DEATH IS NIMBLE, DEATH IS QUICK (1966)

American Interpol agent Tom Rowland (Brad Harris) and his buddy, detective Joe Walker (Tony Kendall), are back in another Eurospy movie, the second in the Kommissar X series after KISS KISS, KILL KILL. In Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), three men attempt to kidnap Babs Lincoln, daughter of a wealthy American businessman, resulting in the death of Rogers, an American diplomat, by a fatal karate chop administered by a big bald bruiser named King (Dan Vadis). As it happens, Rowland gives a public demonstration of his impressive karate skills in Singapore and he is tapped to investigate the kidnapping attempt, apparently being masterminded by a mysterious criminal organization called the Golden Cats. When Walker is hired by Babs' father to keep an eye on her, the two wind up working together on the case. As Walker prepares to take a shower in his hotel room, the water comes streaming out blood red, and it turns out to be infected with man-made bacteria that can eat human flesh. As is often the case with these 60s spy films, the plot becomes labyrinthine and hard to follow, but turning off your narrative logic senses will help you enjoy the proceedings which include the following: a beachside chase between a jeep and a train, a thrilling rooftop chase between Tom and King, a cab that is used to gas backseat passengers to death, an assassination attempt foiled by a flashing mirror, more karate attacks, a bizarre amphibious tank that patrols a creepy swamp filled with dead trees, and eventually a climactic sequence of elephants versus a plane.

I'm finding these Kommissar X movies quite fun, almost as much fun as the classic James Bond films, taking into account their lower budgets and less creative screenwriters. Harris and Kendall have a nice 'antagonistic buddies' chemistry, and though in theory, it's Kendall whose character is Kommissar X—though that name is never used in the film—it's Brad Harris (pictured to the left of Kendall) who gets the lion's share of the action and attention here. Vadis makes an effective and imposing bad guy, and Siegfried Rauch is nicely repellent as the secondary villain Nitro, though of course, neither one of them is the chief bad guy whose identity is kept secret until near the end. The finale takes place in another supervillain secret island lair, though it feels oddly truncated. The German title, Drei gelbe Katzen, means Three Yellow Cats, but the English dub always refers the group, definitely more than three people, as the Golden Cats—the 'three' may refer to a ceramic bauble of three cats which is sometimes left at the scene of a crime. Enjoyable. [YouTube]