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.