Immersed in Eurospy

I've been working on a chapter about the Eurospy film since well before Christmas, and it sometimes feels like I will never finish it. I recently spoke to the Dorado Films podcast about the genre. It was them who very kindly sent me an Agent 077 boxset last year which has formed the basis of this chapter. They are American but appear to have a massive catalogue of European popular cinema. Apparently this includes at least twenty Jess Franco movies, and tons of Spaghetti Westerns and other Eurospy movies. Cool stuff, and they seem to be kicking up a gear in terms of releasing some of these gems on DVD and blu ray.

The podcast can be found here, and apparently I talked so much they are cutting it into two episodes. 

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966)

Seeing as how my PhD is built on my Bonditis collection, it is perhaps inevitable that the Eurospy would play such a large part in it, but it's forcing me out of my comfort zone and into areas of colonialism and imperialism that I have very little academic experience in. Which I suppose is a good thing. I just wish I could finish it! It is my aim to have this done by the end of the week, which is probably why I'm writing a blog about it instead of just writing it. I only update this when I'm putting off doing the real writing.

I'm a real convert to the Eurospy now, and was grateful for the opportunity to talk about it with someone else who is interested. I hope Dorado are able to get some of the other films in their collection out there.

In related news, I've been talking to Screenbound (who used to be Odeon Entertainment) and they are planning to release Bonditis on DVD and blu ray next year! With any luck I will be involved in creating some bonus materials, which is very exciting.

Examples of Agent 077's casual violence and misogyny. What a guy.

Dick Malloy: Agent 077

I am currently writing about Agent 077, aka Dick Malloy (Ken Clark), an American spy who spends most of his time in Europe either punching bad guys or seducing exotic women. I named this blog after the second of three Agent 077 films, having found lobby cards and this original quad for dirt cheap in a local memorabilia store. Now, thanks to Dorado Films in the U.S. I finally have the out-of-print DVD box set of all three films and am working my way through. As is to be expected, they are entertaining but not amazing. Most of the sixties eurospy films I have seen can be a bit of a slog to get through. Trying to match the thrills and romance of Bond on a quarter of the budget was always going to show on screen, and they often come across as travelogues with the occasional pedestrian car chase and raven-haired beauty wrapped in a towel.

Despite their shortcomings I personally find the whole genre fascinating, and I now have to justify this by writing a chapter of my thesis on them. Ideally I need to turn in the first draft of this, a mere 10,000 words, some time next week.

So, the Agent 077 films are:

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

From the Orient With Fury (1965, originally titled Fury on the Bosphorus)

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1967)

All three were directed by Sergio Grieco, under the name Terence Hathaway (a common practice at the time, in order to fool Italian audiences that the film they were watching was American) who clearly had a good relationship with Ken Clark. He made two other eurospy films with him, Tiffany Memorandum (1967) and The Fuller Report (1968). Neither of which are on DVD but are available on YouTube, thanks again to Dorado Films who own videotape versions of these films. They are not good enough quality to release on DVD but they are watchable. I intend to watch all five, as although my focus is specifically on Agent 077, I feel that the other two are relevant to the set. Hopefully they will not be too disappointing.

The eurospy film was massively popular in the 1960s with the majority coming out of Italy, and yet it is very underserved when it comes to legitimate DVD releases. There are probably hundreds that are currently commercially unavailable. This is probably because there is not a lot of mainstream interest in them, which is a pity. Like all popular genres, they tell us a lot about national identity and the times in which they were produced. The costumes, haircuts, cars, etc. are often a far more authentic depiction of their era than the big-budgeted Bond films, which have for the most part achieved a kind of timeless quality.

I have written a large article for a future issue of Cinema Retro on another eurospy film, Bonditis (1968), a one-off spy spoof from Switzerland, which I have probably mentioned on here before. I will also be writing about that for this PhD chapter, depending on how close I get to 10,000 with Agent 077.

I often get asked why I spend so much time with films that no one else (i.e. in the mainstream) has ever seen or heard of. Even I have to admit that watching obscure cinema is something of a crapshoot, but for every five bad or boring films (I saw Sharknado 3 last week, and that was terrible), you find a gem. Maybe. 

From the Orient With Fury UK Quad!

I took the title of this blog, and my PhD itself, from a 1960s Eurospy film released in the UK by Compton. It was one of the Agent 077 films. These were Italian/ French/ Spanish co-productions. 

Whilst I have yet to find a copy of this film itself, last weekend I found the quad poster. It was in the same shop I bought the lobby cards almost two years ago, in a box of posters I had never seen before. It has been folded, probably for most of the last fifty years, but it is still in remarkably good condition. The artwork is crude, and Ken Clark is all out of proportion and looks like he is in a western, but I am still happy to have found it. This will take a prominent place in the visual elements of my study. 

Agent 077's name was Dick Malloy, and he was played by the American actor Ken Clark, who despite some success at home spent the majority of his career working in Italian films.

According to the Kiss Kiss Kill Kill archive there were three Agent 077 films, and some of the posters advertised that fact. It is interesting that Compton chose not to use that in their materials, perhaps trying to play down the Bond connection for suspicious British audiences. 

Argentinian poster for From the Orient With Fury (1965)

Italian poster for Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

Italian poster for Operation Lady Chaplin (1966)