Spanish/Portugal Euro-spy movie with ordinary ingredients : thrills , noisy action , crossfire, plot twists ,several villain roles , bare fists fights , various international locations and being middlingly entertaining from start to finish .The story is a loop of mutual spying and battle-solved confrontations .Colorful and so-so rendition about European spy subgenre , an usual genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously . A British Secret Service agent posing as a TV host (Antonio Vilar) is recruited because of the disappearance of a professor who has been kidnapped by a criminal organitation . The scientist has discovered the formula of a particular resistant steel, and a spy ring from an enemy power wants to take it , But another spy (Peter van Eyck) also sets after him and to obtain the essential formula . If this formula go to enemy hands it will cause a world disequilibrium . Both spies must retrieve it at whatever cost , and eventually join forces against the undergroung ring . Every espionage story also includes some women (Mikaela, Letícia Román) , but they are only the third favorite toy of the agents next to guns , but they're traitors as well.
Routine Euro-spy movie with usual components : pursuits , car crashes , struggles , state-of-art gadgets , strange artifacts , international conspiracy , explosive women and other tippings that used to appear in the genre. A fashion and run-of-the-mill film at the time, meaning it stuck to a lot of what was currently popular , but here including some embarrassing and nonsense scenes . Inspired by the success of the James Bond films, as this spy sub-genre borrows heavily from the OO7 series that at the time starred Sean Connery , such as : Dr No, From Russia with love , Thunderball, and Goldfinger . In Comando de asesinos (1966) the typical international agents's story is created , here the style was more oriented towards the hard wave triggered by the Edgar Wallace or Doctor Mabuse films , though due to its monotony , cannot even bring the abundant involuntary comedy to fruition . The content remains the same as the title : any insinuations remain hints , ridiculous , uptight and silly from a today's point of view . A Sixties-style film usually has a short sell-by date , and this flick isn't exception . Ultimately , as possible evergreen , both the story and actors are doomed to fail from the start . The leading roles were played by Peter van Eyck and Antonio Vilar who produced too , they were popular as well as untalented players at the time , two mediocre actors who couldn't carry a rickety product like this. The script doesn't help him either , as it consists of the worn-out intrigue about an abducted professor and actually tells no more than different people spying on and beating up each other in the hope of getting the scientist's formula . Of course , with such a film from nostalgic and botcher ways , one does not count on high art work . The probability of having discovered a small hidden gem was very limited. "Comando de asesinos (1966) or High Season for Spies or Fin de semana con la muerte" is staged in a hopelessly amateurish way , it shows us rows of bare fights in the worst choreography and degrades agents to big children who visibly enjoy fighting , like teenagers in the schoolyard among buddies . They don't show the shred of maturity that would go into making them seem like believable agents . They behave in such an infantile activity and so stupid manners so that they are committing usual mistakes on their own way .The screenplay works with unnecessary contradictions and implausibility , which wouldn't be so tragic and could still function as mindless trivia if the story hadn't been so extremely thin , thinner than it usually is in works of this kind , the Euro-spy sub-genre . There are colorful outdoors showing sightseeing from Lisbon , but the lousy cinematography spoils the spectacle , being really necessary a perfect remastering . The main and support cast -with everyone having fun- are regular , slightly adequate to their functional characters . It has some flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , including repetitive nature of some fight scenes , and excessive nonsense , but it has a bit of fun , so it cares . Co-stars various Eurotrash actors , many of them ordinary in co-productions , such as : Letitia Román , Mikaela , Frank Braña , Klausjürgen Wussow , Ricardo Valle , among others.
The motion picture was middlingly directed by filmmaker Julio Coll. He was a craftsman who wrote/produced/directed a lot of films, being his greatest hits : ¨Un vaso de whisky¨ and ¨Distrito Quinto¨ . Coll had a long career , being expert on ¨ Spanish Noir film¨ , he started collaborating in more than 30 scripts , as the classic ¨Apartado De Correos 1001¨(50) by Julio Salvador . His best works were at the beginning his career as ¨Nunca Es Demasiado Tarde¨ , ¨Carcel De Cristal¨, ¨Un Vaso De Whisky¨ and ¨Los Cuervos¨ in which there is social drama , intriguing elements and solid dramatic narrative . In 1958 he created the production company ¨Juro Film¨ with whom he writes , produces and directs his films . As he shoots ¨La Cuarta Ventana¨ (61) , ¨Ensayo General De La Muerte¨ and ¨Los Muertos No Perdonan¨ (63) . Julio , subsequently , made international co-productions as ¨Fuego¨ with Barry Sullivan , ¨Comando De Asesinos¨ with Peter Van Eyck , ¨Persecución Hasta Valencia¨ with Tom Tryon and the historical ¨La Araucana¨ with Elsa Martinelli and based on Luis De Camoens book until his death at 73.
