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Code 7, Victim 5

Andreas Fabian | Sweden | 07/05/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Lex Barker, a man who should be a great James Bond! This former Tarzan actor in the begining of the 50's stars in this spy/dective movie, he plays a dective who follows up a murder in the african savan....there begans many mysteries and murders and good classic 60's spy action....i love Lex Barker and if u like this movie check out his other onces...specialy the " Winnetou " movies......"

South African Detective Story

Robert Huggins | Suburban Philadelphia, PA United States | 04/24/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Code 7, Victim 5" is one of a number of low budget films that used to play on television in the late 1960s/early 1970s and then promptly disappeared from the airwaves. I had not seen the film in about 35 years until this DVD release from Geneon. It's the story of an American detective (Lex Barker) who's hired to find the killers of a wealthy man's (Walter Rilla) butler. "Code 7, Victim 5" is a fairly routine detective story, but it's enjoyable on its own terms, particularly for the scenic location photography in and around Cape Town, South Africa. With the exception of Barker, you probably won't recognize anyone else in the cast of this 1964 Harry Alan Towers production save for Ronald Fraser, a prolific British character actor and, possibly, Gert Van den Bergh, who is probably best known to U.S. audiences for his role in "Zulu" as a South African defender of Rorke's Drift. Van den Bergh appeared in a number of films made in South Africa during the 1960s, including Cornell Wilde's "The Naked Prey."

The DVD release from Geneon is no great shakes, but it has fairly good color and there are no major problems with the print utilized for this DVD release. What is unfortunate is that Nicholas Roeg's cinematography is compromised with a full-screen presentation on the DVD; it was originally filmed in the 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. So those viewers, like me, who only know "Code 7, Victim 5" from its television airings apparently will never have the opportunity to see the film in its original aspect ratio. Save for the possibility of a theatrical trailer, I wasn't expecting any extras on this DVD and there are none, but Geneon disappointingly fails to even include chapter stops on this DVD. This might make a nice double feature with "The Cape Town Affair," another 1960s film produced in South Africa that featured another American actor in the lead role, James Brolin.
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