OSS 117: MISSION TO TOKYO (1966)

Secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, more simply referred to as OSS 117, endures a car and helicopter chase in which he manages to kill the bad guys, but is unsuccessful at getting information from an agent who had infiltrated a mysterious organization trying to blackmail the United States government by threatening to use new powerful and undetectable weapons. One American military base has already been destroyed, possibly by miniature fighter planes (we now know them as drones). Sent to Tokyo, OSS 117 discovers that Eva Wilson, an employee at a base there, is being blackmailed to leak information to the villains allowing them to target the bases. 117 poses as her American husband, hoping the bad guys will contact her again. He winds up knocked unconscious outside a strip club, shot at with a poisoned dart, has a knock-down fight with a Sumo wrestler-type guy, and gets in a swordfight. Then Eva's husband shows up and turns out to be a bad guy. The finale, on a huge ship, has overtones of sci-fi and plays out very much like a James Bond climax. This is a fairly engrossing entry in the OSS 117 series. Frederick Stafford, later the leading man in Hitchcock's Topaz, looks more like Sean Connery than the previous OSS 117 (Kerwin Mathews) and is more down-to-business. Marina Vlady is fine as Eva, with few standouts in the rest of the cast. If it doesn't manage to break out of the pack of 60s Bond imitators, it's still an entertaining action spy flick. Pictured is Stafford. Also known as Terror in Tokyo; apparently it also received a release of some sort as Savage Desire. And from what I can put together from the movie's IMDb page, it may never have gotten a theatrical release in the United States.[DVD]