It quickly becomes clear that our visit to Curtain Guy’s office is for the purpose of a little pregame exposition, which is all pure 1960s spy movie boilerplate: A kidnapped scientist; a new kind of atomic device that could “destroy all human life” if it should fall into “the wrong hands”; a one week window to recover the device before those wrong hands that it’s fallen into start touching all over it; a clandestine atomic laboratory — perhaps located beneath the Mediterranean Sea — that needs to be located before it’s too late. The superior then outlines for the attendant anonymous functionary those attributes that the agent assigned to the job must possess: “Perfect understanding of Italian, French, and a complete understanding of nuclear science. And the man must also be an expert sailor.”

Even though the cast and crew are making a lark of a movie, Hasebe never lets it collapse under the weight of its own self-awareness. He understands that the best spoof of the campy spy film of the 1960s also has to be a very enjoyable spy film, and Black Tight Killers doesn’t forget to entertain. Kobayashi, as usual, throws himself into the role’s physical aspects with gusto, and he and the girls who make up the black tight squad get to have frequent fights with fists, feet, guns, bamboo bazookas, and of course more mundane weapons like killer albums and ninja chewing gum. The whole thing is light, frothy, and totally ridiculous. Black Tight Killers looks like some scamp replaced the crew’s cameras with kaleidoscopes

The second compilation that I had in the works is ready for your consumption, hot on the heels of the recent Music for Departure Lounges. Teleport City Presents, volume two, is Music for Espionage and Space Defense. You may not think the two of them go together, but that’s only because you didn’t watch enough Gerry Anderson TV shows.

As with many Bollywood spy films, Yakeen spends a great deal of the first half building up the family drama, which drags the story out a bit. But the second half flies along with a pretty tight little spy story, with some groovy incidental music and a show-stopping number by Helen in the ‘Club Ago Ago’ nightclub. It amused me to see that the swinging backing band during this scene was billed as ‘The Monkees’. After a slow start, Yakeen is an incredibly entertaining espionage adventure, and as someone who is still a novice at watching Bollywood films, I found it a refreshing change from the usual spy hijinx and tropes that I am used to seeing.

Yakuza Deka: The Assassin is the second film in the Yakuza Deka series. The film was released in America as Assassin. This lot lighter in tone, and subsequently far more enjoyable than the first Yakuza Deka film, although it is essentially a remake. The Assassin is better than the first film Secret Police — but due to the familiar casting of Ryohei Uchida once again, and a plot that is so similar to the first film, it feels like an also ran or a remake. I would suggest that if you chose to watch them, do not do it in close succession like I have, because it will take some of the gloss off all that this film has to offer.

Yakuza Deka is fairly action packed, but at the beginning it has a confusing directorial style. The story makes sense by the end of the film, but all throughout are these little action set pieces that seem to have little purpose. Only after the scene, is the plot explained. I guess in some ways the film is like an old school detective film and you only find out what is going on as Hayata does. The action sequences however, are not like an old school detective film. Yakuza Deka is tough and violent with a healthy dose of martial arts thrown into the mix. The last twenty minutes of this film is packed with fights, shootings, electrocutions, explosions, leaping from rooftops, and car chases. There’s even a pesky helicopter dropping dynamite on our hero.

The film opens with the villain of the piece, who is simply referred to as ‘Boss’, watching as a woman madly flees from a house. In terror, she gets into a car and drives off at speed – excessive speed. She is driving so fast she cannot control the car and starts swerving across the road (this may be because her brakes lines have been cut — but don’t quote me on that). This comes to an end when she crashes through a stone barrier and drives off a cliff. Now how do we know that the man watching must be a villain. Well he is dressed in a hat and wearing sunglasses. Furthermore he is wearing ‘weird’ red gloves and is stroking a cat which he cradles under his arm. If that isn’t visual shorthand for ‘villain’, I don’t know what is.

So, yes, if you’ve seen a James Bond movie, you know exactly what tropes Altin Cocuk holds in store. But the film nonetheless offers distinct pleasures in the course of watching them unfold. When sour-faced Goksel Arsoy and the unnamed woman don their scuba gear and prepare to make their descent down to the evil genius’s lair, the thrill we feel is like a muscle memory, coming almost in spite of the fact that we know full well that we’re not going to see events play out on the scale we imagine. The fact is that, by this point, Altin Cocuk has demonstrated enough of a good faith effort that we’re willing to sign on, buy in, and perhaps fill in the gaps ourselves when necessary.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I never finished reviewing all the Bond books by Ian Fleming. In a way, that in itself is a fitting review of the final of Fleming’s influential adventures starring international pop culture icon James Bond. There is nothing about The Man with the Golden Gun that I would call bad. But there sure is a lot of it — as in all of it — that I would call unmemorable. Fleming was dying (some people say he even died before he finished, and what remained was polished off by his long-time friend Kingsley Amis). He was sick of Bond. But he’d had the bad fortune of ending the previous, and one of the best, Bond books on a cliffhanger, as he had taken to doing with most of the stories once he realized this was going to be his career. Well, this, and spokesman for cigarette holders.

The sad passing of actor Tony Kendall – aka Luciano Stella – back in November inspired me to get back on board with the project of reviewing the Kommissar X films for Teleport City. Not that I can say with authority that the Kommissar X films represent the best of Mr. Stella’s work, mind you – I haven’t, for instance, seen Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, or Hate Is My God, to name just a couple of his many non-Eurospy efforts. It’s just that it’s those movies, and Kendall’s portrayal within them of dick-both-public-and-private Joe Walker, that won him permanent residence in a very special secret space-age lair located deep within my heart.

As the studio sought directors to tweak the formula, Kobayashi remained as a clear and dependable connection to what had been and what was coming. A little heavier, a few years older, he slipped easily out of the rebellious youth roles of his early career and into the role of a more sophisticated and imposing man of action. Films like Velvet Hustler were redefining what Nikkatsu action was, still making callbacks to film noir and the French New Wave but infusing it with something less morose, snappier, and more in keeping in touch with the evolving go-go and rock ‘n’ roll culture. Kobayashi couldn’t pull off the “Sun Tribe with a gun” mood of those movies, but he had his own more grown-up version of cool that still appealed to younger viewers. And then everyone started watching James Bond movies.

It’s obvious that while director BJ Davis is a director of limited skill, he knows exactly how to make a low-budget 80′s action movie. Every single thing you need in the movie is present, and if it’s not expertly realized, it’s usually at least delivered in a competently incompetent manner — a statement that will make perfect sense to anyone who watches a lot of these movies. A movie like Laser Mission can really only disappoint me by not delivering on the predictable formula to which it cleaves. That happens a lot with low-budget action movies, but not with Laser Mission. It may not deliver on the promised lasers of the title, but it delivers exactly what you’d want from a cheap, goofy 80s action movie.