DEATH HAS BLUE EYES

d. Niko Mastorakis (1976)

A Greek curiosity that resembles a James Bond film scripted by the team behind Robin Askwith’s Confessions films, Death Has Blue Eyes (aka The Para Psychics) can’t make up its tiny mind as to whether it’s a comedy, a drama or a soft porn film. It is most definitely stupid, however, and more sexist than even a film from the mid-seventies should reasonably be.

We follow the misfortunes of two vain and gormless fools who, unbelievably, are supposed to be Vietnam Special Forces veterans. In their heads they are international playboys, but in reality they are moochers, freeloaders and con men, tricking their way into a hotel and charging their disgusting looking meals to someone else’s room. They don’t wear shirts under their jackets and all of their clothes are too tight. They talk like damaged children. They are two of the most unattractive male leads in film history. Actually, just history.

The discovery of their shabby, petty ruse leads them to start working as bodyguards for a rich woman and her daughter, a beautiful girl who happens to be able to use her mind to kill people and blow things up. The ‘boys’ are hired to protect her against foreign agencies that would like to put her powerful, deadly brain to their own unpleasant uses – or in some pickling vinegar.

Although it’s interesting to see Greece from a non-touristy point of view, the script rambles on to no great effect for too long. When there is action, it is done in a pedestrian, amateurish way or is undercut by the inanities of the script. In the most impressive sequence, the protagonists are sprayed with machine gun fire from an aeroplane as they run across a beach. The lead doofus looks up at the sky and shouts ‘you could have killed us, you bastard’. Well, yep.

The story can only be concluded by one of our stupid heroes pushing an old lady from a roof, thereby severing the mental link that has turned our heroine into a human bomb. I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. The old lady had such a surprised look on her face.

This isn’t the end, although it should have been. Over the credits, we see the now rich  protagonists seemingly settled into a ménage a trois on a beautiful, deserted beach. As the credits roll, the two idiots start to tussle, eventually progressing to a brutal fist fight. It’s a needlessly confusing coda to a largely unrewarding experience.