Upcoming Spy DVDs: Jerry Cotton Revival

The new Jerry Cotton movie (a comedic update of the classic Sixties George Nader Eurospy series), which opened in Germany last month, is already available for pre-order from Amazon.de on DVD, Blu-ray and Special Edition Blu-ray.  It will be available on October 31. Unfortunately, it's impossible to say from these listings if there will be any English subtitles, but sadly I would doubt it.  Still, you can at least watch another trailer on any of those Amazon listings, and though it's in German, you get a pretty good idea of the film.  (And watch for Casino Royale's comic relief scene-stealer Jürgen Tarrach!) It seems to play things a bit straighter than either the previous director/star pairing, the Edgar Wallace send-up Die Wixxer, or the French Eurospy revival parodies featuring OSS 117.  Jerry Cotton looks to be a fairly straightforward action/comedy rather than a spoof; the comedy seems to be generated by the characters (some rather silly) rather than the premise.  I really hope that the rest of the world has a chance to see this eventually, because I'm very curious to see how Jerry's been updated for the 21st Century.

Read my review of the Jerry Cotton movie Death in a Red Jaguar here.
Read my review of the Jerry Cotton movie Death and Diamonds here.
Read more about the new Jerry Cotton movie here, and see the teaser trailer here.

Jerry Cotton Soundtrack Back In Print

Johann at the Eurospy Forum has sounded the alert that Peter Thomas's wonderful, jazzy music for the Jerry Cotton Eurospy series will be reissued on CD on March 12 to coincide with the release of the new Jerry Cotton movie in Germany. The music was previously available on a great, long out-of-print two-disc set called 100% Cotton. That set contained sixty-four tracks; the new Beat Records release Allscore Media release, called Jerry Cotton: FBI's Top Man, contains only twenty-eight. However, six of those are previously unreleased and two more were not on the original CD, and only previously available on a rare vinyl issue. So to have every possible piece of Jerry Cotton music available, a Eurospy fan would need to track down both CD releases. But just to have a good sampling of the score music, the Beat Records release seems like a good bet, and as added incentive, Beat's website claims all the tracks are remastered and the disc will come with a 24-page booklet (in German and English). Thomas's music isn't typical, Barryesque spy music; it's unique, it's jazzy and it's lots of fun! Perhaps the best compliment I can pay these scores actually comes from my girlfriend. When she heard the CD playing in my car once, she was surprised and said, "I thought those movies were low budget?" Indeed, there's nothing low budget-sounding about Thomas's music, and it elevates the films.

Jerry Cotton: FBI's Top Man is available for preorder on Amazon.
View complete track list and full details at the Allscore Media website.

Read my review of the Jerry Cotton movie Death in a Red Jaguar here.
Read my review of the Jerry Cotton movie Death and Diamonds here.
Read more about the new Jerry Cotton movie here.

Movie Review: Jerry Cotton In Death And Diamonds aka Dynamit in grüner Seide (1968)

Movie Review: Jerry Cotton In Death And Diamonds aka Dynamit in grüner Seide (1968)

While Jerry Cotton is technically an FBI man and not a spy, most of the movies–especially the later, color ones–still situate themselves firmly in the James Bond-inspired Eurospy genre by way of fantastic Bondian stunts and situations. Not so much with Death and Diamonds, which plays as more of a heist movie (or crime movie) than spy. There aren’t even a lot of stunts this time around, at least not after Jerry earns some points for needlessly using a crane to enter an apartment full of thugs in the pre-credits sequence. (Though there are a few doozies at the end that make up for the dearth in the middle!)

The FBI, as usual, wants to discover the identity of a big-time crime boss, this one named Stone. Stone’s gang are planning a heist in Los Angeles, so the Bureau inserts Jerry Cotton (American actor George Nader) undercover, posing as a safe cracker named Rick Trevor, known to the gang only by reputation. Rick is apparently a skilled piano player, so Jerry has to brush up on his ivory-tickling with his old teacher: his mother!

It’s not every day that we get to meet a Eurospy’s mom. Mrs. Cotton worries about her son as any mother might, and he lies to her, insisting his assignment isn’t dangerous. That’s not much comfort, though, because she remembers that the last assignment he said wouldn’t be dangerous put her son in the hospital for seven months!

The piano playing isn’t the biggest obstacle Jerry will have to overcome, though, to pose as Rick. You see, unfortunately (for the audience), Rick is British. That’s right; Jerry goes undercover as a British safe cracker. And yes, that means an accent. I think Dick Van Dyke was his dialect coach. It’s an awful, awful British accent, the kind that leans primarily on adding "old man" to the end of every sentence. Really, it wouldn’t fool a five-year-old, let alone a gang of ruthless criminals. But somehow... it does. I guess that’s because he’s also got the piano-playing chops to back it up. (That’s a joke; mercifully, he never has to actually play the piano.)

The L.A. setting results in some cool period shots of late Sixties L.A. scenery (mainly freeways and street signs) generously interspersed with incongruous German locations. The gang operates out of a pool hall/nightclub (and, apparently, dayclub, because the go-go dancers are in full swing and the ladies are in their evening best when he first arrives in the middle of the afternoon) called the Green Silk Bar. (Hence the otherwise nonsensical German title, Dynamite in Green Silk.) The gang themselves are the usual assortment of familiar Euro character actor faces (Carl Mohner, Dieter Eppler) and dim-witted thug personalities, easily pitted against each other when the time comes. There are also two very attractive ladies in the mix: good blonde Lana (Silvia Solar of Umberto Lenzi’s giallo Eyeball, Danger!! Death Ray and several other Eurospy movies, including a previous Jerry Cotton entry) and evil brunette Mabel (Marlies Dräger, who really should have worked more, but didn’t do anything else of note except the Edgar Wallace thriller Terror on Half Moon Street). Eventually, the brunette ties the blonde to a post somewhere in Barstow and whips her to make Jerry talk, injecting the requisite bit of sleaze to a mostly chaste genre entry.

For most of the middle of the film, Jerry is undercover with the gang, constantly arousing their suspicion, but never enough so to get himself killed. Not even by perpetually sounding like one of the American voices on the Beatles cartoon show. The big heist itself is kind of neat, involving an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner to suck up the diamonds by remote control, kind of like that Season 6 episode of Mission: Impossible, "Casino." (I wonder if its writers saw Death and Diamonds?) Of course the big problem with the heist scenario is that in a heist movie–especially of the Sixties Euro-caper variety–we're conditioned to root for the heist to be successful. So by inserting Jerry as an undercover man trying to throw a monkey wrench in the plan at every opportunity, we can't help but root against him. (Even more than we already are because of that really annoying accent.)

Once Jerry’s cover is finally blown, he can at last drop the accent and everyone can breathe a huge sigh of relief. He’s also free now, of course, to openly battle the gang, and that finally leads to some of Jerry’s trademark stunts. One in particular almost singlehandedly makes up for the earlier lack: Jerry perfects the coolest way ever of getting into a car! As the car careens towards him, he charges at it head-on and leaps, feet-first, smashing through the windshield and knocking out the driver! Then we cut to a closer shot inside the car, and Jerry has somehow managed to turn himself around and take the gun from Dräger in the backseat and turn it on her. Maybe it was sloppy editing, but I like to believe that a widescreen version would reveal Jerry doing a tricky bit of gymnastics inside the car and twisting himself around in time to make that work. Either way, the stunt is awesome enough that a flub is forgivable, like when James Bond drives his Mustang out of the alley on the wrong two wheels in Diamonds Are Forever. Plus, Jerry offers up a witticism to keep us from dwelling on continuity issues: "Well, it looks like this car’s had it. Let’s move on to yours, shall we?"


Speaking of cars, there’s sadly not much of Jerry’s Jag this time out, but we do get a nice white Mustang (hers that he’s referring to) and a motorcycle. Jerry commandeers the latter to pursue the bad guys out of their garage at the end when they escape in a fake police car, dressed as cops. And their driveway leads right into a quarry. There’s always a quarry at the end! Wherever they are in the world! This one takes place in my own neighborhood, and I never, ever realized that there was a giant quarry just off the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica! But somehow the quarry leads them from the house onto the PCH, and Jerry gives chase as the infectious Cotton Theme blares.

The baddies drive their police car to a waiting yacht... and once again, the geography doesn’t quite add up. Things seem to shift suddenly from Santa Monica to, I’m guessing, somewhere in Germany, because there’s suddenly a convenient bridge over what should be the Pacific Ocean. Whatever; geography doesn’t matter. After all, a bridge probably means a good stunt, right? Right! I suspect Jerry’s never met a bridge he didn’t jump off of, and this one proves no exception. In fact, he plunges from a really staggering height (it’s very impressive!) onto the awning roof of this yacht. (Of course the yacht has an awning roof. You need a lot of awnings when Jerry’s around.) There aren’t a lot of stunts in Death and Diamonds, but the ones there are are good ones. These, and Solar and particularly Dräger, make it well worth your while to sit through Jerry’s intolerable British accent for a breezy hour and a half.


After watching a few Jerry Cotton movies, though, I’m left with a burning question: Is Jerry himself supposed to be gay? Did the first heroic gay secret agent actually beat Jacob Keane to the screen by a good forty years? (And even beat Timothy Dalton’s character in Permission To Kill by a decade?) I know George Nader was gay, but I didn’t think the character was supposed to be. But there are just so many moments that would seem to support that, particularly in Jerry’s interactions with the many beautiful women who cross his path. In Death in a Red Jaguar, Jerry walked right past the open arms of the grateful damsel he’d just saved and into embraces of his male colleagues instead. In Death and Diamonds, when Lana puts her hand pointedly on Jerry’s and says at the end that she wants to be good, good friends, Jerry smiles and earnestly replies, "for a long, long time." In Tony Kendall’s (Kommissar X) mouth that line would somehow come out exceptionally sleazy, and you’d know that he meant friends with serious benefits. But coming from Jerry, I really do think he just means "friends." I suspect Lana is in for a disappointment...

Movie Review: DEATH IN A RED JAGUAR (1968)

Movie Review: Death In A Red Jaguar (1968)

I’ve been familiar with Jerry Cotton for quite a while now, through reading about him in The Eurospy Guide and on Permission To Kill, through listening to Peter Thomas’s weird, awesome, jazzy music on the double CD 100% Cotton, and through seeing Cotton star George Nader in a few other movies, like Lindsay Shonteff’s The Million Eyes of Sumuru. But I’d never actually seen a Cotton movie, as they were–until quite recently–rather hard to come by in the United States. Through those combined other experiences, though, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of who and what Jerry Cotton was. And, honestly, the main thing that kept me from trying too hard to seek them out was Nader. Based on what I’d seen, I wasn’t a fan. Sure, I admire the guy as a person; it took a lot of balls to be a (more or less) openly gay action star in the 1960s. (In fact, by some accounts that choice is what got him banished to Europe, the American studios supposedly preferring to protect the reputation of Nader’s more famous friend, Rock Hudson.) But as an actor, I’ve always find him a little bit repulsive. It might have something to do with that red mesh shirt he ill-advisedly wears all through Sumuru, or it might have to do with his odd, overslicked helmet of hair, but mostly I think it’s his general lack of charm and charisma in the roles I’ve seen him in. Now I’ve got to admit, that’s not a fair way to judge Jerry Cotton. Not because in this particular role Nader suddenly just oozes charm and charisma; quite the opposite in fact. Because in this particular role, charm and charisma simply aren’t required. Jerry’s got other things going for him.

The Jerry Cotton movies are famous for their stunts, and with good reason. While there’s nothing so impressive that it will wow Bond fans used to parachute jumps on skis, what is impressive is the fact that the Jerry Cotton crew tries so hard. Other Eurospy movies often settle for a few fist fights and maybe a knife fight to pass for the requisite action scenes demanded by the genre (and some get away with that just fine, if they have other things going for them), but Jerry Cotton serves up pretty much wall-to-wall action in Death In A Red Jaguar (Der Tod im roten Jaguar), the seventh film in the series. And that’s impressive. One small chunk of the film stays with me most, as director Harald Reinl manages to pack multiple action setpieces into so short a period of time, each one more elaborate than the last.

We start off with a gun and fist fight in a slaughterhouse. Yeah, I know, the slaughterhouse/meat-packing fight is a pretty tired Eurospy cliche (probably because it’s a somewhat unusual yet relatively inexpensive setting), but here it’s well-done (no pun intended). It’s a cut above the rest. (I’ll stop, I’ll stop!) While most Eurospy movies that include slaughterhouse fights give themselves a nice pat on the back after that and then move onto some silly exposition or some ogling of lovely ladies, Reinl doesn’t rest on his laurels. This scene leads immediately into another action sequence, wherein Jerry clings to the underside of a speeding truck. Knowing he’s there, the driver parks it on the railroad tracks and scurries away. Within seconds, a train collides with the truck with an impressive explosion, plowing it out of the way as Jerry manages to keep still between the rails, watching the train cars pass over him. But he still doesn’t rest. He continues in his dogged pursuit of the fleeing bad guy–into a convenient rock quarry. Another familiar location for these things, but I’d say that the ensuing action is actually my favorite rock quarry scene I’ve seen in a spy film! Machine guns pop out of slots in the side of a sinister black van and open fire on our hero as the van speeds away. But Jerry still doesn’t give up!

Thinking fast, he fashions a makeshift zipline out of a hook and a telephone wire, and zips down the wire, across the quarry, intercepting the van and dropping on top of it. Peter Thomas’s infectious Jerry Cotton Theme plays all the while. Of course there’s some dodgy bluescreen action going on, but it’s still a very impressive bit. It’s not over, though. Jerry drops down to the side of the moving van, pulls his gun out, and points it through the passenger window to surprise the driver. But it’s Jerry who’s surprised–and us. What he finds instead of a driver is one of my very favorite Sixties spy tropes: the expressionless mannequin! (This is a variation on the robot, but animated or inanimate, it’s that blank facial expression that really gets me every time these guys pop up in Sixties spy movies or TV shows.) It turns out the van is being operated by remote control by more bad guys up on a cliff! Jerry has ziplined his way right into another deathtrap. Needless to say, the sequence still isn’t over, but I won’t spoil any more of it. I just wanted to share enough to get action fans’ mouths watering a little bit. This is good, exciting stuff! I also love how the bad guys knew Jerry so well–and his love of pulling off ridiculous physical feats–that they had actually anticipated his zipline swashbuckling! How else do you explain their decision to drive their remote-controlled van away so quickly? They must have known he would fashion an improvised zipline to catch up!

Hopefully that little taste of Cotton action will sell the naysayers on why, exactly, Jerry fits into the Eurospy canon. Technically, he’s not a spy; "G-Man Jerry Cotton" is an FBI agent who does most of his sleuthing in the US of A instead of abroad. (Or at least in German locations substituting–sometimes hilariously–for US ones... although there are some legitimate San Francisco settings on display in this one.) The no-nonsense lawman himself is more of a Federal Joe Friday than a James Bond, but his stunts and physical derring-do put him squarely in the 007 camp. You’ll never see Joe Friday ziplining through a quarry onto the top of a van! Besides the exotic locations, all the other trappings one hopes for in a Sixties spy outing are present and accounted for: cool cars (Jerry feels naked without his red Jaguar XKE, hence the title), fun chases with ample rear projection, nifty gadgets (including a car with a tire spike dispenser), beautiful babes (led by Daniela Surina of one of my favorite guilty pleasure gialli, The Dead Are Alive), dastardly villains, double-crosses and, of course, the death-defying stunts. For good measure you've also got Irma Bunt herself, Ilse Steppat, a year before On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

As fun as the action is, though, there are other offputting touches to hamper any purely escapist expectations a bit. There is an abundance of violence toward women (at least four were dead by midway through the film, the fate of most female characters introduced), and even a cute little girl ends up the (offscreen) victim of a creepy, babyfaced, bald killer. At least one female character knows how to defend herself, though, and gets in some good fight moves ("Only a bit of karate," she says modestly when Jerry asks what she did to her assailant). Apparently this is something of an anomaly for the Cotton series, which is too bad because the capable female character makes a good foil for Jerry.

The plot itself is standard-issue cop stuff, pretty much. Jerry investigates a syndicate of hitmen described as "murder by mail order." But clearly, as evidenced by the remote control van with the dummy driver, these villains are more than common crooks. They think like Bond villains, and that’s enough to elevate the run-of-the-mill plot. Furthermore, a Jerry Cotton movie is about the action, not the plot, anyway, and the action–as I’ve mentioned–is top notch! The stylish direction (including lots of great, very Sixties camera moves and competent zooms) and outstanding, offbeat score also help overcome any nascent mundaneness. Overall Death In a Red Jaguar made an excellent introduction to the character, and I’m eager to see more Jerry Cotton movies. (Many are now available on Amazon as DVD-Rs from Sinister Cinema for just $8.99 apiece.)

New German Jerry Cotton Teaser

A teaser trailer has gone up on YouTube for the new, comedic reinvention of Sixties Eurospy mainstay Jerry Cotton. As previously reported, Christian Tramitz will step into George Nader's shoes as G-Man Jerry Cotton, and Christian Ulmen will play his sidekick Phil Decker, now apparently comic relief. Penelope's sister Monica Cruz is the girl; the red Jaguar remains the same. See previous behind-the-scenes videos from the set here.

First Glimpses Of The New Jerry Cotton Movie

The man in the red Jaguar is back! So blare the teaser posters for the 2010 version of Jerry Cotton, Germany's most famous Eurospy reinvented for the age of... the reinvented OSS 117. Yes, it's another Sixties Eurospy hero reimagined in a new comedic take... and I, for one, can't wait! Now we get our first glimpses of the new film. See Christian Tramitz in action as Jerry Cotton! See Jerry undercover, in disguise! See Jerry's red Jaguar in action! There's all this and more in three behind-the-scenes videos posted on the film's official German website (and also on YouTube). That's the catch, of course; it's all in German, but you really don't need to understand the language to get a taste of the movie. In addition to all that stuff I just hyped, you'll also see some of the sets (including FBI headquarters) and a quick shot of the new "Cotton Girl," Monica Cruz, performing a very sexy nightclub act. (Which is totally in keeping with the established series.) The second video is the most English-friendly, as it's mostly behind-the-scenes shots edited together like a trailer to Peter Thomas's original Sixties Jerry Cotton Theme. Unlike the recent OSS 117 revival movies, the new Jerry Cotton appears to be contemporized rather than stuck in the past. His Jag, however, remains the vintage model.

New Eurospy Revival Jerry Cotton Starts Filming

A press conference in Berlin yesterday marked the commencement of filming on the new Jerry Cotton movie, which was first announced back in 2007. Jerry Cotton, originally played by American star George Nader in a series of Sixties Eurospy movies like Death In a Red Jaguar and Deadly Shots On Broadway, was a New York-based FBI agent in his original incarnation. (They're available in Germany without English subtitles, although the Dutch DVDs do offer those.) The new version, from the makers of the popular Wixxer films (which parody the Edgar Wallace crime movies so popular in Germany during the Fifties and Sixties), reimagines Cotton in much the same way that the new OSS 117 films reinvent that Sixties Eurospy hero. Whereas the Sixties movies were serious, the new version is a comedy. Fifty-three-year-old German actor and comedian Christian Tramitz (who also starred in Der Wixxer) steps into Nader's shoes as Cotton; Christian Ulmen plays his sidekick Phil Decker (originated by Heinz Weiss). Monica Cruz (sister of Penelope) plays the newest "Cotton Girl," Malena, who producer Christian Becker describes as a femme fatale who turns Cotton's head.

I'm not sure if that poster image at left (which apes the look of older Cotton book and DVD designs) is official or not, but it's all over German-language websites, including plenty of seemingly reputable news sites, so I would guess it's legit.

Becker told Screen Daily that the new film (called, simply, Jerry Cotton) will be "a fantastic new interpretation which will be like the way people approached Starsky & Hutch. It won't be a parody because we take the character of Jerry Cotton very seriously but we see him a bit like Inspector Drebin in The Naked Gun." So, despite not being a parody... it sounds like a parody. What's unclear is whether it will recreate the Sixties milieu of the original films, as OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost In Rio did so successfully, or if the character will be contemporized. The red Jaguar E-Type on hand at the press conference would seem to indicate the former, although such a car could obviously make an appearance in a modern-day movie as well. Jerry Cotton is due out in Germany at the end of this year. Hopefully international distribution will follow, although the Wixxer films still remain unavailable on DVD in English-speaking countries.

G-Man Jerry Cotton Recalled To Active Duty

Following the success of France's OSS 117 revival, another classic Eurospy hero is getting reactivated. "G-Man Jerry Cotton," who appeared in a string of German Bond knock-offs in the Sixties, will return to German screens next year. Variety is unclear on the matter, but it seems likely that, like 0ss 117: Cairo Nest of Spies, this will be a parody revival and not a serious franchise reboot. Rat Pack Filmproduktion is producing, and they gave a similar treatment to Edgar Wallace Krimi mysteries last year in The Wixxer. Wixxer was shot in black and white, and--I believe--set in the Fifties or early Sixties. But it was a send-up of the endless German Krimi movies (basically their version of the Italian giallo) based on Wallace's pulp novels made from the late Fifties to the mid-Seventies, and mostly starring Joachim Fuchberger. Presumably the new Jerry Cotton movie will follow the same pattern, although apparently serious Jerry Cotton adventures are still published in Germany, so perhaps not.

The original Jerry Cotton cycle began as a Krimi series itself, and then morphed into a spy series as the Bond movies took off. American beefcake actor George Nader (banished to Europe when a tabloid threatened to out him in America) starred as Cotton. I haven't seen any of them yet, though I did find Nader rather off-putting as a secret agent in the atrocious Million Eyes of Sumuru. DVD collections are available in Germany, but without English subtitles.