This falls
into the Euro-spy genre but is a lukewarm one at best. It is directed by
Terence Hathaway who in reality is Sergio Grieco, who seems to have specialized
in peplum and spy films in the 1960's. The lead in this one is American actor
Ken Clark who had starred in three of Grieco's spy films as Agent 077 - Mission
Bloody Mary, From the Orient with Fury and Special Mission Lady Chaplin -
all of which are better than this one. Clark had a peculiar career - starting
off in Hollywood in the 1950's with loads of appearances in TV shows as well
as cast in South Pacific and The Giant Leeches - but eventually he made the
move to Europe in 1962 first in peplum films and then action ones and never
seems to have gone back home dying in Rome in 2009. He has a resemblance
to Lex Barker who also went from Hollywood to Europe so it must be a look
that European filmmakers liked. The All-American Boy.
Here he is a journalist working for the
Herald Tribune and is a witness to the assassination of the President of
El Salvador in Paris before the film moves on to Germany. He snoops into
the story and this gets him mistaken by other interested parties as being
involved in the killing. So these parties are either trying to kill him or
kidnap him to get a secret that he doesn't have. Sort of Hitchcockian in
that sense but only in that sense. It is rather a shoddy affair with narrative
shortcuts taking place throughout. A fair amount of action as it turns out
that this journalist is pretty good with his fists and a twist or two come
your way.
