The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I was looking up this movie and noticed that it has yet to be released on a single format on video. I was always wondering how people managed to see such a rare film. Then again, how did the cast of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" stumble upon this? Was the film just preserved somewhere? I don't think this was an awful film. I actually enjoyed the fighting at the end. Of course, it's still a bad movie. It's mostly because it's just plain boring. It wasn't until near the end that I understood why a lot of people considered this a James Bond wannabe.The main character actually did get a few amusing lines in. It's just nothing too memorable. The atmosphere isn't good, but not the worst. There's some pretty gaudy details here that don't help. It didn't really have anything that stupid about it. I guess it wasn't a good movie to look at for the most part. There aren't any actors or actresses that I recognize. At least we got to see a few explosions in this. Of course, that's just near the end and it isn't worth the whole movie. I thought there was a little effort put into it. **

The IMDb-rating (3.0 at the time I write this review) is plain ridiculous, that's why I give this movie a write-up. Of course, it's cheesy and silly but no different from other spy comedies from the 60s, say the Matt Helm flicks. And the production values are much higher; there's good location shooting and beautiful sets, plus good camera work (I watched the wide-screen version). Capable acting there is little, but the pretty female cast makes a bit up for that. The music is nothing special and the movie definitely has some lengths despite the snappy running-time.SPOILERS: The main problem is probably that the "hero" never gets much to do (James Bond would have freed himself in the final act - well, I guess our hero waiting passively for his rescue is part of the spoof but it was a lousy decision, tension-wise). Secondly, the villain organisation, basically a small army of nubile young women aimed at creating a men-free reign, is doomed to fail from the start (in fact, one wonders how it ever got that big) because none of the pretty members, from leader to lowest rung, is able to keep her wits about her when left alone with a healthy male. That's a nice running gag at first but gets simply ridden to death. So overall, it's just a minor B-movie despite the high production values.But if you like other 60s spy comedies (say, Liquidator or the Matt Helm outings), you'll like this one well enough. It's even a valid spoof of early James Bond in many scenes.

Playing the lead role as Su-Muru is that golden Bond girl Shirley Eaton from Goldfinger. Shirley is a female version of Fu Manchu and I can just hear Great Britain's man in the east Nayland Smith referring to her as an Oriental She Devil.Wilfrid Hyde-White of British Intelligence has handed off the problem of Su-Muru and her thousands of bikini clad agents over to our CIA and its agents George Nader and Frankie Avalon. Like Fu Manchu her ambition is to rule the world. Can't say the girl doesn't have high goals.For Nader he was approaching a nadir of his career. He was one of those before Stonewall tragedies of a gay man who was getting very tired of living a double life. As for Avalon the Beach movies were coming to a halt and a new music scene took over with that quartet from Great Britain in the latter part of the Sixties. You take what work you can get.The comedy here falls embarrassingly flat and the players look like they're waiting for their checks to clear. Hope they did.

It is really strange that most people seem to think this movie is unintentionally funny, but the truth is it surely was made as a parody of the 60's spy movies. George Nader is frequently bumping into something and has a lot of funny lines to say. He is obviously the stupid counterpart of his other role at this time, FBI agent "Jerry Cotton". A big problem in enjoying this beautiful fun is however, that most available versions present this (shot in 2,35:1-Scope) film in shitty fullscreen transfers, so you can see only half of the real image and missing much important picture information on both sides, so you sometimes can hardly tell what's going on. I'm sure, the day this finally will be released in a decent OAR-transfer the film will win a lot of admirers!