Guet-apens à Téhéran

Stewart Granger may have been critical of his years with Metro Goldwyn Mayer but most of his subsequent European films are a sorry bunch and this one has to be the bottom of the barrel. Aimed at the slowest-witted viewer, it suffers from a moronic script, garish cinematography, atrocious score and the very worst type of mid-Atlantic dubbing.

A previous reviewer who referred to this as 'a little disappointing, considering the cast' has a genius for understatement. Granted that lifestyles have to be maintained and the taxman kept at bay, Messrs. Granger, Jurgens and Celi should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for taking part in this unadulterated trash, having presumably read the script beforehand.

It is generally accepted that audiences feed on crap but here it is dished up without a trace of originality. Should there be a Circle of Hell reserved for fifth rate directors then Herr Koehler surely resides there.

Two great actors which I like very much, Adolfo Celi and Klaus Kinski, are wasted in a mediocre production. With the help of a few other famous names of the movie world, Stewart Granger, Karin Dor, Curd Jürgens. The script is completely stupid and the interpretation of all leaves it desirable for a better chance in another movie. Those who manage to hide the best how disagreeable and ungrateful are their roles, are Kinski and Jürgens. Granger is too bombastic, like in all his movies. Dor is not credible, her acting is forced. And Celi, who has the most unfortunate role, is eaten by a bunch of hungry rats, he does what he can in such a situation. Manfred R. Köhler, the director, has achieved a much better film a year earlier, "Thirteen Days to Die"(1965)Der Fluch des schwarzen Rubin (original title), with another German specialist in villain roles, Horst Frank.

Stewart Granger is at his most dapper, suave, best in this otherwise completely unremarkable effort that offers a hybrid "Bond" meets "UNCLE" scenario. Luckily for us, it has the consummate baddie Curd Jürgens as his deadly foe and the scenes they have together, mostly towards the end, are what redeems it from serious mediocrity. It's all about "Sandra" (Karin Dor) who meets our charmer on an aircraft. He ("James Vine") has to land the thing, saving all the passengers, and soon discovers that she is about to come into $70-odd million on her 25th birthday and that there are moves afoot in certain quarters to try and prevent that anniversary from happening. What ensues are a series of fun escapades and the pair try to stay one step ahead of their pursuers who have a habit of using brain-washing as their preferred means of controlling their subjects. The ending is rotten, but there is certainly some fun to be had en route. The cast are enjoying themselves and the production is reasonable, if hardly one that would trouble Messrs. Broccoli and Saltzman. Speaking of them, Adolfo Celi makes an appearance too (sans eyepatch), and we've a bit of Klaus Kinski at his malevolent best too. Aim low and you ought not to be too disappointed - it's all about the stars.

Stewart Granger is after a generally evil organization run by Curd Jurgens but the real story has to do with Jurgens' efforts to kill Karen Dor and get the money she is soon to inherit.

Granger is again an FBI agent and indeed, is even supposedly the same man who thwarted the smuggling racket in "Red Dragon" but he has a different name; James Vine. Luckily, this time the results for viewers are much improved as the groovy credit sequence will attest. Hip graphics and a cool rock song kick things off nicely. Here Granger isn't quite the smarmy character he was in "Red Dragon" but he is still the unlikely beneficiary of a relationship with a pretty young thing, even pledging to marry her in the end!

Director Manfred Kohler (From Beirut With Love) has made a vast improvement on Granger's previous spy outing and the talented cast is a real asset to the film's modest successes.

Of the numerous James Bond knock-offs produced in the 1960s, A TARGET FOR KILLING is a guilty pleasure. It may sport an unoriginal and tedious story line, but makes earnest stabs at satirizing Bond movie cliches, and features an excellent tongue-in-cheek performance by Stewart Granger, as James Vine, suave and debonair FBI agent.

We find Vine on a passenger airplane with Sandra Perkins (Karin Dor), construction company publicist and heiress who will inherit millions on her upcoming 25th birthday. The plane's pilot is played by familiar character actor Klaus Kinski, and the stewardess pouring poison into Sandra's drink is played by Erika Remberg. She, Kinski, and the co-pilot parachute out of the plane in mid-flight, leaving Vine and Sandra to land the plane.

Vine's intervention upsets the plans of The Giant (Curd Jürgens), an evil mastermind hiding out in a decrepit monastery with an army of thugs dressed as yellow-hooded monks. Sandra's uncle hires The Giant to kill her before she can collect the inheritance, but The Giant wants the cash for himself.

In a story that is more confused and complicated than most spy flicks of the period, Sandra continually dodges bullets and with Vine's intervention simply won't be killed. This frustrates The Giant no end. He resorts to kidnapping her, chaining her to an electrified cage (powered by electric eels!) and subjecting her to mind control via a telepathy expert.

This Austrian-Italian co-production, shot mainly in Yugoslavia, boasts a superior supporting cast of busy continental actors. Rupert Davies appears as a police inspector who enjoys handling poisonous snakes; Adolfo Celi is Sandra's uncle, who is eaten by starved rats; and Mollie Peters, a former Bond girl from THUNDERBALL, appears in a brief nude scene.

Around the same time A TARGET FOR KILLING was made, Granger appeared in a short run of spy thrillers that included THE TRYGON FACTOR and CARNIVAL OF KILLERS. Only THE TRYGON FACTOR saw any wide theatrical release in the U. S,. In 1968. A TARGET FOR KILLING was sold directly to American TV in 1969, where it played on the late-late-late show for years.

Manfred R. Köhler also wrote and directed AGENT 505: DEATH TRAP IN BEIRUT, also a spy thriller, the same year.