Secret agent Robby Logan, wearing a tux and trapped in a room, appears to be killed by machine gun fire, but we discover that he is really testing a new bulletproof vest worn under his clothes. He leaves for a beach vacation where he makes out with several women before his fellow agent Wilson calls him back for an important mission: travel to Spain to track down a missing space scientist, Dr. Morrow, who was working on an important project called Operation Gemini for Indra, a missile company. He makes contact with Morrow's lovely daughter Jeanne, with whom the kidnappers have established communications. She is carting around a briefcase of important papers that the kidnappers may want, though she won't let Robby in on its specific contents, which establishes her as a bit suspicious. Robby follows her to Monosabre, a missile base, and a blonde totsy named Carol follows Robby—she also seems vaguely suspicious, though it turns out she works for Robby's organization. At the missile base, Robby is captured and tortured in a high speed wind tunnel. The winds begin tearing off his clothes but he is saved by Carol. Jeanne and Robby fall for each other, and we know that because of the intense way they stare at each other in a darkened nightclub as a stripper goes through her routine. It seems like there are two different groups of bad guys: a guy named Revel is in possession of Dr. Morrow, but another gang, headed by a guy named Strike (who looks like a cross between Orson Welles and Peter Lorre) who is assisted by a thuggish Goliath named Goro, is in the mix as well. Clearing this up would be a spoiler so I won't. Operation Gemini is discovered to be an outer space rocket weapon called Ypotron which will be sent up at the same time as the latest NASA Gemini mission so no one will notice it, and it will be tested by shooting down the NASA craft. Things come to a climax at the Ypotron base in an African desert where the good guys and bad guys converge. There is a second climax of sorts when, after Ypotron has been destroyed, Robby and Jeanne start to make out as we see the real Gemini rocket take off.
This Italian Eurospy film has fairly low budget production values and muddled plotlines, but the hero is a handsome square-jawed dirty blond, and there is a nice twist in the last half hour that keeps viewers interested even as we still may not be clear on who's who. Most sources credit the lead character, played by Argentinian actor Luis Davila (credited as Luis Devil), as being named Lemmy Logan, but the English dub I watched clearly calls him Robby, and to make matters more confusing, the title card refers to the hero as Mike Murphy, Agent 077 (which is the name of a character that Davila played a year earlier in Espionage in Tangier) and the film’s title is given as Mike Murphy vs. Gemini. (For more confusion, the original Italian title translates as Agent Logan: Mission Ypotron.) At any rate, Davila (pictured) is the main reason to watch this—he's a good looking, B-movie stud and is handy at fisticuffs, especially in a great knock-down drag-out fight with Goro at the climax. Gaia Germani is fine as Jeanne, but she's outdone by Janine Reynaud as Carol who, in one scene, communicates important information to Robby by blinking her eyes in Morse Code. There is a somewhat confusing backstory involving the fact that during the war, Morrow saved Robby from being experimented on in a Nazi concentration camp. It's mentioned in passing, but winds up being important in a clever way at the climax. The score is peppy and light, perhaps a bit too light at times, and the theme song, performed by a British band called The Sorrows, has lyrics that explain what Ypotron (pronounced “Eeep-Po-Tron’) is. The bulletproof vest from the first scene does get used, as does a cigarette case full of eye-stinging powder and a device that causes all the phones at a hotel registration desk to ring at once as a distraction. It’s harmless fun for a Saturday afternoon. [YouTube]
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