New York appelle Superdragon

As a young James Bond fan, if I had seen this one in the theater it likely would have rated a 5 just for the goofy gadgets! 53 years later, it's almost as difficult to watch as today's main stream, self-absorbed fluff and high tech digital cartoons. Like so many other films, this one is best served with a generous helping of MST3K.

I'll keep the plot synopsis short and sweet. Most of Secret Agent Super Dragon was so unnecessarily confusing that little of the plot seemed to matter anyway. In this James Bond wannabe, CIA agent Super Dragon (Ray Danton) goes up against a Venezuelan drug lord who uses candy to distribute his merchandise. Anything else beyond that wouldn't be much more than speculation as I found myself completely in the dark during much of the movie. I'm not one who needs to be spoon-fed plot points, but how about making what's going on just a little clearer? Too much of the movie seemed like a series of unrelated set pieces that didn't fit together.

But the biggest problem with Secret Agent Super Dragon is the same thing that plagues a lot of these James Bond inspired films - money. The James Bond movies had the financial backing to pull it off. These Italian movies like Secret Agent Super Dragon can't match that kind of money. As a result, they suffer from weak scripts and acting, a lack of interesting multiple locations, poor special effects, a very anti-climatic ending, and anything else you can spend money on to make a movie better.

That's not to say the movie was a total waste. In fact, I enjoyed quite a bit of it. Danton is above average in the title role. He's slick and clever - just what you would expect from a secret agent. Marisa Mell and Margaret Lee would give any Bond girl a run fir her money. Finally, there is a sense of fun about the movie that I liked a lot. Those behind the movie were smart enough to never take it too seriously. As a result, the movie's light, almost bubbly, feeling is an asset.

While certainly a bad film, it could have been much worse. The entire movie is mostly just nothing but spy clichés and it's pretty easy to tell that this was made around the same time as the original Sean Connery James Bond movies. The plot's not that good, with the title spy investigating a woman's death and finding out it was a poison made by a supervillain. There really is very little to distinguish this from a Bond movie. It's mostly a ripoff. There are in fact a few good lines here and there. I really did like it when he said, "Call me an idiot" (or something like that) and he just says, "You're an idiot".

I guess it's kind of hard to judge this because according to this website, it has a longer running time than the actual MST3K episode it was featured. I'm not going to waste my time tracking the original version down. I got all I wanted from this movie. The colors were bad, although some of the sets seemed off at time. There's a little good action, but for the most part it's quite boring. I guess it's around this time we tried to put intentional jokes in non comedies.

Well it is not. Anything but, as this is another in a long line of Bond knock offs where they get a smug spy and think that is enough. Saw this one on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as they did a number of these James Bond Wannabe films during their run on the air. The agent in his one at least goes to Holland whereas the agent in Agent From H.A.R.M virtually stayed at the same beach house for most of his flick, but he did more in the way of action than Secret Agent Super Dragon did! A few clunky fight scenes and a tepid shoot out or two is all we get. Both pale in comparison to that film where they got Sean Connery's brother to play the agent as that film went to multiple locations and had better action which is sad, because in that film he was not even a true agent, but a plastic surgeon! Then there was the agent from Danger, Death Ray and that too had more action, but used ridiculous miniatures which looked pretty much like a kid's toys! This one did manage a couple of humorous scenes and the setting of Holland was different, they just needed their super agent to do a bit more than rummage through hotel rooms and such.

The story has people in a small town in America going berserk and no one knows why. So in comes, Secret Agent Super Dragon...though he is not really all that motivated to take the case. Seems he is retired, but the death of a fellow agent sends him on the trail. He partners up with a guy who is apparently some sort of mob boss and they soon make their way to Holland after discovering that the means of distributing a drug that causes bizarre behavior is hidden in chewing gum. Soon Dragon makes his way to a posh party after a few run ins with some thugs and learns the terrible secret the villain of the piece has in store for the world!

This made for a funny episode of MST3K, as did all the spy films they riffed on. None of them were too terribly horrible, but they all had flaws that stopped them from being anything that was remotely a good film. The Holland setting made for some good jokes as did the fact that the agent of the piece really did not do all that much in the way of action. They were also dead on when they would say that the villain of the piece did not make much of an impression at all. I did love the joke where the villain takes the poison and they riffed Secret Agent Super Dragon kind of smugly getting the last word in right before he died.

So, this one had some good in it despite not being all that great. The Holland setting was interesting, a few good jokes here and there and at least it wrapped up nicely. They just needed to have a few more action pieces in this one, they did not have a single chase scene in the film that I could tell. What spy film does not have a super cool chase sequence? Even the Agent From H.A.R.M managed to get on a motorcycle and try to stop a plane and the guy in Danger, Death Ray had a chase, albeit slow and involving toy cars. The fights they did manage here looked poorly choreographed too, not anything that really gets the excitement up, and just what was the deal with Super Dragon rolling the guy up in the carpet? Seriously, he couldn't find a better way to hide the unconscious body than that?

This is the kind of movie, like Diabolik, that the French would find funny, but everyone else in the world would think is incredibly DUMB. Man, there sure were a lot of James Bond clones in the late 1960's, and finding them is really a crap shoot. On this one, chances are you'll not like it. A joint project among four countries (and a nice rule of thumb is the more countries involved, the worse the film.) by Monaco, France, West Germany and Italy, the film features none of those countries, but was filmed in the Netherlands. (I can't say I blame these countries for not wanting their country in the film.) Secret Agent Super Dragon himself reminds me of one of those perfect jocks who always got his way in school and nobody would even think of being against. I ended up hating him, and the film. Perhaps if he was more imperfect and human, we could root for him.