Tip Not Included (1966)

Fourth of the Jerry Cotton films is largely light on Jerry for much of the film. Sure he appears here and there, but mostly he’s off screen until the final half hour of the film

The plot of the film has a young chemist getting mixed up with a gang of robbers. The crooks are planning on robbing the federal reserve bank in lower Manhattan when it makes a shipment of money . The trouble is that the chemist has been threatened by someone who knows about the robbery and he’s feeding the information. Cotton initially comes into the mix early on when he saves the chemist from getting a beating . He then shows up here and there to move things along. However he shows up in the final third in order to kick butt and put bad guys away.

For the most part this is an above average Euro-caper film from the mid-1960’s. It, like all of the Jerry Cotton’s are a nice antidote to the over blown spectacle of the Bond films which influenced so many films outside of the spy genre- and this isn’t a spy film it’s a robbery film. What sets the film apart is two things.

First is the location. The film is set in New York. Yes it’s a new York that exists only in movies and has some touches of Germany, but at the same time the film feels like New York thanks to copious background shots and enough locations that look like, and are New York that I full accept it as being NYC.

The other thing that makes this a fun film are the set pieces, from the early fight on the moving car park, to the car crash, the robbery, the shootout in the train yard the fight in the arena… basically if there is an action sequence its top notch. Its sequences like these that are the reason the series ran to 8 films. They are also the reason I‘m completely puzzled that the series isn’t better known. These are good little crime dramas.

Definitely worth searching out. It can be had from Sinister Cinema or Amazon-who is selling Sinister’s release