OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bangkok

OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok
aka Shadow Of Evil
aka Banco à Bangkok 
pour OSS 117
France/Italy 1964
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

The year following the release of OSS117 Is Unleashed in cinemas (reviewed by me here), Kerwin Mathews once again starred as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, code name OSS117 in his second and final go at the role, OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok, adapting one of Jean Bruce’s original novels. And, I have to say that although they’ve gone into colour for this second outing to be presented in Kino Lorber’s OSS117 - Five Film Collection Blu Ray set, it’s not a great film and still nowhere near a match for the Bond films it’s obviously trying to compete with. Although they’ve certainly trumped Bond by a year in terms of going for a full 2.35:1 aspect ratio (1965’s Thunderball would be the first Bond film to deploy this treatment... reviewed here) and, to be honest, the whole film looks really good... which I would expect from a director like André Hunebelle.

It’s fun and games in Bangkok this time around, as Hubert gets involved in trying to stop villain Dr. Sinn (played by Robert Hossein) from unleashing a master plague to destroy all the inferior races on the globe (apart from the chosen few with the vaccine, obviously). Hubert recruits, through means of his irresistible charms, Dr. Sinn’s beautiful sister Lila (played by Pier Angeli) and it’s the usual shenanigans with... a little more action than the first movie but in terms of pacing and punchiness, nowhere near the likes of Bond, or indeed, some of the American productions which would start spoofing the British franchise over the next few years. 

And there are some nice little quirky things about the project though, asides from Hunebelle’s wonderful use of verticals to split compositions. He’s definitely into the whole visual compartmentalisation thing and it all looks pretty spectacular, especially now it’s in colour and with a much wider canvas, so to speak. So one great moment is at the start of the picture where, a couple of decades before Lethal Weapon did a similar thing, OSS117 shoots eyes, nose and big smiley face on the target when he’s practicing his shooting skills near the start. 

And another nice thing is when Dr. Sinn presses the alarm bells in his Monastery Plague Lab... which, by the way, is not quite up to Ken Adams’ designs for the Bond films but it is pretty impressive. Each time the klaxon of the alarm sounds, the frame goes red until it stops sounding for a second, then goes red again. And it’s not done with lightning as it would be too difficult to get the actors running around various rooms on the set, the sound and the lights coordinated in editing, I think. That’s why they’ve gone for a full red tint on the print whenever the siren sounds... like an old silent film frame might be tinted. It’s obvious that’s what’s been done but that makes it no less effective and gives things an almost psychedelic feel. 

Okay, those are the positives. There are a heap loads of negatives too, other than it being a fairly dull film throughout (I think I preferred the first one, in some ways). For example... that old trope often associated with comic moments where a character says that they’re definitely not going to be getting talked into doing a thing... cut to them now doing that thing? Well Lila Sinn does this twice in the space of just a few minutes... it’s just not good writing to use that device twice in a row, I think. It makes the following shots quite predictable. You can always see that stuff coming a mile off. 

And the music isn’t great either. Well, okay, scratch that. The music is great, as a stand alone listen but, like the first movie, Michel Magne’s score is really not hitting the right notes of support for the piece. It’s doing its own thing and really not supporting the on screen visuals with the kind of dramatic emphasis needed, it seemed to me. At several points, a cute, stereo-typically orientalised, ‘this music denotes Asian people’ style instrumental rendition of Magne’s OSS117 song from the first movie kicks in and, yeah it sounds fine but somehow fairly racist to my ears. It doesn’t bother me in the least, this is just the norm for the time and even John Barry’s score and opening song for You Only Live Twice (reviewed here) had a degree of this in it... but this one does seem like a fairly ‘in your face’ use of this particular musical tool and, at a couple of points in the movie, I kept thinking to myself that they just couldn’t get away with this kind of thing on a score these days. 

And that’s me done on this one... Kerwin Mathews is fine in this but doesn’t really have the larger than life personality of actors like James Coburn and Dean Martin, who would use their presence to carry them through their own Bond parodies in a much more successful manner (reviews of all these coming to the blog at some point soon). OSS117 - Panic In Bangkok is a nice enough film but, it’s just not punchy or innovative enough to hold it’s own in the Bond/spy market, I think. Still, I’m hoping these things get better and, with Kino Lorber’s lovely Blu Ray set, I guess I’ll know soon enough.