CHFB Member Reviews • BONDITIS (1967)

This spy comedy went into production sometime after the December, 1965 release of THUNDERBALL and the June 1967 release of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.  The title could almost be a statement on the ubiquitouness of James Bond during this period when you could hardly turn around without running into a product or reference to the secret agent or the movies.  In comparison this is certainly a weak cousin.  There aren't any huge action scenes, not a lot of fancy gadgets, nor tremendous production design.  Instead, it's a rather small-scale film with production values similar to many other Bond knock offs of the time period.  It's a mostly gentle, whimsical comedy that doesn't produce any big laughs but is generally amusing in a low-key manner.

Lead Gerd Baltus plays Frank Born, a nebbish who suffers from nightmares and daytime hallucinations in which he is James Bond.  The film opens with one of his dreams.  Lacking the budget for a huge set the producers found some sort of industrial complex full of brilliantly shiny ducts and pipes sporting all kinds of valves.  It serves as a pretty good substitute for a smaller Bond set, somewhat reminiscent of a similar location for OUR MAN FLINT.Born consults his psychiatrist where he experiences another Bond moment with a beautiful girl who bares herself to him.  This is one area the Bond films never dared venture.  The doctor suggests that Born take a vacation and get ouf of the country.  He recommends Switzerland and a hotel where he often sends patients.Meanwhile, agent Hata Sari (Marion Jacob) is dispatched to Switzerland for Operation Chinese Defense.  Her mission is to recover an egg containing microfilm that has gone missing.  She is equipped with nail polish containing nitroglycerin, egg holder grenades, a lipstick gun, and a music box radio transmitter.  Her arrival is radioed to headquarters.Unfortunately, the transmission is intercepted by several different spy groups that infest this small Swiss village.  As Born is the only obvious person debarking from the train, everyone assumes that he is the agent, including Sari, and they aim to kidnap him hoping to find the microfilm.  Besides the Americans there are the Chinese and the Russians.  There is another team run by Uncle, a mysterious, harp playing woman whose face is never seen like Blofeld in all the Bond movies before YOLT.  She has several agents who are given numbers along with the appellation nephew.  They include Acker (Herbert Weicker), Lucky, Dracula (Peter Cappa), The Blonde, and der Weiche (which is a feminine German noun that's used I'm guessing to indicate that this character is Gay). There's a scene that made me think of THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST when Born cluelessly walks down the street while enemy agents fail to kidnap him.  A snow laden scene with a helicopter towards the end brings memories of OHMSS.  The villain Acker carries around a small model of a bear that contains a gun.  Dracula, who reminded me of a young Matthew Broderick, is a mission neophyte eager for his first kill.  "You mean I get to kill an agent in cold blood?" he asks, hence the nickname Acker gives him.  He likes to play with a model guillotine.  The American listening station is identified as American by the Coke bottles.  There is a music cue which incorporates chicken clucking as a secret code.  One of the hotel residents, a patient, is a nymphomaniac.  The hotel manager gives Born a complex, insider's rundown of the current political situation.  When Born asks him how he knows the manager replies, "I heard it on the radio."  There's a kooky moment when the Chinese try to steal the egg (the wrong one) from under Born's nose.  There's a low tech meeting like in THUNDERBALL where the offending party is dispatched with a harp.  Pay attention to the boy scout troop that meanders by at one point.

Gerd Baltus is an able comic actor who resembles Rowan Atkinson.  He is capable of both the physical comedy required but is also convincing in the Bond dreams as well as the later action scenes.  Herbert Weicher has a memorable look perfect for villainry.  In the German version of THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM he voiced Christopher Lee.  Werner Kruse was responsible for the chicken clucking cue and also provides a very nice opening title theme that recurs periodically.  Robert Rietty was the dialogue director.  If Karl Suter's direction had been a little sharper it might have resulted in this being one of the better Bond parodies.

statistics: Posted by ryanbrennan — 2:09 AM - 1 day ago — Replies 0 — Views 240

---