TARGET FOR KILLING (Der Geheimnis der gelben Moenche, 1966)

Manfred R. Köhler's "The Secret of the Golden Monks" plays out like a hybrid movie, part Bond-inspired Eurospy action, part Edgar Wallace inspired plotting as befits the film's largely Germanic origin. While there's an unavoidable acknowledgment of the Cold War, with emphasis on both sides' dabbling in the paranormal, it's a crime story at heart. Stewart Granger, who seems to be having a good time howevermuch he despised the genre stuff he made in the Sixties, is James Vine, introduced meeting cute with a pretty girl, Sandra Perkins (Karin Dor), whom he recruits into helping him land a jetliner after the crew (including pilot Klaus Kinski) ditch it, their plan being to crash the plane with no survivors.

Kinski & Co. work for "the Giant" (Kurt Jurgens), whose inner circle includes a vaguely Asiatic hypnotist and the sadistic female operative, Tiger (Scilla Gabel). While they've collaborated with the Eastern bloc, their motives now are purely mercenary. The Giant has been hired by Sandra's uncle (Adolfo "Largo" Celi) to kill her for reasons that become clear only when Uncle himself is captured and put to the torture. It turns out that he wanted Sandra dead before she could come into her $70,000,000 inheritance, which would fall to him as her guardian. It occurs to the Giant that with a hypnotist at hand, he could get Sandra under his power and have control over her fortune rather than take whatever pittance Uncle had offered him. An interesting aspect of this otherwise unambitious story is how nearly all the villains are looking to get out of the game. The Kinski character is a particularly reluctant villain and ends up sacrificing his life to save someone else, while the Giant himself longs to retire on the proceeds of this last big score. There's something almost noirish about that, amid all the Eurospy trappings from the golden monks of the German title occupying an old cathedral to the inevitable storming of the villain's headquarters and the slaughter of his singularly incompetent troops -- the sort who'll descend an exterior staircase without cover to engage with the troop climbing upward, rather than rest on their high ground.

When it really counts, James Vine saves the day with timely explosives and by turning a mirror on a hypnotist. None of it can be taken very seriously and no one on screen really does, possibly excepting future Bond-villain Jurgens, whose low-key, businesslike villainy can be taken as a refreshing departure from genre cliche or the work of a bored performer. Granger is never less than a pro and seems to do a fair amount of his own fighting, and his apparent willingness to get into the spirit of the proceedings helps make Target For Killing a mostly pleasant diversion for an hour and a half or thereabouts.