Customer Reviews

The Kommissar X Collection: Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill/Death Is Nimble, Death Is Quick/So Darling, So Deadly

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just want to stop any Brad Harris fans from potentially wasting their money on this dreadful dvd. The picture quality on all of the films is awful. Stick with your bootleg videos or foreign language copies. And as for that cover...

A collection that is not complete(3 out of 7 movies)including the first
3 films made in 1965-66 (the last one was made in 1971)
The "commissioner x "adventures are pure entertainment,007 style parodies,
starring handsome italian actor Tony Kendall.
With the assistance of former muscleman actor Brad Harris,they make an
explosive,entertaining team,in explosive,entertaining films.
The picture quality ,unfortunatly,is not colorful on this dvd.

Christian Karlsson,Sweden

Seeing these film in this condition, I wondered which film could survive this treatment and still be considered "good" in some way.
These films are better than they are shown here. It could be, however, that the best of them is still the one which is not in thís collection, which was called "drei grüne Hunde" in Germany and which I saw at the Cinema Paradiso in Lugano when I was fifteen and totally loved. Cinema Paradiso in Lugano in the late sixties was however something very special - it cannot get more romantic than that - and maybe all films I saw there gave a better impression than they deserved.

What a delight this was...a wonderfully nostalgic trip back to the way movies were when I was a little boy.

All three films are surprisingly well done and feature the good hair, clothes, cars & music of the period. Tony Kendall makes an especially attractive hero, making his leading ladies ardent attitudes far more plausible than when we see these romantic plot devices on "I Spy," "Star Trek," etc. Brad Harris is great as the two-fisted best friend and their easy alliance fighting crime is tongue-in-cheek fun.

Much has been written about the quality of the DVDs. I was prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised. These are clean (no dust, no scratches) 16mm TV prints taken from 35mm UltraScope masters. If you lived in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, you'll recall that ALL TV USED TO LOOK LIKE THIS. Yes, even prime-time "movie of the week" specials. FYI, "UltraScope" was an extreme version of CinemaScope, the anamorphic process which squeezed a very wide image onto standard film. It was then expanded by the projector in theaters to create a super-wide panoramic image. On 4:3 TV however, it means you're only seeing a portion of the 35mm negative; a 16mm print of this means added grain. So what? The color and picture are still fine--just not HD.

Great collection, great fun. Enjoy!

Retromedia has released 3 of the popular Kommissar X films based on the novel by Bert F. Island. The first two are directed by Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini) who also directed the Sabata trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns in the late sixties. The films involve two characters :Joe Walker played with playboy arrogance by Tony Kendall and Tom Rowland played by Euro stalwart Brad Harris who also choreographed the action scenes in two of the films. All of them have the Bondian mix of beautiful women, outlandish set pieces and megalomaniac villains. My favorite of the bunch is 'SO DARLING SO DEADLY', a tight,fast moving piece of sixties escapism which doesn't let you catch a breather from beginning to end. It has all the usual ingredients and like another spy film of the same year 'A TARGET FOR KILLING' it has not one but a half dozen lethal ladies brandishing machine guns and leather whips to torture their captives. The third film 'DEATH IS NIMBLE' also stars another euro star Dan Vadis who is a master of killer karate moves and the face off between Vadis and Harris at the climax is alone worth the price of the disc. All three are full screen versons but 'DEATH IS NIMBLE' has the worst wear with some faded color spots and missing frames at reel changes. But then again, where are you going to view these films unless you have inferior bootleg copies over the years. All in all, a nice package for Spy fans until the definitive releases come along.

I agree with the previous reviewers that the film quality of these three movies is suspect (to say the least) however,
the movies themselves are OUTSTANDING! and, if you can ignore some real poor pan and scan you will be
entertained!

My favorite is Death is Nimble, Death is Quick. Dan Vadis is great as KING. When he faces off with
Brad Harris it's a classic moment, an apex of the Kommissar series in my view. Tony Kendall is his usual handsome
(and cool) self in all three of these films.

Sure, everyone wants high quality and surely these films deserve better but, with nothing else out there
this disc is worth every penny. I highly recommend these flicks.

I USED TO LOVE THIS SERIES WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER.SO I THOUGHT I'D ADD IT TO MY MOVIE LIBRARY. I WAS DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED WITH THE PICTURE QUALITY.IT'S LIKE THEY MERELY COPIED A FUZZY VHS ONTO A DVD WITHOUT RE-MASTERING IT.