Danger: Diabolik!

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The Godfather. Scarface. Young Guns.

All of those movies treat very bad people as heroes, for some reason. But they are not heroes. Also, they're based on real people, so differentiating between the fiction of the movie's story and the reality of these terrible people's lives is important.

This week's movie, Danger: Diabolik!, is not based on a real-life person. Or reality at all. In fact, it's based on an Italian comic strip. The main character is about as far from a hero as you can get, but he is framed in this film like one.

Diabolik (John Phillip Law) is a famous cat burglar who is best known for his stunning blue eyes and his penchant for rubber. With the help of his girlfriend, Eva (Marisa Mell), he steals countless riches, confounding the police and upsetting other criminals.

The movie starts with ten million dollars being hauled somewhere, and the man in charge, Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli), is doing everything he can to make sure it gets to its destination, wherever that is, safely. He sets up a fake caravan of police motorcycles and limousines, and fills money bags with blank paper as a precaution. He will be attending to the actual money himself.

The delivery sets out, and things appear to be going well, until they arrive at the waterfront. Smoke bombs go off, and they lose track of each other. When they can finally see, they find Diabolik high above them, taking the real money out of the other car! He drops it into a boat, where Eva eagerly awaits, and then he dives into the water himself. He makes it back to his car's hidden location, and takes off down the road. The police, for what it's worth, planned ahead and had a helicopter on the lookout, and it gives chase, following Diabolik's car until it goes into a tunnel.

Mmph!

Inside the tunnel, Diabolik moves the money to Eva's car, and then sends his own car out and over a cliff, hoping it will make the police think he is dead. Diabolik and Eva play a bit of tonsil hockey, and they are off in the opposite direction, headed for their cave-based hideout to have all kinds of sex on some of the money they just stole.

Ginko is not happy, and neither are his superiors. They want Diabolik and they want him yesterday! But they can't find him, as nobody knows what he looks like, which is unfortunate, because they both attend a press conference from the Minister of the Interior (Terry-Thomas). He reinstates the death penalty as a way of trying to stop all the crime going on. Diabolik drops some laughing gas on the crowd, and he and Eva head home, no doubt happy with a day's work done well.

Ginko takes a novel approach to finding Diabolik; he starts cracking down on other criminals, hoping they will give him a hand in stopping Diabolik. Ralph Valmont (Adolpho Celi), a major drug dealer, is willing to work out a deal to get Ginko off his back. Ginko offers a reduced sentence instead, and Valmont (who is referred to as "Wawa" throughout the podcast) accepts.

Get me the Burger King! Immediately!

Meanwhile, In the Diabolik-cave, post-coital news watching results in Diabolik getting an idea for Eva's birthday gift, which is approaching soon, apparently. Maybe "every kiss begins with Kay," but for Diabolik and Eva, boning begins with burglary! He's going to steal a famous emerald necklace for her. But he makes her earn it by casing the castle where the necklace will be. While there, she is spotted by a prostitute who gives her description to Valmont so he can create a sketch of her and have his men go out looking.

The day of the burglary comes, and Diabolik scales the side of the castle, sneaking into the room of the elderly couple who have the necklace. As he is leaving with it, he is spotted and chased by the police, all the way to the top of the castle, where he pretends to launch himself from with a catapult that happened to be laying around. The police leave the roof, and Diabolik finds a way down do he and Eva can escape in her car again. Along the way, they stop and set up a trap for anybody following them, causing another car to go over a cliff and explode, and this one had Ginko in it! (Don't worry. He manages to get out of the explosion with only a light scratch on his head.

You'll never let me down, booze.

At some point, Eva injures her arm, so Diabolik has her go to a doctor to get it looked at. She stops to get gas on the way, and one of Valmont's men spots her, following her to the doctor's office and alerting Valmont, who comes to snatch Eva and kill the doctor. When Diabolik discovers Eva is missing (due to an ad in the paper advertising a white Jaguar--her car), he calls the number and Valmont answers, telling Diabolik he wants the stolen ten million dollars and the emerald necklace. Diabolik agrees and sets up a meeting on Valmont's plane.

Upon arrival at the airport, Diabolik is disarmed and taken aboard the plane, which takes off, and he gives Valmont the money, but refuses to give him the necklace until he turns Eva over. Valmont tells him no necklace, no girl, and Diabolik immediately capitulates. Valmont's men give Diabolik a parachute and open the floor so he can jump out and parachute down to where Eva is being held. But before he jumps, he grabs Valmont and pulls him out the opening with him, after which the plane explodes.

In freefall, Diabolik questions Valmont (we won't even go into the impossibility of that, considering the wind rushing past and all) and is told that, along with Eva, Ginko is waiting for him with a bunch of other cops who intend to arrest him. Just before they reach the ground, Diabolik knocks Valmont out and drops him, stealing back the emerald necklace, ditching the parachute and hiding behind a sand dune while he makes a plan.

He sneaks into the building where Eva is being held, just as the guy watching her is about to burn her with his cigarette, gives the guy a karate chop to the neck (this appears to be Diabolik's signature move, as he did a double-chop on Valmont), and rescues Eva. As they run across the beach, the are cornered, so Diabolik tells Eva to find her way home and draws the attention of the police so she can escape. Valmont, now conscious, opens fire on Diabolik, but fails miserably. Diabolik, on the other hand, is a better shot. So much so that he can load the emeralds from the necklace into the gun and shoot Valmont with those! (FULL DISCLOSURE: The guys did not realize that's what happened, and this led to a hilarious bout of trying to figure out how Valmont ended up with the emeralds inside him.)

All this, just to get laid on a pile of money. SO MANY paper cuts.

The police open fire again, and although they don't know whether they hit him, Ginko realizes the gunfight is pretty one-sided, so he goes over the top of the dune and discovers Diabolik, apparently dead. They take his body back to the city and hold a press conference, announcing his death. At the same time, Diabolik, who is very not dead, awakens as the pathologist is about to bandsaw the top of his head off. After revealing in great detail how he managed to cheat death, he and Eva, who is dressed up as the hottest nurse ever, escape, but not before as visit to the crematorium to collect Valmont's ashes, as well as the emeralds that are in them.

The government is now pretty upset about a dead guy ezscaping, so they put out a rewrd of a million dollars for his capture. To show he's not going to take that sitting down, Diabolik blows up a number of tax offices (remember: this is the "hero" of the movie), and the citizens refuse to pay their taxes because they don't want all their money blown up, putting the city into debt. The government decides that the best way to deal with this is to sell a twenty ton gold ingot to buy more currency, because how could a reedy guy like Diabolik manage to walk off with a big ol' brick of solid gold?

Naturally, Diabolik has a plan to do exactly that, and it involves having Eva wear tiny clothes and fooling the hillbilly driving a truck into thinking she would even pay the slightest bit of attention to him otherwise. (FULLER DISCLOSURE: We would probably fall for that, as well.) It works, and Diabolik steals the truck, driving it through a police barricade and clears the way for them to catch the train the gold is loaded on. They set up a trap to get the train to go over a bridge that they have rigged with explosives, which it does, and the explosion causes the train to fall into the ocean, with the gold and Ginko onboard.

It sounds like a dumb idea, and it is, but Diabolik has got it covered! He gets into his mini sub and retrieves the TWENTY TON GOLD BRICK with the help of his equally reedy girlfriend and a couple of balloons, and takes it back to the Diabolik-cave. Don't question it. Just accept it.

Get out of my secret lair, mom!

Now it's time to melt the giant ingot down using a "laser" and turn it into several much smaller ingots. But just as they're getting started, the police show up, having tracked the container the gold was in by its radiation signal. (Ginko had it partially irradiated for this very reason.) Again, Eva fades into the darkness, leaving Diabolik to try flooding the cavern in order to get the cops to go away, but they pin him down before he can get to the valve, and the "laser" causes the container to explode, covering the interior of the cavern--and Diabolik himself--in gold.

Is he dead again? Or will he get out of it? And why does Eva go from being dressed like short shorts to a goth beekeeper in less than a minute? Also, what the hell did we just watch?

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Jake is surprised to realize that he actually enjoyed this movie. It keeps things interesting, and managed to be fun at the same time. He is curious, however, exactly how Diabolik managed to get those emeralds in Valmont's body. He has theories. They're icky.

Derek has loved this movie since he first saw it as the final episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also thinks Eva is nifty, and is disturbed by Diabolik's eyes. Are they grey? Blue? Zombie white? It is unnerving.

So put on your rubber gimp suit, ram your tongue down your girlfriend's throat so far that you can taste her toenails, and check out this week's episode!