CODE 7 VICTIM 5 (1964)

An annual week-long celebration is the cold intro to this film. Once the mountains are spotted in the background you know it is not New Orleans. The colorful parade traverses the Cape Town streets with instrumentalists and flag wavers creasing the point of view camera as participants pass by. Amid the celebration, however, three clowns commit a murder.

Released in America in 1965 by Columbia Pictures, nearly half of this eight-nine-minute film has a potential license to thrill. I was impressed with the great opening theme music by Johnny Douglas as the credits rolled with his faint nod to the signature sound of the "007" franchise of the period. Coupled with Nicolas Roeg's beautiful panning of Cape Town's bay from high in the mountains, it portends what might have been an international action-packed thriller. Add a winding mountain car chase amid views of the sea between two unlikely vehicles, one can expect a lot of tire-screeching. Another reason for optimism is the presence of the maturely handsome Lex Barker, a New York City private detective with great-looking hair. In the early going the private detective delivers exactly two one-liners ala Mr. Bond of the period. Yet there is not much action for him in town—and his stuntman—outside an early fistfight with attackers. The film starts to lose its intrigue with a somewhat confused and dull final third.

From the moment Barker steps off the Lufthansa Boeing 720 the film has secret agent potential. He never looked better. Yet he is more a puzzle-solver than tough detective womanizer. The engaging script continues as he is quickly met by the beautiful (naturally) Ann Smyrner, secretary of a wealthy German, Walter Rilla, whose butler was the film's opening victim—the reason for Barker's hiring. The heavily French-accented Veronique Vendell plays Rilla's adoptive daughter. The dodgeball-faced tart bounces from "any male" to another. Smyrner is not only an aviation pilot, she also takes the helm of a 1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III 430 CID V8 convertible land yacht as it wallows up the mountains toward the estate. Roeg's distant pan shots of the vehicle add adventure—and no back-screen projection scenery ala Hitchcock's It Takes a Thief from a decade earlier. But look out—they are pursued by an eighteen-year-old Dodge Custom, perhaps on its last legs.

Barker—not to be confused by a word scramble of band leader Les Baxter—is one of two faces Americans will recognize. Less so is perhaps Ronald Fraser as Inspector Lean, Barker's help in solving the case and the film's levity. Fraser's lifestyle is ogling bikini-clad females, always arriving late to assist Barker. With his somewhat disparate facial features—a mouth no wider than his nose flanked by inflated cheeks—the ladies are not too discriminating. Rilla sits poolside in a wheelchair though he is not the least bit physically impaired. Reminiscent of Program Manager, “Guy Caballero,” of SCTV fame. Baxter discovers a well-hidden photograph at the estate of four people marked for death. The butler makes it five. But no reveal of Code 7. Perhaps for good reason: Code 7 officially means “out of service to eat” for American police squads, making the tagline at the top of this poster hilariously misguided.

This British Lion Film Corporation endeavor was written by Harry Alan Towers under the pseudonym Peter Welbeck with a screenplay by Peter Yeldham. With its obvious Ian Fleming influence, the film made a tidy profit. Originally filmed as Table Bay, the current spy craze gave it the obscure Code 7 Victim 5 title—yet again as the more logical Victim Five. The end result is a rather talky mystery as it bounces from location to location. The former Tarzan, Barker shifts to “African Safari” summer wear from JC Penney as he explores a diamond mine, shoots an attacking lion and goes scuba diving with viewers wondering its point in the film. The “point” is the tip of a spear gun's harpoon mysteriously skewering one of the cast. Expect the oft-used battle between good and evil on a gondola lift as it ascends a mountain and an implausible (nee ridiculous) cliff-hanging climactic pursuit.

Note: There is no doubt this film has some 1960s foreign trademarks of abrupt editing and a studio soundtrack seemingly unconnected to any screen action. Code 7 Victim 5 was released on Blu-ray in 2016 with another 1964 South African caper, the talkative and dull, Mozambique—essential with the same production team—as a double feature. It stars a weary Steve Cochran, with an American release eight months after his death. The same or similar Lufthansa Boeing 720 from this film is also used in Mozambique. With the astounding success of the Eurowestern, The Treasure of Silver Lake (1962)—and its six sequels as "Old Shatterhand"—Barker was on a career resurgence in Germany by the time "Code 7" was released.