Dale Robertson worked his way up the Hollywood Western ladder, from bit part player, to second lead in female led productions, to lead in B Westerns, until he finally made it big on television, starring in the Western series "Tales of Wells Fargo" and later "Iron Horse". In between those two he formed his own production company and made this dreadful Eurospy in Yugoslavia
Dale may be past his prime physically by this time, but he still has his undoubted charisma and impressive quiff of Elvis style hair. He plays a journalist rather than a spy, and the story is a treasure hunt for personal gain, rather than recovery of information of vital national interest, but aside from that the plot elements fit the template of a Eurospy.
There is a beautiful and mysterious woman, Luciana Paluzzi, who got into the spy business via "The Man From UNCLE", where she featured in the movie length pilot episode (with second billing, way ahead of David McCallum, who only rates 7th!). That was followed by the undoubted pinnacle of her espionage career, appearing as assassin "Fiona Volpe" in the James Bond movie "Thunderball". From there she went on to feature in an episode of the spin-off series "The Girl From UNCLE", the Robert Vaughn spy movie "The Venetian Affair", and then this one, before signing off on her distinguished spy movie career in one of the French James Bond films "OSS-117 Murder For Sale". Appearances in three of the most renowned 1960s spy franchises is quite a notable achievement. She starts out strongly in this one, but fades away to become merely a damsel in distress by the end.
Guy Deghy plays a poor man's Sydney Greenstreet, Mirko Boman is suitably grotesque as his bald mutilated sidekick, and dwarf Milo Avramovic does a decent job of making the lead villain menacing, despite his lack on inches. They provide some much needed colour to mitigate the scripts many shortcomings.
Unfortunately the plot itself is almost non-existent and the dialogue is banal. To say there are "plot holes" would be misleading, as it would imply there is some sort of structure for the holes to exist in, whereas this is just loose sequence of scenes linked by some random running and hiding and shooting and capturing and escaping. The best thing I can say for it is that, for the most part, it is played straight (apart from the appalling fat woman scene) and it moves along at a reasonable pace thus remaining somewhat watchable.
The few vehicles available in Yugoslavia all appear to be from the 1940s, the rundown locations more reminiscent of a cold war thriller than a Eurospy and the soundtrack is unremarkable.
For die hard Dale and Luciana fans only.
