Jaguars on Screen: E-Type in ‘Danger Diabolik!’

By John Coyle - August 10, 2020

Based on a Italian comic book, this surreal 1968 action flick features not one, but two E-Type Jaguars.

Driving them is a joy, to be sure. But to me, one of the defining things about Jaguars is just how dead sexy they are. These are cars the are impossible to walk away from without throwing a parting glance over your shoulder. That attribute makes them a natural for on-screen work, so over the last couple of years, I’ve gone looking for appearances of Jags in film.

And before we go too much further? I’m never going to do a post on the E-Type hearse from Harold and Maude, because I just can’t stomach looking at that car. Every time I see it, I just hate it more.

There are plenty of other flicks featuring Jags, however, from The Robbery, to Get Carter, to The Invasion. Somehow though, while I was going down the old YouTube rabbit hole looking for those clips, I somehow missed this seriously weird sequence from 1968 action adventure Danger: Diabolik. Based on an Italian comic book series, the surreal and stylish heist picture also features a score from recently departed virtuoso Ennio Morricone, most famous for the spaghetti Westerns which Clint Eastwood rode to fame.

The plot centers around Diabolik, played by actor John Phillip Law. He’s a master thief who pulls big jobs so he can give jewelry to beautiful women, drive sports cars, have sex in piles of money, and live in killer underground lairs.

If that’s not enough to sell it, Howard Thompson of The New York Times called it “infantile junk,” and Danger: Diabolik was actually the subject of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. And depending on your interest in classic cinema? MST3K might be the best way to experience it. To be fair, British movie magazine Empire was far kinder than Thompson, and named it one of its top 500 greatest films.

Viewed apart from the rest of the flick, the sequence here is pretty solid, especially given the shaky standard for car chases at the time. In watching the scene, it’s worth noting the movie was released almost a full year before Bullitt, which ushered in the modern era of chase scenes.

So while there’s there’s some use of speed-up footage, and the in-car rear projection looks silly, those techniques should be expected for movies of this vintage, and they’re minimal enough not to detract much from the experience.

Here, Diabolik uses a pair of E-Types to avoid not one, but two helicopters which are firing machine guns at him as he speeds along a mountain road.

The first gets scarified as part of a diversion, while he uses a second one to take the stunning Marisa Mell to his James Bond-villain-style bachelor pad. Try to ignore the beyond-goofy pose our rubber-clad bandit hero makes while swapping rides. The tunnel sequence is especially cool, and shows off some of the over-the-top imagery director Mario Bava used to invoke the comic book source material.

So as a Jaguar fan, how big of an oversight was it for me to not know about Danger: Diabolik? Was I just clueless, or is this movie a legitimate under-the radar deal? Please let me know. Maybe some members even remember seeing it in the theater!

Also, check out some of the other Jaguar chase scenes we’ve posted about here on Jaguar Forums, and if you see one that we missed, send me a message. I’m always interested to see Jaguars on screen!