Country and Year: Italy/Germany (1966)
Directors: Gianfranco Parolini, Rudolf Zehetgruber
Starring: Tony Kendall, Brad Harris

Review By: David Austin

Ah, Eurospy flicks. Cheap, cheerful, colorful, silly – cinematic Froot Loops for the soul. And they don’t come much goofier than the Kommissar X films. Fortunately for fans of the genre, Retromedia has collected the first three films in the series - Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill; Death Be Nimble, Death Be Quick; and So Darling, So Deadly – into a DVD set, the Kommissar X Collection.

The Kommissar X films were based on a long-running series of spy/detective novels attributed to “Bert F. Island,” among other pseudonyms. While the first story was written by C.H. Guenter, over the years many writers have tried their hands at the series, churning out a mind-boggling 1,740 novels starring the “Jo Walker” character between the ‘50s and the ‘90s (take that, Hardy Boys!). In addition to the books, during the late ‘60s at least seven films based on the series were created as Italo-German co-productions (I assume there were some significant tax breaks), the majority directed by experienced spaghetti western director Gianfranco Parolini of the abysmal Sabata series and a superior Sartana film.

Not surprisingly, the James Bond influence is overwhelming - the first three films in the series were all released in 1966, during the reign of Connery. However, in the grand scheme of Bond knockoffs, the Kommissar X films fall very much on the parody side. They are far more Roger Moore than Sean Connery – odd considering it would be years before Moore would assume his role as Bond Lite. It is pretty clear that even recent spy parodies were watching Kommissar X pretty closely (Austin Powers, I’m looking at you - the Fembots are clearly swiped from Kiss Kiss).

Nevertheless, at least in the incidentals, the biggest influences are clearly Goldfinger and Dr. No. In Kiss Kiss, the plot revolves around a plan to irradiate gold, and the villain ends up running around in a tubular radiation suit. In Death be Nimble, a rumored fire-monster turns out to be an elaborate ruse to frighten off the curious. Sound familiar?

The biggest change is that the Kommissar X series gave us two Bonds for the price of one. Tony Kendall (aka Luciano Stella), who had a role in Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body a few years before, stars as Jo Walker, the private detective and babe magnet. Kendall does a fine job as Walker, though he’s a little too smug to be entirely likeable, and gives off a creepy John Cassavetes vibe. His Walker always wins, and always has things under control, though he is allowed a nice moment of genuine emotion in So Darling when he briefly believes his friend is dead. The best thing about him is that he has his own theme song, in which Angelina Monti sings about how every woman in the world loves Jo Walker. If these films are to be believed, that’s probably true.

Walker’s square-jawed sidekick, Captain Tom Rowland, is played by Brad Harris, the beefy veteran of sword-and-sandals pepla like Goliath and the Giants. Harris had a rather interesting career – 14 years after these films, he was still jacked enough to play a greasy, villainous muscleman in Challenge of the Tiger (aka Gymkata Killer), and made regular appearances on Dallas and Falcon Crest during the heyday of the primetime soaps. Even more importantly, the lucky bastard married the lovely Olga Schoberova of Who Wants to Kill Jessie? Rowland is the straight-laced cop to Walker’s unconventional jester.

Walker and Rowland really do divide up the labor. Walker handles all the wise-cracking, smirking and romancing. Meanwhile, Rowland is the two-fisted fighting man, even getting an opportunity to bust out some poorly choreographed karate. Walker and Rowland have something of a love-hate relationship. Actually, it’s only Rowland who seems to hate Walker. Maybe it’s a sexual frustration thing. Every time the two of them walk into a room, women give Rowland a cool appraisal, and then turn a winning smile on Walker. No matter how many pretty girls the two save at the end of a movie, Rowland doesn’t get much attention.

The three films included in the set are all pretty similar, and there is no particular reason to view any one before another. Each is filled with pretty girls, escapes, gadgets and punch-outs. However, Kiss Kiss, while slightly more incoherent than the others, also has the best ending, and is probably the one to watch if you’re watching only one.

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Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill
AKA: Kommissar X - Jagd auf Unbekannt; Kommissar X, Hunter of the Unknown
Country and Year: Italy/Germany (1966)
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Starring: Tony Kendall, Brad Harris, Maria Perschy (Joan Smith), Christa Linder (Pamela Hudson), Nikola Popovic (O’Brien), Giuseppe Mattei (Kan)

Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

Jo Walker and Captain Rowland investigate a series of murders of businessmen and gangsters (and women with unflattering beehive hairdos) connected to a missing nuclear physicist. The trail quickly leads to genial criminal mastermind O’Brien (Nikola Popovic), and his army of redshirted goons and kung fu fighting Barbie dolls. Walker solves the mystery with the help of cuties Joan Smith (Maria Perschy) and Pamela Hudson (Christa Linder), and bon mots like “the later the hour, the shorter the skirts.”

The plot is pretty pointless, and largely ripped off from Goldfinger. What makes this one are the incidentals. Walker, while slipping away from Rowland’s custody, takes the time to hit on a cute girl he meets on the street, 50 feet away from the guard he suckered. We get to see Walker’s home, where he keeps his clothes on full-size closet mannequins. Walker and Rowland also track one witness to an oddly giallo-esque nightclub.

By far the highlight, though, is the final sequence at O’Brien’s base, staffed with an army of mesmerized female servants. These proto-Fembots wear leopard-skin collars on their body-suits and platinum-blonde go-go wigs, and raise the kitsch factor to 11. The explosive finale sees an all-out battle between Walker, Rowland, their allies, O’Brien’s goons and the Fembots in a secret island base. What more could you ask for?

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Death Be Nimble, Death Be Quick
AKA: Kommissar X - Drei gelbe Katzen; 3 Golden Cats
Country and Year: Italy/Germany (1966)
Director: Rudolf Zehetgruber
Starring: Tony Kendall, Brad Harris, Ann Smyrner, Dan Vadis, Siegfried Rauch, Michele Mahaut

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 4 stars (above average)

In Death Be Nimble, Walker and Rowland travel to lovely Sri Lanka to investigate attempts on the life of Babs Lincoln (Ann Smyrner), the daughter of an American industrialist. In the process they are aided by cute secret agent Michele (Michele Mahaut), and opposed by a fearsome organization of freedom fighters known as the Golden Cats (Tamil Tigers, anyone?).

The best thing about Death Be Nimble (besides the pretty locations) is that Walker and Rowland are finally given some distinctive villains to tangle with. First up is Siegfried Rauch as “Nitro,” a hitman whose specialty is blowing people up with nitroglycerine, resulting in some pretty elaborate setups. More fun yet is “King,” played by gigantic, bald Dan Vadis, an evil karate expert. Vadis may not be the greatest actor in the world, but he gives Harris a chance to show off his martial arts chops in a fight which, while it doesn’t approach Hong Kong standards, isn’t half bad for a European film from the ‘60s where fight choreography typically consisted of a few aikido throws or maybe a Frenchman slapping people around.

Overall, it’s fairly amusing, and the director throws in some irrelevant but not entirely boring scenes to pad things out to 90 minutes, like an army of kung fu fighting girls that have nothing to do with the plot, and funny animal footage. Oh, and one of my favorite “throw a dummy over a cliff” shots ever.

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So Darling, So Deadly
AKA: Kommissar X - Jagd auf Unbekannt; Agent Joe Walker: Operation Far East
Country and Year: Italy/Germany (1966)
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Starring: Tony Kendall, Brad Harris, Barbara Frey, Nikola Popovic, Gisela Hahn

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 4 stars (above average)

After being hired to protect Professor Akron, who has developed a laser cannon capable of exploding vehicles, Walker and Rowland travel to Singapore. There, they follow the James Bond method of spying, which is to show up at a location where they know there is trouble, and wait for people to try and kill them. In the process they have to protect Akron’s daughter, Sybille (Barbara Frey) from the Golden Dragon organization and many girls of ample proportions, while keeping the film’s MacGuffin (a special filter needed to run the cannon) out of the baddies’ hands.

A co-production of Cathay Films, So Darling has some decent location shooting and local extras (though Chinese villain Mr. Wang is played by Nikola Popovic in yellowface). Meanwhile, we get to see Walker and Rowland let their hair down. Rowland goes water-skiing and does the spazziest dance since Elaine on Seinfeld, while Walker all but humps the leg of every woman that walks by, and makes out with a girl who resembles Thelma from Scooby-Doo.

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Recommended? Yes, the Kommissar X series is cheap and cheerful, and the films are pleasant time wasters.

If you like this, you might like: Goldfinger, Kilink Istanbul’da, Angel with the Iron Fists, Super Argoman

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DVD DETAILS

DVD Production Company: Image/Retromedia (www.image-entertainment.com)
Release Date: February 13, 2007
Run Time: 270 minutes
Extras: None

The less said about the technical quality of this Retromedia set, the better. It fails on all the essentials – picture quality, aspect ratio, and extras. Normally, I would also complain about the lack of a foreign language track (only the English dub is provided), but for this kind of Italian co-production, where every member of the cast speaks a different language, English is as “original” as any other. The single biggest problem is that this DVD is a pan and scanned version of the letterboxed original. I’ve seen worse examples, but there are still plenty of occasions where conversations take place with characters who cannot be seen, and portions of the action are cut off. The picture quality is also washed-out and poor, though I have certainly seen much worse – it never approaches unwatchable (i.e., Ground Zero quality). Extras? None.

On the other hand, all three films have been fit on one disc, the set can be picked up online for as little as 13 bucks, and you’re not likely to see these films in better condition any time soon.

© David Austin