OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo

Tokyo Selves To Death

OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo
aka Atout coeur à Tokyo 
pour OSS 117
aka Terror In Tokyo
aka From Tokyo With Love
France/Italy 1966
Directed by Michel Boisrond
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

The fourth feature in Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray set of the five 1960s incarnations of OSS117 is OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo and, I was kind of holding out hope that this one would be a lot better than it’s predecessors, being as it’s not directed by André Hunebelle this time around... just ‘presented by’ him. Instead it’s directed by Michel Boisrond and, to further whet my appetite for the movie, instead of being based completely on a Jean Bruce novel, it’s instead ‘adapted by’ two people (and apparently the adaptation is pretty much a completely new story, such as often happened with the James Bond films this series was trying to compete with, up to a certain point), one of whom is Terence Young, who of course directed Dr. No (reviewed here) and helped groom Sean Connery to bring a definitive image of Bond to the screen. And I was similarly impressed that it’s set in Japan with many of the kinds of cultural elements utilised in You Only Live Twice (reviewed here) all present and correct here... a good year before the Bond film was even released. I guess the producers must have got wind that the next Bond would be set in Japan. 

But yes, even with all these good things going for it, this one is still quite a dull and disappointing affair and, perhaps better than the previous one but maybe not as good as the Kerwin Matthews films. Once again Frederick Stafford takes on the role of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath, aka OSS117, for his second and final time and, he’s not completely unlikable but, once again, I have to note that Matthews was a much more animated personality than this guy... which is really saying something. Although in fairness, Stafford does look a lot more like the typical movie spy of the time. 

The plot involves the world being blackmailed by a secret organisation who are using miniature planes to launch nuclear missiles at secret US government intelligence headquarters around the world unless, of course, they are paid huge sums of money. So OSS117 is sent to Tokyo for no earthly reason that I could fathom. I can only assume the Japanese were widely admired for their miniaturisation techniques and leave it at that. There’s a turncoat gal, played by Marina Vlady, who provides the story twists when she’s revealed to be helping the bad guys before turning coat again and working with Hubert. Plus there’s a second OSS117 girl in the form of a Japanese secret service sergeant played by Jitsuko Yoshimura, who you may remember as the younger of the two female protagonists/antagonists of Onibaba. There are the usual twists and turns plus the odd fist fight or car chase (although the opening action pre-credits sequence is nowhere near the quality of the Bond pictures) and it’s pretty much business as usual as far as this film series goes. 

One interesting bit of business, which heavily foreshadows You Only Live Twice, is a rival faction of thugs who you assume are out to get Hubert in the opening half an hour or so of the movie (but, yeah, not really... you’ll see it coming as soon as this bunch are first introduced) but who turn out to be the Japanese secret service, who then team up to help OSS117 fulfil his mission. 

And, there are a few nice shot set ups too. One such occurs when a character is in long shot and walking back towards his car from the right of the screen to the left. The camera starts moving sideways until a decorative architectural detail of an upright post with an elabourate carving, hollow and leaving a big hole in the middle of it, hits the centre of the screen and the car has shifted with the camera viewpoint until it’s directly lined up in the centre of the opening of that upright. Then the character continues walking to the centre of the shot and gets in his car in the small opening in the centre of the screen. Which is a nice way of doing things. There also a huge amount of effort to get the look right, such as a shot which reminded me of something of the deliberately controlled lighting in a specific sequence in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (reviewed here). As a shady figure in a raincoat at the end of the corridor, his face under shadows like a film noir, lights his cigarette, it lights up his face just a little too much when the lighter is engaged, making it evident that a light source hidden from view has been switched on at the same time to complete the effect, before being switched off again when the lighter is flicked closed. 

All in all, it’s not a terrible film but, accompanied once again by Michel Magne’s rather tepid score... which is fine as a stand alone listen but certainly doesn’t really seem to elevate the on screen action and pacing of the film... it’s all just a little dull and struggles to engage the viewer, at least this audience member, it has to be said. 

So that’s me done with OSS117 - Mission To Tokyo. Some may find it more yawn inducing than thrilling, I suspect. For the last film in the set we have American actor John Gavin taking over the role but we also have André Hunebelle back in the driving seat so, yeah, I’m maybe not looking forward to it as much as I’d hoped, to be honest. I’ll report back here with a review when I can. 

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. 

OSS117 Is Unleashed

Muffed Diving

OSS117 Is Unleashed
aka OSS 117 se déchaîne
France/Italy 1963
Directed by André Hunebelle
Gaumont/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Some spoilers.

The OSS117 novels comprise a vast array of stories about the French/American espionage agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath with the titular code number. Starting in 1949, the first 88 novels were written by Jean Bruce who died in a car accident in 1963 (the same year OSS117 Is Unleashed was released). Then his widow Josette took over and wrote another 143 before she apparently retired in 1985. And then, keeping the family business going, I guess, her daughter Martine with her husband François... wrote another 23 novels before the series was finally finished in 1992 (to date). And I can’t tell you what any of these 254 spy yarns are like because, it seems to me, they’ve never been translated into English? At least, not that I’ve found. If anyone wants to point me in the right direction for English translations I’d like to give them a go. 

OSS117 Is Unleashed is actually the second of the OSS117 films. The first big screen adaptation from the successful series of novels was in 1958. However, this is the first of the five films presented in Kino Lorber’s OSS117 - Five Film Collection, which gathers the adaptations from a very specific stance... look at the timing. The first big screen Bond film Dr. No (reviewed here) had just been a pretty big international hit and must have prompted the producers to start their own rival series... the first two of which, starting with this one, starred American actor Kerwin Mathews (who I’m sure readers will remember from such films as The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, which I reviewed here and The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver, review coming soon). These ones are directed by André Hunebelle, who would soon go on to direct the three 1960s Fantômas revival films (which I reviewed here, here and here) but, he hasn’t really quite caught that larger than life, tongue in cheek vibe with the series here... at least not yet (he directed a few of these... I’ll let you know). 

And, if this is the case that the cinematic revival of the character was one of many films jumping on the new Bond band wagon (such as Matt Helm and Derek Flint, reviews all coming soon), then I have to say this opening shot of a film, the only one of these five in black and white, doesn’t give the Bond franchise much in the way of competition. 

It’s a fine little spy film, for sure, starting off with an American agent who muffs his diving job looking for the location of a grotto harbouring a new atomic submarine spotting device, by getting shot dead in the water. Special agent OSS117 is sent to Bonifacio in France, to find out what happened to the agent, getting involved with the freelance diver who was helping the agent and his dubious girlfriend, who has been secretly acting against him to target the agent, blackmailed into the plot by the bad guys who are controlling the device. So, of course, when Hubert gets there, shenanigans ensue and the world is, fairly anticlimactically it must be said, saved from the atomic submarine spotting device (even the secret base blowing up at the end is the size of a small car explosion in an American film... I hope they upped the budget for these as they went on).

Kerwin Mathews is surprisingly at home in the role, pouring on the charm, sexism and action man heroics in equal parts. He actually looks like he could do some of the stuff asked of him, getting away with it fairly well on the close up shots... much more so than his stuntman in some of the fist fights who, quite honestly, looks nothing like him. There are some nice lines in the movie at certain moments too. For example, when Hubert steals a non-consensual snog from the car hire girl at the airport (who returns as a running gag later in the movie), she softens and compliments him on having a gift for the French tongue. 

The film kinda misses the feel of the first Bond outing by a long chalk, though. The dynamic editing and hard hitting score stings are notably absent and, while Michel Magne’s score is pretty good and makes for a nice stand alone listen on CD, it’s noticeably inappropriate in some sections of the movie. Technically it’s no match for the Bond films... although I hope that improves as the series goes on. The opening song is great, presented as credits animate across various shots of foaming white boat wake but, yeah, it’s not exactly a power ballad but then again, Dr. No didn’t have one of those either. And though there is one sequence where a friendly agent makes contact with Hubert by using a sequence of code phrases, there’s none of the excessive caution about staking out his surroundings that Bond was so meticulous about in his early cinemtic outings. 

However, OSS117 Is Unleashed is very nice and I’m kinda looking forward to the next ones, to see how much they up the ante with, I presume, various gadgetry and harder hitting (and more frequent) action scenes but... this one is probably going to disappoint anyone going in expecting a screen incarnation who can give us what the British and Americans were doing at the time. And I’ve seen much more interesting eurospy movies too (something I hope to be getting to see more of at some point soon). I can’t speak for the other movies in this set (yet) but it makes for a nice historical watch and I’m keen to see where they go with the series after this one. I’ll keep you informed right here, of course. 

Fantômas VS Scotland Yard

Licence To Kilt

Fantômas VS Scotland Yard
(aka Fantômas Contre Scotland Yard
France/Italy 1967 Directed by André Hunebelle
Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Fantômas VS Scotland Yard is the third and final of the trilogy of 1960s Fantômas movies, based on the character who appeared in Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre popular novels. And, this will be a short review because it’s also my least favourite of the three, a real step backward from the previous movie... although I do know someone who absolutely loves this one, to be sure.

Once again we have Jean Marais playing both newspaperman Fandor and Fantômas (and, of course, various disguises of Fantômas who are always easy to spot). Mylène Demongeot returns again as Hélène, Fandor’s girlfriend and, again we have the bumbling Inspector Juve, played by Louis de Funès, along with his comical assistant, Inspector Bertrand, once more portrayed by Jacques Dynam.

And, I guess you would suppose from the title that the film is set in London with Fantômas taking on the UKs finest police force at Scotland Yard but... you’d be wrong. In a blindingly clueless move by the film makers, this movie is almost exclusively set in a castle in Scotland, with hardly any mention being made of the English police until the end of the movie, where they all come in (presumably in their bizarrely left hand drive cars, like everybody else in the movie), kitted out with something similar to, but not quite, sten guns. Because, yeah, that’s obviously what a British bobby would carry around with them.

Actually, the plot is another one played for comedy hijinks but it eschews the Pink Panther-like animated title sequence of Fantômas Unleashed (reviewed here) and instead goes for a car driving around Scotland (ish) with bag pipes playing on Michel Magne’s score (yeah, I know, let’s not talk of this again). The comedy of the movie, with Inspector Juve constantly finding dead bodies in his room which disappear before he can show them to people, is set against a plot which involves Fantômas delivering ‘living tax’ contracts to various rich and powerful figures in an elaborately fanciful and blisteringly stupid version of a protection racket. Yeah... let’s not talk of the plot again either, such as it is.

And it’s pleasant and has a lot of Louis de Funès running around like a madman, if you like that sort of thing. And I guess people probably did because he seems to be the reason most people are watching this. A fourth film, Fantômas In Moscow was planned but, according to popular knowledge, the combination of Jean Marais getting fed up playing second fiddle to de Funès and the fact that the three leading actors were getting rather expensive to employ in their success, meant that the planned follow up to this one was scuppered. Actually, that might not be a bad thing because.. well, it’s just generally less interesting than the last one.

For me, the comedy comes from the bizarre mistakes found in the astonishing assumptions that the French writers obviously had about life in England. So, for instance, you have a fox hunt (with a nice moment where a dog is disguised as a fox... don’t ask) but instead of the traditional, English costumes, the cast all seem to be dressing up in something reminiscent of the Napoleonic wars for this sequence. And, get this, instead of the leader of the hunt playing his little horn... we have four horsemen carrying massive French horns and playing those. Seriously, this is way past just getting it wrong now... I couldn’t help but think there was some deliberate ‘winding up’ of potential English viewers on this one.

In a similar matter of pushing the bounds of credibility beyond what they could possibly be expected to get away with, when Juve and Bertrand find themselves being transported around the castle on a remote controlled bed, they go into an elevator in the walls and down into an elaborate, Ken Adams style criminal underground lair. But this is not the castle of Fantômas... he’s just quickly borrowing it. How in heck did he have any time at all to have a massive, labyrinth of a high tech lair built under the castle with electric access points installed into the walls? This thing makes no sense!

One good thing about this movie is that Jean Marais really does get a chance to shine. There’s not too much of Fandor in the film but his turn in various disguises as Fantômas really shows what a good actor he could be. He has a wonderfully sinister presence here and his bluer than blue contact lenses when he is in his normal guise help complete the look very well.

Ultimately, without the gadgets and dynamic chase sequences of the previous films, Fantômas Vs Scotland Yard tends to drag a lot and, though it’s nice seeing the cast reunited one last time, I’m kinda glad they didn’t make anymore. Ultimately, I think Louis Feuillade’s very early 20th Century silent serial is the best version of the character I’ve seen committed to screen but, that being said, I’m sure there have been some other, probably better, productions over the years. Alas, trying to get a hold of most of that stuff in the UK (or, indeed, in the US) can prove difficult.

Fantômas

Fandor Snatch

Fantômas
France/Italy 1964
Directed by André Hunebelle
Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Fantômas is a very popular master criminal character who appeared in a series of over 40 best selling books by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, written between 1911 and 1963. I’ve only ever read two of them myself because translations from the French are especially hard to come by over here in the UK but in the original stories he’s a pretty ruthless and vicious criminal who is more of a terrorist and will stop at nothing to achieve his goals.

And that’s the tone director Louis Feuillade took with him in his excellent, silent, Fantômas film serials, which in some ways are more a series of interlocking shortish films but, yes, pretty much in the serial format and, of course, he’d later go on to direct two more very famous serials (internationally famous, that is, he churned out a lot of interesting stuff)... Les Vampires (with the original Musidora incarnation of Irma Vep... played by Maggie Cheun many decades later) and Judex (who also resurfaced in 1960s movies). Since Feuillade’s serials, many versions of Fantômas hit the silver screen (and television) in various incarnations and this one I’m now seeing for the first time on an American Blu Ray release of the 1960s trilogy (these still haven’t been released in the UK, can you believe?), is a more lighthearted take on the master criminal.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s still quite ruthless but the other characters in this play it more for laughs and, surprisingly, they all just manage to get away with it without harming the movie... too much. So we have Jean Marais in a dual role here both as Fantômas himself and the main protagonist Fandor, the newspaper man originally created by Fantômas in the first book but, well, that part of the story doesn’t come into play here at all, Fandor starts off as his own man here. We also have Louis de Funès playing Inspector Juve completely for laughs (and it’s a fairly charming performance), Mylène Demongeot playing Hélène (Fandor’s girlfriend and news photographer) and Marie-Hélène Arnaud as Lady Beltham, whose husband, if I’m remembering correctly, was killed in the first book but, again, not much mention is made to her origins as the current girlfriend of Fantômas here.

And it’s a bit of a romp. It’s well paced (for the first half of the movie, at least) with a certain competence behind the shot design, without being all that spectacular. Looked at now it seems a little clumsy in places but you can see the director and producers were just finding their legs with it and I suspect they got a little wilder as the series progressed (I hope). It’s also very much, it seems to me, to be a reaction to the current cinema trends in which the James Bond films had started making waves. Dr. No and From Russia With Love (and possibly Goldfinger) would have preceeded this film and you can certainly see the influences here. The set for Fantômas’ underground lair is absolutely taking a page from the Ken Adams school of 'evil villain power base' design and this is coupled with a kind of slightly underplayed (but still quite over the top in terms of most films) homage to the The Pink Panther films, regarding the incompetence and bumbling of the policemen lead by Juve in the movie. Indeed, even the smooth, secret agent style scoring from Michel Magne seems a bit like a pastiche where John Barry meets Henry Mancini from their respective, famous franchise scores.

It’s a bit uneven in terms of on screen action, especially for the last half an hour of the film which is pretty much just one, long ridiculous chase. An over the top (especially in terms of length) sequence where Fandor and Hélène try to negotiate their car down a mountain without breaks really outstays its welcome and then leads into an equally lengthy pursuit by car, bike, train, helicopter and submarine scene which, frankly, gets a little dull in places but, overall, it’s not a bad movie and I think I’m maybe being a little too harsh and not allowing for the historical context of the release of the film to make an impact. This would have been quite well received at the time and you can certainly see why.

Marais looks older here than in anything else I’ve seen him in (which just amounts to some of his collaborations with Jean Cocteau, to be honest) but he shows a certain versatility in various guises here, not least of which is the harsh title antagonist who, bizarrely, they’ve chosen to give a blue face to. The ‘mask’ of his face is actually quite cleverly put together and I reckon it’s a half mask prosthetic blended with his ‘blue skin’ because it’s a lot more mobile around the mouth and completely dead and sinister in the upper part of his face. This is not, by the way, what Fantômas looks like but, it’s a nice idea and, well, it was the 1960s... I’m happy to accept it.

My biggest criticism is, perhaps, the softening of Fantômas. Don’t get me wrong, he seems utterly ruthless here and somehow ‘gets away with it’ amongst all the comedy hi-jinks but, well... for instance, there’s a caper where he steals a load of ‘unstealable’ jewellery from under the police commissioner’s nose during a presentation. To do this he gasses a load of models who were wearing the jewellery in their dressing room but, later, it’s revealed that this was a sleeping gas from which they all awake. All I’m saying is that, in the books, I’m pretty sure Fantômas would have just killed them all with the poison gas... he has no regard for human life, as I recall and it wouldn’t have been a big deal for him. Indeed, it would just feed his reputation as a terrorist before whom the world should tremble even more so, yeah, I can half see why they’ve done it here but, I still think he’s a little bit of a compromised version of the character, nonetheless.

And that’s me done with this one. Really glad I’ve started to catch up to the 1960s cycle of Fantômas movies and I’m looking forward to watching the next one in the series. That review will be coming in a couple of days.