‘Kissing you is not hygienic.’
A clue to the location of Nazi gold has been hidden in a Goya painting. A mysterious American attempts to obtain the canvas but soon finds out that there are multiple forgeries in existence, and many other people are trying to obtain the original…
Eccentric, multi-national comedy adventure from one-man-band Vincenzo Cascino that flirts with the conventions of both the caper movie and the Eurospy genre. The film has nothing to do with either the brief ‘7 Golden Women’ series or the Bond imprint, and it’s tempting to assume the title was imposed to try and salvage box office receipts. However, it could have been just another example of Cascino’s rather odd sense of humour.
A man carrying a painting is pursued through the early morning streets by two thugs on the instructions of a mysterious blonde. He is saved by American Mark Davis (Mickey Hargitay). The latter discovers that the man is an Armenian named Barbikan (played by Cascino) and identifies the blonde as Frenchwoman Marie Dupont (Maria Vincent). They’re both after the Goya painting just sold at auction by Geoffrey Copleston. Strangely enough, this dealer has been selling multiple copies of the artwork to beautiful women from all around the world. The buyers include Miranda, the Italian (Luciana Paoli), the African (Paola Mariani), the Spaniard (Patricia Méndez) and several other gorgeous lovelies identified in the credits only by the colour or length of their hair.
It’s rather fruitless to try and explain the plot any further. The large, multi-national cast have a series of largely pointless interactions going from one place to another with little apparent rhyme or reason. Apparently, the secret of the painting is discovered at some point, so the canvases disappear from the story, only to return late on, but I’ve no idea what the secret was or why they go to the places they do. At one point, everyone visits a ‘haunted’ castle, but I suspect it was just because the location was available for filming for a couple of hours.
The film doesn’t even make an effort to establish the identities of its characters. Some synopses of the story mention that Hargitay is a secret agent, but it’s never mentioned in the film. On several occasions, auctioneer Copleston whispers apparently essential information to several of the principals in turn, but the audience never finds out what he was saying or how it affects the story. Action is limited to the odd bout of poorly choreographed fisticuffs and humour to the listless mugging of the cast, who wander through proceedings as if barely paying attention.
Cascino was an Argentinian industrialist who entered the film business in 1964 and departed three years later, having written, produced and acted in a total of four films. He also served as Production Manager on three of them and directed the final two. He also edited this one, making some very curious and hamfisted choices with his cutting. Similarly, as this was his first time in the director’s chair, perhaps his lack of competence in this department is somewhat forgivable, but it’s hard to work out just what he was trying to achieve with the film. Perhaps he envisaged it as a madcap chase comedy such as Stanley Kramer’s overblown ‘It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World’ (1963)? If that were the case, it falls hopelessly flat. Is it a caper movie? Not really. A Eurospy? Well, perhaps.
Additionally, the English dubbing is awful, with Vincent saddled with a ridiculously over the top ‘come to bed’ French tone and an English girl who makes Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent in ‘Mary Poppins’ (1964) sound positively restrained. If all this seems like it might make for a deliciously bizarre 1960s free-form experience, then perhaps that was Cascino’s intention. Unfortunately, the lack of jokes and the absence of plot, action, stakes, form and logic leaves a flabby blob of a movie that goes nowhere and takes a very long and tedious time to get there.
An awkward and rather baffling experience. Unbelievably, Cascino’s fourth and final film was apparently a sequel.
Mark David Welsh 