Director: Miguel Iglesias Year: 1967 Rating: 6.0 Country: Euro
How can you at least not like this to some degree with the bad guys meeting
in a super deluxe luxury box at a Houston Astros baseball game, a rat torture
scene, various scenes in discos, strip clubs, belly dancing bars, more strip
clubs, a bevy of beautiful girls most who end up dead, big American cars
and a fair amount of knock em sock em fighting. This Spanish Euro Crime admittedly
suffers from many of the faults of so many in this genre - sloppy script
writing, location transitions that bounce around like a ping pong ball and
make no sense at all logistically, an anemic leading man with the charisma
of a raw beet and just a lot of dumbness everywhere. But so what? It was
reasonably fun with a few good scenes. The rat one in particular. An award
to Lea Nanni for best screams.
The world is being flooded by counterfeit dollars - to such an extent that
the banking system may collapse. But a reporter Jeff Gordon (Giacomo Rossi
Stuart though credited with various names) notices that the picture of Lincoln
has a flaw and notifies the authorities who are able to stop the influx of
phony money. Think about that. Lincoln is on the $5 bill. These counterfeiters
have gone to the trouble and danger to make a $5 bill. I know $5 was worth
a lot more back in 1967 but I am pretty sure we still had 20's and 100's.
Like I said a lot of dumb.
So the villains kidnap another engraver and his daughter (the screamer) to
fix the Lincoln plate and Gordon chases after them to Istanbul - but every
time he has a lovely girl about to spill the whereabouts of the baddie, they
are murdered right next to him. Which begs the question - which many other
films also imbibe in - if you can kill the witness with a cigarette blow
gun - why not just kill the hero. A question perhaps for another time. But
as things turn out they probably should have taken my advice.
Some decently staged fisticuffs and action - in particular the final climatic
scene where our screamer stands there doing nothing while the hero fights
for his life. That was standard back then of course - but thankfully not
so much any more. So a little of everything here from the good to the dumb.
I can't say I am at all familiar with the director Miguel Iglesias but I
would like to track down his films Kilma, Queen of the Jungle and Kilma,
Queen of the Amazons. You just know they have to be great!
