Directed by reliable journeyman Umberto Lenzi and starring Roger Browne (who began his career in peplum films, but always seemed better-suited to and more comfortable in spy-espionage films), LAST MAN TO KILL has everything the fan of Euro-spy films could want. A witty, sly hero (Browne is excellent here); interesting mid-east location shooting; a plot that is both simple and convoluted at the same time; cheesy lounge-spy music (with an organ that sounds like it was borrowed from Joe Meek's studio!); low-budget props and sets; chases and fights; and even the occasional zoom photography. The dubbed sound effects are outrageous, and in some of the action scenes sound like they could have come from a 1970's Hong Kong martial arts film. This only adds to the fun and excitement of the film! Not much to analyze here--if you are a fan of dubbed Euro-spy action, you'll want to see this one. And Lenzi's fans won't be let down either. My copy is from a pan-and-scan, English-dubbed copy taped off UHF television in the 1980s--unfortunately, the days when we could rely on this kind of entertainment being available regularly and for free are long gone. Roger Browne is also put to good use in the films RIFIFI IN AMSTERDAM and PASSWORD:KILL AGENT GORDON, crime-spy films from the same era. Of course, director Umberto Lenzi made dozens of excellent films in any number of genres--as late as the 90s he was still churning out wonderful low-budget action films such as MEAN TRICKS (see my review) starring Charles Napier.
3 Reviews
Nothing is as it seems
gridoon20249 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
These days, and especially after "The Usual Suspects", the everything-was-a-lie movie is fairly common, but back in the 1960s a story of this type must have been a more daring experiment. "Last Man To Kill" supposedly tells the story of a master thief who is offered a large sum of money to find a stock broker's kidnapped son, and after he finds him buried, an even larger sum of money to avenge his death. But that's only "supposedly" - almost nothing and nobody in this movie is quite what or who they seem to be. The final twists make "Last Man To Kill" worth sitting through, but the rest of the movie is not very interesting, though it does have its moments, like an apple grenade! Unfortunately, the exotic locations of Egypt and the cute girls were hard to appreciate in the atrocious, way-below-VHS-level print I saw - but somehow I doubt we'll ever get a remastered version of this obscure flick. ** out of 4.
Does the job
Leofwine_draca24 April 2022
Another reasonably entertaining film from Umberto Lenzi. I don't think he's quite as adapt here as he was in his earlier swashbucklers or later polizia movies but this is still fun enough as a typical Eurospy adventure. The ubiquitous Roger Browne hunts for a nuclear scientist around the world with the usual treachery, hand to hand combat, and beautiful femme fatales. It does the job.
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