Mercenários do Crime

In the middle of the night, a man wanted by the police for multiple murders breaks into the house of a professor and holds him captive at knifepoint. The professor tries to convince him to give himself up, by telling him three stories about how criminals always get caught in the end. In the first story, set in Vienna, Stewart Granger (who was too old for his role here) is a suave and shady character investigating the death of a reporter who was tracing a drug ring around the world; in the second story, set in Rome and, unlike the other two, played mostly as a slapstick comedy, Pierre Brice is a secret agent trying to deliver some important documents to his boss while being chased by a gang led by a woman with a whip; in the third story, set in San Francisco and Rio, Lex Barker is a private detective trying to stop a political assassination plot by posing as the assassin himself. In the end, there is a major plot twist that tries to tie everything together, but the film ends up making even less sense than before! Some of the "names" in the cast (Klaus Kinski, Karin Dor of "Topaz") have very limited screen time, and although the film does boast a variety of international locations, the three episodes generate little excitement or (if that was the purpose of the second story) laughter. For 60's spy-movie completists only. (*1/2)