Saturday, January 17, 2015

LA PEAU DE TORPEDO - François de Roubaix - "Only The Cool" (1970)

 It's another Saturday night down in The Dungeon, and I ain't got nobody but you and this weird ass flick! I watch a lot of strange and odd movies, and this one is right up there with the best, so get Ready, Set, and here we GO................!!!!

 It's "La Peau De Torpedo," No, it's "Torpedoes Skin," No, It's "The Children Of Mata Hari," No, it's "Pill Of Death," No, it's "The Deathmakers," No, it's "Only The Cool!"

Nothing like a little bit of gratuitous sex to get things going! The music in this film is very cool throughout! Here's the theme and a little more created by Maestro François de Roubaix of "Le Samouraï" fame! When he wrote the music for "The Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay," François used the name Cisco El Rubio! I don't know why, but I find that interesting!

This movie is so ambiguous in so many twisted ways! I'm going to guess at the times and just tell you what it felt like to me! It starts off with this spy guy going to sneak into some place and steal some secret documents! You don't know who he is, or why he's doing it, or whether he's a good guy or a bad guy! The actor is Frédéric de Pasquale!

To me, this went on for about 15 minutes! He finally reaches his destination, and takes some secret photos with a secret camera!

What this guys is up to is so secret, his wife, the lovely Stéphane(The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)Audran as Dominique, can't even know about it, so she just thinks he's being unfaithful to her! On his latest job, there was a malfunction at the junction, so he has to be squirreled off to a secret destination! Unfortunately, the sneaky spies get spotted by Dominique's best girlfriend as played by Noëlle(Wild For Kicks)Adam who spills the beans, and tells her that she saw her husband with another woman in Paris! How freakin' ironic! These people are all up to some over the top secret affairs, and they get busted up by some daytime soap opera script!

Dominique goes to the address her girlfriend gives her to confront her husband, and ends up shooting him dead, and the agent who was housing him that she thought was his girlfriend! So, I'm confused right away, I thought he was the star of the movie! The female agent is Catherine(Poof)Jacobsen as La 'boîte aux lettres' or 'The Mailbox!'

Lilli (Chamber Of Horrors, The House That Screamed) Palmer as Hélène is the Boss of the whole operation! She is cold and calculating just like Dr. Joyce Brothers or Hillary Clinton! So now it's time for this different agent(or is it the same actor, I can't tell?)to go clean up the mess, and silence anybody who might leak anything to anybody! He's happy to do it! She gives him a hard shelled pill full of instant death to put in his mouth and bite if and when it comes down to it!

AAAhhhh!! What's this? The Island of Dr. Moreau? No, it's just a little girl sticking her face up against the side of one of those things that don't exist anymore, a phone booth!

'The Mailbox' didn't die in the shooting, so one of the nurses (they seem to have agents virtually everywhere) gives her a snoot of some stuff that kills her instantly, just in case she recovered and might talk to somebody! These people seem to have some major issues about information leaking out!!

In the meantime, Dominique ran off into the night after the shooting, and ends up on this anti-establishment guy's boat! This crooner is Angelo(Secret Agent Super Dragon)Infanti! He serenades Dominique with this sweet song he wrote! "I don't like buildings, I don't like the subway, I don't like week days, I don't like the office, I only like luxury hotels, I only like dough, I only like Sundays, I only like mink, I only like cars, I only like caviar, I only like stars, I only like jaguars......" etc.

I had to include this shot, because it reflected the way I felt watching this movie a lot of the time!

Obviously, some of this is tongue in cheek! If the sub-titles look a little funky, I think it's whoever did it, didn't quite have a handle on the English language! Doesn't matter though, the end result is the same!

The local authorities have been monitoring the whole scene! I love these two shots, and the juxtaposition between the cops in private drinking beer and chowing, versus on the street, looking all official!

The last guy bites the pill, and the dust after another 15 minutes of chase, so now it's the always interesting Klaus Kinski's turn as Torpédo I ! The Boss lady Hélène doesn't know what to make of Klaus's character! He's a bit too loose for this organization (so he must be REALLY good)!!

Dominique remains on the boat, but they have figured out where she is! Everybody wants to kill everybody else, because nobody knows that nobody else doesn't even know anything!

The guy who owns the boat who was singing the song seems like he's a character that matters, but once Klaus boards the boat, he unceremoniously kills him too!

Klaus pursues Dominique, but falls through a big hole and breaks his back! He's failed, so he wants to die, and the authorities don't mind if he does, because they don't need him any more since they caught his Boss lady!

Someone even higher up decides that they need to make sure that the Boss doesn't talk either, and Dominique, who still doesn't know anything, gets taken in by the authorities!

What you do now, and where you go from here is all up to you!

6 comments:

Grant said...

That scene you describe about the shooting of the husband and the female partner is believable in a sad way, because people are willing to kill each other for THAT reason sooner than a lot of really concrete reasons. I'll bet some real-life spies really HAVE been killed over adultery instead of anything to do with their spying missions!

Eegah!! and Tabonga! said...

That might be true Grant, but what makes this film such a fustercluck is it's all based on misconceived conceptions!

Dr. Theda said...

Klaus Kinski always a great "character actor"... upon having been chosen to portray "Nosferatu (1979)... he remarked the "ugliness has its own rewards"....

Eegah!! and Tabonga! said...

I took a class one time on the films of Werner Herzog. My first exposure to Klaus Kinski was "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God!" What a movie!! After that I wanted to see every thing the man had ever did! What a guy!

TABONGA! said...

I'll never forget the day I spent on the set with Klaus on TIMESTALKERS, especially when he drove a 4-wheeler through the lunch area with everyone scattering! The dude could really handle a horse though, impressive!

Anonymous said...

Noelle Adam. Remember her in the Wonders of Aladdin where she is suspended by her wrists naked with her bare feet over hot coals?

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