As one who loves to watch chicks kick ass, I've wanted to see this movie ever since as a teenager I came across a picture of Daniela Bianchi in what looks like some sort of animal-skin jumpsuit dangling from a parachute brandishing a machine gun. But experience has taught me not to get my hopes up too high on the basis of individual publicity stills; and sure enough the film itself proved the usual let-down.
Even though the movie is actually named after her character - and begins with a promising pre-credits sequence with Miss Bianchi in a nun's habit (under which she's wearing a bathing suit) packing a machine gun - most of the action is thereafter hogged by Ken Scott making his third and final appearance as Agent 077, Dick Malloy. Bianchi, alas, doesn't get her hands on a firearm again until the afore-mentioned scene just ten minutes from the end of the movie; when after finally getting a crack at Zoltan's turtle-neck wearing goons (to whom Malloy has been laying waste for the past ninety minutes), she runs out of bullets after barely ninety seconds and is hardly given time to reload before that big killjoy Clark barges in and lays her out with a punch while mouthing that groan-inducing old macho chestnut: "I'm sorry, Arabella, you're going to have to sit this one out!"
And yet another opportunity to treat us to a truly badass female lead has been lost.
Even though the movie is actually named after her character - and begins with a promising pre-credits sequence with Miss Bianchi in a nun's habit (under which she's wearing a bathing suit) packing a machine gun - most of the action is thereafter hogged by Ken Scott making his third and final appearance as Agent 077, Dick Malloy. Bianchi, alas, doesn't get her hands on a firearm again until the afore-mentioned scene just ten minutes from the end of the movie; when after finally getting a crack at Zoltan's turtle-neck wearing goons (to whom Malloy has been laying waste for the past ninety minutes), she runs out of bullets after barely ninety seconds and is hardly given time to reload before that big killjoy Clark barges in and lays her out with a punch while mouthing that groan-inducing old macho chestnut: "I'm sorry, Arabella, you're going to have to sit this one out!"
And yet another opportunity to treat us to a truly badass female lead has been lost.