When my father-in-law died, his eulogy included a mention of his cat Fang, which was short for “fangool”. There were ripples of laughter in the crowd of mourners, as many were in the know that this is Italian for “fuck you”.
The only time I can recall hearing the word in a film is 1974’s The Destructors (also released as The Marseille Contract), where it is said repeatedly in a span of about two minutes. I was very amused by how one can get away with multiple F-bombs in a PG film, so long as it is in a language likely to be known only by a small portion of the audience. Still, there were possibly going to be kids watching this who were wise.
Not that there’s anything here that would draw in the kiddies. Really, I’m not sure who this film was for, except maybe as a working vacation for the leads: Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn and James Mason.
Quinn is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, working out of the US embassy in Paris. He has been having an affair with Alexandra Stewart, and he will seek revenge after her husband is killed by agents of international criminal mastermind James Mason. I was confused by Quinn avenging the death of the guy he’s cuckolding.
An inspector played by Maurice Ronet puts Quinn in contact with a hitman, who turns out to be Caine. An old friend of Quinn’s from government work, Caine is now working as a freelancer.
Caine penetrates Mason’s organization by penetrating the crime boss’s daughter, played by Maureen Kerwin. The lovers first met through that most common of mating rituals, the dangerous high-speed pursuit up a mountain road in ridiculously expense sports cars. There’s a moment which is equal parts fascinating and daft, where the stunt driver who is supposed to be Kerwin quickly and repeatedly spins the vehicle, alternating between it being face forwards and then backwards. It is the closest I’ve ever seen a car doing anything like dancing, and I wonder if synchronized driving will ever become an Olympic sport.
I could tell you more about what happens in the film but, really, all the elements are from some sort of toybox filmmakers of the time dipped into to make movies like this. You’ll see mansions and expensive cars. There will be a pursuit that will take place partly on a rooftop from where we can clearly see the Eiffel Tower. Caine has sex with various beautiful women, so somebody who a cruder sense of humor than I might say his job has minge benefits. A naïve character proves they are a complete dummy not just because they chose to stand right on the edge of a rooftop when talking to dangerous men, but because they are obviously replaced by a literal, loose-limbed dummy when they are pushed off the edge. As far as how these, and other, stock elements come together, it is like somebody did a Mad Libs that was international thriller themed.
There is a notable lack of connective tissue between those moments. It wasn’t difficult to follow the film but I too often found myself realizing we were in a scene, such as Quinn riding in a car with three thuggish guys, with no idea how we got here. But anybody has seen enough of these films to know he has been picked up by the bad guys to “go for a ride”, etc. One day, I hope to determine exactly where the divide lies between a thoroughly realized plot and something that is just a series of events. Even the twists here feel unremarkable, even expected.
Still, there are elements which suggest an undercurrent of a sly sense of humor, and more of that could have made this a more interesting movie. Most of these moments are in or around scenes with Caine. I suspect some adlibs from him are preserved in the film. One of the most bizarre moments in the film has Caine about to score with a woman and there’s a jump cut to kids on a carousel where each is trying to get an object off a hook by getting a stick through the large hole in the middle of it. This suggests the carousel game is a deeply weird sexual metaphor. The carnival music playing over this scene is used again over a chase scene for no apparent reason.
The Destructors is a competent 70s European thriller, but little more than that. If this was a paid vacation for the leads, then Caine seems to the only one enjoying the experience. More Caine and more weird could have made this, if not a considerably better film, a more interesting one. Regardless, nobody will ever watch this and afterwards wish they could say fangool to the filmmakers. It just wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Dir: Robert Parrish
Starring Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, James Mason
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray