PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
Though this boring Eurospy made for a better-than-average episode of MST3K, by itself DEATH RAY isn't nearly as exciting as the above poster makes it look.
The routine setup shows us a good mad scientist who invents a death-ray in the hope of advancing world peace. A spy-ring abducts the scientist, in the hope of forcing him into re-creating the weapon for their dastardly uses. It's up to the risibly named "Bart Fargo" (Gordon Scott) to save the world from the barely described evil spy organization.
Though Scott is suitably dashing, even he can't inject much interest into the rambling plot, which mostly consists of Fargo walking into various settings and pissing off locals so that he can beat them up and get info from them. This incidents are broken up with a few liaisons with beautiful women, no better or worse than a billion others.
In addition to a bouncy musical score, which seems to be one of the few merits everyone agrees upon, I'm at least gratified that since the opening displays a death-ray test, the movie concludes with a duel between the hero's machine gun and the villain's big but unwieldly death-ray cannon. That's about it.
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