Super 7 appelle le sphinx

Although the film was directed by the Italian veteran director Umberto LENZI, it is only a very weak representative of the EuroSPY wave of the 1960s, which began after the great success of the first James Bond films DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER and THUNDERBALL.

A highly radioactive material is stolen and hidden in a camera lens. Agent SuperSEVEN (Roger BROWNE) chases the whole thing from London to Cairo, Locarno and Rome. Fabienne DALI and Massimo SERATO complete the all too colorless cast.

Only 281,000 tickets were purchased in West German cinemas (source: InsideKino). Not surprising!

I saw this recently, and it was the first time I have ever seen the actor Roger Browne. He's very striking-looking: six feet tall, and very strong and fit. No one would be eager to tangle with this guy! He makes a good secret agent.

You can tell from the first scene that the filmmakers are trying to follow the format of a Bond movie, and they manage that sometimes. One of the fun things watching 1960's Euro-spy movies is to enjoy what makes them of their time, and especially the European touches. That mostly means Italian, as here, though there were French and German Euro-spy movies, too.

For example, there is an interesting scene of a full-figured belly dancer in a Cairo club. She's a wonderful dancer, but a U. S. film of the time, I think, would never have featured a dancer who wasn't slender.

The movie has some great scenery of Cairo and Egypt. There's an amazing shot of a huge hotel swimming pool and you can see minarets in the background. I wondered if this hotel had been a palace; I've never seen such an enormous pool.

Rosalba Neri is in the movie and has a good role. I wish her part had been even bigger. She brings beauty, energy and star quality to every scene she's in. When she's on screen, it's just more interesting.

There are a fair number of action scenes. I think some should have been longer. The music is very European, a bit tongue-in-cheek! I liked it. On the whole, this is one of the better Euro-spy movies.

Roger Browne is competent enough here in this pretty shameless hybrid of all things "007" with a bit of "Man from U. N. C. L. E." thrown in for good measure. The suave agent "Super 7" is tasked with tracking down a newly discovered metal that is being smuggled inside of a pocket camera that cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands! His investigations take him to the magical city of Cairo where he encounters dangers a-plenty and has no idea who he can trust. It's all pretty procedural, this, with a few gadgets and gizmos to liven it up as it moves along, quickly, to a conclusion that has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek. There's not much jeopardy and a bit too much script/score but it's still just about watchable if you accept it's production values and budget do not compare with it's more illustrious contemporaries in the genre.

Another of the numerous Bond like spy films of the sixties, Italian made I think so it's dubbed in English. I know a lot of people don't like this but in this case it's done pretty well.

Roger Browne plays Martin Stevens, aka Superseven is sent to Cairo to recover sensitive equipment before the Soviets get their hands on it. There's not many people he can trust, especially the many beautiful ladies that frequently turn up. Whilst the storyline and characters are pretty formulaic the location work is not. It's fantastic to see Paris, Rome and Cairo in the mid sixties before mass tourism arrived, for that alone this is worth a watch.

One of the better and more serious James Bond rip offs. The film has low budget but takes itself seriously and avoids camp. Superseven needs to track down a rare radioactive material hidden in a camera. This sends him off to Cario where most of the film takes place. Meanwhile, the bed guys want get the material first, or at least let Superseven lead them to it. There he meets Rosalba Neri's Faddja, who is forced to help the bad guys to pay off her debt to them. Rosalba gets decent screen time here and looks great. Her role is a bit more involved in the plot than many of her films. It's hard to tell if she's with the hero or against him, which is an plus given the majority of the characters she played. A huge surprise for me here was the female lead, Fabienne Dali. She played the old woman Ruth in KILL BABY KILL under a load of make up. She's a femme fatale here and 180 degrees from Ruth. I watched a dreadful looking full screen English dubbed print. There is a widescreen German DVD I would love to see sometime, a good looking copy would improve the film's pleasure tenfold.