Argoman, The Fantastic Superman (1967; Sergio Grieco)

Often, the only power exhibited by some of these Italian superheroes is that they can fight well. Argoman on the other hand, has telepathic capabilities, as seen in the opening when the anti-hero is facing a firing squad, and has his captors turn their guns on themselves. This sequence (missing in some prints) is the only time in a long while that you see Argoman in costume. (This may be a blessing, once you see his silly yellow outfit.) Otherwise, this film plays more like a James Bond film, and reinforces the ugly sexism that abounded in some of those pictures.

Consider this. Argoman’s alter ego is Sir Reginald Hoover (played by Roger Browne), a playboy who lives in a groovy coastal mansion. He has TV cameras that offer views of his female assistants in their bedrooms.  He also uses his telekinesis to levitate one Regina Sullivan (Dominique Boschero) from a hovercraft to his pad, and offers her a game to shoot a target with an arrow. If she hits the target, she gets a car. If she misses, she has sex with him. Unsurprisingly, she ends up in bed with him. And after they get dressed, she shoots an arrow again, and this time hits the target, implying that she wanted sex all along. Ha ha. Argoman’s perky assistant Samantha (Nadia Marlowa) is mostly decorative, largely serving to distract the bad guys by prancing around in her underwear while our hero sneaks into their armoured truck.

However, our libidinous superhero has one Achilles heel. His superpowers are inactive for six hours after lovemaking. This sly jab at the male ego (man’s inability to have further arousal after climax) is sadly never exploited in the plot. 

Eventually Argoman gets out of bed to save the world from the super-villainess Jenabell (a play on the name Jezebel?). She even has a black clunky robot abduct poor Samantha, to lure the superhero to her lair. The film has some good art direction, especially in the Kubrick-like monochrome of Hoover’s mansion and Jenabell’s futuristic headquarters. The special effects however are quite poor (especially in the levitation scenes, and dated matting devices for the smoke bombs used during a robbery).  

Argoman, The Fantastic Superman plays more like an espionage film, with such gimmicks as a radioactive cigarette (!) that Hoover can trace to find the bad guys, which is perhaps fitting, since its star and director worked a lot in the Eurospy genre. Director Sergio Grieco's spy-fi credits includes Rififi in Amsterdam, and two of the Dick Malloy (Agent 077) films with Ken Clark: From The Orient with Fury and Mission Bloody Mary. Star Roger Browne also had a long pedigree in espionage, after his peplum cycle of films wound down. He collaborated with Umberto Lenzi on The Spy Who Loved Flowers and Superseven Calling Cairo; and again with Grieco for Password: Kill Agent Gordon.