Death on a Rainy Day
Director: Ramon Comas
Year: 1967
Rating: 5.0
Country: Euro
A.K.A. Scorpions and Miniskirts - of which there are few - but it is a cool
title.
This Euro-Spy flick is basically a parody, a goof, a tongue in cheek version
of spies saving the world sort of thing. At least I hope it was meant that
way, but it could have just been bad filmmaking - hard to be sure. But they
tried hard with a budget that enabled them to film in Paris, Hong Kong and
New York City. And there is constantly something going on whether action
or hitting on women.
Our two heroes are French spies - though this is a Spanish production in
Spanish - and in the first scene a casket is being placed into the ground
when the cover pops off and Spy #1 starts killing everyone and the widow
in black pulls out a machine gun to return fire - finally a helicopter comes
by to pick up the coffin and deposit it in the office of their version of
M. Two minutes later Spy# 1 is off to save Spy #2 who is surrounded by multitudes
of Chinese who are obliging enough to stand in a straight row and allow themselves
to be machine gunned down - and then they have to go rescue a Chinese damsel
in distress who is being hung up and has two men who have trained since childhood
in the art of torture ready for work. Today children we learn about sharp
stakes under the finger nails. Another bunch of bald-headed Chinese are killed
(there are lots of them and I assume they are using the same actors to die
many many times). And we have not even reached the 20-minute mark.
And so it goes - Doctor Kung is a sorry excuse for a Fu Manchu run out of
the Mainland with a devious plan to start WW III by injecting a fluid into
the brain of US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that will cause a war.
Off they go to Hong Kong which seems to be the destination of a lot of spy
films in the 1960's where they have a huge brawl that begins in an Opium
den, goes into a casino and ends up in a low-rent brothel. Every five minutes
bald-headed Chinese attack them and get killed. There are also attractive
girls everywhere and being French the agents hit on every one of them - without
admittedly much success. It is silly no doubt but manages to be mildly entertaining.