Aenigma fanzine

The look of this new fanzine by Nigel Maskell, of Italian Film Review, is deliberately low-fi and retro, the text being done in a typewriter font where the g’s have the descender filled in with ink and the occasional word is struck through or inserted in pencil, and then appearing as it has been cut out and pasted onto the background, with the result then being photocopied. There’s no colour, excepting the use of red card for the cover.

Anyone who remembers old punk-era, pre DTP zines, or who now reads Cinema Sewer or Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory will feel right at home.

Nigel begins with a childhood memory of seeing Asylum whilst on holiday and how it led into horror and then Eurohorror. Following a brief digression into Joan Blondell – a digression that works thanks to the stream of consciousness style of the writing – we’re then onto five of the great Italian horror shock endings, namely Zombie/Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, Rabid Dogs, To Be Twenty and 'Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.

Next up is a review of The Beast in Heat, in which the brilliant description of the titular Beast – "a Luciano-Pigozzi headed Ron Jeremy figure in a Luis Guzman mask" – pretty much tells those of us in the know all we need to know, that Nigel knows his stuff.

Following this is a piece on Cannibal Holocaust that’s partly about the film and partly about the late lamented video culture in the UK. Nigel’s analysis of documentary authenticity and the wider history of animal cruelty is good, though I would have added in a nod to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, as a foundational documentary that is nevertheless misrepresentative, sensationalist and exploitative at points. I’d also say more about the score: while effective and mentioned diegetically I feel it detracts from the effectiveness of the whole.

The discussion of Zombie Flesh Eaters is similar: Part a discussion of the film, part the author’s reactions to it and the influence it has had on his life.

All in all, if you’re a reader of this blog, you should find plenty in Aenigma. If you don’t, well, as the masthead proclaims, with a reference to Welsh band Super Furry Animals, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”

Available from http://www.italianfilmreview.com/p/eurocult-fanzine.html.

Cannibal Holocaust almost uncut

Interesting things are afoot at the BBFC it would seem.

Ruggero Deodato is currently working on a director's cut of Cannibal Holocaust that will feature less animal cruelty. It seems a copy of the film was submitted to the BBFC and the only one of animal cruelty scenes that was going to require cuts was the killing of the small rodent type animal. A reason this was unacceptable was that whereas the other animals killed on camera were consumed for food, this was not.

There's something of an irony here in that within the diegesis of the film this animal is one which is eaten (the guide who kills it actually remarks 'tonight we eat meat' or something like that) whereas a pig that gets shot later is presented as not being eaten ("that pig would have been food for those people').

Context based guidelines just get harder to understand the longer you think about them contextually...

[There's loads more on the topic at the Cult Labs forums]

The Barbarian Brothers / The Barbarians / The Barbarians & Co.

Ruggero Deodato is above all a competent professional. He may be a metteur en scene rather than an auteur – if we want to use the French terms and subscribe to their implicit hierarchy – but he’s also someone who can be relied upon to deliver. The Barbarians is no exception, though it must be emphasised that 'the goods' are more juvenile sword and sorcery in the Conan the Barbarian mould than the 'video nasty' material Deodato is most (in)famous for.


Hints of Cannibal Holocaust? barbarian women on a raised platform

The story starts with a caravan train crossing a plain. These people, the voice-over informs us, are the Ragneks. They once traded away their gold in exchange for a magical gemstone, the belly stone (so called because it magically fits into the navel of the chosen female ruler of the tribe, a nice variant on the Excalibur theme for those wishing to check off their mono-myths) and the right to safe passage across in the known world in the practice of their trade, entertainment.

Now, however, the evil Kadar has decided to put an end to this. Though they fight bravely the Ragneks are no match for his forces. Some are slain. Others are captured, including the current ruler, Canary (?!), and the two youngsters Kutchek and Gore. A few escape.

Kutchek and Gore are separated from one another and sent to work as slaves. The years pass and they grow into formidably muscle-bound figures.

Wearing helmets that conceal their features they are then sent to fight one another to the death. Bread and circuses and all that...


Kutchek and Gore, or Gore and Kutchek

Rather than killing one another the brothers realise the truth (“Why have you got my face” “Why have you got my face!?”) and escape. They team up with another adventurer, China, find the remaining Ragnek survivors and plan their revenge.


Kutchek, China and Gore, or Gore, China and Kutchek?

Initially this entails sneaking into Kadar’s castle to rescue Canary. She however declines to be rescued and instead tells them that they must first find the now-lost belly stone, which is guarded by a dragon. So off they go...

It’s about this point you get the distinct feeling that the film was being made up as Deodato and company went along.

Still, its hard not to be entertained. What money there was is very much up on the screen, with bright and extravagant costumes, sets and design. And while the Paul brothers, the professional bodybuilders who play Kutchek and Gore (and sometimes billed themselves as The Barbarian Brothers in real life) can’t really act they don’t pretend that they can. Indeed, beyond flexing their muscles, they aren't really called upon to do so.

The presence of Michael Berryman and George Eastman is, of course, also welcome; sadly both have relatively small roles.


Berryman as 'the dirtmaster'

The sad thing about the film is the way that, in retrospect, it can be seen as one of those titles that the Italian cinema was soon thereafter to cease making. Yes, it’s cheesy but is it really any worse on this count than Conan the Destroyer? The truth is that Italian B-films weren't necessarily any worse than US B-films but that they increasingly didn’t get the chance to prove themselves with potential audiences.

Mondo Cannibale / Cannibal Holocaust 2

A group of film makers go missing in the jungle where they were working on a documentary about some of the last remaining cannibal tribes. Some time later the footage they shot is screened before the excited and shocked group of television executives who commissioned the film.

It could be Cannibal Holocaust, but it is actually Bruno Mattei's 2003 digital reboot, alternately known as Cannibal World and, arguably more honestly, Cannibal Holocaust 2. This said, it would perhaps be better thought of as Cannibal Xerox, both for a nod to Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox in the form of a penis-ectomy scene and on account of the way in which Mattei and his co-scenarist Giovanni Paolucci all but plagiarise numerous scenes and lines from Ruggero Deodato's film in lieu of writing their own script from scratch.

Maybe Cannibal World gets away with it on being less a remake of Cannibal Holocaust than a contemporary re-interpretation or maybe Deodato was simply disinclined to engage with the subject matter again at this time, here remembering both the reaction his film had provoked and the alternative approach to primitive world ultra-violence seen in Cut and Run compared to its two predecessors in Cannibal Holocaust and Last Cannibal World. (As of August 2008, Deodato was however working on a new Cannibal themed film.)

Whatever the case, with the notably old-school exception of gutting a lizard on camera, the departures from the original source are where Mattei's film tends to get things more wrong than right.

The two key differences are in structure of the narrative and, following on from with this, the composition and dynamics of the film-making team. Though the bulk of the film comprises flashbacks to the documentary film-makers at work and the results, the film within the film structure of Cannibal Holocaust, wherein the first half of the film concentrates on the rescue mission and the second on an exploration of their what they found of the missing film-makers, is not really in evidence.

In particular, the Professor Monroe character, as the one who provided a more moral, anthropological voice on the mondo film-maker's excesses, is here positioned as one of the documentary team, Bob Manson. While he initially serves as something of a counterpoint to his Alan Yates like counterpart, in professing to be more concerned about the wider environment than with viewer ratings – or at least can justify his excesses if they help spread his message more widely – he soon succumbs to an ecofascistic / survival of the fittest / law of the jungle type amorality.

Reference to Cannibal Holocaust's Yates brings us on to the film's second major departure in terms of the group's composition. Their leader, the one who recruits the initially reluctant rival Manson as best man for the job, is actually a woman, Grace Forstye [sic]. The rest of the team is rounded out with Cindy Blair, whose role in the proceedings generally proves to be similar to that of Faye Daniels in Deodato's film, and the less noteworthy pairing of men analogous to Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso.

While the team also have two cameras like their Cannibal Holocaust counterparts, Mattei fails to satisfactorily introduce this detail nor to make use of the apparently different properties of the two cameras within his actual mise-en-scene. Rather there are too many images that do not accord with either camera-person's point of view and instead come across as being staged for the benefit of and recorded by an external, non-diegetic, camera. The impact of this is particularly significant when it comes to the gore scenes: whereas Deodato made impressive use of pseudo-documentary techniques and downright 'mistakes' to prevent us from noticing how unconvincing a given effect might have been, Mattei's comparatively conventional approach makes such shortcomings all too apparent.

Connected to this is Mattei's decision not to use stock footage and the Grace's comments within the film as to the datedness of such practice, that today's more sophisticated audience are sure to notice it. If the distancing from Mattei's own practice within the likes of Hell of the Living Dead is ironic, it is also a strategy that proves less effective than Deodato's admittedly morally problematic re-contextualisation of real atrocity footage as being a put-on for the camera in the infamous 'Road to Hell' sequence of his film. Similarly and paradoxically, Mattei's approach makes it that bit harder to suspend our disbelief that we are watching anything other than a film here.

In a similar vein, the film also lacks that palpable sense of psychosis one gets from its model, of not knowing just how far the film-maker was willing to go in his pursuit of authenticity. Instead, it comes across as a more calculated product, as the work of someone intent on giving his target audience what they wanted, but in a no more and no less manner. If this is no such bad thing in itself, as demonstrated by Deodato's Cut and Run, the issue is that Mattei is not quite as good a film-maker as Deodato and does not have the same resources at his disposal here.

As already mentioned in reference to the figure of Manson, Mattei's characters are also less satisfactorily drawn. Alternatively, however, we might also see this as one of the film's developments / departures from its model, in terms of emphasising that today it is less viable to hold Monroe's doctrine – i.e. that academic would-be detachment from the rest of the corrupt world / system – than it is to succumb to the inevitable.

Cannibal World's rape scene is also of interest in this regard because of its dynamics. While Grace expresses her displeasure at the scene, framing it as wasting film on a porno in a reprise of Faye's critique of the analogous scene in Cannibal Holocaust, Cindy encourages the men. The conflict within the group seems here more about power directly and less about power in relation to gender, of Cindy temporarily asserting her position with the men against Grace in decidedly un-feminist manner perfectly in keeping with the film-makers' we-are-all-complicit post-reality-TV world-view.

Or, maybe not, insofar as it is the TV network executive who emerges as the film's admittedly muffled moral voice, as he asks the inevitably “who are the real cannibals” question to the camera and the spectator...

Longer term fans will want to note that amongst the English dubbing voices can be heard Ted Russoff and Susan Spafford, two voice artists whose careers dated back to the glory days of the filone cinema and can be heard on the likes of The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh, while newcomers may want to check out actress and model Cindy Matic's portfolio.

Affare Concorde / The Concorde Affair / S.O.S. Concorde

Disaster movies and the Airport series were two staples of 1970s cinema. 1979 brought them together with Concorde: Airport 79 and, predictably enough, spawned this Italian imitation / cash in, directed by the ever-reliable Ruggero Deodato.

Like its models Concorde Affair features something approximating an all-star cast, with Joseph Cotten, Edmund Purdom, Mimsy Farmer and James Franciscus in the name roles and such familiar Italian cinema faces as Dakar, Venatino Venantini and Meg Fleming amongst the supporting players.

Cotten and Purdom play the villains. With their airline threatened by Concorde's success, they've decided that a campaign of sabotage is called for, leading to a nice symbolic cut from the launching of Cotten's clay pigeon target to the doomed Concorde taking off.

The plane duly goes down over the ocean, near to one of the Antilles. All on board are killed, with the exception of Farmer's stewardess, Jean Beneyton, who is rescued from the water by two fishermen, one of them played by Dakar.

Fleming's character, Nicole Brody, notices Jean and informs her ex-husband, Franciscus's down-on-his-luck investigative reporter Moses Brody, who duly flies out from New York. Unfortunately by the time he arrives Venantini and his gang have already recaptured Jean and disposed of Fleming and Dakar. Worse, with the downing of one Concorde apparently not having the desired effects, his paymasters are planning a second disaster...

While there is nothing unusual in Concorde Affair's depiction of evil businessmen willing to kill a few hundred innocent people for the sake of profit – and here remembering the Ford Pinto saga during the 1970s – what makes it more interesting is the way in which Cotten emphasises that the multinational corporation is like a state:

“Since time immemorial nations have been sacrificing hundreds of millions of lives to protect their interests. Well, we too are a nation. A multi-national state. Our citizens are workers, employees, technicians – and shareholders. The shareholders, gentlemen! And it is our responsibility to protect their interests, which at the moment are being threatened by the Concorde.”

There's an inherent believability gap in the story that it's hard to accept that the Concorde with its limited passenger and cargo capacity and noise could have ever offered a real threat to conventional jumbo jet based air-travel. The idea of a South American airline commissioning 12 new Concordes also seems highly dubious considering that only 20 models were ever built and operated by the UK and France, only 14 of these seeing operational use.

Given environmental concerns, a more plausible Concorde '79 story would perhaps have been one of Cotten, Purdom and company bribing politicians and encouraging astroturfing (i.e. fake grassroots) campaigns rather than corporate murder. This, of course, would doubtless have been a scenario that wouldn't have offered the same dramatic potential.

Reading the interview with Mimsy Farmer in Spaghetti Nightmares, where her commitment to Marxist politics helps indicate just why she found Europe a more congenial environment than the USA, one wonders if this anti-corporate aspect was part of the reason underlying her involvement in the project. If not, its anti-bourgeois tone is certainly in accord with House on the Edge of the Park and Waves of Lust in relation to Deodato's oeuvre.

Another problem in terms of plausibility is that there is no sense of any official investigation within the film, with nobody from the aviation authorities present in the Antilles searching for the Concorde or its black box, nor any other reporters converging on the islands.

Indeed, the whole scenario seems to operate in a curious vaccuum. We get little sense of Cotten and company having seen to it that rumours about the Concorde are already in circulation – especially given that waging the propaganda war is surely an important prelude to waging a real war; that they likely wouldn't escalate the conflict to blowing up planes without exhausting other methods first. The question of exactly how you go about moving a 200-foot long, 78,700kg plane off on the seabed and hiding it without anyone noticing or wondering what you're up to also goes unanswered.

In this regard the film, with its extensive waterworks, is also touch reminiscent of an inverse Jaws or The Last Shark in that the bad guys should be trying to publicise the danger as much as possible rather than downplaying it; note here also that the surname of Franciscus's character is the same as that of Roy Scheider's in Spielberg's film.

If the individual investigative journalist also shows up in the like of Fulci's Zombie and City of the Living Dead around the same time – not to mention his more specialised anthropologist variant in Deodato's own Cannibal Holocaust – the scenarios in which these characters are placed are that bit lower-key: the killing of a cop or the death of a reputed medium in unusual circumstances are worth a newshound's nosing around a bit, but of a different order to an iconic aircraft going down with the loss of 100-plus lives.


Gaunt and Bolla

Another reason for mentioning Cannibal Holocaust is, of course, the casting of that film's Robert Bolla as the one of the ground control team at London the airport as the film builds to its race against time climax.

What's less frequently been remarked upon, however, is the presence of another 70s woodsman amongst the team, namely Michael Gaunt who, in one of our six degrees of separation filone style, also appears in City of the Living Dead as one of the gravediggers opposite another Cannibal Holocaust alumnus, Perry Pirkanen.

Reading Gaunt's credits on the IMDB makes for some bizarre juxtapositions, ranging from long running British children's TV programme Jackanory to Radley Metzger's The Opening of Misty Beethoven to Doris Wishman's Let Me Die a Woman; I can't say I remembered Gaunt in either of these films but will definitely be keeping an eye out when I revisit them.

Returning to the inherent plausibility issues with the film, the point that needs to be made in closing is that, having outlined what I think are the problems with the film, they ironically really matter except to the critic commenting on the film in retrospect: Deodato knows that as long as he keeps things moving at a fair pace and throws in moments of spectacle like the killing of the fishermen; an extended scuba diving sequence; and the preparation, planting and triggering of the devices intended to down the second plane etc. – at regular intervals, his target audience aren't going to care too much.

What most impresses about his direction is again his versatility and professionalism, especially when we remember that he made the very different Concorde Affair and Cannibal Holocaust in the same year.

Stelvio Cipriani provides a workmanlike score, well suited to the action but not particularly memorable.

[An English-dubbed, Greek subtitled video rip is available for download from Cinemageddon]

Una Ondata di piacere / A Wave of Pleasure / Waves of Lust

The opening image of Waves of Lust throws you, makes you pay attention: it’s upside down.

Has someone made a mistake?

The answer is no: we are sharing the point of view of a man standing on his head.




“How's the world upside down?”
“Basically the same as right side up.”
“Then just as sick.”

Rather than being a simple attention-grabbing strategy on the part of the filmmakers – you can imagine audiences being ready to throw things at the screen or to scream at the projectionist – it's also an image that is crucial to an understanding of this 1975 erotic thriller / drama, recurring as it does at the film’s conclusion.

As a device, the image brings to mind the theories of the Russian Formalists, with their notion of defamiliarisation, taking something we know and take for granted and representing it in an unfamiliar way to make us question our presumptions and assumptions. It was, for the formalists, a key component of poetic language.

Yes, it’s yet another filone film that has more to it than meets the eye and which offers a number of interpretive challenges and possibilities.

It's also a vital film for anyone interested in the work of director Ruggero Deodato specifically, coming at a time when he had spent a number of years in television productions to mark the inauguration of his second, 'mature' period as a filmmaker and the introduction of a number of signature marks that would become more pronounced with his later, more (in)famous works.

In Deodato's best films – amongst which Waves of Lust certainly counts – he rarely gives us what we expect. Unless, that is, what we are expecting is a showcasing of humanity at its worst...

Deodato is a filmmaker who denies us easy answers and heroes and villains, tending more to present a division between the dead and the living, more often than not survivors who have been profoundly affected – or damaged – by their experiences.

He also subverts our narrative expectations. The most obvious instance of this is, of course, Cannibal Holocaust with its two films in one structure, but much the same could be said of his thrillers, Waves of Lust included, insofar as he has never really made a straight giallo.

There's no murder mystery plot here, with the discovery of a dead body early on leading nowhere; none of the familiar iconography beyond the J&B bottle, almost a character in its own right at times as it is consumed in quantities that the manufacturers could hardly endorse; and a fundamentally different logic underlying what we are told, not told and left to decide for ourselves.




Not promoting responsible drinking

The result is a chamber piece in which the air is thick with sexual tension, recalling Polanski's Knife in the Water as much as anything, which keeps looking like it is about to move into more obvious Lenzi-style sexy giallo territory but never quite does – a strategy of formalist retardation, at a stretch – by refusing to signpost an obvious noir-style conspiracy of power, lust and wealth despite the central presence of these three ingredients.

The film presents the story of two somewhat contrasting couples who happen to be vacationing at the same coastal resort at the same time.

The first couple comprises Irem – the man standing on his head – and Barbara. They're a bit younger and a bit counter-cultural, but otherwise deliberately sketchily drawn.

The second comprises Giorgio and Silvia. He's a wealthy businessman with a tendency towards cruelty even when sober, she's his property / trophy and the main target of his verbal, mental and physical abuse.

After a few apparently chance encounters in the resort's marketplace and gallery, Giorgio invites Barbara for dinner. She sends Irem in her stead and then arrives with Silvia, whose presence Giorgio had not counted on.

As the evening goes on, it is decided that Irem and Barbara will accompany Giorgio and Silvia on their boating trip. All manner of sexual and other tensions arise as Giorgio expresses his interest in Barbara – an interest which she reciprocates and Irem, with his hippie ideas, is happy to go along with – but proves reluctant to grant parallel license to Silvia, whom he continues to abuse and humiliate...






Along the way we get just about every combination except Giorgio and Irem

Though not as harsh a film as Cannibal Holocaust or House on the Edge of the Park, Waves of Lust still offers a heady mix of sex, violence and general unpleasantness. Yet, it is all curiously unobjectionable, making sense in its own terms.

Thus, if Giorgio at one point brutally stabs an eel he has caught while fishing it is presented, cannibal film-like, as part of nature, red in tooth and claw and, beyond this as an expression of his capitalist, social darwinist understanding of the world – “You fired 600 people?!” “My business regards no one else” – which, in turn, relates back to his cruelty and borderline psychopathic behaviour.


“You've completely destroyed it!”
“It would have done the same to me”
“No that's not true. Humans are always more ferocious. Animals kill out of defence or for food. Only humans do it for their own enjoyment. You enjoy seeing people suffer.”

Yet, in this, he's also different from David Hess's character in House on the Edge of the Park. Whereas Hess's proletarian character is all untrammeled id, doing things without regard for their longer term consequences, Giorgio, with the possible exception of his bingeing on J&B, is far more forward planning and in control.

He behaves in this way, uses these strategies and plays these games because he knows he can get away with them and that they fundamentally work for him, bringing rewards because of the way 'the system' operates.


“You almost killed me today”
“I'm sorry. The idea of going to jail over you doesn't entice me.”
“Don't worry, guys like you never go to jail.”
“You're right.”

As such, like the bourgeois who set up Hess in House's rape-revenge scenario or the cats paws and manipulators of many a giallo, there is then the awkward question of who are the real monsters are, those who cannot help themselves or those who would take advantage of them in their schemes.

In a similar vein, thought the film contains extensive nudity and softcore sex these elements come across not just as an exploitation film essentials – how exactly would you do an erotic thriller without them? – but also as a part of Deodato's almost anthropologically detached approach.

If as a filmmaker he exploits sex as a commodity, it is also because sex also has a commodified value in the world he is depicting.

Deodato's worldview thus for the first time emerges in Waves of Lust as that uniquely disconcerting combination of the critical – there is little doubt that we are supposed to be against Giorgio – and the cynical / cyclical.

Specifically, his take on revolutions, be they social, sexual or both, looks to be along the lines of “what goes around comes around,” leading not so much to a transcendence of any master / slave dialectics as to a temporary – i.e. 180 degree – reversal of fortunes and positions. As with Cannibal Holocaust's closing remark / question, “I wonder who the real cannibals are,” one suspects that this struck a bit too close to home for some.

Deodato's direction is not quite as accomplished as it would be in later films, being functional and effective without always convincing that he had chosen this or that set up, angle or movement for any specific, 'meaningful' reason. This could also, however, be put down in part to the inherent constraints imposed by the main setting. Certainly there is a contrast between the confined spaces and pointed exchanges of words and glances that tend to predominate on the boat and the sub-aqua sequences – likely the major contribution of co-writer Gianlorenzo Battaglia, best known as an underwater camera specialist – whose blue expanses and silence provide punctuating moments of apparent tranquilty.

Even so, danger is ambiguously present, as when Silvia gets trapped in between some rocks on the sea bottom and must be rescued by the others in a collective effort. Was this an accident or a pre-planned incident, a challenge issued by some of those present to see how others would react? As ever, Deodato provides no easy answers or get out, only questions and challenges.

As Giorgio, John Steiner again impresses in his willingness to go for it in the role of a human monster while remaining believably scary. The role of Iram is well-suited to Al Cliver's laid-back, casual style, with his relative inexpressiveness contributing to the effectiveness of his performance by making Iram that bit harder to read. Silvia Dioniso and Elizabeth Turner, as Barbara and Silvia respectively, likewise impress, delivering credible performances that belie the notion they are only present for decorative purposes.

Marcello Giombini's reedy synth score is one of the film's few weak points, though is not too intrusive and also helps ground the film in its specific time and place with its easy / sleazy / trash stylings that provide an aural counterpart to Dioniso's extra-wide flares and Steiner's tastefully patterned trunks.

Another view:
http://bloodyitaliana.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruggero-deodatos-waves-of-lust-1975.html

Fenomenal e il tesoro di Tutankamen / Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen

This early outing from Ruggero Deodato is quite frankly a bit of a mess, albeit a sporadically entertaining one.

Inspired by the fumetti neri, especially Diabolik, the first problem is that we're pretty much in the dark about who our titular protagonist, hero and point of identification actually is. We know he's one of the good guys thanks to the opening sequence in which he takes out a boat full of heroin smugglers, but after this he actually drops out of the narrative, such as it is, for close on half an hour; after watching the film I found I wanted to check if the film was actually a sequel and that the audience was expected to know Fenomenal's alter-ego, even if it isn't terribly difficult to guess.

The second is that the film as a whole really isn't that good, with little of the comic book vibe apparent in the general style and mediocre action and set piece sequences. While it was Deodato's official debut, he'd picked up a lot of credits as assistant and second unit director, so couldn't exactly be described as inexperienced.

On the plus side Lucretia Love and Carla Romanelli are easy on the eyes and Bruno Nicolai's catchy score easy on the ears.

The story sees the Mask of Tutankhamun exhibited in a Paris museum; cue lots of location shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee etc.

Various criminal masterminds played by the likes of John Karlsen and Gordon Mitchell want the mask, with a complication provided by the fact that there are not just one but two replicas of it floating around. (Seeing that Karlsen is after the mask because it contains a secret code that reveals the location of an even greater treasure, presumably he would actually have been satisfied with an exact copy, however.)

The action then shifts to Tunisia; cue more location shots with various bewildered inhabitants wondering what's going on.

Fenomenal shows up once more and saves the day.