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I love the
armada of James Bond rip-offs that came during the sixties. 1967 was a
practically good year with new Bonds from all over the world. Thailand Bangkok , a co-production with Hong
Kong might have been the best one, but Top Secret is a very
charming and confusing entry. The story is kinda convoluted, but my guess is...
... that
super-villain Kecha Plianvithee wants to rob the world of a lot of gold. Maybe
to build an even bigger crime syndicate. He has his own army of actually very
cute soldiers and the usual easily fooled femme fatale girlfriend that gets
dumped in the end. But beware, heroic cop/agent Chaibancha is after him! Thanks
to Sombat Metanee, who's undercover inside Kecha's crime syndicate, he gets
inside - but gets caught and spend most of the time in a cell, doing gymnastics
and flirting with the female guards! Eventually the baddie is traced to his
island (what else) and the action starts!
Okay, there
is action even before the ending - a couple of fun fist fights and some chases,
but the money and time is spent on the low budget spectacular war scenes with
tanks, soliders, helicopters, boats etc. It looks good! The movie also starts
with some very nice-looking aerial scenes involving fighter airplanes. My wild
guess is that the Thai army sponsored this movie both with vehicles and men.
What's
interesting is that Chaibancha kinda takes the backseat in Top Secret. He's
always there, but mostly talking or looking at other people, and Sombat - who
looks terribly young at the tender age of thirty - takes care of most the
action and even has a very cute and romantic song-number in honour of some girl
he's interested in. And don't forget, his famous curl is always there to set
the hearts of teenaged girls (and gay men I guess) on fire:
Even of the story itself is quite generic, Top Secret still have a couple of wonderful and
bizarre set-pieces. The song-number by Sombat is nice, but we're also treated
to a big song- and dance-number on rollerskates! If every movie had that! Top
Secret is also filled with the ancient and prestigious art of killing dummies.
Yes, stunt-dummies pretending to me real humans are thrown from houses and
cliffs and blown to pieces by hand grenades. Always a welcome sight and during
many years a tradition in the real Bond-movies. I mean, we all know they're not
killing people for real so why not go all out with limbless dummies? I dig it!
You dig it! Another awesome sequence is when Chaibancha falls down a trapdoor
and ends up in a really "far-out-man" psychedelic room belonging to the
super-villain. And it seems to hurt when he glides down on that metallic slide!
