Opération Marrakech

BANG BANG YOU'RE DEAD aka Our Man In Marrakesh seems a low budget homage to the talents of director Alfred Hitchcock and actor Cary Grant. Imagine, if you will, a blending of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and you might have BANG BANG.

Tony Randall is very appealing as the much harried, put upon innocent who is caught up in a series of misadventures (his character Jessel actually says something like "We're suspected of being murderers, and we're being chased by murderers"). Randall is certainly not someone you would cast as the romantic lead, but you can readily accept that he and Senta Berger will become lovers.

Ms Berger's characters is very fond and adept at telling lies, and shaping the truth as she sees fit. She does it well, and is charming, and everyone likes her, not least the wily Arab truck driver Achmed (Gregoire Aslan), who twice saves the couple.

I had mistaken Margaret Lee for another Italian starlet but apparently she was born in Wolverhampton, England in 1943. She plays the sex kitten very well, and again, has some good lines.

The script is actually very good, the dialogue especially, with more memorable lines than I expected. The line-up of character actors is also fine, though Klaus Kinski's thug is nowhere as effective as the one he displayed in GRAND SLAM.

Locations are well chosen, the action good for its day, and the music by Malcolm Lockyer (someone who doesn't seem to have worked much in film) catches the flavour of Marrakesh, Morocco.

All in all, highly recommended (If you can find it!)

Tony Randall has been a favorite of mine since his recurring appearances on David Letterman's late-night talk shows. The guy was such a good sport about putting over any gag the writers came up with, deploying equal parts debonnair charm and lack of self-seriousness. He shows the same sensibility here - his character knows he's in a spot of bother, works hard to work his way out of it in the same charming way Cary Grant does in North by Northwest, mixes in a fair amount of sly humour, yet somehow manages to avoid any campiness or ham. Director Don Sharpe helmed The Avengers TV show with a similar touch. The whole ''money for votes at the UN" plot is basicaly a McGuffin. It just helps move things along, layers of the onion peeling away in a pleasant fashion. The location shooting was a pleasant surprise, too, given the reportedly small budget. This was a fun way to spend time in front of the tube re-visiting the work of an old ''friend."

British-made film (released under a variety of different titles around the world) concerns an American hotel-builder, newly-arrived in Morocco, who becomes involved in a $2M plot to change votes at the United Nations. Despite poster art designed to look like a spy spoof (with Randall an unlikely substitute for James Bond), this minor, droll offering is more in keeping with the latter-day Hitchcock films ("North by Northwest", in particular), with the dryly-resolved star getting deeper into hot water with every plot turn. Senta Berger is a very attractive mystery woman, and she matches up surprisingly well with Randall (grounded and more affable than usual), but the supporting cast of old pros is never given anything especially exciting to do. Director Don Sharp, working from a wayward, rudderless screenplay by Peter Yeldham, does decent work, yet the finale is confusing instead of suspenseful, and the overall air of familiarity is wearing. ** from ****

Our Man in Marrakesh is a comedy spy adventure. It is less a spoof of Bond and more of a homage to Hitchcock.

It is the wrong man adventure. American Andrew Jessel (Tony Randall) arrives in Marrakech for business purposes and finds a dead body in his wardrobe. Luckily mysterious femme fatale spy Kyra Stanovy (Senta Berger) is on hand to help him hide the body. She also helps Andrew get away from henchman Jonquil (Klaus Kinski) sent by well connected criminal kingpin Casimir (Herbert Lom.)

Casimir thinks Andrew could be one of the travellers who has arrived to Marrakech on the bus carrying a suitcase full of money to fix a UN vote.

Despite the location shooting in Morocco. This is a low budget film with a mundane script and a lack of thrills.

It does have plenty of back projection. Kinski and Casimir are effective villains. There are a couple of beautiful ladies, several familiar British character actors. Randall gamely does his best but he is no Cary Grant.

One of the better Harry Alan Towers travelogues, probably because after this they just kept getting worse and worse (Towers should have retained Don Sharp to direct and commissioned half decent scripts).

Even here one's attention tends to wander during the endless scampering about exotic locations that passes for a plot. But at least it's largely played for laughs, Tony Randall & Senta Berger are attractive leads, Herbert Lom an excellent villain and even Margaret Lee (who gets an "introducing" credit despite having been busy in movies for several years, admittedly not ones anybody was likely to remember her from) is slightly more animated than in her later films.

And of course there's Terry-Thomas's amusing late guest appearance as El Caid, AKA "the oily cad".