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International Secret Police: Key of Keys is the fourth of five James Bond parody movies in Japan known as Kokusai Hhimitsu Keisatsu. Yet once Woody Allen got hold of it — it’s his directorial debut — the story turned into a battle for the world’s best egg salad recipe.
Originally intended to be just an hour-long made for TV movie, Henry G. Saperstein and American International Pictures took more footage from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, an actor imitating Allen’s voice and music numbers from The Lovin’ Spoonful to pad the running time of the film and get it into theaters. Allen had no control over that, a mistake that he wouldn’t make in any of his future projects.
The voices in the film include Allen’s writing partner Mickey Rose (he’d go on to write and direct Student Bodies), Julie Bennett (Madame Piranha’s voice in King Kong Escapes), Frank Buxton (a story editor on Love, American Style), Len Maxwell (the voice of Punchy, the Hawaiian Punch mascot) and Allen’s wife at the time, Louise Lasser.
After some nonsensical action about the mob and the secret agents vying for the egg salad recipe — intercut with Allen himself speaking about his work on the film — the credits include China Lee, Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1964 (and the then-wife of Allen’s comic idol Mort Sahl) stripping while Allen explains that he promised her a role in the film. She’d go on to appear in an episode of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and as one of the robot girls in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, while we’re on the subject of spy films.
Speaking of spy women, two of the secret agents in this movie — Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama — would also show up in You Only Live Twice.
The Count of Montebruno (Claudio Gora) was just trying to clean up his gigantic mansion in time for his niece Harriet (Barbara Steele) to visit. As part of this, a statue is found at the bottom of the lake and brought back to its original splendor by artist Roberto Morigi (Anthony Steffen). Of course, it turns out that the status looks exactly like Harriet but is truly one of Belinda, an ancestor who was a witch who held the entire village in her grip.
Now, Harriet has become Belinda and uses her beauty to destroy men — and a woman — in scene after scene of twisted sexual frisson. In one, she makes the gardener enflamed with desire by alternately asking him to watch her disrobe and attacking him with a riding crop. There’s no nudity, but somehow by being not in your face explicit it all seems somehow more perverted. The man becomes so overwhelmed that he attacks every woman in the village and he’s not the last man to feel her ways, as a teacher hangs himself, a woodsman kills his entire family and even the maid is forced into evil because of the womanly power that is Belinda.
Gold transfers keep getting attacked, which puts a hurting on the U.S. Mint, so they sent Joe Ford (Rik Van Nutter, Felix Leiter in Thunderball) — better known as Dynamite Joe — to make sure those bandits get taken care of. Joe’s talent is blowing people up. That’s why they call him Dynamite Joe, after all.
Joe builds an entire train car out of gold. That doesn’t seem like a plan, but I’m also not someone that throws lit sticks at people. Maybe it’s the fact that Van Nutter was in a Bond movie, but this feels like a Eurospy mixed with an Italian Western and I am all for everything that is all about.
So yes, Joe shows up looking like Eastwood, but this is by Antonio Margheriti which guarantees great camerawork and something a little different. Cinematographer Manuel Merino also shot She Killed In Ecstasy, so the camerawork is great and the soundtrack by Carlo Savina is a bit off as well and I mean that in a “it’s a bit off” and I love it usage of the phrase. He also composed the music for Comin’ at Ya!, Lisa and the Devil, And God Said to Cain…and many more.
Jim Latimore has been battling the Gonzales brothers and when he marries their cousin Rosaria (Mónica Randall, The Witches Mountain), things get even worse. They hire El Matanza (Antonio Molino Rojo) to kill him and take his son to be raised as one of the Gonzales family. Rosaria is assaulted and barely survives. Three years later, Tex (Guy Madison, Long Days of Hate; he also plays Jim) arrives with four other men — Dan (Vassili Karis), Ramon (José Manuel Indios (Giovanni Cianfriglia) and Alan (Mariano Vidal Molina) — who plan on killing every one of the Gonzales brothers, giving Rosaria back her home, getting her son back and getting vengeance.
This is directed by Aldo Florio, who also made Dead Man Ride and wrote 2020 Texas Gladiators, which is pretty much a Western with cars instead of horses. This movie was written by Dirk Wayne Summers, Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Alfonso Balcázar (La casa de las muertas vivientes).
One of the camera crew with Aristide Massacesi, the man of many names who most call Joe D’Amato.
Milklos “Mickey” Hargitay left Hungary in 1947 to get out of being drafted into military service by the Soviet Union. He settled in Cleveland, where he worked as a plumber and carpenter. Can you imagine Hargitay coming to your house to fix your toilet? He’d already been in an acrobatic act with his brothers, a football player, a champion speed skater and a freedom fighter. He was just 21 by the time he made it to America and he started an acrobatic act with his first wife, Mary Birge. Steve Reeves inspired him to start bodybuilding and just a few years later in 1955 Hargitay won the National Amateur Body-Builders’ Association (NABBA) Mr. Universe. Jayne Mansfield demanded that he be in her movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The two became lovers, appearing in movies like The Loves of Hercules, Primitive Love and Promises! Promises! together. After they were divorced in 1963, Hargitay kept acting in Italy, appearing in Revenge of The Gladiators;Stranger in Sacramento; The Sheriff Won’t Shoot; Bloody Pit of Horror; Sette donne d’oro contro due 07; Cjamango; Ringo, It’s Massacre Time; Lady Frankenstein; Black Magic Ritesand Delirium.
Charles Allen Pendleton was born in Denver, Colorado and began working out to deal with the rough kids in his neighborhood. He was in the Battle of the Bulge and taken prisoner and when he got back to America, he became a high school teacher and guidance counselor in Los Angeles. He was reenlisted for the Korean War and when he came home, he acted in Prisoner of War, The Man with the Golden Arm and The Ten Commandments in which he drags Moses to meet the pharaoh. Before going to Italy to be an actor — the success of Steve Reeves brought every bodybuilder there — a psychic asked him if the name Gordon Mitchell meant anything to him. When he got to Italy, that was the name that he was given. He would appear in everything from Fellini’s Satyrcon to crime movies, horror, sexploitation and post-apocalyptic films.
Both Mickey Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell started their show business careers as part of Mar West’s Muscleman Review. Other bodybuilders who appeared with West included Reg Lewis (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules), Charles Krauser (who later became Paul Novak, the love of West’s life), Armand Tanny (a Muscle Beach bodybuilder who often wrote about weight lifting; he organized a strike when West attempted to reduce pay of the group), Dan Vadis (Hercules the Invincible, Mission: Impossible), George Eiferman (The Devil’s Sleep; George of the Jungle was based on him), Irvin “Zabo” Koszewsk (Tommy Chong’s stunt double; he’s also in Spartacus), Dick Dubois (Athena), Dominic Juliano and Joe Gold (the founder of Gold’s Gym). Krauser and Hargitay even had a fight at a press conference in 1956 over West.
Anyways…
This movie is the one time that Hargitay and Mitchell would be in a movie together. Ringo Carson (Hargitay), Frank Sanders (Mitchell) and Tom (Spartaco Conversi) are hired by Walcom (Amedeo Trilli) to rescue his daughter Jane (Milla Sannoner). She falls for Ringo and that splits the friendship between him and Frank.
After the Civil War, Ringo becomes the town sheriff of Stone City and has a son with Jane. Frank is the leader of an outlaw gang who is hired by Daniels (Ivano Staccioli) to terrorize his hometown and drive down the price of ranches. Ringo is blinded in an accident and Frank takes over as the law, which allows him to go wild. Eventually, he kills Ringo’s mother and kidnaps Jane, which is not how you repair a friendship. There’s even a voodoo scene in this oddball Italian Western.
In Italy, this movie was called I Diafanoidi Vengono da Marte (The Diaphanoids Come From Mars) and is part of the Gamma-One series. It follows Wild, Wild Planet (I Criminali della Galassia or Criminals of the Galaxy) and is followed by War Between the Planets (Il Pianeta Errante or Planet on the Prowl) and Snow Devils (La Morte Viene dal Pianeta Aytin or Death Comes From The Planet Aytin).
They still have New Year’s Eve in the future. That’s when space station Alpha-Two reports an issue and loses contact with headquarters. When a rescue squad arrives, they find green glowing energy monsters attacking and the entire Alpha-Two disappears.
Gamma-One Commander Halstead (Tony Russel) sends spaceships to investigate while on Earth, those same green aliens have possessed Captain Dubois. These aliens are Diaphanoids from the Andromeda Galaxy and need humans to exist.
Do you know how we deal with aliens like that? We blow them up real good and then reward Halstead with a private suite to have some zero gravity lovemaking with Lieutenant Connie Gomez (Lisa Gastoni, who was Maddalena).
Antonio Margheriti directed all of these movies and he’s doing what he can with the budget he’s given. Franco Nero shows up as one of the astronauts, Lieutenant Jake Jacowitz. The characters played by him, Russel, Gastoni and Carlo Guistini play the same characters from Wild, Wild Planet while Fiermonte replaces Umberto Raho as General Halstead.
Directed by Sandy Howard and Noriaki Yuasa, this is the American version of Gamera. The footage was provided to Howard by Daiei and he was free to move it around however he wanted for Western eyes.
Gammera the Invincible was the only film in the original Gamera series to receive a theatrical release in the United States. It was sent to theaters and drive-ins by World Entertainment Corp. and Harris Associates, Inc. Amazingly, it played double features with Knives of the Avenger. The rest of the movies went directly to TV and were distributed by American International Television.
All of the romantic plots are forgotten, Gamera being from Atlantis is ignored and new footage of Gen. Terry Arnold (Brian Donlev) and the Secretary of Defense (Albert Dekker) has been added, so that it seems like Americans are in Japan. There’s also footage that wasn’t used in the original movie to add a little more to the movie.
I was just looking at the poster for this movie and had a sense memory. I was eight-years-old and it was a Saturday afternoon. Even on the weekends, I was nervous, anxious, worried for school to come Monday. I regularly got attacked on the playground and my teacher told me it was my fault. I talked too much. I studied too hard. And I never slept, which is where it all began, this lifelong insomnia. But Gamera was my escape. The idea of Gamera, a giant turtle throwing up fire, turning into a shell and spinning around, sure that might seem silly to you today. But I sat in class and knew I’d be beaten into unconsciousness in two hours and I’d just draw Gamera setting a city on fire. He and Godzilla and the rest of the monsters were so fantastic, so wonderful, so perfect, not like the kind of world where a little frightened fat kid threw up all night and tried to round off infinity and had OCD and could barely leave a room without trying to do even steps or flip light switches over and over again. I was a prisoner of my mind and all that helped me forget it, even if just for a few moments was movies like this. So here’s to you, Gamera. Thank you, Johnny Sokko. God bless you, well, Godzilla. I still never sleep, I have never stopped worrying, but you have always been here for me, smashing cities so that I can escape.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein;’s Daughter was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 23, 1968 at 1:00 a.m. It also appeared on December 20, 1969 and November 4, 1972.
I’ll admit it. I cheated. Instead of watching this movie in its original form, I found a version that had Joe Bob Briggs do commentary. Unlike modern commentary tracks where bloggers and magazine writers try in vain to impress you with how cool and smart they are, Joe Bob just hangs back and blows your mind with his limitless info. It made this movie way better than it deserves.
Paired with director William Beaudine’s other cowboys against the supernatural film Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, this film supposes what would happen if Dr. Frankenstein’s daughter Maria would come to the American wild west along with her brother Rudolph to use prairie lightning to turn immigrant children into slaves that will help continue their father’s experiments.
Meanwhile, Mañuel and Nina Lopez are leaving town before their daughter Juanita (Estelita Rodriguez, Rio Bravo) is killed. And here comes Jesse James (John Lupton, Airport 1975), Hank Tracy and Butch Curry, the leader of the Wild Bunch (no, not the Peckinpah film), who are here to steal $100,000 from a stagecoach. Yep, Jesse James did not die on April 3, 1882.
The crime gets foiled when Butch’s brother Lonny tips off Marshall MacPhee (Jim Davis, Jock Ewing the patriarch of the Ewings of TV’s Dallas) in exchange for becoming his deputy and getting reward money for Jesse James. Everyone but Jesse is shot, with Hank barely surviving. They hide in the Lopez family’s camp and Juanita takes them to the Frankensteins in the hope that Hank’s mortal wound can be healed.
Maria, of course, is in love with Jesse instantly, even faking suicide to get in his heart. She’s goth before goth was goth, basically. Jesse manages to escape another trap and kills Lonny, who has tried to bring him back in. Maria Frankenstein has transformed Hank into Igor, her new servant, and killed off her brother. She then orders him to kill Juanita, but he turns on his mistress. In a final scuffle with Jesse, Juanita kills the monster with Jesse’s revolver. She begs the famous outlaw to stay with her, but he goes off into the sunset, arrested by the sheriff.
I fear that I’ve made this movie sound way more interesting than it really is. The one good thing I can say is that the lab equipment was provided by Ken Strickfaden, who loaned out his gadgets for all of the Universal films, as well as Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Blackenstein.
That said, William Beaudine started his career as an assistant to D.W. Griffith on The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. His directing career stretched from 1922 to 1966, with this being his final film. Harry Medved’s book, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, gave Beaudine the nickname “One-Shot” because everything ended up being in his films, like actors screwing up their lines or special effects not working properly.
The truth is that he actually had some talent and worked with plenty of talented films, including Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett and W.C. Fields. However, bad judgment and worse luck ruined his career.
Beaudine was brought to England in the 1930’s to work with their top stars. He directed there and expected to come back to the United States with his A-list status intact. Sadly, studios no longer wanted to pay his salary. And even worse, he lost his personal fortune when a bank he bought an interest failed. It got worse. Most of his UK income was then seized by the British government in taxes.
Then, publicist-turned-producer Jed Buell and Dixie National Pictures offered Beaudine $500 to direct a one week job: an all black picture. The director realized that if he took this job, he’d never return to the limelight. But at that point, he was near destitute and needed the work.
William Beaudine reinvented himself as the master of low budget films, forgoing art for survival. He recouped his finances through the amount of work he turned in, working in all genres and with stars like Bela Lugosi in the absolutely bonkers film Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, the East Side Kids and nearly half of Monogram Pictures’ series of Bowery Boys comedies. In fact, he became the master of sequel series films, also working on films with characters like Torchy Blane, Jiggs and Maggie, The Shadow and Charlie Chan.
He also directed Mom and Dad, the film that pretty much set up the exploitation movie pipeline until the death of grindhouses. Produced by Kroger Babb, this film was distributed by a loose knit organization that called themselves the Forty Thieves. You had guys like S.S. “Steamship” Millard, who produced Is Your Daughter Safe?, Samuel Cummins whose Public Welfare Pictures and Jewel Productions brought the public 10 Days in a Nudist Camp, J.D. Kendis who produced Gambling with Souls, Dwain Esper who brought one of the original serial killer movies Maniac to the public (as well as buying Freaks from MGM for just $50,000 and re-distributing films like Reefer Madness), Willis Kent who had The Wages of Sin, Louis Sonney who owned the West Coast with films like Hell-a-Vision and Howard “Pappy” Golden, who was known for stealing prints from the other thieves. They weren’t a studio as much as an informal trade association, kind of like the old National Wrestling Association, that used something they called the “states rights” system. Truly, Mon and Dad is an exploitation landmark and we wouldn’t have so many of the films we love without it.
Beaudine became so well known for his efficient directing that Walt Disney himself used him for several films (he directed the special Disneyland After Dark, whose title was appropriated by the Danish rock band D-A-D). TV was tailor-made for the director, as he worked on shows like Lassie. He was even the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space alum Criswell’s TV series, Criswell Predicts!
This Western horror mix would be his last film, although after Bruce Lee became famous, several episodes of The Green Hornet that he directed would be packaged as feature films — 1974’s The Green Hornet and 1976’s Fury of the Dragon.
Look, this isn’t a great movie. But it’s fun. And it’ll lead you to learning a lot about exploitation films and Old Hollywood, if you want to learn more.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Casanova ’70 was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 13, 1969. Well, kind of. Chiller Theater temporarily became known as The Saturday Late Show and Bill Cardille hosted the first movie from a living room set. For the second feature, Chilly Billy returned to the Laboratory set. The second movie was Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Woman. This didn’t last long but the movies shown were Crazy Desire, No Love for Johnnie, The Reluctant Spy, The 10th Victim and Dingaka before taking a week off for Halloween. The Saturday Late Show continued by showing Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; The Easy Life; Sins of Casanova; The Success; Red Culottes; Marriage, Italian-Style; Boccaccio ’70; The Naked Kiss and The Bigamist. On January 3, 1970, Chiller Theater stopped showing non-horror films and was back to normal. I’ve always thought that Count Floyd showing non-horror movies like Ingmar Burgman’s Whispers of the Wolf and trying to sell them as scary came from this time. Joe Flaherty was from Pittsburgh and was so complete with his Chiller Theater impression that Count Floyd was often joined by a sidekick known as The Pittsburgh Midget, played by Flaherty’s brother Paul Flaherty. He’s a nod to Stefan, the Castle Prankster, who was played by Stephen Michael Luncinski on Chiller Theater.
Directed by Mario Monicelli, this may be one of the few movies nominated for an Oscar that played Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. It’s all about NATO officer Andrea Rossi-Colombotti (Marcello Mastroianni), a lover who can only perform with women when he might get killed. His psychiatrist recommends that instead of sex, he seeks out the spiritual and emotional qualities in women. Of course, he’s in an Italian comedy, so that’s not happening.
He almost marries the religious Gigliola (Virna Lisi) but days before he says “I do,” a liontamer (Liana Orfei, who really did that in the circus before being in movies like Mill of the Stone Women) dares any man to kiss her while she’s surrounded by the deadly beasts. He can’t resist this and is alone again. She tries to stay with him because she’s his true love, but he can’t ruin her life with his sickness. By the end, she even marries him, even if he can’t be cured.
Then again, this movie has so many gorgeous actresses for him to nearly be killed over, including Rosemary Dexter (Marquis de Sade: Justine), Seyna Seyn (Flashman), Jolanda Modio (Face to Face), Margaret Lee (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die), Moira Orfei (the queen of the Italian circus who was known as Moira of the Elephants), Beba Lončar (Some Girls Do), Michèle Mercier (Web of the Spider) and Marisa Mell (Marta) in her first Italian film.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Bamboo Saucer was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 24, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on November 25, 1972 and March 16, 1974.
Directed and written by Frank Telford, this starts when test pilot Fred Norwood (John Ericson) is chased by a UAP. The pilot following him says whatever he’s told to say by the air force. No one wants to admit that an alien craft could be following our armed forces.
He decides to use an old Mustang to track the UFO along with his friend Joe Vetry (William Mims). Vetry is soon abducted or disintegrated by some alien vehicle, which only makes Norwood more invested in finding out the truth.
He’s contacted by a deep cover government type named Hank Peters (Dan Duryea) who tells him that something that looks just like what he saw has crashed in China. The bodies of the aliens have been burned, but the UAP still exists. When he parachutes down to find it, he comes across a group of Russians with the same plan. They decide to work together and end up in a battle against the Chinese Army that they escape by flying the craft past Saturn.
Producer Jerry Fairbanks sent the script to the U.S. Department of Defense and made sure that the CIA was never mentioned and that the Air Force was never near China.
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