Plot
While fishing off the coast of Egypt, Italian fisherman Franco and his father see an American Air Force bomber crash in the water carrying nuclear weapons. Franco's father and the rest of the crew flee in a lifeboat, stranding Franco in the boat off the coast, which beaches. When Franco swims ashore, Agent 87, a member of an international criminal organization called SPECTRALIS, kidnaps him to locate the nuclear weapon. A man named Pasqualino leads SPECTRALIS. Pasqualino sends an Egyptian scientist and SPECTRALIS employee Dr. Yes, who wishes to use the energy of the weapon to reanimate Egyptian mummies.
Ciccio cannot extract information from the fisherman for the bomb's location. His attempt to threaten Franco with torture on a mechanical butt-kicking device backfires when Ciccio lets himself demonstrate the necessary posture himself.
Franco escapes and arrives at a train station. Not understanding that he is in Egypt, he attempts to purchase a railway ticket to his home in Palermo, but cannot speak Arabic. A nearby Italian priest helps him by explaining where he is, and Franco treats the man to a cappuccino at the station bar. There, Franco's hollering voice attracts the attention of Cinzia, a woman who joins in on the conversation.
At the SPECTRALLIS base in Egypt, three spies named James Bomb, Modesty Bluff, and Derek Flit attack Ciccio. However, they are so fixated on depriving each other of the catch then let him escape unnoticed while they brawl it out.
Meanwhile, Cinzia lures Franco to her hotel room with the promise of sex. Unknown to Franco, she works for Dr. Yes. However, while she has her back turned, Bomb, Bluff, and Flit break into the room and attempt to abduct Franco, to no avail. Then Ciccio arrives, retrieves his prisoner, and spirits him away to the base. Ciccio later uses a lie detector to probe Franco's mind by asking him questions about the bomb. Seeing that Franco knows nothing, Ciccio confides in him that his superiors will have him killed for failure to find the bomb. Franco talks Ciccio into teaming up in hatching a plot to plant a fake bomb where it can be found.
Franco and Ciccio make contact with Cinzia, who believes their claims that they found the bomb. She tricks them into a meeting with Dr. Yes at his underground headquarters at a villa outside Cairo. Dr. Yes plans to revive an Egyptian mummy of Nabuco Sonor, the Queen of the Dead. He requires the bomb's radiation to do this. His experiment appears to be successful when he achieves a thumb twitch from a specimen. Franco and Ciccio deliver the fake bomb, only to be told they will be sacrificed to Nabuco Sonor on her revival. The duo laughs, knowing that the bomb is not real. The mummy then stands up and advances towards them. However, Dr. Yes's plans are thwarted when the "mummy" is revealed to be Derek Flit in disguise. Aided by Bomb and Bluff, Flit beats up all of Dr. Yes's men and abducts Franco and Ciccio.
Out in the desert, the three spies fall out again over who will get the credit for turning Franco and Ciccio over to their superiors. They stop fighting each other when a live report on the radio announces that the search has ended after the United States claimed that there was no nuclear bomb on board the crashed plane. Franco takes the disgraced Ciccio aboard his fishing boat, still beached on the shore, to sail back to Italy. When they pull up the fishing nets to cast off, they discover the actual bomb tangled in them.
Weeks later, Franco and Ciccio are aboard a yacht living in a life of luxury, with the bomb pointed across the sea as they are blackmailing world leaders for riches by telephone to avert nuclear destruction.
Lucio Fulci was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. Although he worked in a wide array of genres through a career spanning nearly five decades, including comedies and spaghetti Westerns, he garnered an international cult following for his giallo and horror films.
Francesco Benenato, known as Franco Franchi, was an Italian actor, comedian and singer.
The New York Ripper is a 1982 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci. The film is about a police lieutenant who is tracking a sadistic killer who slashes women with a switchblade and straight-razors.
Francesco "Ciccio" Ingrassia was an Italian actor, comedian and film director.
Derek Flint is a fictional world adventurer and master spy featured in a series of movies and comic books. Flint, a parody of James Bond and Doc Savage, is an agent for Z.O.W.I.E..
Bonvi, pen name of Franco Bonvicini was an Italian comic book artist, creator of the comic strips Sturmtruppen and Nick Carter.
Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs is a 1966 Eurospy comedy film, made in Technicolor and directed by Mario Bava. Serving as a sequel to two unrelated films, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Two Mafiosi Against Goldginger, the film stars Vincent Price, Fabian, Francesco Mulé, Laura Antonelli, and the Italian comic duo Franco and Ciccio.
Zombi 3 is a 1988 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei and starring Deran Sarafian, Beatrice Ring, and Ottaviano Dell'acqua. The film is an in-name-only sequel to Fulci's Zombi 2. The film is about a group of scientists at a top-secret research facility who are working on a biological weapon called Death One, which mutates and kills the living creatures and reanimates the dead. The weapon is leaked out of the facility, which leads to a spread of infection among soldiers and touring people in the area.
Adel Adham was an Egyptian actor. He was known for his portrayal of evil and ambiguous characters. He was awarded the title of Prince of Cinema.
Manhattan Baby is a 1982 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci, and starring Christopher Connelly and Carlo De Mejo. The film begins in Egypt, where Susie, the daughter of archaeologist George Hacker, is given a mysterious talisman by an old woman. Meanwhile, her father investigates a tomb, and is blinded by a blue light. George and Susie return to New York, where George gradually recovers his vision. Strange deaths begin to occur around the Hackers, seemingly caused by the amulet.
002 operazione Luna is a 1965 science fiction comedy film directed by Lucio Fulci. The film stars Franco and Ciccio, Mónica Randall and Linda Sini. The film's Spanish print released in 1968 was titled Dos cosmonautas a la fuerza and ran only 76 minutes.
Silver Saddle is a 1978 spaghetti Western. It is the third and final western directed by Lucio Fulci and one of the last spaghetti Westerns to be produced by a European studio. The film was based on an original story written by screenwriter Adriano Bolzoni and directed by Fulci for the Italian studio Rizzoli Film Productions.
Franco and Ciccio were a comic comedy duo formed by Italian actors Franco Franchi (1928–1992) and Ciccio Ingrassia (1922–2003), particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Their collaboration began in 1954 in the theatre field, and ended with Franchi's death in 1992. The two made their cinema debuts in 1960 with the film Appuntamento a Ischia. They remained active until 1984 when their last film together, Kaos, was shot, although there were some interruptions in 1973 and from 1975 to 1980.
Pierluigi Conti is a retired Italian actor who is perhaps best known for starring in horror and exploitation films, especially ones by directors Lucio Fulci and Jesús Franco.
Dracula in the Provinces is a 1975 Italian horror comedy film, directed by Lucio Fulci and starring Lando Buzzanca in the main role.
The Long, the Short, the Cat, also known as The Tall, the Short, the Cat, is a 1967 Italian comedy film directed by Lucio Fulci and starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio.
The Two Crusaders is a 1968 comedy film directed by Giuseppe Orlandini, co-written by horror icon Lucio Fulci and starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio.
I due evasi di Sing Sing is a 1964 black-and-white Italian film directed by Lucio Fulci starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio. The film is the first of three comedies with the duo by the same director, with I due pericoli pubblici and 00-2 agenti segretissimi, to be released in 1964.
00-2 agenti segretissimi, distributed in English as Oh! Those Most Secret Agents!, is a 1964 Italian film directed by Lucio Fulci starring the comic duo Franco and Ciccio. The film is the third of three comedies with the duo by the same director, with I due evasi di Sing Sing and I due pericoli pubblici, to be released in 1964, 00-2 agenti segretissimi being the only colour film of the three.
Project Islero was an attempted Spanish nuclear program. Named after Islero, the bull which fell the famous bullfighter Manolete, the program was created by Generals Agustín Muñoz Grandes and Guillermo Velarde in 1963. Although Spain possessed the second largerst uranium deposits in the world at the time, it was not until the Palomares Incident of 1966 that Spain would gain the technological breakthrough to conduct serious hydrogen bomb research. By reverse-engineering the Teller-Ulam process, the project was able to shift to usage of plutonium-239. After a Franco paused the military research in 1966, efforts shifting to nuclear reactor construction and plutonium production. However, the program was resumed in 1971, with help from Charles de Gaulle's France to refine the material and fund the nuclear facilities.
