Brilliant and touching

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is hard to believe that so many people involved in making this film have quite some resume. This one doesn't work at all: the music does not fit, Claudio Brook is totally miscast as a James Bond wannabe, the plot is full of holes and jumpy and the characters are just sketchy. Take a look at one of the extras in the house where the Russians try to hide the girl: he is not even able to sweep the floor with a broom! All in all: a sloppy "effort" of an international team which really serves as an example for all that was wrong with some European productions of these days. If you want to see how it can work - check "Top Job", also featuring Edward G. Robinson in an international production.

Actually more of a spy comedy than a thriller, "The Peking Blonde" is a little confusing at first, but eventually the story (based on a James Chase novel!) and the various conflicting parties involved in it become more clear. Claudio Brook makes for an interesting hero: he's not a spy, but an actor hired to impersonate the husband of an amnesiac woman, who used to be the mistress of a Chinese missile expert, and help her regain her memory. He has no spy skills and he does not care to acquire any spy skills; he's in it only for the money. Brook shows a lot more life in this role than he did in another spy film he made around the same time, "Coplan Saves His Skin". The most beautiful woman in "Peking Blonde" is neither Mireille Darc nor (even) Giorgia Moll, but a redheaded secretary who, at one point, is attacked in her room by two Russians; she fights like a wildcat before they subdue her. But the single most unforgettable moment of this film (at least for me) involves a deadly Asian girl, her toes, and a phone cord - I'll say no more to avoid spoiling it. **1/2 out of 4.

This dreary Cold War adventure with tongue-in-cheek results in a misfire, despite interesting credentials: novel author James Hadley Chase (I hadn't quite realized just how many of his work has been adapted for the screen, particularly from the 50s through the 70s, albeit mostly French-made programmers…such as this one), screenwriter Marc Behm (The Beatles' HELP! [1965]), director Gessner (THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE [1976]), composer Francois de Roubaix (LE SAMOURAI [1967], DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS [1971]), cast (a couple of lovely Godard alumni – Mireille Darc and Giorgia Moll, Bunuel regular Claudio Brook – here making an unsuitable leading man – and, of course, Edward G. Robinson – who's wasted). While occasionally sexy and featuring colorful locations, it's neither very thrilling nor very funny – though being, mercifully, short enough to be palatable.The only other film of Gessner's that I've watched is the similarly international though superior 12+1 (1969) – based on the same source material as Mel Brooks' THE TWELVE CHAIRS (1970) and for which an equally eclectic cast had been assembled, including Sharon Tate (in her last role) and Orson Welles.

This was among a handful of 'sixties crime caper films with Robinson that scarcely were in the theatres before being sold to television. He is a government agent here, and his role is brief. The plot is fast-moving, moving from Europe to Hong Kong as the protagonists chase a jewel known as "the Blue Grape." The younger performers in the leads are adequate; what mars the work is the often laughable dubbing of voices. Robinson's excuse for being involved was that it gave him yet another chance to go abroad and gaze at art treasures.