I will spare any reader the lecture on Freud – if, indeed, I could even provide you with one. We have all heard, casually or otherwise, the psychoanalytic ideas pertaining to men; women and fear before – fear of one's mother or the opposite gender or whatever else is on offer, but of course all conveniently sub-consciously: we know what we think but have no idea that we think it. Somewhere at the heart of "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" there is a reason to fear women; to fear their beauty and their company – to be sceptical as to their motives and to be mindful as to their ideas. The decade of the 1960's was a time of extraordinary change, no less on the issue of women in the Western hemisphere – abortions; easier access to a divorce; better opportunities on various career ladders are but three items which revolutionised a female's "place" in society. "The Million Eyes of Sumuru", certainly a piece of its time, is the strange amalgamation of these two articles crashing head first into one another: women are powerful and independent – they have a newfound sense of freedom and power; they are capable of things they were deprived of previously. They are to be at once both feared and found attractive. The fact that those responsible for the film considered it befitting to depict aspects of these psychoanalytic/post-feminist notions as some kind of horror piece is interesting. Alternatively, the film is merely a somewhat strange and relatively incompetent 80 minute long thriller which is ultimately both too uninteresting and too confused of its own individual identity to be something really worth recommending. Shirley Eaton is the eponymous Sumuru; a woman whose origins are not provided nor whose overall vision is ever fully explained. She is the stock movie antagonist – somebody who wants world domination and she plans said conquest from the confines of an island just off the coast of Hong Kong. She presides there with a small army of women aged between 18 and 35: they are beautiful, but deadly - in the opening scene, Sumuru kills 19 men with one bomb explosion on the mainland. Arriving home, the women are coldly watching on as a comrade uses her thighs to choke a man to death. The whole operation reeks of a cross between the Czech-based "Other World Kingdom" and the infamous "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant".This combination of terror and heightened sexuality is the thrust behind Sumuru's plan: to send each of these gorgeous girls out to seduce and marry the richest men in the world. Sumuru assumes that, once they meet grizzly ends, most of the money will be left to their new muses – money which will all come back to Sumuru who'll thus be able to fund her campaign to take over the world.On another strand, Nick West (Nader) and Tommy Carter (Avalon) are CIA agents holidaying in Italy. Carter, the younger man, likes his girls whereas West appears more prudent – early nights and an oral affirmation that he does not force himself upon anyone seems to characterise him. They become entangled in Sumuru's plan when a murder in their vicinity that she ordered was already connected to somebody they knew, and after a bit of prodding and poking, both men are in the Far-East. West is later forced into working for Sumuru as they seek to kill a local tycoon, while Carter spends most of the film trying to find and save him.In spite of the globe-trotting; the high-concept idea; the efficiency in how the enemy is conveyed to us and the plot of world domination, it is remarkable as to how the film does not really lift off. We are distracted too often by other things: Why is Central European Klaus Kinski cast as somebody from Hong Kong? Why doesn't the lead react as he should when he is provided a tour of the villain's lair? Why do characters act with remarkable inconsistently throughout as per their established outlooks on life? The film is not without a sprinkling of substance – it allows both Sumuru and West to seem to come to question their outlooks on life and the world. Eaton's character punishes one of her girls early on with a death sentence for the "crime" of falling in love, but then appears to come to quite like our lead agent – providing him in the process ample opportunity (too much to be consistent with her views, hence why we sense it to be so central) to return that fondness. West, comparatively, who begins the film with a cautious attitude towards women, seems to fall under a spell of promiscuity the longer he stays on the enemy's island. By the end, he seems to have fallen for his gaoler and realised the pleasures one can derive from sexually submitting to a woman. This, however, makes the film sound more substantial than it actually is. It is difficult to entirely work out what point the film was trying to make. Many have laughed the whole thing off as camp nonsense – an idiotic piece of its time and era. It seems to me it had something to say about the way men and women co-exist; that sex, love and power are too interlinked with one another as elements to ignore one or all of them. The sexualisation of our culture in the years since it was made, not to mention the more prominent role women have had in where we live, have had an incredible impact on our civilisation - "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" seems to have been made by people aware we were heading into a brave-ish new world, where girls; sex; power; mass-influence and Technicolor would be more prominent, but it is a very difficult piece to be entirely enthused by.

Playing the lead role as Su-Muru is that golden Bond girl Shirley Eaton from Goldfinger. Shirley is a female version of Fu Manchu and I can just hear Great Britain's man in the east Nayland Smith referring to her as an Oriental She Devil.Wilfrid Hyde-White of British Intelligence has handed off the problem of Su-Muru and her thousands of bikini clad agents over to our CIA and its agents George Nader and Frankie Avalon. Like Fu Manchu her ambition is to rule the world. Can't say the girl doesn't have high goals.For Nader he was approaching a nadir of his career. He was one of those before Stonewall tragedies of a gay man who was getting very tired of living a double life. As for Avalon the Beach movies were coming to a halt and a new music scene took over with that quartet from Great Britain in the latter part of the Sixties. You take what work you can get.The comedy here falls embarrassingly flat and the players look like they're waiting for their checks to clear. Hope they did.

I could barely stand to watch this movie. Frankie Avalon is irritating as the comic relief sidekick, and George Nader is the creepy, smug, smarmy 'hero.' I found myself hoping they would get killed a quarter way into the movie. The villainesses in this movie are false eyelashed, tightly outfitted (practical for spy maneuvers), and brainless in that sixties spy movie way. If they were trying to make a farce, they failed because it is not funny. If they were trying to make a 'straight' spy movie, they failed because it is horrendously lacking. I cannot recommend one thing about this movie. I originally saw this movie as part of the original KTMA season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I felt that they had trouble even mocking this movie.

This flick was always on a "double-bill" because nobody in it (including one of the leads, Frankie Avalon - who starred in Beach Movies before this) was REALLY A-list quality talent, except for the beautiful Ms. Shirley Eaton (Painted-gold girl in GOLDFINGER). The plot is wack-city on a bad dexedrine trip with ancient greed or something. The sacriligious testament to Z-movie cultures exemplifies NOTHING! This flick isn't even EVIL or robotic, it's just a zenith of confusion ("plot"-wise), let alone there's some beautiful babes spouting Amazon-like platitudes about illusions of purity.Needless to say, this sounds like a turkey (and technically it is), but it's an exploitation film without any known characteristic (sex, violence, bikers, horror..etc.) and manages to make you believe that these characters are actually believing what they're saying. George Nader was never great shakes as an actor, but had a lengthy career without having "known" talent or good hair. Shirley Eaton, one of the brightest, most beautiful and enchanting Brits of the 50's and 60's never gets to show something. But you have to check this one out. I give it a high (7) for this kind of thing rating, ..only because everyone involved SEEMS convinced it's a REAL PLOT! Anyway, give it a shot (if you can find it). Quite enjoyable in a sleepy, demented way.