his costly 7-disc set from Germany em- bodies a triumph of love over common sense that makes it fascinating in its own right, above and beyond the film series it restores to its original lustre. It renders completely irrelevant Retromedia Entertainment’s single-disc triple feature THE KOMMISSAR X COLLECTION, a cut, cropped and wholly unsatisfactory attempt to collect the 1960s Eurospy series starring Tony Kendall as Jo Walker, private detective and ladies man, and Brad Harris as athletic, two-fisted, New York police captain Tom Rowland—each the other’s nemesis and best friend.
T
Produced out of Berlin by Theo Maria Werner, working in tandem with other production compa- nies in Yugoslavia, Italy and elsewhere, the Kommissar X films are a sub-Bondian series, as one must expect, but one that deserves to be bet- ter known. First of all, it’s one of the few spy fran- chises with a genuine literary basis—and it has a greater claim to that basis than any other series of its kind, in terms of sheer quantity. Between 1959 and 1970, more than 620 Jo Walker pulp novels were published in Germany, all attributed to “Bert F. Island” though reportedly hammered out by one Paul Alfred Mueller, and the series has since pro- liferated to an astounding 1,740+ titles under other bylines (the most recent being Earl Warren)—mak- ing it the espionage equivalent of what the Ger- man Perry Rhodan novels are to science fiction. For the bulk of its run, the film series divided its directorial duties between Italian action spe- cialist Gianfranco Parolini (working as “Frank Kramer”) and German director Rudolf Zehetgruber, both of whom showed a penchant for overstep- ping the Hitchcock cameo by casting themselves
One of the original Kommissar X novels penned by Bert F. Island.
in highly visible supporting roles. Parolini scored his greatest international successes with the Sabata westerns starring Lee Van Cleef and di- rected the Kommissar X films as a result of his happy working relationship with Brad Harris, hav- ing guided him through a number of earlier sword- and-sandal adventures including Sansone (SAMSON, 1961) and La furia di Ercole (THE FURY OF HERCULES, 1962). Zehetgruber, a per- verse, swanning personality who sought to upstage his own stars, started out making krimi thrillers and dramas but gradually zoned-in on more fam- ily-oriented fare, achieving his greatest success with the Superbug films that were inspired by the suc- cess of Walt Disney’s THE LOVE BUG (1969). The people at Anolis obviously grew up with these films and went crazy with this set. It collects all six of the Parolini/Zehetgruber “canon” titles (which are also available individually), as well as a very special seventh disc that it offers exclusively. One final series entry was produced in 1971— Harald Reinl’s Kommissar X jagt die roten Ti- ger (“Kommissar X Hunts the Red Tiger” aka FBI OPERATION PAKISTAN or THE TIGER GANG)— albeit by different companies, unfortunately forc- ing it outside the compass of this otherwise definitive and anyway exhaustive set. Whereas the 2007 Retromedia collection focused on the titles once shown on American television, making use of battered 16mm ITC TV prints, Anolis presents the six films—including three never before shown
KOMMISSAR X Anolis, 672m, €169.95,
PAL DVD-2
The stars of the KOMMISSAR X franchise: Tony Kendall and Brad Harris.
15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116