L'agent Gordon se déchaîne

This mid-60's Italian/Spanish co-production is one of the numerous attempts to cash in on the James Bond craze of the decade. It gets some of the ingredients of the formula right (a secret agent who is good with his fists and irresistible to the ladies, various international locations (from Paris to Madrid), a casino sequence, the "You Play To Win" title song, etc.), but fails to connect them in a coherent way. The story is hard to follow, and the low budget limits about 90% of the action to simple fistfights (there are no set-pieces to take advantage of the locations the way the Bond films do). Roger Browne is a passable lead, he has the looks and the athleticism for the part, but the bad guys are generally useless. In the second half, Brown teams up with a beautiful female Russian spy (Helga Liné), but her character is not really that much help. Among the other women he meets is Rosalba Neri, to whom he says "I bet you are good at freestyle wrestling". Pity we never get to find out! (*1/2)

¨Password: Uccidete agente Gordon¨ is an ordinary Euro-spy with full of action , tongue-in-cheek and usual components : pursuits , crossfire , struggles , fist-fights , international conspiracy , explosive women and other tippings that used to show up in the genre . Dealing with a two-fisted and obstinate tough CIA agent Gordon (Roger Browne) who's called in to put a stop to a shipment of weapons to the Viet Cong from a weapons smuggling ring. Agent Gordon meets a suspicious Mogador ballet run by demanding choreographer Rudy Schwartz (Miguel de la Riva) and two gorgeous ballerinas (Rosalba Neri, Helga Liné) . Eventually , Gordon find out the valuable armas the weapons are being transported by ship camouflaged in boxes of mineral water . Then he confronts a mysterious organization led by Albert Kowalski (Franco Ressel) in drag and on a wheelchair.

Routine Euro-spy movie with ordinary ingredients : thrills , noisy action , plot twists , several villain roles , bare fist-fights , various international locations , shootouts with high body-count and being middlingly entertaining from start to finish . The story is a fun mess starting with a twisted intrigue and some spectacular locations from Madrid, Spain, Rome, Lazio, Italy, Tripoli, Libya . Happening mutual spying and silly confrontations with a lot of violent karate fights , leaps and crossfire . Colorful and so-so rendition about European spy subgenre , a prolific genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously . A fashion , but pedestrian routine spy film at the time, meaning it stuck to a lot of what was currently popular , but here including some embarrassing and nonsense scenes . Inspired by the success of the James Bond films, as this 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 , including frequent appearance of the simple helicopter pursuing the good guys , common in these early James Bond pictures , adding a thrilling and repetitive musical score by Piero Umiliani. This ¨Password: Kill Agent Gordon¨ (1966) seems to be shot at the same time as ¨Rififi in Amsterdam¨ (1966) , in fact both have similar actors , producers and a similar technical and artistic team ; so it is concluded that it was shot back to back . The content remains the same as the title : an unknown villain as mastermind , beautiful mini-skirt girls , along with ridiculous , uptight and extremely silly action set pieces from a today's point of view . A Sixties-style film usually has a short sell-by date , and this flick isn't exception . The leading role was ordinarily played by Sword and Sandals regular Roger Browne who was a popular as well as untalented player at the time , a mediocre actor who couldn't carry a rickety product like this . The script doesn't help him either , as it consists of the habitual intrigue to take on a powerful organitation , while our starring go around the world and actually tells no more than different people spying on and beating up each other in the hope of getting their nasty purports . Of course , with such a film from nostalgic and botcher ways , one does not count on high art work . It is staged in a hopelessly amateurish way , it shows us rows of bare fights and several confrontations with a number of dead people in the worst choreography . As our starring behaving in such an tough activity and so stupid manners so that committing usual mistakes on their own way . The screenplay works with unnecessary contradictions and implausibility , including hilarious or absurd moments , and the story is thinner than it usually is in works of this kind , the Euro-spy sub-genre . There are colorful outdoors by cameraman Juan Julio Baena showing sightseeing from France , Italy , Libya , and particularly Spain with sights from sunny coasts and Mediterranean outdoors . However , the worn-out cinematography spoils the spectacle , being really necessary a perfect remastering beacuse the film copy is really wasted . It has some flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , including repetitive nature of some fight scenes , and excessive nonsense , but it has a bit of fun , at times, so it cares . The main and support cast -with everyone having amusement- are regular , slightly adequate to their functional characters . Appearing some familiar faces from the Sixties who worked in the habitual 60s , 70s sub-genres : Peplum, Spaghetti Western , Giallo, horror, Euro-thriller , as Spanish actors, such as : Helga Liné , Miguel de la Riva as Michael Rivers , Beni Deus , Alfonso Rojas, Ángel Menéndez , and Italian ones : Franco Ressell , Andrea Scotti, Enzo Andronico , Umberto Raho , Jeff Cameron, Aldo Canti . As well as some gorgeous girls in bikini or mini-skirt , such as : Rosalba Neri , Mila Stanic , Kitty Swan, and , of course , the always attractive Helga Liné .

The motion picture was middlingly written by Ramón Comas and regularly directed by Sergio Grieco . Ramón Comas was as a craftsman who worked as a writer , production manager , producer and finally filmmaker . As he wrote some international co-productions such as : "Rififi in Amsterdam" , "Operacion Mogador" , "La Ley Del Colt" and directed four films including an Euro.-spy flick : "Chinos y minifaldas" (1967) in similar style to ¨Rififí in Amsterdam¨(1966) and Password: Uccidete agente Gordon(1966) . While Sergio Grieco was a good Italian artesan who made a lot of adventures, action and thrillers movies as ¨Sergeant Klems¨, ¨SOS agent 017¨, ¨The mysterious swordsman¨ , ¨Lucrezia Borgia¨, ¨La regina dei Tartaro¨, ¨Il Capitano di Ferro¨, ¨Pirates of the Black Hawk¨ and several others. Rating : 4/10 . Inferior Italian/Spanish Euro-thriller.

Roger Brown's third Eurospy is an incoherent mess. There are plenty of Bond-esque scenes which are ok when considered individually, but add up to less than the sum of their parts when taken as a whole. In other words the plot makes no sense whatsoever.

Someone is selling arms to the Vietcong (in addition to the Chinese of course) and someone had obtained the evidence and hidden it inside a cigarette lighter in some way before being killed off. Now someone else has it and everyone else wants it. The Americans nominate Roger to represent their interests. So far so good, but after that it's anyone's guess what is going on.

The only thing you can rely on is that every five or ten minutes Roger will be attacked by several henchmen and will punch his way out, in his customary exaggerated style.

Women come at Roger so thick and fast during the first half of the movie that I couldn't keep up with them, but as far as I could tell, although he gets some offers and opportunities, he doesn't manage to bed any of them, (but I could be wrong, maybe the audience is meant to read more between the lines). However in the end he does manage to arrange an off screen assignation in San Tropez with Russian Agent Helga Line.

While the henchmen are numerous and undistinguished, Miguel de la Riva makes an angry impression in his red polo-neck and Franko Ressel foreshadows Charles Gray in "Diamonds Are Forever" as the evil mastermind.

After a while I gave up trying to keep track of who was who, who was on whose side or who was double crossing who.

Traditional settings like the casino, the docks, the cabaret and the luxury villa are visited and there are some nice locations choices for the key set piece confrontations, an imposing ruined castle on a cliff (with helicopter arrival and departure), and an empty bullring.

There's also an interesting double torture scene during the climax back at the villa. Helga is tied to a table "Goldfinger style" and tortured with gold tinsel blown by a fan (I think it was meant to represent some sort of Van de Graff generator style electrical charge?) while Roger is tied to a chair in an alcove, behind a glass wall, and subjected to poison gas. The villain makes them watch each other being tortured but he ends up being distracted by the writhing of Helga and Roger is able to make his move.

Paris, Tripoli, Madrid and other parts of Spain make for acceptable exotic locations.

The soundtrack is adequate with another Shirley Bassey-esque title song that sounds suitably dramatic unless you actually listen to the appalling lyrics.

There is one nice sports car, possibly a Triumph Spitfire Mk 1.

As for gadgets, he has an exploding watch, she has a lipstick with a laser weapon and the villain has a spear-gun umbrella.

Roger would fare much better in his next outing, "The Spy Who Loved Flowers"

Lines You Wouldn't Hear From The Other Fellow

Nightclub Singer - "It would be very easy to fall in love with a man like you"

Roger - "That would be my pleasure I can assure you (caresses her chin)...now let's get back to business, where can I find..." (!!! ???)

Mile - "Couldn't we..."

Roger - "Some other time (!!! ???), I hope you managed to check her hotel room, that's all I asked"

Mile - "I know, she's staying at the etc"

Roger - "Good, I don't think you should wait till I come back (!!! ???) (Kissing her gently on the mouth) you're very sweet and someday I want you to meet my twin brother" (???)

After interrogating Rosalba Neri by tickling her feet with a feather

Roger - "Humph, how about that, a wild goose chase, you don't know anything about anything"

Rosalba - "Well. After all. I'm only a woman"

Roger - "Humph, and I bet you'd be just great at freestyle wrestling... (gently fondles her hair) wouldn't you"

Rosalba - Chuckles

Roger - "Listen I have a proposition to make (!!! ???) you still broke?"

Rosalba - "Always daring, always"

There is a lot going on in this movie, and we cover a lot of ground with our hero, Roger Browne, who is agent Gordon. Browne also starred in a number of the sword-and-sandal epics of the early 1960's; he was a very big, very fit guy. When he punches anyone, you're kind of surprised that it ever takes more than one punch to knock them out! Basically, Browne gives the impression that he could whip his weight in alligators, and then some.

A nice thing about Browne, is that he often shows a rather sly sense of humor; you get the idea that he is enjoying himself, indeed, when he is flirting with some of the beautiful women in this movie, who include top Euro-spy stars Rosalba Neri and Helga Line.

I will say, a plus for this movie is that you can't always tell what is coming next, in my opinion. At least I couldn't. Roger Browne was one of the main leading men of the Euro-spy genre, and he was a good and important figure in it. Any Euro-spy movie with him starring in it is worth seeing and provides enjoyment.

The beautiful Rosalba Neri, the only thing worthy of some interest in this thing, has a very small role, she is killed in the bathtub with a knife. Roger Browne, which I have seen in another great spinach called "Argoman the Fantastic Superman", directed by the same Sergio Grieco (as Terence Hathaway), is more a presence than a true actor, he is good in running and giving and collecting punches. Helga Liné, in the role of Karin, strived but the rest is a big nonsense.