Sergio Grieco's 'Mission Bloody Mary' was the first of three Eurospy pictures to star the late Ken Clark ( no, not that Ken Clark! ) as C.I.A. agent 'Dick Molloy' a.k.a. agent 077. His first assignment is a carbon-copy of 'Thunderball' - a new type of atomic bomb ( codenamed 'The Bloody Mary' ) which can fit into a briefcase has been stolen, and Dick must recover it before it winds up in China. The Russians want it too, along with a criminal mastermind known only as 'Black Lily' ( I kid you not! ). Much running, fighting, shooting, and fornicating ensues. The chase takes Dick from Paris to Barcelona and then to Greece.Nice location filming and some of the action scenes - particularly a rooftop chase and a fight in a train clearly inspired by the one in 'From Russia With Love' - are well executed, but overall I found this a disappointment. Clark has all the charm of a battered and bruised nightclub bouncer. Worse, the script does not give him any good lines. Another reviewer wonders if he might have inspired the Leslie Nielsen character in 'Spy Hard'. I'm wondering whether or not Arthur Mullard based his performance as 'Wally Briggs' in 'Romany Jones' on him. Not much gadgetry either. Dick has a knife in his watch to help him cut through his bonds, and a device for reconstructing paper from ashes but that's about it. It never moves into first gear, playing on one level throughout. There is not even a decent villain - the 'Black Lily' turns out to be as menacing as 'Matthew Lilley' of 'Get Some In!'. As 'Dr.Elsa Freeman', Helga Line is smoking hot. The beautiful Mitsouko was seen in the opening moments of 'Thunderball' as 'Madame LaPorte'.The theme song was by Ennio Morricone, a busy chap in those days.Hard to believe but Dick returned in 'From The Orient With Fury' ( 1966 ) and 'Special Mission Lady Chaplin' ( 1967 ).

Perhaps due to being more easily available on DVD than many other Eurospy movies, "Mission Bloody Mary" has a reputation of being one of the best entries in this vastly prolific genre. For the first hour or so you may find yourself wondering if that reputation is fully deserved, as it seems to be a competent but routine outing; however in the last half hour there are several clever plot twists that ultimately do make "Mission Bloody Mary" an above-average entry in the genre. There are the usual glamorous locations, including Paris, Barcelona and Athens, and some nifty gadgets, including a blade hidden inside a torchlight, and a liquid that enables our hero to reconstruct and read a message written on a piece of paper which had been burned to ashes! There is also a train fight that's very reminiscent of the Bond-Red Grant fight in "From Russia With Love". But one sequence that you will NOT find in a Bond film is agent 077's female contact baring her breasts (we don't see them) to show him her "distinguishing features"!. **1/2 out of 4.

Virile blond stud Ken Clark slugs and shoots his way from Paris to Madrid and back in "Mission Bloody Mary." Directed with momentum by "Beast with a Gun" director Sergio Grieco, this fast-moving secret agent escapade qualifies as an above-average but low-budget knock-off of the fourth Sean Connery James Bond epic "Thunderball." The first installment in a three film franchise about tenacious CIA Agent Dick Molloy, who rates as quite the ladies man, puts him on the trail of a mysterious organization that calls itself the Black Lilly. They use a resourceful impostor to sneak aboard a Strategic Air Command bomber and snatch a top-secret American nuclear warhead which the Black Lilly plans to sell to the Red Chinese unless the Soviets can acquire it first in this melodramatic international Cold War saga of action and intrigue. Of course, the impostor demands a bigger pay-off after he risks his life to seize the bomb for his employers. Naturally, the villains are prepared for this treachery and they barbecue the turncoat for his perfidy. Grieco stages a nimble scramble of a chase across the rooftops in Paris, a fistfight in the hold of a freighter off the Spanish coast, and a savage knockdown drag-out brawl in a train compartment along with several surprises right up to the last five that make this a exciting as well as entertaining adventure opus. Incidentally, the film derives part of its title "Bloody Mary" from the code name for the explosive device. There is an interesting strip tease scene in Paris when a beautiful Asian circulates around a room and allows the gentlemen, usually seated with their women, to remove articles of her clothing. She lets Molloy unsnap her bra which contains a message about a future rendezvous.

I saw this film as an 11 year old as a 10:30am morning show at the local cinema in Bangalore, India. At the time, there were a lot of Italian spy movies about with Ken Clark or Kerwin Matthews and to us under-age kids these 'Adults only' type films were enjoyable forbidden fruit! Of course, it was the post-McCarthy era with the ethos still firmly on the "Red under the bed" attitude and most of us thought the spies were heroes. Among our group, having seen "Bloody Mary" was the 'in' thing and just about everybody was 'in'.