Director: Giorgio Simonelli
Cast: Franco Franchi, Ciccio Ingrassia, Fernando Rey, Gloria Paul, Dakar

American actor Adam West once said that in the 1960s, there were three big Bs. One of them was of course what he became most famous for, playing the title role in the still loved to this day television show Batman. The second big B of the period was The Beatles. And the third big B was Bond, James Bond to be exact. Not many people know that West actually got an offer to be in not one but two of those Bs. When Sean Connery decided to leave the role of Bond behind after starring in You Only Live Twice, West was approached by Albert Broccoli (the producer behind the James Bond movies) with an offer to replace Connery in the series. West decided to turn down the offer, because he felt that the character of James Bond should always be played by an Englishman, and he later said that he had no regrets turning down the role, especially when he saw how the Australian actor George Lazenby was trashed by the press after he gave the role a try. But West also admitted that he was extremely tempted by the offer Broccoli gave him to play James Bond. Well, who for that matter would not have some sort of desire to play the most famous secret agent character ever created? Just think about it for a few seconds, and you'll get a long list of incentives you'd get from playing Bond. You would be getting into a number of action sequences, some very complex, but being able to instantly shrug off any tension once getting the bad guy or getting away from the bad guy. You'd get to play with a lot of cool high-tech gadgets - what power you'd feel from doing that! And of course, there are all those sexy women you'd encounter and get to fool around with, with the threat of pregnancy not being there (almost) every time.

There was also the total spectacular scale the Bond movies seemed to be increasing in spades with every subsequent entry. I once read a report saying that in the climatic large-scale assault on Ernst Stavro Blofeld's hidden base in You Only Live Twice, audiences went simply nuts because they had never seen anything on the silver screen like it before. It's no wonder that then James Bond was so big in the 1960s... and it's also no wonder that the Bond movies in the 1960s generated a huge number of imitators that played in movie theaters all over the world. There were such Bond clones as the short-lived Flint movies starring James Coburn, as well as the Matt Helm series that had Dean Martin as its chief secret agent. There were even episodes of the Bond inspired television series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that were edited together and released to theaters since there was so much demand for Bond imitations, even if the product had already been widely seen for free. However, looking at all these Bond clones, one will find a certain viewpoint taken with the majority of them. That viewpoint was that of a more humorous vein. Sure, the Bond movies could be outlandish and have some comic relief here and there, but there was always at least one foot down in reality. But the imitators often ran riot with making their product campier and funnier. The public bought it at first, but then like with almost every fad that has come around, eventually the ticket buying audience moved onto other kinds of movies. The craze of imitators probably burnt out quicker than it could have been because when you are making fun of something, quite often a kind of contempt for the entire thing can build quickly.

That's probably why George Lazenby's agent told him in 1969 after On Her Majesty's Secret Service that Bond was on the way out, so move on to other things. Much to Lazenby's regret after parting ways with producer Albert Broccoli, while Bond imitations almost completely died out, the James Bond film franchise lives on to this very day. Since the end of the '60s, there have only been occasional cinematic spoofs of James Bond, and even fewer of them have been successful; one critic said that the first Austin Powers movie milked the last drops out of Bond spoofing. Since my site focuses on unknown movies, I thought that with my recent interest in reviewing a Bond wannabe, to look for one from the 1960s, to increase its chance of you readers not knowing about it before. To further increase its chance of obscurity, I picked an Italian Bond spoof, which was titled on this side of the Atlantic as The Two Crazy Secret Agents. The villain of this movie is named Goldginger (Fernando Rey, French Connection II), which probably informs you that this comedy will be spoofing elements from the Bond movie Goldfinger. It does do that, though Goldginger's scheme isn't to pull off a big robbery. Instead, his secret plan is even more outlandish - to have various world leaders under his command with mind control. To make sure that his evil scheme will be pulled off, he has the actual secret agent 007 (played by a famous European actor in a cameo) knocked off. However, two bumbling photographers played by Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia (both of Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs) managed to get some vital information from 007 before his murder, and they get an idea about Goldginger's dastardly plan. Although they eventually get help from a woman named Marlene (Gloria Paul, Darling Lili), it should come as no surprise that Franco and Ciccio are so inept with everything, stopping Goldginger will be an even bigger undertaking for them than 007 had.

Even when you deal with the idea of James Bond in a comic fashion, you still have to do enough preparation to pull it off successfully, including being technically competent, having a decent story, and having some idea of what the appeal of James Bond is. If you can connect with the audience in those ways, more likely is the possibility you'll pull off your spoofing. However, in those three ways, The Two Crazy Secret Agents doesn't have all that much success. Although it's quite some distance from the soda pop bottle return budgets I have seen in some other Italian movies, all the same the whole enterprise has a kind of slapdash feel to it. For example, several scenes taking place on a highway feel like the film crew drove up to the designated shooting area and then thirty seconds later the camera started rolling. Some interiors don't look too bad, with some sets being constructed, but more often than not it seems the movie filmed on just what was available and convenient. It should then not be too much of a surprise that the central story often seems made up as filming progressed. There are many elements in the story that just seem to be killing time and nothing else, like a subplot when it's established that Goldginger is a master chess player and is seeking worthy opponents. When this subplot ends, it quickly becomes clear that it has absolutely no bearing on the central struggle at all. Well, come to think of it, it does manage to set up an attempted spoof of the moment in Goldfinger when one person via radio and binoculars tries to provide instructions for their partner to win at the game. There are other attempted comic interpretations of moments in Goldfinger that may bring a slight smile to some viewers. The one that works best is when the two heroes in wetsuits over their tuxedoes sneak in via the water with rubber swans on their heads. The soundtrack plays a snatch of the music from the ballet Swan Lake while this unfolds, a light comic touch you might find in a lighter moment of a James Bond movie of this era.

Unfortunately, this is the only Bond element spoof in The Two Crazy Secret Agents that comes close to working. You might think there are endless possibilities with the movie spoofing stuff like Goldfinger's attempted laser castration, or a woman being painted with gold paint, but for some reason they almost come across as poker-faced straight recreations instead of showing them in an absurd angle. It's not the fault of the cast that these recreations fall flat, but the cast has to shoulder various other reasons for the movie's failure to entertain. Despite being the villain, actor Fernando Rey actually gets a lot less screen time than you might think; quite often he's offscreen for long periods, and his Goldginger character during these passages often isn't even mentioned directly or indirectly. Then there are the two leads played by Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. The best way to describe their partnership and their comic style is to imagine if a Jerry Lewis that simply didn't know when he should restrain himself was paired up with a Bud Abbott who severely lacked any kind of personality, comic or other. It should come as no surprise that their comic chemistry is extremely irritating from start to finish. In fairness to Franco and Ciccio, as they were referred to in their long 100+ (!) movie partnership, the English dubbing given to them doesn't do them any favors. It's not just that Franco's dubbed voice would give Jerry Lewis a headache, but that their style of comedy most often seems to depend on their banter with each other. While it's quite possible that their wordplay may have been amusing or even downright funny in the original Italian language, the English dubbing just makes their exchanges seem hostile and very awkward. The wordplay doesn't sound clever at all, with much of it not getting beyond them saying things like, "Bring us TV dinners for our breakfasts!" or when one asks the other if an expensive and fancy car they come across says anything to them, the other responds he can't hear anything.

They don't seem to be in sync with each other like Martin and Lewis, or Abbott and Costello. Instead, it comes across as two people desperately trying to improvise when they have absolutely no improvising skills or practice at the craft at all. It's excruciating and embarrassing to watch. The Two Crazy Secret Agents does give Franco and Ciccio some opportunities to not have to depend on wordplay all of the time, but the humor in those moments is just as dismal. Some of it is very dated, like when they dress up in blackface and Middle Eastern robes, and refer to themselves as "rug peddlers". Or it's stuff that even a young child wouldn't find particularly amusing, such as walking in on someone using a toilet (and we don't even see the person on the toilet). But even gags that have more potential than those don't manage to work due to the shoddy direction of Giorgio Simonelli. When Franco picks up a barbell and his feet slowly sinks into the earth below his feet, it comes across as just yeah, that's it. Jerry Lewis would have run riot with that prop (and actually did in The Nutty Professor, I believe). When Franco and Ciccio have to confront Goldginger's evil henchman Molok (Dakar, Ator The Fighting Eagle), they defeat him by throwing toothpaste and talcum powder into his face. Hilarious. And there are gags that are flat and have absolutely no purpose, as when Franco and Ciccio are suddenly seen riding bicycles for no reason, and knock someone into a pool when they ride past him... and we immediately cut to another scene and the whole bicycling is forgotten. Yeah, that's what I thought too. The Two Crazy Secret Agents is a pretty much completely failed comedy that will insult not just James Bond purists, but even those whose idea of good comedy is simply juvenile slapstick. For some reason, the streaming service I saw this on a while back slapped this simple-minded mess with an "R" rating, but I'm actually all for that, because the rating will potentially mean some parents will forbid their young children from watching it, and the young children will avoid having their minds be completely insulted.

(Posted June 21, 2026)