I know nothing about Spanish-born Drector Jose Maria Forque and may it remain so on the strength of this offering.
ZARABANDA BING BING, aka BALEARIC CAPER (shot in Ibiza, Balearic Islands) sends up such James Bond films as DR NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (lovely Daniella Bianchi puts in a short appearance), GOLDFINGER (Harold Sakata, the famous Oddjob), and THUNDERBALL (sharks, scuba diving, harpooning competition under water).
The best part, though, goes to deliciously elegant Mireille Darc, who has designs on a painter who has already fathered 13 children, and to whose collection she adds by movie's end, leaving him to look after all the children while she, like the other mothers, goes off gallavanting around the globe.
Marilu Tolo, yet another dish of the highest order who in 1966 appeared in eight films (!) gets bored when she is not stealing a watch, a purse, a cigarette lighter or the like.
Eusebia, the self-driving antique car, is a hoot: cleverer than any human, she tracks down the submarine/aircraft/shooting crate cum contraption that kills seekers of the Lyttelton-Barry scepter.
Uneven cinematography despite stunning settings: you can barely see anything in darker footage or day for night shots.
Well, at least there are some comic touches, notably while luscious Darc is having a shower while thieves and cops attempt to grab the Lyttelton-Barry scepter, setting off a grand chase.
Muscle-bound Harold Sakata beats the pulp out of puny pugnacious Jacques Sernas, who keeps coming back for more. My brother and I took turns imitating Sakata and pretending no pain when hit with a stick. Beefy Sakata has a long, sustained final laugh before the inevitable explosion...
I first watched ZARABANDA BING BING in Mozambique when I was 11 and then, incredibly, some four or five times, be it at the local movie house, the drive-in, or on TV before I turned 20 - not because I loved it but because... no choice back then!
Then, I did not see it for over 40 years, did not know its title, remembering it only because I had watched it with my dad once, another time with my grandad, and they laughed their heads off at the unrelenting rubbish on screen, so mesmerizingly idiotic that we all continued watching, waiting to see how much worse it could get...
It does not say much about our IQ, hey? Oh well, now I have found it on Youtube and watched it in Italian with English subtitles... to the end. Pure nostalgia for non-CGI camp. 6/10.
