OPERAZIONE POKER - Piero Umiliani - "Nice Pair" (1965)

Roger Browne was off my radar at first because he was mostly a 'Sword and Sandal' guy for years, but after watching a couple of his spy guy films like this, I'm starting to really like the guy, and that brings us to tonight's feature, "Operation Poker!" The instrumental genius once again responsible for the swingin' swanky music is the "Mah Na Mah Na" man himself, the Maestro Piero Umiliani! What a phenomenon!

This is pretty interesting, the word operation is seen here four times, with four different spellings! Operation, Operacion, Operazione, and Operatie, but no matter what language you're talking in, Poker is still Poker! The universal way to lose your ass!

Not exactly Tex Ritter's "Downtown Poker  Club!"

So here he is, Roger Browne as secret agent S1-14, aka Glen Foster on the prowl! Don't know why, for some reason on IMDB, they have his name as Glenn Forest.

This is a unique way to get your girl to go with you, knock her out cold! I've watched this a couple of times now, and I'm still not sure why he did it!

The heartbreaking Helga Liné is Diane, Glen Foster's girlfriend! Yabba Dabba Doo!!

Suddenly people like this agent start dying in all kinds of strange ways! There was a trip wire hooked up to the accelerator pedal and I'm not sure he didn't get shot right square in the crotch!

And this woman is always round whenever it happens!! Carla Calò aka Carol Brown as the twisted Russian agent responsible for all the executions!

Then every once in a while when the sub-titles kick in for a few minutes, you get stuff like this, arguably the worst pickup line of all time!

Here's a little scene featuring one of the best gadgets I've seen in a while! When Glen hits the button, the whole ass end of this '56 Chevy ejects, and the would-be assassin is thrown over a cliff to his well deserved death!

There's way too much going on in "Operation Poker" for me to try and attempt to explain much, and it's awfully twisted too. Glen's got his girlfriend Diane, and he's got orders to get friendly with this Austrian Ambassador's daughter Helga! They are both beautiful and to me can look very similar at times, and if that's not bad enuf, Diane's played by Helga Liné, and Helga is played by José Greci! It would have been a whole lot easier if Helga could have been Helga!

Glen gets some good help from his muscleman pal Omar as played by Bob Messenger (Roberto Messina)!

I'm not sure, but this might be the first time I've ever seen somebody in a fight scene put a real piledriver on his opponent! Roberto is pretty tough!

 

"Operation Poker" is supposed to be set in Malaga, London, Vienna, Geneva, Copenhagen, and Casablanca, but I think it was all filmed in Spain and Italy. This looks like North Korea's vision of the future!

 

Omar gets shot in the back, and you think it's curtains for him, but as you can see, he's doing fine!

Glen finally gets to the root of the problem. This is the device that enables his poker playing friend Parker to win all the time, and is also why the Russians, Chinese, and Vietnamese are all at each other's throats!

When this little x-ray camera hidden in a tie clasp is combined with a special pair of contact lenses, the wearer is enabled to see through not only cards, but walls!

Naturally Glen Foster puts them to good use immediately!

The reason that selfies never existed until just a few years ago, was that it was something that was virtually impossible to do with a camera like this!

The bonus feature is you get a free mini-tour of the Tuborg Brewery!

The last laugh is on the pig in the tank that these three are peering in on!

I just had to add this other version of the poster for it's classical use of four aces! "Operation Poker" is a winning hand in a world of mediocre jacks or better, and the jokers are wild! Where's the place to find it? Cult Action, or The Trash Palace, Of Course! Actually, just go ahead and get one from each place, and give one to friend! They'll love you forever!

MASTER OF THE WORLD / American International Pictures - 1961

It's Master Of The World Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Here's a flick Eegah!! and I saw at the Sierra Theater back in 1961, we thought it was an okay sci-fi adventure, it was based on two Jules Verne novels and starred the great Vincent Price. Problems arose during production due to budgetary restraints, the budget was $500,000.

Eegah!! sent over this sound clip of the theme and more for us to check out, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there by the old bomb drop, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... MASTER OF THE WORLD

Here's Vinnie as Captain Robur, giving details about his fantastic airship, The Albatross, to a small group of acquaintances who become his imprisoned crew of "air sailors" that includes Henry (THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON) Hull, Charles (HOUSE OF WAX) Bronson and Wally (BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE) Campo.

Speaking of The Albatross, this is a pic showing it off as it magnificently travels through the air.

The cook has a job even more important than just cooking... COMEDY RELIEF!!

I'd really like to have a Heightmeter for the Dungeon since I have acute height-tra-phobia!

The mission of The Albatross is to confront warring factions around the world and bomb the crap out of them, and, it does its job in stunning fashion due to a special bomb sight!!

Portrait of the deadly serious humanitarian, Captain Robur...

John and Phillip have displeased Captain Robur and are also fighting over the female love interest, Dorothy. So, the cap drops them down on ropes from the airship and proceeds to give them and the viewers one wild ride! Oops, the rope broke!

Robur goes to the mid-east to try and end some conflicts there!.. Good fucking luck!

It all ends in disaster for Captain Robur and The Albatross! Part 2 was planned but it never happened... Tune in Wednesday for more from the Dungeon Crew!

GIBEL SENSATSII - "The Robots Of Ripley" - (Loss Of Feeling) (1935)

Greg Goodsell here! It's 1936 -- all the promises of a "Worker's Paradise" in Russia has gone down the porcelain convenience as the entire globe is gripped in the Great Depression! People are going hungry and morale is at an all-time low. What to do? Well comrades, the thing to do is to rush out a bit of agit-prop that combines science-fiction and melodrama into a project called THE ROBOTS OF RIPLEY in order to placate the proletariat!

Yes, the fine folks at Sinister Cinema have made this long-forgotten Russian sci-fantasy film available to the English-speaking peoples of the world for the first time! But as we shall soon see, there are some issues to be found with this presentation -- with all apologies to Mr. Greg J. Luce.

NOW -- here is the problem I have with this version of the film: there are no subtitles, but merely inter-titles such as these that vaguely explain away the film's action! How half-assed can you get? On the other hand -- since the majority of this film's dialogue is long, dry, political diatribes, maybe that's a good thing!

It's Russia in an indeterminate near-future, and factory workers are at their wit's end! In a bit of interesting set design, in lieu of the expected assembly lines as invented by that capitalist exploiter Henry Ford, the workers in this film work on spinning Lazy Susans! As expected, they get dizzy pretty darn quick and productivity suffers!

A little mechanical assist is needed … The gentleman at the extreme left is our erstwhile inventor, Ripley! Playing a most American musical instrument, Ripley controls his army of mechanical men with hot jazz riffs!

And here is the big boy! Ripley's robots are about one-and-a-half stories tall and emit a sound like a lawn mower going over gravel! They're UGLY and NOISY things!

Music soothes the savage automaton!

A machine of many talents, this robotic prototype entertains the capitalists with a version of the Hawaiian hula dance!

Indeed, while speaking out against capitalistic decadence, there are a lot of nightclub scenes in ROBOTS OF RIPLEY -- almost as many as in a Jess Franco film! There seems to have been a bit of Weimar Berlin going on in Moscow at this time! Sure beats community sing-alongs and conversations revolving around tractors, I guess --

OOoooops! I take that back! As this hideous little homunculus proffered by a nightclub vendor proves that there was a lot of surrealistic art going on at this time as well! The Nazis, up and running at the time this film was made would have snatched this puppet out of the vendor's arms and thrown it into a bonfire, a foremost example of "degenerative art!"

It wasn’t always this way. Ripley first introduced his mechanical men with this cute little prototype to meet with labor's approval at the worker's colony. Since this is a communist film, the workers are SUPPOSED to be the good guys – but I don’t know --

This tiny robot dances merrily and knows his way around a sewing machine. The Forces of Labor react with great anger -- this robot will take away jobs from humans who toil for 12 hours a day without rest for 15 cents an hour! NYET! they say, and send the cute little feller tumbling to the ground, whereupon he breaks into a million pieces.

Poor little prototype robot, thrown to the floor by the forces of labor!

So they up and squeeze in another nightclub scene. Hey, where else are we going to fit in some music, pretty girls and long legs to hold the audience's attention?

The Russian version of Joel Grey exhorts his countrymen to drunken excess and debauchery!

Ripley addresses his troops after dark after a riotous night on the town!

Soused to the gills, Ripley leads his robotic army in a surrealistic dance -- Cue The Music!

Here we go! A very important part of the plot -- a telegram -- is presented in Russian, with NO subtitles! GRRRRRRRR.

A giant worker robot is introduced to a member of the general public -- aaaaaaaaand it doesn't end well. No, it doesn't.

HOOOO-kay, here is where things get a little weird. In perhaps a nod to Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (1925), the wicked greedy capitalists now send out the robots to destroy the worker's colony! The question, as in Lang's film is -- WHY? So they can destroy the infrastructure which has ensconced the bad guys in luxury all these years? Please 'splain.

Ripley tries to turn back the tide -- but his sax is broken and he gets trampled by his army of automatons! AAAAAH!

Yup yup yup. This is what happens next. The robots trounce all the capitalist pig dogs and the world is left in chaos, in much the same way as the Bolshevik Revolution did way back when. But seriously folks, 14 years into the 21st century and the issues surrounding labor and management remain highly complex ones, not served by the simplistic cowboys-with-white-hats versus the cowboys-with-black-hats arguments as proffered here. Back to the drawing board, comrades! This is Greg Goodsell -- signing out.