Black Box Affair - Il mondo trema (1966) Online

BLACK BOX AFFAIR, a mid-60s European spy film starring American actor Craig Hill (who has continued to work successfully in Europe for over 30 years), should satisfy any fan of low-budget Eurospy genre films. It starts off with a wild montage that could be out of GLEN OR GLENDA or ROCKET ATTACK USA, moves on to a credit sequence featuring a catchy europop-lounge title song, and then before the plot begins to kick in, Craig Hill is attacked by TWO different sets of bad-guys! The whole film does not proceed at this breakneck pace, but there is some beautiful location shooting, a good amount of action, a pretty female lead in Teresa Gimpera, and as a hero the versatile Craig Hill more than holds his own. The Black Box of the title is only partially explained, and little effort is put into giving the characters much individuality, but if you ask those kind of questions, you wouldn't like this type of by-the-numbers spy film anyway. If you collect this sort of thing, you'll want BLACK BOX AFFAIR, and Craig Hill--who is excellent in all kinds of roles, both in his US and his later European career--gives the role the kind of authority and manliness it needs. One a four star scale, I'd give this a solid two-and-a-half, compared to other films in the genre.

The plot for The Black Box Affair is pretty simple – Agent Johnny Grant (Craig Hill) and sidekick Pablo (Luis Marin) are assigned the mission of finding the black box from a downed airplane before it can fall into enemy hands. Why? I honestly couldn't tell you. All I know is they have to find the box.

While I say I'm a Eurospy fan, what I'm learning about myself is that I'm a fan of GOOD Eurospy films. I prefer an entertaining Eurospy with something exciting, something kitchy, something different, or something totally ridiculous. I like films like Special Mission Lady Chaplin or Dick Smart 2.007 or Our Man in Marrakesh – you know, something good. Acting, budgets, dubbing, and most everything else plays second fiddle for me as long as it's entertaining. Unfortunately, I found little entertainment in The Black Box Affair. It's dull, dry, lifeless, and difficult to get through.

There are so many issues I have with this movie that I would write about, but I'll start with the plot – it's a disaster. A large portion of the film consists of little more than our heroes, Grant and Pablo, running, driving, or flying from one location to the next for no real reason that I could ascertain. They seem to be in one fight after the next with either the Russians or the Chinese. Why? Again, I'm not sure other than they're all trying to find the box. None of it makes much sense and that fact really hurts the overall movie. There's nothing I could sink my teeth into and care about. Hill and Marin aren't very good either. Hill makes for one of the most uninteresting leads I've seen recently and Marin's attempts at comic relief are just plain old horrid. His ventriloquism schtick gets old before he does it the first time. Agent Grant also happens to be about as stupid an agent as I've seen in a Eurospy film. He takes forever figuring out who's double-crossing him. The solution all but slaps you in the face it's so obvious. Honestly, I could write for days on the many problems I had with The Black Box Affair, but I've got better ways to spend my time.