Fri 20 Feb 2015
A Sci-Fi Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS (1966).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[8] Comments
ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS / CARTES SUR TABLE / CARTAS BOCA ARRIBA. Spéva Films / Ciné-Alliance / Hesperia Films S.A., French-Spanish, 1966. Eddie Constantine, Françoise Brion, Fernando Rey, Sophie Hardy. Written by Jean-Claude Carriere. Directed by Jesus Franco….
…which I guess answers the question, “What would Jesus direct?â€
Actually this is a surprisingly light and enjoyable thing to come from Jesus (aka “Jess†for American consumption) Franco, who more typically did sex-and-gore epics like Revenge of the Alligator Ladies and Lust for Frankenstein. It helps that it was written by Jean-Claude Carriere, a frequent collaborator with Luis Bunuel and the screenwriter of such trifles as Borsalino and Viva Maria.
It also helps that Eddie Constantine stars, and lends his compelling screen presence to a role suited perfectly to him. For those of you not in on it, Constantine was an American actor who hit the big time as a night club singer in France and went on to star in a whole bunch of “B†action movies, usually as Lemmy Caution and most famously in Jen-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965).
Here he plays a retired Secret Agent named Al Pereira (or Carl Peterson, depending on the dubbing) called back into the field by his superiors to check out assassinations committed by individuals apparently under the influence of what’s known in the genre as Some Diabolical Mind Control. And he isn’t on the job for much longer than a few bites of popcorn before he’s run into oriental masterminds, seductive ladies, furtive guys-who-know-too-much and the odd bruiser just looking for a fight.
All this comes off much better than it deserves, thanks mostly to Constantine’s brutal charisma. Projecting a screen persona somewhere between Humphrey Bogart and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, he lumbers gracefully across the screen, and somehow convinces you that yes, he really is that tough.
The story lumbers a bit too, I’m afraid — not so much a story as a succession of fights and chases, but writer Carriere does what he can with it. Some of the repartee is genuinely funny, there are a couple of amusing twists (as when a squad of killer robots and a gang of Chinese assassins prepare to ambush our hero in his room and suddenly discover each other’s presence) and we even get an oriental mastermind with a sense of humor.
Perhaps no film should need so many redeeming features, but this one somehow carries it off, and if you’re in the mood for something mindless, it fills the time very pleasantly.
February 21st, 2015 at 1:04 pm
I just love Eddie Constantine and remember watching his Lemmy Caution films on Saturday afternoons back in the day. He also made a couple of films as Nick Carter, one of which (License to Kill) was available on VHS. It was an updated version of the dime novel hero, but there were some clever touches to connect the generations. I used a clip from it in a presentation at the Popular Culture Association many years ago. Alphaville was one of the first films I rented from Netflix after I joined.
February 21st, 2015 at 6:43 pm
Some of Eddie’s film are available at Sinister Cinema (this one) and Something Weird.
It always seems strange to think Franco worked with Orson Welles (who praised him) and Brunel. This one is entertaining — of course there’s a nightclub scene — Franco would put a nightclub number in BEN HUR.
Overall one of the better Eurospy films.
February 21st, 2015 at 10:25 pm
Sinister Cinema was my source for “License to Kill.” Eddie Constantine made another Nick Carter film, but I was never able to find a copy of that one. I recall there was some legal problem over the Nick Carters because the French company never asked the American copyright holders for permission to use the character. They probably thought “Nick Carter” was in the public domain. When I visited the offices of Conde Nast (the successors to Street & Smith) looking for information about Nick Carter they provided me with long lists of the stories that had been compiled to prove they had kept the name and character before the public since 1886. The lists saved me a lot of time going through the actual publications.
February 21st, 2015 at 10:48 pm
I’ll have to catch up with Eddie Constantine sometime later when I can. I don’t remember ever seeing anything he was in. All in all, though, I have a feeling I’d be better off watching one of his Lemmy Caution movies than this one, but you never know.
February 22nd, 2015 at 12:10 am
Well, Steve, I would tend to agree with you. A pizza, a beer and a Lemmy Caution movie made for a great Saturday afternoon so I hardly noticed the dialogue was being dubbed. The name “Lemmy Caution” came from the British coppers’ warning to the man under arrest “Let me caution you …”
February 22nd, 2015 at 1:08 am
The Eddie Constantine film to see is SOS PACIFIC, a Brit film with Richard Attenborogh as well. A group of people go down in a plane on a small island only to discover its a target for a nuclear test.
He also did one called HAIL MAFIA with Jack Klugman. He wrote two novels that were bestsellers in the Harold Robbins vein in Europe ( or his name was on them ) and you can hear some of his not bad singing on YouTube.
I spent a ood many summer afternoon watching his films in the sixties on the Dallas stations when it was too hot to be Ioutside.
February 22nd, 2015 at 1:10 am
He also appears in one of The Godfather films and has a major role in the THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY NIGHT with Bob Hoskins.
April 8th, 2018 at 3:04 pm
It used to show up fairly regularly on TV, on the weekend late night “Monster Chiller Horror Theater”-type shows, or on the afternoon “Million Dollar Movie”-type shows. I think it must have been distributed by AIP in the US; it seemed to be in the same syndication package with Godzilla vs. the Thing, Return of the Giant Monsters (aka Gamera vs. Gyos), The Amazing Colossal Man, Motorcycle Gang, Zontar the Thing From Venus, et al.
I saw it when I was a teenager and the main thing I remember is that Francoise Brion was really hot.
I vaguely remember License to Kill (Nick Carter va tout Casser), too. The “clever touches,” IIRC, explained that Eddie’s character was a descendant of the dime novel hero.