Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Blu-ray Movie Review

Jessel. Andrew Jessel.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 18, 2014

Most James Bond fans can tick off the major actors who have played the superspy, easily detailing Sean Connery, the singular (in more ways than one—no pun intended) George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. But even many who consider themselves true Bond aficionados forget “also rans” like Barry Nelson, who was actually the very first screen (albeit small, as in television) actor to play the vaunted character, in a 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale. A later Casino Royale offered another actor whom Bond fans tend to overlook, David Niven, as Ian Fleming’s dashing hero. (Why Casino Royale should have been the source of two relatively little remembered Bonds is a story in and of itself, worthy of investigation by those with an interest in how rights to various properties are obtained.) Another famous fictional detective, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, has also been portrayed by a number of actors through the years, with television’s David Suchet defining the role indelibly in many fans’ minds. But of course Albert Finney played the Belgian sleuth in Murder on the Orient Express and Peter Ustinov did similar duty in a number of other “all star” Christie adaptations like Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun and Appointment With Death (Ustinov followed these big screen renditions with several made for television films featuring the character). Many devoted Poirot fans are nonetheless completely unaware that none other than Tony Randall also essayed the role in a now largely forgotten film called The Alphabet Murders in 1965, a lackluster British effort made in what was then the considerable box office wake of the British Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford (Rutherford as Marple actually has a cameo in the Randall Poirot film).

Randall, who was in a somewhat fallow period in his career (it would be another few years before he would burst back into the mainstream with The Odd Couple) found more work in a British production the year after The Alphabet Murders with a cheekily amusing riff on the then very hot spy genre which was of course sparked by James Bond himself. Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (which was the American title for a film released in international markets as Our Man in Marrakesh) also owes a debt of gratitude to Alfred Hitchcock outings like The Man Who Knew Too Much (the opening scene of Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! is in fact heavily indebted to Hitch’s film) and North by Northwest (wherein an innocent civilian gets swept up into an international conspiracy with seemingly few skills to handle the ramifications). There's a third antecedent in the proceedings as well, though, and it is none other than Dame Agatha Christie. The film's story was written by producer Harry Alan Towers (utilizing his frequent pseudonym Peter Welbeck). Towers had himself just come off producing the 1965 version of Christie's inimitable Ten Little Indians (the one with Hugh O'Brian set at a ski lodge), and brought with him Christie's typical device of manifold suspects, all with various backstories and skeletons in their closets (in the case of Bang! Bang! You're Dead, that's almost a literal statement, as we'll discuss).

The “suspects” in this case are not potential murderers, but ostensible couriers carrying top secret documents which will fetch a cool two million in American dollars, papers which local Moroccan mobster Mr. Casimir (Herbert Lom) is intent on getting his hands on so that he can cash in. A number of characters are therefore introduced who all carry bags or valises of some kind, letting the audience know that any of them could be the target of Casimir's desire. The film actually starts with one of Casimir’s henchmen, the scary looking Jonquil (a young and extremely blond Klaus Kinski) watching calmly as a guy is stabbed to death at a performance of street musicians in a scene guaranteed to remind some of a similar sequence in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. That victim later turns up in the closet (hence the aforementioned skeleton in a closet reference) of a hotel room mistakenly given to American tourist Andrew Jessel (Tony Randall), who understandably freaks out when he discovers the corpse. When a comely woman named Kyra Stanovy (Senta Berger) quickly shows up, first claiming that the room was supposed to be hers and then that the corpse is actually her fiancé, whom she fears has been murdered by his relatives in order to frame her, Andrew is suddenly sucked into the gaping maw of a situation he is spectacularly ill equipped to handle.

Most of the film details Andrew and Kyra on the lam, attempting to escape the police who are after them since that pesky body keeps turning up back at the hotel despite their best efforts to ditch it somewhere. The film plays it surprisingly well with regard to Kyra, whom the audience is never quite sure until a reasonable amount of the way through the proceedings is a villain or not. (Note: Avoid reading the text on the back of the insert, as it spills the beans on this plot point as well as several others.) Andrew’s skill set improves dramatically as he’s forced to face off with Casimir and perhaps even more threateningly Jonquil at various points.

Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! is in fact nicely structured and contains a fair amount of decent laughs, often playing like a somewhat less convoluted (and polished) Charade. The scenery is quite lush and the supporting performances are all very colorful, including a wonderful late cameo by the incomparable Terry-Thomas as an Eton educated caliph who controls a bunch of his own henchmen who come into play in the film’s riotous finale.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is unfortunately one of the more problematic mid-sixties vintage color releases Olive has presented, which is not to say it's unwatchable, as the screenshots accompanying this review should generally show. There are manifest differences in the color space as the film proceeds, with some snippets looking relatively accurate and well saturated, and others looking noticeably faded, with flesh tones decidedly on the brown side of things and skies which are bright blue in the more accurate looking sequences appearing anemic and almost white. Density issues afflict the elements as well, and there's more than the usual amount of flecks, specks and the like. Quite a bit of this transfer is rather soft looking, and grain is chunky enough in some sections to suggest this was sourced at least partially off of dupe elements. The film's gorgeous locations are nicely captured by ace cinematographer Michael Reed, who ironically would go on to lens the Bond feature On Her Majesty's Secret Service. All of this said, Olive has once again commendably not done any overt digital tweaking and while what's here is not in optimal condition, it at least looks like film.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono that is fairly narrow and shallow sounding (especially with regard to some of Malcolm Lockyer's boisterous score), but which delivers dialogue cleanly and clearly. There are some noticeable ambience difference in what was obviously some post-looped moments (a key interchange in a foreign language with forced subtitles late in the film at the climax is the best example), but generally speaking this is a decent if not overwhelmingly forceful track that suffices quite well for the film's dialogue scenes.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bang! Bang! You're Dead! is surprisingly bright and breezy romp, with a dash of romance, some exotic locations and just the hint of menace courtesy of Lom and Kinski. While the film doesn't quite have the elegance of outings like Charade or even Arabesque, but it's quite entertaining and contains brisk direction by Don Sharp and nice performances by Randall, an extremely appealing Berger and an ace supporting cast. While the video quality here isn't the best, it's definitely watchable, and despite the absence of supplements, Bang! Bang! You're Dead! comes Recommended.