{"id":2100,"date":"2010-06-18T16:15:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T16:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2010-06-18T16:15:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T16:15:09","slug":"mexican-slayride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/mexican-slayride\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexican Slayride"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"coplan-poster\"
French poster for Mexican Slayride<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

aka Moresque obiettivo allucinante, Coplan III, Coplan ouvre le feu a Mexico
\n1967
\nOriginal running length: 94 mins
\nFrance \/ Italy \/ Spain
\nBased on the story ‘Coplan fait peau neuve’ by Paul Kenny
\nA Fida (Rome), Comptoir Francais du Film (Paris) and Balcazar (Barecelona) production
\nDirector: Riccardo Freda
\nScreenplay: Bertrand Tavernier
\nCinematography: Juan Gelp\u00ed, Paul Solignac
\nMusic: Jacques Lacome
\nEditor: Teresa Alcocer, Claude Gros, Vincenzo Tomassi
\nCast: Lang Jeffries (Coplan<\/em>), Sabine Sun (the countess<\/em>), Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Caffarel (Langis<\/em>), Robert Party (Fondane<\/em>), Frank Oliveras (Don Felipe<\/em>), Guido Lollobrigida (Montez<\/em>), Osvaldo Genazzani, Guy Marly, Luciana Gilli (Maya, Don Felipe’s daughter<\/em>), Silvia Solar (Francine Labout<\/em>)
\nUncredited: Francisco Cebri\u00e1n, Ida Galli, Antonio Orengo, M\u00f3nica Randall, Mar\u00eda Dolores Rubio, Tom\u00e1s Torres, Mois\u00e9s Augusto Rocha (killer with bazooka<\/em>), Paco Sanz (Don Felipe’s man<\/em>)<\/p>\n

This little-known spy film was financed by three important production companies in the world of low-budget cinema during the late 1960s.\u00a0 From Italy, there was Edmondo Amati’s Fida Cinematografica, which made most of the Agent 077 series of films starring Ken Clark (Mission Bloody Mary<\/strong>, Special Mission Lady Chaplin <\/strong>etc etc).\u00a0 From France, Comptoir Fran\u00e7ais du Film Production, which had made a previous Coplan film, Coplan FX 18 casse tout<\/strong>, as well as putting money into numerous other peplums and spy films.\u00a0 And from Spain Balc\u00e1zar Producciones Cinematogr\u00e1ficas, formed by the brothers Alfonso and Jesus Balcazar, who regularly invested in and allowed Italian productions to use their Barcelona-based studios.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, then, it’s a truly cosmopolitan film, with a multinational cast and crew.\u00a0 It’s also a bit of a mess.<\/p>\n

When a bunch of paintings stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War start turning up in auctions around the world, the secret service are interested: just who is it who’s selling them?\u00a0 and why are they being sold right now?\u00a0 After the first agent dispatched to find out what’s going on is murdered, super-efficient spy Coplan (Lang Jeffries) is assigned the case and, given that he knows absolutely nothing about culture whatsoever, is ordered to take along a slightly more civilised, rookie agent, Fondane (Robert Party), with him.<\/p>\n

\"Lang
Lang Jeffries in Mexican Slayride<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After posing as a bidder for one of the stolen masterpieces, Coplan is approached by a certain Lady Francine Lagrange (Sabine Sun), who tells him she has some rare artworks for sale and then promptly drags him off to bed.\u00a0 After drugging her, he searches around her villa, where he finds some incriminating cheques and some even more incriminating goons. In order to find out more about what she’s up to he lets her escape, following her as she heads off to Mexico.\u00a0 After surviving a rapidfire assassination attempt as he leaves the airport, he meets up with wealthy businessman and ex-agent Langis (Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Caffarel), who has a passion for classical music and a collection of pet snakes, and Montez (Guido Lollobrigida), the secret service’s man in Mexico.<\/p>\n

He also runs into Francine (Silvia Solar), a damsel in distress, who had come to Mexico in order to carry out geological research and has now spent over a week trying to avoid assorted people who are trying – for some reason or other – to kill her.\u00a0 It doesn’t take a genius to work out that her troubles might be connected to his investigations and, as the body count escalates, they figure out that everything is connected to some underground caverns on the land of a local aristocrat, Don Felipe (Frank Oliveras).<\/p>\n

Given some of the big names involved in this – both the writer and assistant director, Bertrand Tavernier and Yves Boisset, went on to become award winning filmmakers, and it was directed by the much respected Riccardo Freda – it’s quite amazing that it has remained obscure for so long.\u00a0 For many years it was obtainable only as a cut-down, mutilated version lasting just less than an hour, called Entre las redes<\/strong>. Now available in a much longer, fandubbed print from the Wild Eye forum, it’s possible to make a true evaluation of its worth and, while it undoubtedly has some hugely impressive elements, it’s let down by moments of quite staggering slapdashery.<\/p>\n

The script itself seems to hark back to earlier spy films: apart from the occasional moment of humour and self mockery (such as when Coplan refers to it being the usual ‘nutters in a cavern with plans of world domination’ type situation), it’s actually quite a dour, moody affair.\u00a0 The more fantastical elements are underplayed, and the narrative fixes more upon the investigation and multiple double-crosses than the deadly weapons, flame throwing walking sticks and so on.\u00a0 It’s also quite callous, with Coplan merrily burning already incapacitated villains to death or crushing people’s head in a handy vice, and even his bedroom activities seem more calculated and cynical than normal for the genre.\u00a0 But it certainly springs some surprises and has a degree of complexity, as well as an assortment of hastily, but not badly, sketched characters.<\/p>\n

However, the problem lies in the direction.\u00a0 While there are some quite exceptional moments – a secret meeting between the spies on a rollercoaster, a funeral that descends into a gunfight, Francine’s paranoid flight through the city, a search of a meat packing plant – other sequences are just rubbish.\u00a0 It’s almost as though there were two directors: a talented one who was dealing with all the action and build up sequences, and a not-particularly talented one who was filming all the static filler and incidental material.\u00a0 It’s not beyond the realms of plausibility that some of the interior work was shot in Spain by someone apart from Freda (Boisset?\u00a0 A Spanish stand in?), which would explain why so much of it is dully paced and staged.\u00a0 At other moments, it feels almost as much like a giallo or, more particularly, a Spaghetti Western as a spy film (a feeling accentuated by the fact that it reuses several of the Balacazar’s western sets as a stand in for Mexico).<\/p>\n

\"Lang
Lang Jeffries and Silvia Solar in Mexican Slayride<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Furthermore, there’s also some extremely poor miniature work, especially when compared to the kinds of results that were being achieved by the likes of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti with similar resources.\u00a0 The stuntwork is impressive – there’s a wild leap out of a plane into a moving taxi – but this is let down by some occasionally ineffective editing (although, to be fair, this could be down to problems with the print).<\/p>\n

It would be interesting, in other words, to know more about what was going on behind the scenes of the film.\u00a0 Admittedly, during the later stages of his career Freda’s films often seemed to suffer from a certain lack of interest on his part, and that could have been the case here rather than anything more complicated.\u00a0 As it is, it remains an interesting, but highly flawed film.\u00a0 But it’s always watchable, not least because of the performance of Lang Jeffries, a very underrated actor who was perfect at playing a more moody breed of spy than usual.<\/p>\n

This was the fourth of five films to feature Coplan, a character created by author Paul Kenny.\u00a0 Agent secret FX 18<\/strong> (64), Coplan FX 18 casse tout<\/strong> (65) and Coplan sauve sa peau<\/strong> (68) were also co-produced by Comptoir Fran\u00e7ais du Film Production and were intended as a vague kind of series, while Coplan prend des risques<\/strong> (64) would appear to be a rival production which had nothing whatsoever – apart from its protagonist – to do with any of the other films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This little-known spy film Mexican Slayride was financed by three important production companies in the world of low-budget cinema during the late 1960s. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[806,804,803,805],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}