Seven Golden Men Strike Back (1966)

As the title implies, Seven Golden Men Strike Back (1966) is sequel to the previous year's Seven Golden Men, a comedic heist movie about a gang who specialise in gold bullion robberies and attempt to double cross each other in the aftermath of a successful job.  Seven Golden Men Strike Back reunites the cast, along with director Marco Vicario, to essentially repeat the formula.  Except that this time, rather than simply being a parody of the heist genre, it also wanders firmly into Eurospy territory, parodying that genre as well.  The 'Golden Men' themselves comprise of six guys of different European nationalities, led by Albert the Professor, the brains behind the operation who is, apparently, British, (although played by Frenchman Philippe Leroy.  All seven happily conform to national stereotypes, with Albert a stiff and stuffy Brit, Adolf a German with authoritarian (and occasionally even Nazi) attributes and so on.  (To be fair, none of the film's characters rise above the stereotypical).  Albert is assisted by the lovely Giorga, who is just as duplicitous as the rest of them when it comes to the spoils of their criminal enterprises.  This time around, they find themselves captured by US agents early on and find themselves assigned to a secret mission to kidnap the Fidel Castro-like dictator of an unnamed Latin American country.  Whilst achieving this objective, the Professor and the other 'Golden Men' also use the resources provided by the US - including a submarine - to steal a shipload of gold bullion anchored in the Latin American country's main port.

Inevitably, the double crosses start as soon as the ship is at sea, with Adolf and Alfred conspiring to steal the bullion for themselves once they reach the island where it is to be offloaded, (an island the Professor was granted sovereignty over as the price for kidnapping the general).  The general, meanwhile, has become so infatuated with Giorgia, who had seduced him as part of the kidnap plot, that he agrees to switch allegiance from the USSR to the US and is returned to his country, where he plots with Giorga to double-cross the Professor and the others for the gold.  As a further complication, the US Navy blockades the Professor's island to prevent him from shipping the gold elsewhere, thereby effectively rendering it valueless.  The Professor, however, devises a way to secretly ship it to Geneva, re-uniting the warring factions of the 'Golden Men' in order to carry it out.  With the gold in Geneva, but seized by the UN, the various factions converge on the city with a view to steal it back, then try to double cross each other once more.  As a lightweight caper film, Seven Golden Men Strike Back is reasonably entertaining, but its plot far too repetitive with its various crosses and double crosses, none of which are particularly sophisticated.  Indeed, the whole thing is quite predictable, springing little in the way of surprises, despite having some well-staged heist sequences, which it tends to throw away rather perfunctorily, rather than making proper set-pieces of them.  Moreover, despite continually being told that the Professor is some kind of criminal genius, none of schemes actually seem especially clever.  But, as with most pulp-style Italian films of the era, it does all look very good, with excellent production design and all of its bright colours, costumes and Bond-style gadgetry, including jet packs, futuristic submarine interiors, giant magnets and mini subs, gives it a distinct fumetti feel.