Le tigre aime la chair fraiche (1964)

Directed by: Claude Chabrol | 83 minutes | thriller | Actors: Roger Hanin, Maria Mauban, Daniela Bianchi, Roger Dumas, Mario David, Roger Rudel, Jimmy Karoubi, Antonio Passalia, Sauveur Sasportes

A major deal between the French and Turkish governments to supply the next-generation Mirage is under threat as rumors start to circulate that terrorists will attempt to attack Turkish minister Baskine’s life. He will land in Paris to sign on behalf of his government. To prevent the attack and to allow the treaty to go through, Louis Rapière is called in, who served in the Foreign Legion for twenty years and was given the honorable nickname ‘Le Tigre’.

Rapière has deployed a large team of employees at the Paris airport Orly, but is still the one who barely manages to prevent Baskine from being shot by snipers. They have ingeniously managed to smuggle weapons past the tight security, but Rapière is of course smarter. Baskine is then placed in a safe place after which Rapière is allowed to act as a pack mule for mother and daughter while shopping in Paris, but as long as he is allowed to be in the company of the attractive Mehlica, he thinks that is fine for a long time. Then another attack is made on Baskine and to ensure complete success, the terrorists also kidnap Mehlica. An extra reason for Rapière to successfully complete his assignment. It is clear that the director wanted to make a French James Bond film. There’s a secret agent who has to face all kinds of dangerous criminals, a Q-style inventor who comes up with handy gadgets and the beautiful women are not missing, of whom Daniela Bianchi was also a Bond girl in ‘From Russia with Love’ (1963).

But apart from beautiful images and a nice find here and there, the result is very boring. The Bond films have a nice, exciting film score that energizes the story and promises the viewer everything, but how effectively it is actually used only becomes clear in this bad imitation. And where a Bond film is worth watching from start to finish, the intrigue here drags from scene to scene and is at times incomprehensible to say the least. Furthermore, Roger Hanin as a replacement for Sean Connery is an outright mockery. The man does not radiate sex, has never heard of biting humor and such a figure without a backbone should never be granted a ‘licence to kill’. No, just be the real Bond, James Bond.