OSS117 - Mission For A Killer

Hell To Peyote

OSS117 - Mission For A Killer
aka Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117
France/Italy 1965
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

OSS117 - Mission For A Killer is the third of the films presented in Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set OSS117 Five Film Collection. This time around, the main lead has been recast... we no longer have Kerwin Matthews in the role of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath aka OSS117, Instead we have Frederick Stafford who, it has to be said, is even more of a block of wood in the role than Matthews was. He does, to be fair, look much more capable of doing all the fights and is quite confident in the role but, well, when I say that Matthews displayed much more emotion and personality in the role, you can see what we’re up against here. I’m not sure I’m blaming the actor here though... I’ll get to that in a minute. 

Luckily, he has a really excellent female lead in Mylène Demongeot, playing a random lady who gets accidentally mixed up in the mechanics of a threat to the world, probably because she strikes up a friendship with Hubert as much as anything else. Said threat to the world starts off as a promising proposition, explained in a truly unmemorable and dull pre-credits sequence which, rather than starting off with an action piece as the Bond films would, is just lots of talking about important figures being assassinated by brainwashed, drugged up, suicide bombers. Hubert’s mission is to take over from another guy in Brazil (who obviously gets killed almost as soon as OSS117 gets there) and find out who is making and using these brainwashing drugs etc. I say etc because, it would seem implicit that they would also want to find out who’s actually programming these living bombs and stopping them in their tracks but, yeah, I don’t think that aspect of the mission is ever actually made clear.

From there on it’s the usual shenanigans where Hubert will get into a fight with a bunch of bad guys, romance a lady, step and repeat for a while before flying to a different part of Brazil to rescue some Indians who have been ‘making’ peyote, which apparently turns you into an easily suggestible robot (hmmm... I’m really not sure that’s what peyote and its mescalin ingredient does, to be honest). 

And it’s a fairly dull and plodding film it has to be said. Some of the fist fights do their best to break up the monotony, which is not in any way helped along by Michel Magne’s ponderous lounge score. I have to wonder how these were supposed to compete with the Bond films, which were already up to Thunderball when this was released without, apparently, the filmmakers managing to pick up on anything which made those films so good. This film is a big yawn compared to what EON were churning out at the same time. I also have to wonder how this was the 11th most popular film in France in the year it was released. 

I wish I could say that the film had some unseen twists or unusual things to recommend it. I suppose a fists against flame thrower fight in a hotel room is quite interesting in its own way and, later, when Hubert drives his car through a sheet of flame, the sight of the tyres on all four wheels of his car spinning orange flames is eye catching. But, over all, this film is as similarly snooze inducing as its predecessors.

I blame André Hunebelle... I thought his 1960s Fantômas movies made around the same time (and reviewed on this blog elsewhere, check out the movie section of the index) were somewhat okay but ultimately lacked a lot of the punch they might have had (although I think their screenplays were a little better) but these OSS117 movies are a somewhat duller affair than those. At least the Fantômas films had some novelty moments in them but, these OSS117 movies don’t even seem to have inherited Bond’s mania for sophisticated spy gadgetry... which is overplayed somewhat in the Bond series over time, to be fair but, yeah, they really could have done with something to lift these movies. 

So it would be true to say that OSS117 - Mission For A Killer is no better or worse than the previous two movies in the series. It’s not a film I would recommend, even to lovers of spy movies and, yeah, I won’t be watching this one again in a hurry. Still, there are two more films left in this set and the fourth, while produced by Hunebelle, is not actually directed by him so, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Frederick Stafford’s return engagement in the OSS117 role will be a better movie than this one. I should find out fairly swiftly.