When the cold war heated up is what this movie is trying hard to accomplish. but fails to get started.
This flick is a passable representation of what one can call an "economical espionager". Something like what Sean Connery's wayward son Jason might have made if he beat his dad to the punch.
This was another low-budget Christopher Lee movie that I was totally unfamiliar with – in fact, I had initially mistaken it as merely an alternate title for the Edgar Wallace "Krimi" THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL (1961; which I also recently acquired in tribute to his passing and which I will be getting to presently)!That said, the result proved quite a surprise – not least for the remarkable cast its producers managed to hire: Peter Van Eyck in a rare and atypically heroic leading role; Macdonald Carey (who had just supplied the obligatory marquee value to Hammer's extraordinary THESE ARE THE DAMNED {shot 1961 but released 1963}), a one-armed Marius Goring, Walter Gotell, Albert Lieven (also from THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL and who had himself assumed the central part for director Carstairs' SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE {1948}), Marianne Koch, Niall MacGinnis, Eric Pohlmann, Peter Vaughan and Billie Whitelaw.
1962's "The Devil's Agent" is a long forgotten programmer in the bygone Cold War days of black and white espionage, ending with the surge of Eurospy glamour in the wake of James Bond. We open in 1950 Vienna, as wine merchant Georg Droste (Peter Van Eyck) sees his son off to school, then bumps into an old friend of 25 years, Baron Ferdi von Staub (Christopher Lee), who invites Georg over to his country estate for a little fishing.
.jpg)
