More than meets the eye!

The 10th Victim (La Decima Vittima, Italian; 1965)
Director: Elio Petri

Riding high on her fame as Honey Ryder, 1962 Dr No's Bond Girl, as the Ultimate Bikini Goddess, Ursula Andress continued making movies banking on her sex symbol status. She also appeared in the 1967 Bond spoof 'Casino Royale' as Vesper Lynd, whose grave we saw in 'No Time to Die'. In between, this Swiss vixen also found time to act in this B-grade Italian movie.

'The 10th Victim' is a futuristic movie set in the 21st century, where the world enjoys peace as society has managed to put a stop to wars. Man's predilection for violence is curbed by having society-sanctioned killing. Each person has the opportunity to kill ten people in a computer-drawn programme named 'The Big Hunt'. In five of the hunts, the selected play hunter and the other five, he plays the hunted. The hunter is given all information about his target but not the hunted. The hunted is clueless about who the assassin is. One who survives all ten hunts get loads of money. In between, the advertisers piggy-bag on the televised hunt.

The Bikini has come a long way since its introduction in the
1946 Paris catwalk. It was named in honour of Bikini Atoll,
the site where the US hydrogen bomb was tested.

The two main characters in the movie are Caroline and Marcello. Both of them are nine-time winners. Marcello is in a massive financial quandary trying to pay alimony to his ex-wife and sustain his expensive mistress. Winning the competition would mean a lot to him. He is chosen as the victim. Caroline is an American who lands in Italy to hunt her prey.

Despite being a brainless movie with plenty of eye candy and blatant flaunting of the female anatomy, the film seems to make reasonably accurate social commentary of the 21st century. It showcases a time where reality TV is a craze and advertisement drives people to sell out. Advertisers are more worried about their sales than the value of human lives. Marriages are a farce. Marcello had been married eleven times before.

The iconic bikini scene from Dr No skyrocketed the sales of bikinis.

In 1965, she was asked why she posed nude in Playboy.

Her answer was, "because I am beautiful!"

At one time, Ursula Andress was referred to as Ursula Undress.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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