Very mediocre Spanish/West German spy spoof with ordinary ingredients: thrills , noisy action , fights, plot twists and various international locations. During ¨Cold war¨, CIA agent Leyton (Eddie Constantine) is sent to Europe to track down a ring of spies from the East Wall. His investigation takes him from the United States to Istanbul, where he gets involved with sexy spies. He receives and is informed of the mission by his friend Colonel Spokane (Otto Stern), to discover and destroy an enemy group operating in the vicinities of a residence. Along the way, Leyton being helped by barman Willy (Cris Huerta) who provides him weapons against a megalomaniac mastermind. Ms. Commander Pendleton (Tota Alba) is the commander-in-chief of a women's training camp for spies, recently established in Turkey. Leyton will manage, with the help, and sometimes extra zeal, of a number of the young women to discover the enemies. Furthermore, Leyton finds there his jealous fiancée Marion (Anita Hoffer) who's also working undercover. But things go wrong when Janet Spokane (Diana Lorys), the wife of the man in charge of all the operation attempts to seduce him. After many chases and intrigue, he arranges to get away with "the secret plans". Our valiant , easy-going but mature playboy/agent, takes on a powerful criminal organization commanded by an undercover nasty.
Colorful but mediocre rendition about European spy subgenre , an usual genre during the Sixties, not taking any situation seriously . This very campy picture contains thrills, action, chases, tongue-in-cheek , absurd situations , but being middlingly developed. The main entertainment of the film is look for various familiar Spanish secondaries who appear here and there, such as: Tota Alba, Mary Paz Pondal, Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui, Dina Loy , Cris Huerta , Patty Shepard, Antonio Jiménez Escribano (most of them Franco's regulars). And , of course, brief cameo by Howard Vernon and director Jesús Franco himself.
The film is atmospherically photographed by notorious Spanish cameraman Antonio Macasoli. Mostly shot on location in Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana: exteriors, namely at Jardines de Abril; Elevador de Santa Justa, Lisbon, Portugal: Attack on Baldek before his meeting with Leyton ; Istanbul, Turkey: close-ups of the Blue Mosque; Bosphorus, Turkey: Day and night scenes along the docks, and a spectacular sun set over the sea; and interiors: Estudios CEA, Ciudad Lineal, Madrid. Adding an evocative but anticlimatic musical score by composer and orchestra conductor Odón Alonso.
This spy sub-genre borrows heavily from the popular Euro-spy genre from the Sixties with usual trappings : pursuits, shootings, struggles , international conspiracy , and explosive women .The picture was made by the time in which Franco directed nice movies, such as : The sadistic Baron Klaus , Rififi En La Ciudad , Miss Muerte or Diabolic Doctor Z , Necronomicon and Gritos en la Noche , developing a consolidated professionalism , as his career got more and more impoverished in the following years, but his endless creativity enabled him to tackle films in all genres, from "B" horror , erotic films to ¨Z¨movies. The main and support cast -with everyone having fun- are passable , but they are really wasted. It has some flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , including repetitive nature of some scenes , and excessive sillines, but it has big fun , so it cares.
The motion picture was averagely directed by Jesús Franco , and it definitively worth checking out if you are a hardcore fan of Euro spy genre. In the Sixties Jesús Franco made various Euro-spy movies , some of them starred by beautiful women , as he directed ¨Two Undercover Angels¨, ¨Besame Monstruo¨ , ¨The Seven Secrets of Sumuru¨, ¨Lucky the intrepid¨, and ¨Golden Horn¨. Jesás Franco was a Stajanovist filmmaker who realized 203 movies . He often used his trademarks , as he pulls off a botcher narration , lots of zooms and lousy pace . As the picture belongs to Franco's first period in which he made passable flicks . Jesus uses to sign under pseudonym , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others . Franco used to utilize usual marks such as zooms , nudism , foreground on objects , filmmaking in ¨do-it-yourself effort¨ style or DIY and managing to work extraordinarily quickly , realizing some fun diversions, and a lot of absolute crap .
