The OSS 117 French spy series consisted of one film in the 1950s, five films
in the 1960's, one film in the 1970s and three since 2000. The first two
in the 1960s star American actor Kerwin Mathews. This is the second of those.
As much as I like the Euro-Spy genre, in this case my main interest was to
see what Bangkok looked like over 55 years ago. Completely different. I didn't
recognize much at all. The Grand Palace that they drive by and a few other
areas looked familiar. Few cities have changed as much as Bangkok has in
these years. The agent was even staying at the Erawan Hotel where I used
to stay on business trips. The Erawan Shrine is just down the street. The
hotel like almost everything else has been totally redone since then. There
were many more canals back then that were heavily used for transportation
with hundreds of small boats on them. Nearly all the canals have been
paved over and turned into roads (causing flooding at times).
Back then the International Airport was Don Mueang, now used for domestic
flights and completely rebuilt since 1964. The taxis were very cool but the
tuk-tuks were the same. Some things never change. Mainly, I noticed the traffic
or the lack of it. Oh and the rats were smaller. In the film cages
of rats are let go and I can say as an eyewitness that the ones that Bangkok
now have on the streets are much larger. I think they are dogs till I get
closer. From a small quiet city to a huge polluted megalopolis. It looked
so much nicer back then.
The plot is an old chestnut. Wipe out the inferior races. In this case that
would be almost everyone including you and me. Too many people. The Avengers
carried on this tradition. Hubert Barton (Kerwin) works for the CIA and is
sent to Thailand to investigate why one of their agents was assassinated.
Since this is a French film you might wonder why they didn't simply make
the agent French so that France could save the world for a change. We are
tired of it. French is spoken by everyone including Thais. And Barton kisses
way too many hands to be an American. There is a reason for this. The films
are based on the books by French author Jean Bruce who wrote 88 novels and
his hero was an American CIA agent. The first one published was in 1949.
Not to be outdone, his wife wrote 143 of them after he died. And now his
daughter has written 23 more. Talk about a family industry. It doesn’t seem
as if any of them have been translated into English.
The dead agent had been investigating a laboratory in Bangkok that seemed
to be behind a vaccine for cholera that instead created a plague in India.
Initially, Barton spends a lot of time flirting with lovely women – Eva,
the secretary of the dead agent played by the beautiful blonde Dominique
Wilms with green eyes who I have seen in a couple Lemmy Caution films and
Pier Angeli who has a resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. Barton uses lines older
than the Romans on these women – like “I am scared of nothing. Even love
at first sight” as he gazes into their eyes. Very French. Bond would never
say that. But being a spy he is of course irresistible to women – good or
bad. The villain is played nicely by Robert Hossein though if you are trying
to keep your Mad Scientist identity secret you may not want to show up at
an American Embassy party with a white turban and suit and introduce yourself
as Dr. Sinn. It is a dead giveaway.
Enjoyable film though slower than we expect these days but plenty of peril
and a number of action scenes that are not bad. The finale that takes place
in an ancient Thai temple compound is quite good and the scene of him driving
with a bomb ready to go off to a terrific jazz soundtrack was reasonably
tense. Mathews is more than palatable in the role. Good looking and fit.
He had adventure credentials from playing Sinbad, Gulliver in The Three Worlds
of Gulliver and Jack in Jack the Giant Killer. Highly unlikely that he is
speaking French in this. It is directed by André Hunebelle who
was very much a commercial director making adventure, spy and spoof films
including the three Fantomas films and four OSS 117 films. IMDB has the runtime
at 92 minutes but the version I saw in French came in at 118 minutes.
