DR SCORPION (SHACK)

US, 1978, 100 minutes, Colour.
Nick Mancuso, Roscoe Lee Browne, Christine Lahti.
Directed by Richard Lang.

Dr. Scorpion is a comic book reworking of Ian Fleming's Dr. No and other espionage thrillers. It is done with a blend of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek with high production values. It is undemanding action entertainment - with some shots at the C.I.A. (so fashionable in the late '70s: All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor ... )

Director Richard Lang moved to feature films with The Mountain Men, A Change of Seasons). Here he handles the action and the high-blown melodrama competently. Nick Mancuso (Ticket to Heaven, Nightwing, Mother Lode) is a sombre looking hero - though he has his moments of humour. An ex-C.I.A. agent, he is brought to Langley, Virginia and re-recruited. Needless to say he thwarts Dr. Cresus. Dr. Cresus is celebrated African American actor Roscoe Lee Browne doing an imitation of Dr. No, a power-hungry maniac living in isolated splendour somewhere in the Caribbean. He is involved in stealing American nuclear missile systems and their plans. Needless to say, things go wrong and he is defeated. Christine Lahti (who was to move into feature films with And Justice for All, Whose Life Is It Anyway, Swing Shift) is an attractive heroine.

The film has colourful locations, a great deal of stunt work. It is also in the vein of the James Bond films of the '80s, Roger Moore's Octopussy, Sean Connery's Never Say Never Again) where the focus of the world crisis is on nuclear weapons and missile systems. At the end, the hero and heroine are able to recover the plans lost at the bottom of the ocean -but then in a spirit of goodwill and optimism, throw them away. Here's hoping.