This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Jo Walker aka Kommissar X (Tony Kendall) is confronted with Oberon’s all-female security force in KISS KISS... KILL KILL.


in America—in splendidly restored, bilingual pre- sentations that reveal them as more ambitious and impressive productions than the American prints ever indicated. The prints are complete, anamorphic, and in their original aspect ratios, with German and English audio tracks and op- tional German subtitles. The ITC TV prints typi- cally removed 2-3 minutes from each of the first three films; when these missing scenes occur, the English audio tracks revert to German audio with English subtitles—giving those who might not oth- erwise sample the German tracks a taste of their far superior voice casting and sound effects. In the first three titles, dubbed into English at Titra, Peter Fernandez can be heard dubbing the voice of Brad Harris (we love Peter, but this is bad cast- ing!); in the last three films, the dubbing was done elsewhere, likely at Fono Roma, with smooth- voiced Ted Rusoff handling the voice of Tony Kendall.


KOMMISSAR X: JAGD AUF UNBEKANNT


“Kommissar X: Hunt For the Unknown” aka KISS KISS... KILL KILL 1966, 88m 5s, €23.16, PAL DVD-2


The first Kommissar X adventure introduces Jo Walker and Tom Rowland chasing and throwing


punches at one another. It’s a recurring trick of director Gianfranco Parolini to mislead the audi- ence, and the scene is soon exposed as the NYPD’s friendly test of Jo’s strength and resourcefulness, establishing the good-natured professional rivalry that persists between them throughout the series.


16


An off-camera mastermind à la Blofeld sug- gests to shapely, purple-haired Joan Smith (Maria Perschy) that she hire “the most expensive detec- tive in the world” to investigate the disappearance of nuclear physicist Bob Carroll. When two of Carroll’s business partners turn up dead, Jo is approached by their surviving partner Oberon (in English, O’Brien in German, played by Serbian actor Nikola Popovic) with an offer of assistance. Unbeknownst to Walker and Rowland, Oberon— whose look, manner and omnipresent Havana ci- gars suggest an insiderly poke at James Bond art director Ken Adam—is in fact the dead men’s former partner in a lucrative criminal enterprise whose scheme he has opted to seize for himself. Lording over an science-fictiony underground headquarters and surrounded by gun-toting, all- female security forces (talk about greedy—what else does he need?), Oberon has struck out on his own after disagreeing with his partners’ collective plan to contaminate the world’s gold supply with radioactivity to control the world’s economy (sound familiar?). Oberon’s madder, more anarchic scheme is to derail the world’s economy perma- nently by destroying the world’s second largest gold reserve on a remote island. Because Joan’s role in the story is not particularly romantic, an- other female—Christa Linder as Pamela Hudson, the comely daughter of a ship’s admiral—is intro- duced and abducted in the third act to raise the film’s romantic stakes.


“This place is done up in early Ian Fleming,” exclaims one admirer of the mise en scène, but this Bondy-yet-cartoonish Italian/Yugoslav co-pro- duction, shot on location in Dubrovnik and on in- terior sets in Rome, is more visibly allied to Antonio


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