The film is set in the fictional nation of Sinonesia, somewhere in South East Asia. The President's Chief of Security has recently been assassinated. The regional head of British intelligence, Colonel Baisbrook, recruits two Americans to investigate. Why does he not use his own agents? Presumably either because he had an eye on the US film market, or because he knew Frankie Avalon couldn't do a British accent. Or both. Probably both.
Whatever the reasons for their hiring, the American duo - Nick and Tommy - prove pretty successful in their assignment. They soon identify that the assassination was the work of agents of a beautiful and evil woman named Sumuru, who plans world domination by having her all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her agents.
Obviously, this sort of thing can't be allowed to go on. Now all Nick and Tommy have to do is stay alive long enough to stop it.
This film is based on a female supervillain created by Sax Rohmer, who is best known as the author of the Fu Manchu series of novels. What that essentially means is that it is based on stories in which Rohmer swapped his usual gross racism for ... slightly less gross racism and lots more egregious sexism.
Only slightly less racism though, as this film makes clear very early on. President Boong of Sinonesia (yes, that really is his name) is clearly a white guy in very peculiar make-up.
The sexism meanwhile mostly makes itself known through the twin vectors of (a) the whole plot basically being "only an evil woman would be unhappy with men running things" and (b) lots and lots PG-rated titillation: bared thighs, backs and midriffs, as a consequence of the fact that Sumuru apparently believes bikinis to be suitable attire for her army of female assassins.
So, it's racist and sexist; perhaps not surprising, given it is nearly sixty years old. How is the movie otherwise?
Not very good, frankly. The plot is weak and formulaic. And while Shirley Eaton is clearly having a good time vamping it up as the wicked Sumuru, she's rather undermined by the fact that the script makes the villainess her own worst enemy. Sumuru decides to kidnap the guy trying to thwart her. Sensible enough. Having done so, she then ... tells him all her plans. Yes, it's in the context of trying to blackmail him to work for her, but still, it's rather clumsy and an obvious way to avoid him having to do any actual investigation.
The film also features a fair number of efforts comedy. Many of these seem to have been directly inspired by Looney Tunes, including an obvious variation of Bugs and Daffy's classic "duck season"/"rabbit season" sequence.
The other source of 'humour' is basically 'Frankie Avalon's been in musicals!', which ... I mean, okay, I can excuse one gag in this line, given that he is your star. But the film returns to the well a number of times, which would rather be like if Deadpool 3 cracks a whole bunch of jokes about the fact that Hugh Jackman was in The Boy from Oz.
But at least the film will have a big action finale where the good guys (who are all men, of course) storm the beaches of Sumuru's island, right? A large scale sequence clearly inspired by the James Bond films of the period. That'll be fun, right? Well, it would be, if it was executed well. Alas, it is static and dull, with unconvincing action choreography.
The 60s delivered some fun, cheesy action espionage films. This aspires to be one of them, but falls far short of the mark.
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