‘The pigment of his colours becomes a means of transcending reality.’
Several paintings originally stolen by the Nazis suddenly resurface, prompting the interest of intelligence agencies. A top secret agent traces their origin to Mexico and a criminal organisation intent on resurrecting the Reich….
This week’s ‘Bond On A Budget’ is familiar face Lang Jeffries, taking his turn at bringing super spy Francis Coplan to the big screen. Well-regarded, veteran Italian director Riccardo Freda marshals the action and ropes in Sabine Sun and José María Caffarel for the fun.
A jeep on a mountain is blown up with a bazooka. A woman agent babbles into a phone about ‘a fantastic conspiracy’ before she dies. Fortunately, the intelligence service discovers a roll of microfilm in the heel of her shoe, which contains a photograph of an old painting last seen in Nazi hands. Agent Francis Coplan (Jeffries) is tasked with discovering what it’s all about, a mission that takes him to a high-class auction house with a similar ‘lost’ master on the block. There, he connects with the mysterious Contessa LeGrange (Sun) and finds more of the missing paintings hidden in her wine cellar.
Following Sun to Mexico, Jeffries is marked for death and forced off the road on a mountain pass. Surviving the attempted assassination, he meets the frightened Francine (Silvia Solar), whose geologist fiancé has just been murdered and is convinced it’s her turn next. Jeffries investigates and realises the cause of these deadly intentions is some infrared photographs the couple took from a helicopter. These showed a network of underground tunnels in the vicinity of a temple and not far from the hacienda of wealthy landowner Don Felipe (Robert Party).
Francis Coplan was a secret agent created by Belgian authors Gaston Van den Panhuyse and Jean Libert, who wrote together under the name Paul Kenny. He first appeared in print in 1953 and was successful enough to get his first big screen adventure before the end of the decade with ‘Action immédiate/To Catch a Spy’ (1957). But it was the advent of Bond, particularly the global phenomenon of ‘Goldfinger’ (1964), that prompted a five-film series in the 1960s, of which this was the penultimate entry. Curiously, a different actor took the role on each occasion.
Here, Jeffries slips effortlessly back into the designer suits of the international agent, displaying the familiar smarmy charm and ready fists. By this point in the loose series, Coplan was a character on the darker end of the Eurospy spectrum, an agent prepared to use deadly force without hesitation. Two enemy agents find this out to their cost when he lights his cigarette with a scrap of paper and then uses the flame to burn them alive. Elsewhere, there’s some wonderfully ridiculous action, including a sequence where Jeffries and a fellow agent jump from a crashing plane into the back of an open-top taxi that just happens to be passing in the middle of nowhere. Later on, he shoots an enemy spy through the window of a speeding car whilst parasailing one-handed.
There are also other fun moments, including bad guys firing machine guns out of the back of a hearse at a funeral and the inevitable assassination attempt between the airport and the hotel. Unfortunately, all these are just enjoyable moments, that sit inside a dull story that drifts and rambles. It’s doubly disappointing because director Freda had a track record that featured some notable films, and he’d directed the previous entry in the Coplan saga, ‘Coplan FX-18 Super Spy/Coplan FX 18 casse tout/The Exterminators (1965), which was one of the very best examples of the Eurospy genre. In this case, however, the story fails to find a compelling direction and often just seems to be an assemblage of the usual clichés.
One of the critical areas where the film desperately needs more punch is with Jeffries’ main antagonist. The script attempts to keep his identity a mystery for much of the running time, but this works against the drama. It doesn’t help that the candidates are a pretty dull bunch as well, including former agent Langis (Caffarel) who has to use a wheelchair after an accident, landowner Party and Contessa Sun. None of these characters have any exciting qualities, and the cast struggles to bring them to life. There’s also a shortage of gadgets, with the tech restricted to a pen-bomb and a walking cane that doubles as a flamethrower.
Jeffries isn’t shy with the ladies, though, and this is a talking point for a current audience. When he encounters the Contessa at the auction house, it’s not a massive surprise that the two immediately fall into bed together. However, while the usual after-sex routine of the 1960s tended to involve cigarettes, the hopelessly romantic Jeffries prefers chloroform. Later, he hits on Solar, and she’s pretty willing even though her fiancé was murdered a few days earlier. Best of all, he attends the 18th birthday celebrations for Don Felipe’s daughter Maya (Luciana Gilli), and he’s after her immediately, and they sleep together. And if you think this will have consequences for the story, then I’m sure you’ll be happy to learn that it doesn’t, and she never appears again.
One of the co-writers of the screenplay was Frenchman Bertrand Tavernier. It was only his third credit after working as a writer and director of segments featured in the portmanteau sketch comedies ‘Les baisers’ (1964) and ‘Chance at Love/La chance et l’amour’ (1964). His somewhat belated career breakthrough came with the award-winning crime drama ‘The Watchmaker of St. Paul/L’horloger de Saint-Paul’ (1974), based on a novel by Georges Simenon, creator of the famous detective Maigret. This proved the springboard for a hugely successful 30-year career, which saw him showered with awards for projects such as ‘Death Watch/La mort en direct’ (1980), ‘A Sunday in the Country/Un dimanche à la campagne’ (1985), “Round Midnight’ (1987), ‘Life and Nothing But/La vie et rien d’autre’ (1990) and ‘The French Minister/Quai d’Orsay’ (2013). He passed away in 2021.
Some good moments in search of an interesting plot.
Mark David Welsh 
Even though I grew up watching 007 films, I’d rather watch the Euro-spy clones; OSS117, Coplan, Richard Harrison (Bob Fleming), Roger Browne (Super Seven). This Coplan entry has more brutality and a faster pace than the Richard Wyler film. As you noted, Jeffries setting his opponents on fire went way beyond the usual and how he ultimately deals with Sabine was not especially gentlemanly. (Sean Connery let his enemies take out the femmes fatale.) The closing chase in the hideout as he wastes each enemy was nicely coordinated. Upping the action from film to film in a series like this is necessary to keep an audience. Jeffries’ style of movie combat was emotionless and efficient.