OSS 117: Five Film Collection

I watched "Topaz" the other night and sort of liked Fredrick Stafford in it; so I checked him out and saw that he had been OSS117 in a couple of those 60's films. The first two films were adequate with Kerwin Matthews (of those stop-action Ray Harryhausen movies). However, the second two with Fredrick Stafford were as good as the early James Bond movies. John Gavin in the last movie was 'meh'--pretty as he was, he made a better Ambassador to Mexico. The movies were startlingly similar to the James Bond storylines (the OSS117 novels predated James Bond novels by 4 years--so I'm wondering who stole from whom)All-in-all, the movies were fun--the sort of Saturday Morning classic movie or TV fare like "The Falcon" or "The Saint" and all the lead actors resemble each other as American versions of Sean Connery.

I love older movies, French ones are actually are fun! It is a kind of take off of the James Bond movies from the early 60's, no political correctness in these movies. The hero is an America agent (LOL) who speaks fluent French, I am sure some do, but it's kind of hilarious in these movies that takes them over the top, but without too much special gadgets.

This collection contains the five OSS 117 films from the 60's from Kino. The picture quality is terrific. The subtitles are okay. I wish the films contained an English audio track. I know there are dubbed versions out there especially of the final film with John Gavin using John's own voice. I realize the dubbed versions can be cheesy but it's just easier to follow a film when they're speaking English. I'm not against subtitles but I sometimes have a hard time keeping up and if you look away even for a second you might miss something important to the story. But I'm happy with the purchase. These are all fun films. I get why the first OSS 117 movie wasn't a part of the package (from 1957). It's mostly boring and maybe there isn't a good print available. But at least it is available on YouTube for those who want to see how the series started even before the first James Bond film. I was curious about these movies after watching the 2006 and 2009 films with Jean Dujardin. Those are for laughs. These are more serious spy films and compare to other Eurospy ones like the Kommisar X series.

Bought it for a friend and he loved it.

Here is the hot dossier on the five Agent OSS 117 movies from 1963-1968: picture and sound are uniformly excellent, but English subtitles were not available on "Panic in Bangkok" and "Mission to Tokyo," and are not easily produced by the menu on the other three films, although by using the icon on my remote, I got those up. So Kino Lorber, you need to fix this problem. The five movies are kind of modest adventures in exotic locales, with the tall, dark, handsome, and daring Agent OSS 117 fighting sinister bad guys and romancing beautiful women in the James Bond tradition, if not with James Bond money, although they are all up to professional standards. Kerwin Mathews stars in the first two, Frederick Stafford in the next two, and John Gavin in the fifth. The stars are all suave and dashing, though not as mean as James Bond, and the authentic European, Asian, North African, and Brazilian backgrounds are pleasingly atmospheric. As for the plots, if you have seen 007 or "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." or even "Get Smart," they are of that spying, brawling, and loving up the ladies variety. The series is of French-Italian co-production, in French language, and as I said, I was able to get the English subtitles up on just three movies. But eef you understand French, there ees no problem, I guess.