Agente S 03: Operazione Atlantide

I couldn't make heads or tails of the plot of this Eurospy with a little Sci-Fi thrown in. That being said it moved right along, and with a little higher budget and a leading man who didn't look so comfortable wearing knee high boots better suited for Nancy Sinatra, it was O.K. The music score is really good and it has a lot of action with an impressive body count. There are also loads of cool old Eurocar's combined with Chevy's and Jeep's speeding around. The lady's were not quite up to par for a Eurospy, but it is still worth a look for genre fans keeping in mind it is circa 1965.

Italy/Spain Euro-spy movie with ordinary ingredients : adventures, noisy action , fights and various international locations. Secret agent George Steele accepts a mission from the R. I. U., an international organisation interested in Uranium . Large deposits have been discovered in North Africa, but seem to have fallen into the hands of local criminals . Steele investigates but finds matters complicated by the fact that the radium seems to be located near the remains of Atlantis and the lost city is occupied by the descendants of the original population . Along the way , our brave agent is abducted , being strapped inside a trunk and flown in the plane cargo and discovers the supposed city of Atlantis while a Red Chinese has built a secret atomic city at the African desert.

Typical Italian/Spanish spy film dealing with an American secret agent and his adventures , misfortunes , dangerous investigations and sexy romances . Lively and passable at times rendition about European spy subgenre , an usual genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously and with a medium budget which allows director Domenico to mount some spectacular set pieces , adding a little more hilarious situations than many of his cash-strapped companions at the era , but resulting in a terribly weak climax . There is also some lame comedy involving smuggling people in baggage trunks on airliners . This ordinarily mediocre 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 . So-so Euro-spy movie with usual components : pursuits , crashes , struggles , fantastic gadgets , strange artifacts , international conspiracy , explosive women , explosions and thrilling pursuits . But ¨Agent 003 Operation Atlantis¨ mixes the Euro-spy issue with Sci-Fi genre in which a Red Chinese has built a secret atomic city from which they will attempt to invade America. None of it is remotely startling, but it does help to give a measure of scale to the proceedings and at least convey a sense that the stakes are high . This is one of the countless spy-spoofs made in the 1960's and it was obviously made on a fraction of a fraction of the budget of a James Bond spy flick or even a Matt Helm spy-spoof . This is an energetic and enjoyable film apparently filmed all over Spain simulating to be North Africa. Stars the good-looking John Ericson was born in Düsseldorf, Germany , and here playing the role of this week's wannabe James Bond who's a hit with the ladies, though , his smarmy charm and lame pick up lines proving so irresistible that many of the Euro-babes on show . John Ericson had a long but tarnished career . In 1951 appeared on Broadway in the hit drama "Stalag 17" and he even studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City , in fact he was in the same class as Grace Kelly, Jack Palance, Don Murray , Don Rickles and was engaged to Anne Bancroft in the early 1950s before his first marriage . And he starred some US productions , such as : House of the Dead (1978) Bedknobs and broomsticks (1971), Dog day at Black Rock (1955) and The Money Jungle (1967) ; of course , he emigrated to Italy to get fame and fortune , playing usual genres at the time (Spaghetti and Peplum) , such as : 7 for Pancho Villa , Io Semiramide . It was probably the pinnacle of his career , but many guest slots followed over the next quarter century on popular network shows , such as : 'The Streets of San Francisco', 'Bonanza' , ' Las Vegas' , 'The Fugitive' , 'Ironside' , 'The Virginian' , 'SWAT' , 'Knight Rider' , 'Invaders' , 'FBI' , and 'The A Team'. Here German-born Ericson has collected a whole bevy of voluptuous Euro-beauties like Berna Rock , Manolita Barroso , Erika Blanc and Cristina Gaioni. He puts them in sexy, scanty costumes and gives them all fast-paced flirtation and/or seduction scenes with the valiant agent . Being a Spain/Italian co-production shows up actors from these countries : Spain as Beni Deus , José Manuel Martín , Maria Granada , and Italy as Mino Doro, Tullio Altamura , Luigi Tosi , and the indispensable Franco Ressel.

It contains an attractive score, as well as a colorful and evocative cinematography by cameraman Francisco Sánchez , shot in Rome and Almeria that bears remarkable resemblance to North Africa where sets the action . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Domenico Paolella, as it has some gaps and failures . It includes various roles arrive and depart regularly with no regard to logic or the plot, many scenes are suddenly chopped short leaving wild flaws in logic and some principals change sides for seemingly no reason at all . Domenico was a director and writer, known for filming all kind of genres such as Nunexploitation : ¨The nun and the devil¨, ¨Unholy Convent¨ , Peplum : ¨Maciste Nell'inferno Di Gengis Khan¨, ¨Il Gladiatore Che Sfidò L'Impero¨ , ¨Golia Conquista Di Bagdad¨ , ¨Ercole Contro Tiranni , ¨Maciste against Mongols¨, among others . Rating : 4.5/10 , very mediocre Euro-spy movie .

Here's a run-of-the-mill slice of Italian spy hokum, with a few minor merry ingredients to distinguish it from the hundred or so others that came out in the mid-'60s as Italy's answer to the James Bond series. As part of the film supposedly takes place in the Sahara desert, once again Spanish locations are used giving the movie a hot, European look to it. This time our sweaty, disposable leading man is played by John Ericson, just one of the dozens of macho American types who travelled to Europe in the '60s and pretended to be James Bond in a series of increasingly tawdry spy thrillers.

AGENT S-03: OPERATION ATLANTIS is no exception, a shoddy, barely-budgeted movie which really doesn't have the strength to pull off a convincing depiction of Atlantis - instead, all we get is a room with strange furniture. The supposed destruction of Atlantis lasts about three seconds of jiggling camera-work and is highly disappointing. Even Alfonso Brescia's tacky peplum epic THE CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS was more convincing than this one! Like in all of these Euro-spy movies, the central ingredient to the plot is a hero who manages to get himself out of all sorts of scrapes. In this film, they include being strapped inside a chest and flown in the cargo hold of a plane (in fact, this happens to two people; I guess they forgot that there's no pressure in the cargo hold of an aeroplane and oxygen starvation is a likely possibily for anyone travelling inside one!) and strapped to a table in preparation for... radiation torture! Then there are the incompetent police force, who don't have a clue what's going on. Convention necessitates that at least ONE scene should take place in a hotel, and preferably involve a disappearing corpse, and this film has that. Then there are the expected car chases; these are the highlights of the film and are pretty snazzy, including one guy getting the wheel blown on his car - there's a helicopter that shows up too.

A spy film wouldn't be a spy film without cool gadgets and devices, and AGENT S-03: OPERATION ATLANTIS has a ton of these. There's a cool x-ray machine; a guy who kills people with huge spiked pincers; a radioactive force-field; a ray that turns a man into a block of ice and disintegrates him; rubber masks to disguise identity; and finally, the film's silliest plot device, a radio receiver in Ericson's ELBOW! Yep, no matter how implausible, you know these Italo films have always gotta top Bond in some crazy way. There are the expected fist-fights and shoot-outs, but these are done with a bare minimum of style and lack excitement. And even the babes aren't as good this time around - bad hairstyles reign supreme and even take the edge off the lovely Berna Rock (real name: Bernardina Sarrocco). Eagle-eyed viewers may spot Erika Blanc (THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE), that sexy succubus of Italian cult cinema, hiding somewhere down in the cast.

Reading the above, I realise I'm made this film sound exciting, but it's not. The plot elements listed above don't really apply for much of the movie, which is slow-paced and pretty plodding. John Ericson's deeply wooden performance doesn't help much either. It's not the best spy film, nor the worst. Just averaging out somewhere in the middle, I guess. Only Euro-buffs are likely to get a thrill out of this one.