OSS 117: PANIC IN BANGKOK (1964)

aka SHADOW OF EVIL

There have been a number of plague outbreaks in India and secret agent Christopher Lemmon, suspecting the deliberate spread of the disease, has tracked the source down to vaccination serums made by Hogby Laboratories in Bangkok. But before he can act on the information, he is shot to death getting out his car. Enter OSS 117, first name Hubert (Kerwin Mathews, pictured at right); as soon as he arrives in Bangkok, he is chased down and shot at but lives to meet up with his local assistant Sonsak. He also meets the agency's lovely blonde secretary Eva, but he suspects she may be up to no good, possibly providing classified information to whoever the bad guys might be. The most obvious suspect is Dr. Sinn, a physician, healer, and dabbler in metaphysics who has a following in Bangkok, and who is, in fact, behind the poisoning of the vaccines—he heads up a cult called the Elected People who want to depopulate the world to save it from itself and plan on spreading the plague on a global level. As Hubert investigates, he takes a liking to Sinn's sister Lila (Pier Angeli), though it's not clear where she might stand on the good/evil continuum. There are car chases, exploding boats, balcony climbers, and plague-carrying rats. The scene involving a car which has been equipped with a bomb to go off in fifteen minutes is particularly tense, and a good example of Hitchcock's theory of suspense; that is, the audience knowing something that the characters on screen do not. Despite being rather long at a full two hours, this is still fun to watch. The producers had a decent budget and shot largely on location, and Mathews (a lead swashbuckler in 60s fantasy movies like 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jack the Giant Killer) makes a good hero; he's no Sean Connery, but who is? In the supporting cast, I especially liked Dominique Wilms as the ambiguous Eva. This is my first OSS 117 film, but won't be my last. [DVD]