Fünf vor 12 in Caracas

With Love from Venezuela - adventure film from the Rapid Film factory with George Ardisson and Harald Leipnitz

Since 1962, Wolf C. Hartwig (1919-2017) and his Rapid-Film had become experts in the production of adventure films set in exotic locations. These GERMAN ADVENTURE FLICKS were shot like on an assembly line - mostly in Hong Kong, Beirut or Bangkok, here for a change in the oil paradise of South America. After this film, Hartwig devoted himself to more ambitious and cost-intensive projects: two years later, "Lady Hamilton - Between Shame and Love", the most expensive West German film to date, was to be released in cinemas.

In beautiful Venezuela, the attractive Giorgio Ardisson (1931-2014), the "Italian James Bond", was once again at the start. In the role of private snoop Jeff Milton, he is on the trail of a kidnapped millionaire's daughter (Christa Linder), who was taken on a beautiful Caribbean beach due to her investigative research. He is assisted in his investigation by the beautiful Florence (Pascale Audret, 1935-2000) and Inspector Alan Shepperton (Harald Leipnitz, 1926-2000, a native of Wuppertal). Together they track down a criminal organization that wants to sell drugs from Hong Kong to the USA via Caracas as a transshipment point. What the mysterious Dr. Soarez (Horst Frank, who was practically part of Rapid-Film's inventory) and the attractive Violet Watson (Luciana Angiolillo) could have something to do with it remains a mystery for a long time. The wiry Jeff Milton gets to have a few nice fights with the rich journalist's kidnappers (Patrick Bernhard, Sal Borgese). The action is definitely not neglected. At the very end, Venezuela's oil wealth comes into danger when the beautiful drilling rigs are actually about to be blown up...

For fans of the genre, this German-Italian-French film by Marcello Baldi (1923-2008) is worth seeing, but it is also quickly forgotten because it is staged too much according to formula.

It looks like a spy movie, it sounds like a spy movie, it's even titled like a spy movie, but "Countdown To Doomsday" is technically more of a crime / private eye tale: the hero is not a secret agent but a private detective hired by a rich man to look into the kidnapping of his daughter, who is also a reporter who was writing a series of articles trying to expose a drug smuggling ring operating in Caracas. When he goes there, he finds himself under constant attacks and is even framed for murder, so he teams up with a British narcotics agent and his beautiful (and I mean BEAUTIFUL) female partner, as it seems they're all after the same target. The cast does a pretty good job all around, and the action scenes are fairly entertaining, but overall there is little in this movie to stick in your mind, little to distinguish it from similar products of its era. ** out of 4.

Another competent Eurospy featuring George Ardisson, let down by plot holes which become bigger and more frequent as we go along and by the customary budgetary restrictions, which leads to laughable special effects during what should be climactic moments

A rich man hires George to find his crusading journalist daughter, who has disappeared while investigating drug smuggling activity in Venezuela. Somewhere along the line the plot morphs into a ransom demand for the daughter and an extortion demand to prevent a number of oil rigs that have been rigged to blow up, thus ruining the Venezuelan economy (which Sanchez, Maduro and co have since managed to do, using slower but equally effective methods)

George makes a convincing hero as usual, but his proclivity for walking into traps and taking a beating pushes the envelope here, even by Eurospy standards. The straw that breaks the camel's back moment for me being the occasion where George is buried in a railway hopper car under a hopper load of sand, which then sets off on its journey, only for Pascal Audret to have a psychic moment as the carriage passes by and tell the Police Inspector that somehow she know George is in there. The carriage is drained via the hopper mechanism until George's body is revealed. Pascal tells us he survived using some sort of mini oxygen rebreather apparatus gadget, which has not been foreshadowed or highlighted as is traditional, other than that George may have used it previously when he swam out to the villains private villa (an island or just remote coastal is not made clear)

Women get a mixed bag of opportunities in this one. Christa Linder, as the daughter, gets to show off her body in the opening scene but is otherwise completely wasted, almost invisible and gets no dialogue to speak of. Pascal Audret, as the rival / allied female agent, gets the most screen time and dialogue, but she's mainly a damsel in distress and messes up when left to guard perennial henchman Sal Borghese. Maria Julio Diaz plays the lead drug mule and gets one decent dramatic scene before being poisoned. While Luciana Angiolillo gets to play the lead villain (villainess?) but lacks the charisma to carry it off in my opinion.

On the men's side Harold Leipnitz, as the affable male rival / agent and Horst Frank as evil Dr Soarez both make a memorable impression, along with the ever reliable Borghese.

Caracus makes for an unremarkable location, other than looking modern, bustling, clean and shiny, bursting with hope for a better future based on fossil fuels, in sharp contrast to the present day conditions. Similar to Beirut, which appears in so many 1960s Eurospy movies and was once considered the "Riviera" of the Middle East back then, long before Donald Trump revived the term for use in Gaza. Sad how things have turned out.

I suspect other locations, such as the villains villa, may well have been in Italy or France rather than Venezuela.

Well worth a watch if you enjoy the genre.