OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117) is one of the French eurospy thrillers based on Jean Bruce’s books featuring secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codenamed OSS 117. It was the third movie in the series to be directed by André Hunebelle.
Kerwin Matthews had played OSS 117 in the previous two films. In OSS 117: Mission for a Killer the role was taken over by Frederick Stafford.
Our spy hero is enjoying a skiing holiday but the holiday is cut short when he is assigned to investigate a series of suicide bombings in South America. The suicide bombers have no political histories and there is a suspicion that they are being turned into human robots through the use of some mysterious drug. OSS 117 soon finds himself on an airliner bound for Rio de Janeiro. He will be posing as a man named Hubert Delcroix.
On arrival he discovers that his contact, Ellis, has had an unfortunate car accident which was unlikely to be an accident. Visiting Ellis in hospital leads to a wild and lengthy (and very well done) fight scene but Hubert is too late to save Ellis from an assassin. Hubert has to beat a hasty retreat from the hospital before the police arrive and he takes the girl with him.
What girl you may be asking? The girl is Anna-Maria Sulza (played by the gorgeous Mylène Demongeot) and Hubert doesn’t know where she fits in but she fits in somewhere.
Hubert has three females to deal with (all of them gorgeous) and he’s by no means sure which of them (if any) he can trust. Of course there are also various people trying to kill him.
There’s an important clue in Ellis’s safe, which suggests that Hubert needs to find out what is happening with a remote Indian tribe. This might lead to an explanation of the hypnotic super-drug being used to turn people into remote-controlled killers. The tribe lives near Anna-Maria’s ranch.
There’s some kind of revolutionary group behind all this. In fact it’s a whole revolutionary army. Their agenda isn’t too clear but they definitely want power and they mean business.
Frederick Stafford makes a fine hero. He’s a fairly typical eurospy hero, quick with the wise-cracks and with an eye for the ladies and he has real charm. Mylène Demongeot makes a terrific sexy heroine.
Eurospy movies naturally couldn’t hope to match the truly spectacular action set-pieces and the outrageous sets of the Bond movies. The most successful eurospy movies tried to make up for this with as many decent fight scenes as they could shoehorn into a movie and the fight scenes in this movie are good and very imaginatively staged. In fact they’re very good indeed. And there’s a well-handled full-scale battle at the end. Lots of stuff gets blown up.
Eurospy movies also relied on style, and this movie has plenty of that.
It manages not to look cheap and there’s some fine location shooting in Brazil. The budget was obviously reasonably generous.
Director André Hunebelle did this sort of thing extremely well. He directed several of the OSS 117 movies as well as the three 1960s Fantomas movies (which are much more lighthearted but just as energetic and fast-moving).
The plot has the touches of outrageousness that the eurospy genre demands but it remains quite coherent.
I’ve now seen three of the OSS 117 movies and this may be the best I’ve seen so far.
Kino Lorber have released five of the OSS 117 movies in a Blu-Ray set (and on DVD as well). The transfers are excellent. This set is an absolute must-buy for eurospy fans. It’s a real treat to see such movies decently presented in their correct aspect ratios and looking terrific.
OSS 117: Mission for a Killer is pure high-octane fun and is highly recommended.
I’ve reviewed the two previous OSS 117 movies, OSS 117 Is Unleashed (1963) and Panic in Bangkok as well as André Hunebelle first two Fantomas movies, Fantomas (1964) and Fantomas Unleashed (1965). All are worth seeing.