So much average

Best movie ever!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I like Klaus Kinski, very much, but not in this, he has a role (actually double small role) absolutely stupid. The whole film is stupid. Frankie Avalon, George Nader and Shirley Eaton can't act, they never did. Wilfrid Hyde-White is probably the most annoying person in movies ever. The whole story is a big nonsense, everything is stupid, nothing attractive or enjoyable in this movie.

I will spare any reader the lecture on Freud – if, indeed, I could even provide you with one. We have all heard, casually or otherwise, the psychoanalytic ideas pertaining to men; women and fear before – fear of one's mother or the opposite gender or whatever else is on offer, but of course all conveniently sub-consciously: we know what we think but have no idea that we think it. Somewhere at the heart of "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" there is a reason to fear women; to fear their beauty and their company – to be sceptical as to their motives and to be mindful as to their ideas. The decade of the 1960's was a time of extraordinary change, no less on the issue of women in the Western hemisphere – abortions; easier access to a divorce; better opportunities on various career ladders are but three items which revolutionised a female's "place" in society. "The Million Eyes of Sumuru", certainly a piece of its time, is the strange amalgamation of these two articles crashing head first into one another: women are powerful and independent – they have a newfound sense of freedom and power; they are capable of things they were deprived of previously. They are to be at once both feared and found attractive. The fact that those responsible for the film considered it befitting to depict aspects of these psychoanalytic/post-feminist notions as some kind of horror piece is interesting. Alternatively, the film is merely a somewhat strange and relatively incompetent 80 minute long thriller which is ultimately both too uninteresting and too confused of its own individual identity to be something really worth recommending. Shirley Eaton is the eponymous Sumuru; a woman whose origins are not provided nor whose overall vision is ever fully explained. She is the stock movie antagonist – somebody who wants world domination and she plans said conquest from the confines of an island just off the coast of Hong Kong. She presides there with a small army of women aged between 18 and 35: they are beautiful, but deadly - in the opening scene, Sumuru kills 19 men with one bomb explosion on the mainland. Arriving home, the women are coldly watching on as a comrade uses her thighs to choke a man to death. The whole operation reeks of a cross between the Czech-based "Other World Kingdom" and the infamous "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant".This combination of terror and heightened sexuality is the thrust behind Sumuru's plan: to send each of these gorgeous girls out to seduce and marry the richest men in the world. Sumuru assumes that, once they meet grizzly ends, most of the money will be left to their new muses – money which will all come back to Sumuru who'll thus be able to fund her campaign to take over the world.On another strand, Nick West (Nader) and Tommy Carter (Avalon) are CIA agents holidaying in Italy. Carter, the younger man, likes his girls whereas West appears more prudent – early nights and an oral affirmation that he does not force himself upon anyone seems to characterise him. They become entangled in Sumuru's plan when a murder in their vicinity that she ordered was already connected to somebody they knew, and after a bit of prodding and poking, both men are in the Far-East. West is later forced into working for Sumuru as they seek to kill a local tycoon, while Carter spends most of the film trying to find and save him.In spite of the globe-trotting; the high-concept idea; the efficiency in how the enemy is conveyed to us and the plot of world domination, it is remarkable as to how the film does not really lift off. We are distracted too often by other things: Why is Central European Klaus Kinski cast as somebody from Hong Kong? Why doesn't the lead react as he should when he is provided a tour of the villain's lair? Why do characters act with remarkable inconsistently throughout as per their established outlooks on life? The film is not without a sprinkling of substance – it allows both Sumuru and West to seem to come to question their outlooks on life and the world. Eaton's character punishes one of her girls early on with a death sentence for the "crime" of falling in love, but then appears to come to quite like our lead agent – providing him in the process ample opportunity (too much to be consistent with her views, hence why we sense it to be so central) to return that fondness. West, comparatively, who begins the film with a cautious attitude towards women, seems to fall under a spell of promiscuity the longer he stays on the enemy's island. By the end, he seems to have fallen for his gaoler and realised the pleasures one can derive from sexually submitting to a woman. This, however, makes the film sound more substantial than it actually is. It is difficult to entirely work out what point the film was trying to make. Many have laughed the whole thing off as camp nonsense – an idiotic piece of its time and era. It seems to me it had something to say about the way men and women co-exist; that sex, love and power are too interlinked with one another as elements to ignore one or all of them. The sexualisation of our culture in the years since it was made, not to mention the more prominent role women have had in where we live, have had an incredible impact on our civilisation - "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" seems to have been made by people aware we were heading into a brave-ish new world, where girls; sex; power; mass-influence and Technicolor would be more prominent, but it is a very difficult piece to be entirely enthused by.

Silly as this movie may be, it does evoke a certain aspect of 1960s culture, so if you're nostalgic for beehive hair-dos, go-go boots, narrow neckties, white lipstick, etc -- sit back and enjoy. The plot and acting here are beneath notice but the pace is snappy and it does have a few oddball moment of note. See Frankie Avalon acting tough and throwing a hand grenade! See Wilfred Hyde-White slumming it! See George Nader in chains being whipped by Shirley Eaton! This whipping scene, in fact, is the movie's highlight. Not only does a bare-chested Nader look pretty good for a man in his mid-40s, but note that his belt is unbuckled. Did the wicked Su-muru plan to pull down his pants after the whipping? Inquiring minds want to know!

This (like Satan in High Heels, Myra Breckinridge, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) is one of those unknown delights produced by the Fab, Mod, Decadent Decade of the Sixties. The child of twisted, tacky sleazemeister Harry Allan Towers (sort of the UK's answer to Russ Meyers--somebody really ought to do a book on Towers--his collaboration with Spanish schlock artist Jesus Franco alone is worth some sort of award for the pinnacle of filmic tackiness), this movie has very little to do with the original novels by Fu Manchu's father, Sax Rohmer. The novels are well worth seeking out--try any online auction site. The best of them is probably The Return of Sumuru and it's pretty easy to get hold of. The original novels were rife with racist attitudes left over from the bygone era of British imperialism, with some new Cold War hysteria and anti-feminist paranoia thrown in for good measure. Sumuru, who was really the heroine, spent most of the novels lolling around nude on mink rugs smoking endless cigarettes or stalking around in high heels sipping liqueur and pondering how ugliness was the root of all that was wrong with the modern world. Rohmer came from an era when homosexuality simply wasn't mentioned so some of the lesbian implications of Sumuru's paradise were glossed over with almost unbelievable naivete. Trust Harry Allan Towers not to let THAT moxie slip past his capable paws. He even includes Klaus Kinski as a gay man marked for death by Sumuru--perhaps because he couldn't be seduced by any of her agents (though I'm sure he would have LOVED to have helped her with her wardrobe, had she given him a chance).As Sumuru, Shirley Eaton chews up the scenery with tremendous eclat, and gets fantastic dramatic mileage out of that cigarette holder. Check out her new autobiography for some behind the scenes anecdotes about the filming of the two movies (and the true story of how Towers shamelessly grabbed footage from the Rio film and inserted it in the Blood of Fu Manchu without Shirley's knowledge). Frankie Avalon, George Nader and Wilfred Hyde-White are all ridiculous as Sumuru's opponents, which is exactly as it should be. Of Sumuru's agents, my favorite would have to be Helga, as incarnated by the zaftig Maria Rohm (a regular of various Towers productions--I think she was his girlfriend).It is truly tragic that this movie is ONLY available as an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Something this sublimely awful deserves to be savored in pristine form. Picket YOUR video store today, and demand Sumuru movies now!