The movie is a mess on so many levels. It is an Israeli-West German co-production if you're looking for any sign of the quality of the movie on the whole. 'Trunk' aired somewhat recently on Turner Classic Movies, and as a fan of Murphy, I recorded it, especially because I had never heard of the movie in any way. The reason was pretty clear. Like so many movies from the 1960s that featured transplanted American stars, it is awful. We're not talking guilty pleasure either, just a bad movie with few if any redeeming qualities. Seeing stars at their absolute worst is never a quality calling card, and that's about all this one has going for it.
Traveling to Cairo, German scientist Ludwig Bauer (Murphy) meets Helga (Marianne Koch), a young German woman going to meet her father, Professor Schlieben (George Sanders). Several of Schlieben's co-workers -- all highly intelligent scientists -- have all been brutally murdered in bombing attacks, Bauer sent as a replacement for the good professor's most recent job. Bauer is stunned at what he finds out. Schlieben is working on and close to completing his latest contract, building an atomic weapon that could knock out a major city, handing the weapon over to the Egyptian government for use at their discretion. Bauer has a secret though, he's a CIA agent working with the Israelis hoping to knock out this program run by Schlieben and his neo-Nazi cohorts.
This review has the potential to go poorly very quickly. About 20 minutes into this bomb, I realized I was watching just that...a bomb. Bad but not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure, I ended up fast-forwarding through long stretches of the movie, the 103-minute running time still managing to go by at a seemingly endless pacing. The powerhouse directing duo of Menahem Golan and Raphael Nussbaum -- yes, somehow these two giants of film were able to work together -- look to try and capitalize off the huge worldwide successes of the James Bond movies, but well....yeah, they fail. Good effort, I guess. Nah, who am I kidding? I could give some credit if the movie shot for the stars and crashed and burned. This one never gets off the launch pad.
In a recent wave of Audie Murphy reviews, I probably said the same thing over and over again. Good/Average actor at times who could be an above average actor with the right part, getting by on his on-screen persona and likability, audiences going along for the ride with his characters. 'Trunk' would not be a good movie to introduce someone to the real-life WWII hero who knew nothing about him. Sleepwalking would be a kind way to describe his performance here as undercover secret agent, Mike Merrick. His Texas drawl is there, but he mumbles his way through his lines, and at times it looks like he's reading off cue-cards held just off camera. He looks bored with the proceedings, clearly not his best effort.
This is not an effort to pile on Murphy, an underrated star/actor who I've always been a fan of. The blame should get placed evenly and all over the place. No one is safe here! Everyone comes under fire. What did George Sanders do to deserve this fate later in his career? I suppose you could call his Dr. Schlieben the villain, but he's so clueless and harmless I can't quite call him a bad guy. Koch -- who I only knew from A Fistful of Dollars -- is the love interest of sorts who falls for Murphy's Merrick, getting caught up in the middle of this mess. Hans von Borsody gets to play the ideal German, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Neo-Nazi who tangles with Merrick before meeting a nasty demise while Yossi Yadin plays Capt. Gabar, Schlieben's Egyptian liaison. Gila Almagor is a bright spot as Yasmine, an undercover contact working with Merrick.
Let's get a bright spot out of the way before I trash the movie on the whole. The locations in Cairo and later Rome look great so the movie's got that going for it...and that's about it. By the end of the movie, the previously serious spy thriller has degenerated to a slapstick chase the Keystone Cops would have been jealous of. Composer Dov Seltzer turns in a laughably bad soundtrack that blares over the embarrassment, Murphy outrunning/outriding (on horseback) two Egyptian police on motorcycles chasing him because he rides up a gentle slope. The ending itself is a topper, but I only want to spoil so much of the badness. I've got to leave some mystery for this steaming pile, don't I? It's forgotten for a reason. Steer clear.
Trunk to Cairo <---trailer (1966): */****
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