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The Corrupt Ones (1967)

“The Corrupt Ones” is a Cold War-era adventure story about a chase for the Peking Medallion, which is the key to an ancient Chinese treasure. The stars are Robert Stack and Elke Sommer, but, as is usual in this type of film, the villains, of whom Nancy Kwan is the chief, are more colorful. The film starts with a fight for the medallion on board a train, and the pace rarely lets up from there. It’s a great time waster, if you’ve got the time to waste. Of course, this particular genre was done practically to death by the Indian Jones series, but, if you can get past the low budget, there’s a lot to enjoy here, not the least of which is Dusty Springfield’s singing of the title tune. It’s one of those multi-country productions, and that makes for an appealing supporting cast, but someone ought to have been shot for dubbing Elke Sommer’s beautiful voice in English. She sounds like a real simp. Citizens of Macao, by the way, must have been shocked by the tagline: “The Deadliest City in the World Is about to Get Deadlier!”