MORESQUE OBIETTIVO ALLUCINANTE (1967)
aka Coplan ouvre le feu a Mexico, Mexican Slayride, Between the Nets
Article 3863 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-3-2012
Posting Date: 3-12-2012
Directed by Riccardo Freda
Featuring Lang Jeffries, Sabine Sun, Jose Maria Caffarel
Country: Spain / France / Italy
What it is: Eurospy

Secret agent Coplan is sent on a mission to discover the reason paintings that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France are popping up in auctions; those who try to bid on them are killed and the portraits stolen. The trail eventually leads to a bizarre plan to take over the world.

There’s apparently a fansub out there of this movie that is preferable to the English version known as MEXICAN SLAYRIDE, the latter of which was cut by about thirty minutes into a running time of less than an hour. I ended up with neither of these, but with the Italian release of the movie with the title above. With the help of a few plot descriptions, I was more or less able to follow what was going on. This one seems to lack the gadgetry that is the reason some spy movies qualify as science fiction, so I suspect that this one is fairly marginal (though the plot which involves the replacement of President Johnson with a lookalike in order to start World War III may give it a little fantastic content). The murders are a bit on the brutal side, some of the action sequences are rather silly (especially an unbelievable bailout from a crashing plane), but I will give the movie credit for going the idea of a sword hidden in a cane one better. Nevertheless, this doesn’t appear to be a particularly engrossing or fun Eurospy movie.