It starts out with a couple of murders and looks half interesting, but soon descends into tedium with our stolid hero tailing a suspicious character for what seems an age while henchmen and glamorous women come and go. Good luck not dozing off during this snoozer!

I never forgot the beautiful Italian actress Christa Nelli (billed here as Krista Nell) when I was 19 in 1965, when she appeared in the ATV tv series, episode one, of "Riviera Police".I even went to the newspaper & magazine library at Colindale in NW London a few years ago, to obtain a photostat of the 30/7/65 issue of TV Times where she appeared as the cover girl advertising the new crime series.

It wasn't until this wonderful web site appeared that I was able to track down other films in which she appeared, in this case "The Beckett Affair" (or affare Beckett L') from 1966.I was immediatly struck by the central character of Rod Cooper played by American, Lang Jeffries and how like Sean Connery he was in looks, intonation, manner and even body language.For once Krista plays a goody girl who works under cover for the cops and looks her ravishing best.The plot is a bit confused to start with but appears to be about a renegade colonel who wants to take over power in Panama hiring Rod Cooper in the belief he is a hit man so he will be able to "bump off" the incumbent president.

Undoubtedly the French & Italian producers were looking to James Bond for inspiration and you must therefore expect heavy dubbing of English from these authentic language soundtracks from most of the players, a bit like the Clint Eastwood's "spaghetti" westerns from the early 1970s.An American video company called, "Something Weird Video" seems to specialise in these European French films of the 1960s and produce their own catalogue where you can peruse these titles.Another I bought was, "Massacre pour une Orgie".This was pretty strong stuff in the mid 1960s but now seems rather innocuous to our 2003 eyes! The budget was certainly a fraction of what Harry Saltzman & Cubby Broccoli lavished on the Bond franchise.It certainly lacks the black humour we've come to expect of James but occasionally I enjoy watching something different from British/American films because of the different Continental direction and conception.I rated it 6/10.

What separates "The Beckett Affair" from many other Eurospy films made in the 1960's is its generally serious-minded, low-key approach. The hero, agent Rod Cooper, is a business-before-pleasure kind of guy, whose job takes him around the globe (France, Switzerland, Nicaragua) but allows him little time for humor and the ladies. And the focus of the film is not on action sequences (there are no more than 2 or 3), but on plot twists and complex, muddy international politics. It's not one of the most exciting films of its genre (a sequence set in a club somewhere in the middle goes on too long), but it's more interesting than you might expect. (**1/2)

PS: I just found out, on IMDb, that the beautiful Krista Nell, who plays one of Cooper's friendly agents, died in 1975 at the age of 29. That just about ruined my day.

First off, after reading the other reviews...Lang Jeffries is Canadian born. This movie 's main title is THE BECKETT AFFAIR but was released as THE SPY PIT, La Jungle Des Tueurs. TWO BOYS FOR A MURDER and the very rare...TRACE IN JAMES BOND. I found that title on video and was pleasantly surprised. There are many reference books available and they almost all get this movies' titles mixed up. All the titles fit the story. At the very end of the movie a girl asks if Lang Jeffries is James Bond. He replies, "who is this James Bond character" you are asking about? You have to watch the movie a few times to catch all the hidden wit. Larry Anderson.

Here's a good, serious political thriller with another great soundtrack starring unsung spy stalwart Lang Jeffries. Jeffries fits the bill as a rather dour but confident espionage agent and his films are worth seeking out. Nora Orlandi's soundtrack is quintessential sixties spy pop worth the price of admission. The plot seems a bit complex as it unravels but as Jeffries says `Politics are full of mysteries' and director Osvaldo Civirani keeps us guessing right along with the good guys. This one's a winner.