Dead Run (1967)

- Geheimnisse in goldenen Nylons
“Do you have a wristwatch that shoots bullets?”, 1 August 2019

The Quick Pitch:  A small-time thief “accidentally” steals some top secret documents.  The thief travels across Europe hoping to sell the documents while staying one step ahead of (1) the spies he stole from and (2) a CIA agent trying to recover the secrets.

Dead Run is a nice little Eurospy film that I don’t think I’d ever heard of before watching it the other night.  IMDb lists the film as a drama/thriller, but there’s also a bit of comedy thrown in that I found appealing. The plot is interesting, but maybe a little more complicated that it needed to be.  The location shots are fabulous as everyone races across Europe. I always love a film filled with 60s era European locations. The film stars Peter Lawford. While he’s not what I envision when I think 60s spy movie, the light-hearted tone of Dead Run fit his style fairly well.  He’s joined by a rock-solid cast featuring the gorgeous (and often quite funny) Ira von Furstenberg, the even more gorgeous Maria Grazia Buccella, and a host of well-known German actors, including Werner Peters, Wolfgang Preiss, and the menacing Horst Frank. I really enjoyed the way Lawford and von Furstenberg played off each other.  I felt some real chemistry. But the real star is Georges Geret as Carlos, the man with the stolen documents. He’s an interesting character – fun to watching in some instances, tragic in others. Overall, it’s a better cast that I would have expected. 

My only complaint (and the main reason I’m not rating Dead Run any higher) is that I felt the movie ran out of steam about halfway through.  After a fantastic and interesting start, the movie slowed down a bit too much for my liking.

6/10