Veteran peplum director Sergio Grieco, who also made a fistful of Eurospy films under the pseudonym Terence Hathaway, helmed the first two Dick Malloy films, with Alberto De Martino directing the third. While obviously lacking recourse to Bondian production dollars, they overcame budget limitations by relying on dazzling European locations, hyper-voluptuous actresses, breathless pace and continental swagger. They also benefited enormously from swinging soundtracks courtesy of cult composers A. F. Lavagnino, Piero Piccioni and Bruno Nicolai. Each film in the Malloy series features a blazingly cool theme song and highly atmospheric music cues that help drive the furious action and smooth over narrative rough spots. And while the 007 epics eventually began to sag under the weight of their pretensions, the makers of the 077 films never took themselves seriously. Their sole purpose in life was to bring pleasure to spy cinema junkies from Brazil to the Bosporus.

Mission Bloody Mary (1965)

Considering that the inaugural Dick Malloy adventure was made during the pinnacle of Bondmania, it’s not surprising that it poaches several narrative tropes from 007. A criminal mastermind named the Black Lily sets the plot in motion with his theft of the Bloody Mary, a portable nuclear warhead that he plans to sell to the Chinese. (Shades of Thunderball.) Upon learning the bad news, Malloy’s avuncular, bowtie-wearing superior Heston (Philippe Hersent) places an urgent call to his number one agent and dispatches him to recover the bomb. The film scores huge points as it introduces Malloy nuzzling a half-naked blonde strumpet in his bachelor pad while listening to the Mission Bloody Mary theme song and fortifying himself with between-coitus champagne. Pure style. Reluctantly dragging himself away from this sexual sanctum, Malloy embarks upon a perilous quest that takes him from Paris to Madrid to Athens as he tangles with assorted Black Lily henchmen, tricky Russian agents and duplicitous females. The plethora of double crosses and false identities may leave first-time viewers a bit confused, but what the hell. Narrative linearity was never one of the defining hallmarks of the Eurospy genre. Nonstop action, groovy music and ridiculously sexy women are the only ingredients that really matter, and Mission Bloody Mary has them all in glorious excess.

Umberto Raho headlines the supporting cast as the Black Lily. As diabolical masterminds go, he may not project the menace of, say, Dr. No or Goldfinger. In fact, the unprepossessing, bespectacled actor looks more like a banker than a criminal. An evil banker, to be sure. He does, however, have a nice line in cruelty and sadism, especially when it comes to meting out discipline to troublesome employees. In a standout scene, he traps one such malcontent in a room with specially equipped flame jets and smugly sets the dial to broil. There’s no better way to keep the troops in line. If Raho registers as a somewhat less-than-imposing presence, the actresses on display more than compensate. Top-billed Helga Liné, who effortlessly conveys equal amounts of poise and pulchritude, is Dr. Elsa Freeman, a fellow CIA agent whom Malloy suspects of playing a double game. Which doesn’t prevent him from macking on her at every opportunity. When she accuses him of having only one thing on his mind, his well-spoken retort conveys the essence of his profoundly sybaritic nature: “It’s the basis of my life.” The film is also blessed with the enigmatic allure of the Eurasian actress Mitsouko, who plays a striptease artist blackmailed into helping the Black Lily steal the Bloody Mary. While demonstrating her act in a posh Parisian nightclub, she makes a rendezvous with Malloy, but pays the ultimate price for her disloyalty before she can reveal the Black Lily’s identity. Mitsouko doubtless drew on her real-life experience as a stripper to lend verisimilitude to her erotically revealing number. Bond fans will recognize the actress as the French secret agent in the teaser sequence in Thunderball, although her appearance in that film was, sadly, all too brief. As an added frisson, the nightclub scene features a nice cameo by real-life singer-actor Nino Ferrer.

The excellence of the film’s cast is matched by the authority of its action scenes, staged by director Grieco with satisfyingly kinetic panache. These include a corking rooftop gun battle that rivals anything in the Bond canon, punctuated by a startling low-angle shot as one of the bad guys tumbles to his death directly into the camera. The scene gains added impact from the realization that Clark is doing it for real, risking life and limb on the steeply angled roofs with the whole of Paris spread out in the background. There’s also an extended brutal fight sequence in a cramped railroad carriage that recalls the similar dustup in From Russia With Love. This is one of several brawls Malloy has with Tiger, a Black Lily henchman played by Peter Blades. This obscure, hulking character actor was the perfect foil for Clark: He looked like a mean son of a bitch and he fought with feral abandon.

The film’s only real flaw is a rather anticlimactic showdown between the CIA and the Black Lily’s gang. In terms of action, things peak just a bit too soon. But despite jettisoning its payload prematurely (a condition that Malloy never seems to suffer), Mission Bloody Mary firmly established the template for succeeding Dick Malloy adventures, much like Dr. No did for the Bond films. The filmmakers took care not to deviate from the basic formula while managing to devise some intriguing and entertaining variations on the theme for the next series entry.

From the Orient with Fury (1965)

While Mission Bloody Mary has a gritty, hard-edged tone and a plot more or less grounded in reality, the second Malloy adventure has its tongue firmly in cheek and its scenario comfortably rooted in fantasy. Following the cool rotoscoped credits, the film opens with a brilliant scientist named Kurtz giving a press conference about his latest invention, an unstoppable disintegration ray. He’s obviously never seen any spy films, or he would realize that he’s just made himself catnip to any would-be international kidnappers. Sure enough, before you can say “sitting target,” Kurtz finds himself snatched up by minions of the decadent and vicious Goldwyn (Franco Ressel). The slimy super criminal plans to sell Kurtz’ weapon to the highest bidder, presumably to keep his mistress, Simone Degas (the stunning Fabienne Dali), dripping in ill-gotten jewels. Malloy is summoned to recover the professor and his death ray and terminate Goldwyn’s dolce vita lifestyle. He’s partnered with a fellow CIA agent played by the very fetching Margaret Lee, who’s got her own kind of disintegration ray, one that melts men’s inhibitions with a mere glance from her bedroom eyes. The film faithfully adheres to its blueprint, as Malloy throws himself body and soul into many a fistfight, gun battle and bedroom skirmish before eventually running down Goldwyn at the latter’s opulent island headquarters. Cue the crazy Hammond organ music as a swinging battle royale ensues involving deceitful daughters, pimped-out KGB agents, Turkish secret police, and a big dose of patented Dick Malloy mayhem.

As in Mission Bloody Mary, the film doesn’t exactly startle the viewer with sophisticated repartee, although the awkwardly dubbed lines do provide a certain measure of amusement. Clark once again reveals his usual aplomb whether he’s dodging bullets or dogging the opposite sex. He does have one out-of-nowhere line that perhaps hints at other aspects of his sexuality, telling a flunky who’s packing his suitcase: “I’d like some lavender among my linen.” Unfortunately, the narrative never follows up this intriguing non sequitur. Malloy’s chief, Heston, again played by Philippe Hersent, has an enjoyably absurd exchange with one of his agents:

“You’ll get in touch at once with Dick Malloy.”
“But he’s on vacation, sir.”
“Even if he’s in paradise, I want to speak to him in one minute.”

Manly man Ken Clark puts the move on femme fatale Margaret Lee

In keeping with its outlandish plot, From the Orient with Fury abounds with crazy gadgets no self-respecting spy should be without: cigarette lighters that shoot poison needles, belt buckle mini-cameras, cigar lock picks, Morse code-sending suspenders and a car with rear-mounted machine guns. It’s got Simone Degas in negligee seduction mode, Malloy in enemy agent-slapping interrogation mode, and Goldwyn in zapping the forces of law and order with the disintegration ray while laughing maniacally mode. It’s even got a climax-capping harpoon killing. The decision to push things in a more outré direction works quite well, even if the film looks like it was made on about $100. In its inimitably low-rent fashion, From the Orient with Fury delivers one of the most compelling and mindlessly enjoyable Eurospy statements of the sixties.

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966)

Special indeed is the final entry in the 077 trilogy. Directed by Alberto De Martino with sleek style and breakneck pace, it’s arguably the best of the bunch, high praise considering the level achieved in the previous two films. For starters, Special Mission Lady Chaplin features the most outrageous criminal plot—the theft of 16 Polaris missiles from a shipwrecked atomic submarine. This daring scheme is masterminded by Kobre Zoltan, the wealthy, jet-setting owner of an underwater salvage company. Played by Jacques Bergerac, Zoltan is far and away the most compelling villain in the Malloy series. Urbane, rapacious and cruel, he has discriminating taste in wine and women, can get away with wearing sunglasses indoors, and owns a pet scorpion that he pits against other scorpions for high-stakes wagers. This guy knows how to unwind.

As entertaining as Zoltan is, however, the film is stolen by ex-Bond girl Daniela Bianchi, just three years removed from her role in From Russia With Love. As Zoltan’s chief operative, Lady Arabella Chaplin, she’s the film’s major catalyst, the straw that stirs this espionage cocktail. Lady Chaplin makes an immediate and indelible impression during the opening credits, which are set to another memorably trippy theme song. Fetchingly dressed as a nun, she arrives at a remote island monastery, greets a pair of seemingly benign monks, then suddenly whips out a machine gun and sends them to their just rewards. (Said monks are eventually revealed as industrial spies.) She carries out another assassination disguised as an old woman in a dart-shooting wheelchair, hijacks a train carrying a shipment of missile propellant, plays Zoltan and Malloy against each other for her own financial gain, and takes part in the frenzied finale as a sky-diving, machine-gunning angel of death. She indulges in all of this skullduggery looking at all times as if she’d just stepped out of the pages of Vogue. Lady Chaplin is definitely a villainess cut from the most ruthless and resourceful cloth, and Bianchi plays her part for all its worth. In evil efficiency, she’s outclassed only by Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina in Deadlier Than the Male.

The screenwriters can’t allow Malloy to be totally upstaged in his own film, of course, so they test his mettle with a nonstop barrage of turtleneck-wearing killers, helicopter assaults, exploding dresses and bruising encounters with Zoltan’s hook-handed henchman Tiger (played by the wonderful Peter Blades in his penultimate film appearance). In the film’s most spectacular set piece, Malloy is lured into a deserted bullring where a number of Zoltan’s goons attempt to take him out with guns, knives and banderillas. De Martino makes use of fantastic camera angles and rapid-fire editing that lend a visceral rush to the carnage. Clark demonstrates his action skills by leaping over railings, trading punches and showing off some wicked judo. At one point, he tears across the ring, dives to avoid a bullet and comes up firing in one smooth move. As he dispatches a knife-wielding assassin with a handy rope hoist, the viewer shares the would-be killer’s perspective as he’s rapidly jerked upward to his doom, a visual flourish that helps lift this sequence to heights comparable with any spy film of the era.

Fittingly, the last film in the Malloy saga boasts the most spectacular conclusion—a bruising Malloy-Zoltan throwdown set amidst a blazing inferno that threatens to blow the Polaris missiles and America’s favorite CIA agent sky-high. While the boys settle their differences (with Zoltan’s scorpion playing an unexpected part in the outcome), Lady Chaplin pulls off one final gambit, ripping off the missiles’ prospective buyers, donning another impeccable disguise and booking a sleeper on a getaway train. There’s no escaping 077, however. The tenacious agent cottons onto her latest scheme, quietly steals into her cabin, handcuffs the two of them together, and commences a full-body search as the end credits roll. Rarely has a film series ended on such a satisfyingly kinky note.

Kudos to Dorado Films for releasing all three films in their original widescreen ratio. The sound and picture quality is excellent, considering the age of the films and the condition of the prints Dorado had to work with. Their Dick Malloy Eurospy series represents the best DVD collection of its kind to date, one other labels would do well to emulate.

For more information, visit www.doradofilms.com