Missile X

Peter Graves is the iconic 70's agent material, and MISSLE X is one of his lesser features exploiting the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE persona. However, the non-Hollywood production atmosphere fills this one up with highly paid stars doing some exploitation work that you can't usually see under the major studio banner.

MISSILE X delivers violence, menace and a few neat Packinpah influenced shootouts in this noirish and yet very Bondian tale o stolen Soviet cruise missile being smuggled into Iran and put on wholesale.

The whole American male agent alternately versus and with Russian female agent fighting the villain played by Kurt Jurgens makes MISSILE X look like a THE SPY WHO LOVED ME rip-off. And that definition holds. However, this film is derivative that it simply cannot stand such singled out rip-off allegation.

Tehran is well used as a location and the mixture of Iranian luxury juxtaposed on very poor suburbs precisely explains why the revolution eventually took place there. This film, with its' unashamed Western jive and aim to exploit the Persian setting may as well be used as the epitome of Iranian revolution and the Shah's decadence.

Overall, MISSILE X is the ideal programmer for the 70's superagent fare hounds. It may as well be worth the search.

Missile X the neutron bomb incident, also called incident in teheran. Peter graves, john carradine. American spy travels to the east to find out who has the stolen missile, and what they plan to do with it. It's just awful. Bad script. Bad acting. Cheesy music. Terrible sound quality. Casinos in tehran?? Doesn't seem very likely. The trivia section states this was actually filmed in tehran, iran in 1978. This was just before the revolution there. And just before graves did airplane. He had been in the biz for 35 years by this time. Missile x was probably not his best choice of scripts. Directed by leslie martinson. Looks like martinson did a lot of television between the occasional films.

A US secret agent and his Soviet counterpart are hot on the trail of a madman with a stolen nuclear missile. The meet-up in Iran and decide to work together to save the world.

This is yet another case where I readily admit the movie in question isn't very good. To me, however, there is some (some - not a lot - just some) entertainment to be had in Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident (we'll shorten that to Missile X for the rest of this). Granted, much of the enjoyment I derived from Missile X wasn't what the filmmakers were going for, but this film is quite often unintentionally hilarious. I'll limit this to three examples. First, there's Peter Graves as the Bond-like hero, Alex Franklin. It's near impossible to take him seriously. He's far too old for the role. And watching him put the moves on some young woman is just plain hysterical. Next, Missile X features some of the worst (and funniest) fight choreography I've seen. There's a hotel casino fight that had me laughing out loud. Or the shoot-out between the good guys and the bad guys where they're no more than 10 feet apart, yet no one gets hit. Third, there's the ridiculous music accompanying almost every scene. It has 70s feel to it that is totally out of place in Missile X. It's hard not to giggle when even the most mundane events, like getting in a taxi, are backed by a loud, funky organ riff.

I suppose that one of the most interesting aspects of Missile X are shots of pre-Revolution Iran. Other than the Iran bits and laugh or two, there's not much here to recommend.

4/10

During the 60's and 70's there were plenty of films that tried to duplicate the James Bond films with varying degrees of success. Well, this one was not too much of a success, but it was rather fun to watch. Peter Graves is out to stop the bad guys in this film that wants to be a super great spy film, but like most copies, you do not get the multiple exotic locations or the super action scenes one typically finds within a James Bond film.

The story has a bomb being stolen and then we learn it is the guy who was the bad guy in the Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me who is the villain! A lot of random scenes play out including a man in a turtle neck putting a beat down on someone and then he is killed. Soon Peter Graves enters the film and is the hero as he travels somewhere and gets attacked immediately upon arrival to somewhere, I think Iran? Soon he is joining up with a Russian agent with no Russian accent to speak of and fighting in a casino so that he can stop Missile X!

Peter Graves does alright in the lead role though he looks a bit too old to be playing a super spy, especially one who can easily get the hot chicks. Curt Jurgens as the bad guy does pretty much the same routine as he did in the Bond film and he even has an evil henchman who instead of sharp teeth as a wacky knife hand! John Caradine is in this too, but try not finding a movie in this era that did not feature him in a role!

So, was it good? Not really, but it was fun to watch and it was not boring. It is better than other Bond wannabes I have seen over the years as at least they try to have a good chase and gunfight here and there. I would have liked to see the evil henchman actually get to use his knife hand and I would have enjoyed not seeing the one girl's pointless dance before dude with bad toupee tried to escape, but overall we got ourselves a good so bad it's good movie!

It was a great campy spy film.

I was sad to find out Pouri, the actress who played the undercover police captain, didn't get out of Iran in time and spent a year in Islamic jail and never acted again.