Our Man in Marrakesh
                                                                                                                  
Director: Don Sharp
Year: 1965
Rating: 6.5
Aka - Bang Bang! You're Dead

When I read that this was a spoof of spy films, I entered it cautiously, ready to bail at any minute. I dread spy parodies. They make me break out in hives. Spy fare should be serious; full of betrayals and sudden death. The fact that Tony Randall was the star didn't bode well. I still recoil from his portrayal of Hercule Poirot in the truly awful The Alphabet Murders made the year before this. So bad that Agatha Christie's friends refused to let her see it. But the other actors in this intrigued me. Some of my favorites. On the female side there is the stunning Senta Berger and her mystical aqua colored eyes. She was quite the European dish during the sixties appearing in two other spy films, The Quiller Memorandum and The Ambushers. Earlier on she had been in a few Krimi features. Matching up with her is the immaculate lower lip of Margaret Lee, who was to become a regular in the Euro-Spy genre. On the male side there is the great Herbert Lom who had already been in the first Pink Panther film, A Shot in the Dark. Then we have the character actors - Wilfred Hyde-White, Terry-Thomas, John Le Mesurier and the blank killer eyes of Klaus Kinsky. A pretty great cast.


 

Producer Harry Alan Towers who was in the middle of making his Fu Manchu movies had the sense to put the film in the capable hands of director Don Sharp (Curse of the Fly, Kiss of the Vampire and the first two Fu Manchu films).  And thankfully Sharp doesn't go full parody on us. Though the film is Light Spy, it is not a parody. It never gets silly or goofy but plays most of it straight. Even Tony Randall takes his role seriously and damn, he beds Senta! Who would have thought. And is sort of an action hero. True, he gives a lot of his exasperated Felix Unger looks like the living room has empty pizza boxes all over but in this case it is because he finds a dead man in his closet. That should be a cause for room service, but instead he gets pulled into a murky game of spies and bribes. And Senta who bewitches him.

 

A plane lands in Casablanca and a group of tourists board a bus to take them to Marrakesh. One of them is carrying a check for $2 million in order to strike a deal with Lom to bribe United Nations representatives to vote a particular way. When Randall hears this, he is shocked - impossible, not the UN. Ah how times have changed. Would anyone be shocked today. The audience doesn't know who the messenger is and neither does Lom. But no one is who they claim to be. Randall finds the dead body in his room and lets Senta persuade him to move it outside of the hotel. Well, you have to see Senta to understand why he says yes. Some great location shooting in Marrakesh and a light but not frivolous story.