Written by Hammer's Brian Clemens but an independent UA release. The print we saw screened on TPTV was rather jerky and hazy.
It's not a good film. For example the scenes set in 'Rio' and 'Rome' are clearly buildings in England, the 'Rio' one with carefully arranged tropical plants around it! Between that there's lots of library footage of airports and planes, as Interpol detective Denis Shaw tries to track down the origin of some stolen money that has been found in Brazil. Also there are abrupt and pointless bits of narration thrown in, like we're watching Dragnet, in a weird mid-Atlantic accent (which are funny).
Yet somehow we were engaged by it. The fight scenes are terribly badly staged, it's cheap, but it moves along (it's only an hour and five) and the acting's OK. The only other name I recognised behind the camera is Nic Roeg, who's the camera operator. And the only actor I knew was bottom-billed Paul Stassino (from Thunderball), who's in it for 30 seconds.
And perhaps the main good thing about it is Denis Shaw, who's an unlikely looking leading man, thick set like a boxer but polite. Actually he was in The Colditz Story, but his career otherwise is playing doormen, butchers, taxi passengers and the like in B movies and TV.
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| We were both independently thinking Robbie Coltrane |
With Kay Callard, Tony Quinn, Philip Saville, Vera Fusek.
Not quite sure though who the shady guy with the weird voice is at the beginning, who buys the 'hot' money.
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