Nearing the end of ICM's French Viewing Challenge,I looked for a quick and easy flick I could watch before bed. Catching the fun O.S.S. 117 n'est pas mort (1957-also reviewed) earlier this month,I decided to join OSS for another mission.

View on the film:

For the first hour co-writer/(with Pierre Foucaud and Jean Halain) director Andre Hunebelle's adaptation of Pierre Foucaud's novel is spent in a wandering state, where instead of gradually increasing the stakes, Agent OSS 117 is left to aimlessly travel round with little feeling of increased pressure from boo-hiss Euro Spy baddies.Going down to the jungle for the final, the writers switch from Euro Spy to a more Adventure flavour, with excitement fired up in the Amazon jungle over an uprising on by the locals on the baddies using a plant from the region to create a drug which will let them take over the world.

Whilst the Jungle action does get lively, the writers oddly continue making OSS 117 and Sulza feel like side characters,due to it being the locals and the baddies who pull the mission along. Mostly filmed in Rio and backed by Michel Magne's sweet hula hula score, director Hunebelle & cinematographer Marcel Grignon visual bring out the Euro Spy style missing in the script,in lush wide-shots giving Rio a globe-trotting espionage adventure sizzle, with the lair of the baddie surrounded by the jungle giving the flick a pulpy vibrancy. Burning up anyone who takes him on, Hunebelle makes the wonderful fight scene the centre-piece, thanks to the hand to hand combat moves being slickly shot, and left-field weapons coming out of nowhere,including a stand out fight OSS 117 has against a henchmen welding a flame-thrower. Cast after the director ran into him in a Bangkok hotel (!),Frederick Stafford (joined by the alluring glamour of Mylene Demongeot as Sulza) gives a very good debut performance as OSS 117, thanks to Stafford match the Euro Spy cool under danger style with a rough and tumble edge in the action scenes,as OSS 117 takes on a mission for a killer.

What atmosphere! What lovely girl (Mylène D)! 4,7 as an average? I must protest!! This is pure magic, the stuff that dreams are made of. Who cares about the story! This is for boys! Pure adventure, a fairy-tale! Will it ever occur on DVD? In France? This is just one film of still many, which has not reached the DVD-format yet although there are thousands of films which are so much badder than this one, which we had to endure on DVD. Probably this is due to the fact, that the people who know about these good films are becoming an extinct race.