As a producer William Castle was known for his outlandish gimmickry. In this the film delivers, although anemically, compared with Castle's best gimmicks, like Illusion-o, and Percepto. In this film he first put together an international search contest for the girls who would play the titular characters, and even made a different opening scene for each girl, all of whom represented their home country, with the exception of the Chinese and Soviet girls who had to be cast, (for you young people, in those days there was this thing called the Iron Curtain) as well as the seemingly well-groomed lead. Those alternate openings were presumably shown in their home countries only, as Americans only saw the one in which our girl was featured. The gimmickry continues with the addition of the Danger Card, with its scratch and win scenario. As this was a spy movie I am sure better concepts could have been developed. I think Castle was just busy on too many projects and this one got less gray matter devoted to it.
As a director, even by the standards we use to judge other Castle films, this one is not so good. As in Ed Wood's classics bad script writing, bad dialog, poor acting do nothing to sell the drawn out and preposterous plot line. It's 007 (with the inherent sexual innuendo)meets Nancy Drew (with its fresh-faced accidental intrigue). I guess it could have worked somehow, but it just doesn't in this case. Come to think of it the whole spy kid genre has been a bit of an underachiever.
See it for the strangeness of it. 3 of 10.
As a director, even by the standards we use to judge other Castle films, this one is not so good. As in Ed Wood's classics bad script writing, bad dialog, poor acting do nothing to sell the drawn out and preposterous plot line. It's 007 (with the inherent sexual innuendo)meets Nancy Drew (with its fresh-faced accidental intrigue). I guess it could have worked somehow, but it just doesn't in this case. Come to think of it the whole spy kid genre has been a bit of an underachiever.
See it for the strangeness of it. 3 of 10.