By
Hank Reineke
Technically speaking, OSS 117 secret agent Hubert
Bonisseur de La Bath is not a James
Bond knock off. The creation of wildly
prolific French author Jean Bruce, the first literary adventure of the spy arrived
in 1949 with the publication of Tu parles d'une ingénue (Ici OSS 117). This
would pre-date the April 1953 publication of the first Ian Fleming James Bond
novel, Casino Royale, by nearly four years. In the years following the publication of that
first 007 thriller to his last in 1965, Fleming would deliver an impressive thirteen
James Bond novels and nine short stories.
In contrast, Jean Bruce would
publish no fewer (and possibly more) than eighty-eight to ninety OSS 117
pulp-adventures between 1949 and March of 1963, the month and year of his
passing. It’s difficult to determine how many of Bruce’s novels were of his
composition alone. His widow, Josette – and later a teaming of the Bruce’s son
and daughter – would continue the pulp series into the early 1990s. So determined
bibliophiles will have their work cut out for them if they wish to track down
all of the 250+ published OSS 117 novels.
If OSS 117 beat James Bond to
the stalls of book-sellers, he also managed to beat him to the cinema
screen. Two OSS 117 films were released
throughout Western Europe and foreign markets in 1957 and 1960: OSS 117 n'est pas mort (OSS 117 is not Dead)
and Le bal des espions
(Danger in the Middle East). The latter title,
interestingly, does not feature “Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.” Though based on one of Bruce’s OSS 117
novels, a messy rights-issue prevented the filmmakers to use the central
character’s moniker. These earliest
films, produced as routine crime dramas by differing production companies (and
featuring different actors in the title role), came and went without attention
nor fanfare.
But in 1963 Bruce’s OSS 117 character was resurrected as
a cinematic property following the success of Terence’s Young’s Dr. No, the first James Bond screen
adventure. The spy pictures comprising
Kino Lorber’s OSS 117 Five Film
Collection are tailored as pastiches of the popular James Bond adventures
of the 1960s. This new Blu ray set
features the entirety of OSS 117 film thrillers produced 1963 through 1968
during the height of Bondmania. And,
just as the Eon series offered a trio of actors to portray James Bond
(1962-1973), the OSS series would likewise present three in the role of Colonel
Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. Each actor
would bring some aspect of their own personalities to their characterizations.
Of course, the name Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is a bit
of a Franco-linguistic mouthful to market successfully overseas. So, throughout the five films the character usually
assumes an Anglo-friendly alias which helps move things along a bit more
smoothly: he alternately assumes – among others - such covert surnames as
Landon, Barton, Delcroix, Wilson and Mulligan. It certainly makes his character’s many “personal” on-screen introductions
easier for all involved.
The Kino set starts off chronologically with 1963’s OSS 117 is Unleashed (original title OSS 117 se déchaîne). Like the four films to follow, the series
were all Franco-Italia co-productions and distributed by Gaumont Films. Unlike those four, OSS 117 is Unleashed is filmed in black-and-white. The monochrome photography is not really an
issue. But cinemagoers were certainly cheated
of enjoying the beautiful beaches and Cliffside scenery of the village of
Bonifacio (off the Corsican strait) in vibrant color.
In OSS 117 is
Unleashed our hero (American actor Kerwin Mathews, best known to American
audiences for his roles in Ray Harryhausen’s special-effect laden epics The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), is sent
to Corsica to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow agent. We’re told, suspiciously, there’s been, “lots
of accidents among agents near Bonifacio.” A preamble to the film, culled mostly of cold war era newsreel footage,
alerts that an unspecified enemy is working towards “neutralizing” free-world atomic
submarine movements in the area. With
conspirators tagged with such names as “Sacha” and “Boris,” we can reasonably
assume its east-of-the-Iron Curtain intelligence agents behind the plot.
Initially posing as a relative of the recently targeted
and now deceased CIA frogman (and later as a Lloyds of London insurance adjustor),
Mathews must dispatch and/or fend off a series of enemy agents and perhaps a duplicitous
woman. In due course, he survives a poisoning,
several (well-choreographed) hand-to-hand combat sequences and even a submerged
spear-gun and knifing frogman attack. The latter occurs while he’s search of a mysterious submerged
subterranean grotto. The base is outfitted
(as one might expect) with high-tech equipment and a detection system designed
to bring about “the end of atomic submarines.” The secreted grotto is also equipped with a built-in self-destruct
button… always handy, just in case. This
is all definitely Bond-on-a budget style filmmaking. Of course, the idea of covertly tracking atomic
submarines movements brings to mind the storyline of the far-more-lavishly
staged The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
As far as I can determine, OSS 117 is Unleashed was never released theatrically in the
U.S. But Mathews’ second (and final) outing
as OSS 117, Panic in Bangkok (Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117) (1964) would
have a belated release in the U.S. (as Shadow
of Evil) in December of 1966. Regardless,
Shadow of Evil was not exhibited as a
primary attraction in the U.S. market. It most often appeared as the under bill to Christopher Lee in The Brides of Fu Manchu or (more
sensibly) to Montgomery Clift’s political suspense-thriller The Defector.
In Panic in Bangkok,
Mathews is dispatched to Thailand to, once again, investigate the assassination
of a fellow agent. The murdered CIA operative
had been investigating a possible correlation between anti-cholera vaccines
produced by Bangkok’s Hogby Laboratories to an outbreak of a deadly plague in
India. The trail leads Mathews to
suspect a certain mysterious Dr. Sinn (Robert Hossein) is somehow involved. Unlike the previous film which lacked a singular
villain with a foreboding presence (ala Dr. No), the filmmakers offer
cinemagoers a more exotic adversary in Dr. Sinn.