OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok (1964)

Original title: Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117
Also known as: Shadow of Evil

This is the second installment of the OSS 117 film series from the Kino Lorber set. I reviewed the first one here. It’s also the first OSS 117 film shot in color.

Kerwin Mathews returns as secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codename OSS 117. Fellow agent Christopher Lemmon had been investigating a plague epidemic in India that broke out after health workers began inoculating locals to protect them from cholera. Lemmon had traced tampered vaccines to Hogby Laboratories in Bangkok. When Lemmon is murdered, OSS 117 is sent to Bangkok to pick up the case where Lemmon left off.

André Hunebelle returns as director, a role he’d reprise twice more in the series, with OSS 117: Mission for a Killer (1965) and OSS 117: Double Agent (1968). Hunebelle is also known for directing two of the Fantômas adaptations from the same decade: Fantômas Unleashed (1965) and Fantômas Against Scotland Yard (1967).

Panic in Bangkok was filmed on location in Thailand, and it shows. There are some impressive scenes of the region, including city-life, but also more remote boating villages, something a studio backlot could have never managed.

Robert Hossein plays Dr. Sinn, introduced to us as a hypnotist and psychologist. Hossein gets to build a character whose calm, clinical surface hides much darker ambitions, and the film has fun letting that reveal itself along the way.

Pier Angeli plays Lila Sinn, the doctor’s beautiful and alluring sister. She is, inevitably, the woman OSS 117 finds himself drawn to. Her relationship to Dr. Sinn complicates things in ways that shift back and forth across the film. That tension continues throughout the story.

OSS 117 also gets a capable ally in the Bangkok office, M. Sonsak (Akhom Makaranond). Sonsak is a helper/sidekick who ends up doing a lot of the legwork alongside OSS 117 in cracking the case. Makaranond makes the most of the role, and it’s a performance worth singling out.

The hand-to-hand fight scenes are a highlight. They are action-packed, thrilling, and clearly well choreographed. Credit for that goes to Claude Carliez, Hunebelle’s regular stunt coordinator, who staged the action throughout as he did in the previous film.

Panic in Bangkok takes everything that worked about OSS 117 Is Unleashed and expands the canvas to include color, a real location halfway across the world, and a villain with grander, stranger ambitions than anything the first film attempted. It’s a step up in scope, even if it doesn’t always tighten the pacing to match. Mathews remains an easy, likable lead, Hossein makes for a memorable villain, and Carliez’s action choreography keeps things moving whenever the plot threatens to slow down. For fans of ’60s Eurospy, carrying on from the first Kino Lorber disc, this is a worthy follow-up, and a good sign for the rest of the series.