OSS 117 Se Dechaine/OSS 117 ls Unleashed (1963)

‘I don’t want to get involved in nutty escapades.’

An American secret agent is killed when diving off the South coast of France. His mission was to locate and prevent the deployment of a device which can track atomic submarines. After his death, the authorities send in agent OSS 117 to complete the assignment.

When James Bond became an instant movie phenomenon in 1962, it was inevitable that film producers around the world would look to ride his coattails (or cocktails, perhaps!) to the promised land of financial glory. Perhaps it was a little surprising that the French were first off the mark, but they had an advantage. Agent OSS 117 was already a well-established character with name recognition value, thanks to a series of 88(!) novels by Jean Bruce, the first of which was published four years before Ian Fleming debuted Bond. There’d also been a movie: ‘OSS 117 n’est pas mort’ (OSS 117 ls Not Dead) (1956), which starred Ivan Desny, an actor who was born in China, of Russian descent, and a Swiss national! The producers here also chose to ignore homegrown talent and cast U.S. actor Kerwin Mathews in the title role instead, a leading man best remembered for tangling with Ray Harryhausen’s menagerie of creatures in the title role of ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’ (1958).

The plot revolves around the usual ‘device that must not fall into the wrong hands’ and the threat it poses to the free world. For now, it’s only a prototype but, if it proves to be successful in pinpointing atomic subs, a network of the things submerged in caves around the world could have serious consequences. Agent Jacques Harden is already on the case as the story begins; scuba diving off the southern tip of Corsica with the help of local sailor Renotte (Henri-Jacques Huet) and his girlfriend Brigitta (Nadia Sanders). Unfortunately, he pokes his mask in where it doesn’t belong and ends up dead, and Huet is desperate not to get involved in Matthews’ subsequent investigation. Sanders is not so immune to our hero’s rugged charms, of course, but her loyalty to truth and justice is more than a little suspect as well.

On the whole, the film is slow and not particularly exciting. The action is limited to a few bouts of energetic fisticuffs and some underwater combat with spear guns. The aquatic sequences are well-shot and edited tightly so they don’t overstay their welcome, a lesson someone should probably have imparted to director Terence Young before he shot ‘Thunderball’ (1965) with Sean Connery. One significant weakness here are the villains. They are simply anonymous foreign agents, with the notable exception of the creepy Daniel Emilfork, who fans of cult cinema should recall from his performance as the mad scientist in Jeunet and Caro’s astonishing ‘The City of Lost Children’ (1985).

So how much does this film resemble one of Bond’s escapades? Well, quite a bit, so long as you bear in mind that we’re still a decade away from Roger Moore using crocodiles as stepping stones, and an even further distance from giants with metal teeth, space stations, invisible cars and surfing on CGI waves. Yes, this is a far more grounded espionage adventure, much in the manner of the first two acts of ‘Dr No’ (1962). In fact, it bares more than a slight resemblance to the 1960s TV show ‘Danger Man’ which starred Patrick McGoohan. Mathews does have more of an eye for the ladies than McGoohan though and this stretches to sexual harassment in the workplace, grabbing some quick tongue action from a car hire employee in an airport car park. Still, she doesn’t seem to mind too much, because…the Sixties, baby!

‘Tell me! What have you done with the Princess Parisa?’

Director Andre Hunébelle had more than a decade of experience in the canvas chair by the time he first got involved with the spy game, through this film and its sequel ‘OSS 117: Panic In Bangkok’ (1964) (again with Mathews). He shot two further entries in the series, one with Frederick Stafford, and one with John Gavin, and also delivered the ‘Fantomas’ trilogy, a series that shared more than a little DNA with the Eurospy genre.

Mathews was never the busiest of actors and after the OSS 117 sequel took a break for 3 years before shooting another spy adventure ‘The Viscount’ (1967) and then heading across the channel for tatty sci-fi action flick ‘Battle Beneath The Earth’ (1967). After that, he seems to have gone into semi-retirement with just over half a dozen pictures and some limited television appearances before he called it quits completely at the end of the 1970s.

Sanders was born in Miami and, although biographical information on her is a little scant, is seems fair to assume that she had some facility with languages. Her first film role was a small bit as ‘French Girl’ in the Three Stooges Sci-fi comedy ‘Have Rocket Will Travel’ (1959), but she swiftly relocated to Italy, where she had half a dozen second leads in ‘sword and sandal’ pictures and appeared in Fellini’s ‘8 1/2’ (1963). After this picture, she returned to the U.S. but her career never really took off and she retired in 1970 after some TV roles and a supporting part in Matt Helm ‘Bond’ spoof ‘Murderer’s Row’ (1966) with Dean Martin.

This is a mildly engaging spy picture with some slow spots, but a decent level of intrigue and action. Mathews breaks the fourth wall right at the end of the picture, presumably to confirm that we shouldn’t have been all of it very seriously and it’s an undemanding, if unexciting, way to spend 90 or so minutes.