For the next few months, or maybe over the course of the Summer, I'm declaring Wednesdays to be "Super Secret Agent Nights, aka "Eurospy A Go Go," down in The Dungeon, so get ready for loads of gadgets, girls, and gizmos, and a lot of movies with either an X or a 7 in the title, and it's mostly all being brought to you courtesy of those crazy cats over at
Cult Action!!
I'm going to get things rolling with "Baraka Sur X-13" for several reasons, one being that it's a movie I had only heard about but wasn't able to track down until just recently! "X-13" was the name of one of our Hermanos Guzanos' tapes, so it made me more interested than ever! This film starts with a guy on a plane. He doesn't hijack it, he gasses everybody on board so he can get some important papers from one of the passengers, then he parachutes to freedom, and the plane crashes!
This is the area in Italy where the plane goes down! This looks more like a painting than any other still I think I've ever seen! Here's about where I believe the most annoying music ever used in a spy saga kicks in! What it sounds like is player piano music, and if once wasn't bad enough, they insert it multiple times during the course of the film, and they're usually long sements!
Here's just a taste, followed by a little bit of swingin' music off the radio in a much later scene, which was the musical highlight of the movie! The music in The French version was written by Georges Garvarentz, and the music in the Spanish version was composed by Federico Martínez Tudó, and since this is neither of those, I don't know who to credit or blame!
Enter our hero, Gérard Barray as Serge Vadile, Agent X-13, masquerading as an official airline investigator! Working mostly in French cinema, it shouldn't be to surprising that Gérard played D'Artagnan in at least one two Three Musketeer movies!
Uh, Oh, The Boss gets the bad news! Despite all their precautions, there might be witnesses! This news doesn't make him very happy!
Croatian Goddess Sylva Koscina has the role of Mania! Working mostly in Italian cinema, among Sylva's 123 credits are titles like "Hercules," "Hercules Unchained," "Deadlier Than The Male," and "Lisa And The Devil!" Much to our chagrin, Sylva passed on way back in 1994!
I'd say Gérard is a pretty lucky fellow, but I guess it wasn't luck, he earned it!!
Now THAT my friends is a knife!!
I don't know about you, but I'm not getting on any ship called "Lucifer!" All aboard, next stop HELL!!
Now here's a real mystery for you, if Serge Vadile is Agent X-13, why was the movie released as "Agent X-77 Orders To Kill?" Beats the crap outta me!!
The grey haired Boss was talking on the phone to this guy, the bigger Boss! See, he has the same kind of phone with the rotary dial on the bottom, the only difference is, his is red! This guy must be extra bad, because he's got toy army men on his desk, and he plays chess with himself! The other two-tone phone is for less important calls!
I gotta give X-13 a lot of credit, he can take a lot of abuse.........
.............But he doesn't mind handing it out either, regardless of gender! In fact, he ends up having a wrasslin' match with this gal, and she's tough as nails!
I think we should give a big round of applause for Juan Gelpí and Franco Vitrotti, the cinematographers for this movie!! This is good example why!
Throughout the whole film, I expected to find out that Sylva's character was just toying with Agent X-13, but she stays true to him to the end! She's pretty scrappy too!
Agnès Spaak is Ingrid, and in a 2009 post I did for the movie
"Dr. Orloff's Monster" I said I was going to track down "Baraka Sur X-13" because she was in it, and I finally did it! Grant should like this movie because Ingrid is also a spy working on this case, but she falls in love with the guy who took down the plane in the beginning, but rather than go bad, she just chooses to die with him!
Not exactly sure of the reason, maybe just the colour, but I do like this shot!!
Well, if this kind of movie is your cup of tea, you now know where to find it, I just saved you five years of searching, you're welcome!! Come back on Friday for some more of Tabonga and "Way Out!"
