missile x
V.C.L. Communications
1978
NR

  • An American secret agent is sent to Iran to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and comes across a crazed international businessman called The Barron who has stolen a Soviet nuclear cruise missile which the Barron plots to use on a peace summit in the Persian Gulf region.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Self, what was iconic American film and television star Peter Graves doing in between his roles in the Mission: Impossible television show and the Airplane! movies?”, well, here’s your answer: Missile X – Geheimauftrag Neutronenbombe The Teheran Incident Cruise Missile Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident. And, of course, the only decent movie poster I’m able to find is the Spanish language one. Eh, it keeps with the tone of the movie, I guess.

Anyway, Missile X is a 1970s European spy “adventure thriller” that was a joint production between Germany, Italy and Spain, and not only stars Peter Graves as an aging secret agent, but also features John Carradine as a Soviet Russian professor. Also, some German actor named Curd Jürgens as The Baron, whom I’m told is a big deal or something. Oh, and also it was shot in a pre-Revolution Iran, which means something, I guess.

Can you feel my enthusiasm for this movie just dripping off of me, here?

An experimental nuclear cruise missile has been stolen from a Soviet military site by an international terrorist group commanded by a Bond villain wannabe known only as The Baron. The plan is to use the missile to destroy the international peace conference that’s set to take place on an island in the Persian Gulf. Enter US intelligence agent Alec Franklin, who travels to Iran to investigate the murder of a US consul. He’s immediately targeted for death, but they underestimated the agent (probably due to his advanced age), who manages to elude them at every turn. He then travels from Tehran to Abadan and teams up with a couple of Soviet KGB agents and an undercover Iranian policewoman to find The Baron and prevent him from starting World War III.

Missile X is, in a word, boring. It’s clearly another one in a long line of James Bond ripoffs, featuring a lead Peter Graves that, although he was only 52 when he appeared in this movie, his hair was all snowy white, so he came off as much older than what he really was. I would say that it made things kind of creepy and weird when his character got his mack on with the ladies (some of which he only knew for a few hours), but considering Roger Moore was pushing 60 when he played Bond in A View To A Kill, this may actually be par for the course for spy movies.

Keep in mind, I’m not really a fan of the spy thriller genre. The closest I’ve come was playing the N64 Goldeneye game a whole bunch (darn fine game, there). Nothing against them, they’re just not my thing. This being the 70s, and European exploitation movies had a tendency to not really care about plot consistency over style, I had a tough time paying attention to the goings on. Add to this some rather low-key poor-choreographed “action” scenes and some of the lamest “special gadgets” effects, and I have a hard time thinking that even the most hard-boiled spy thriller fan would find something to enjoy with Missile X. Pass.