How We Stole the Atomic Bomb 1968

On the coast of Egypt, Franco and his father witness a U.S. Air Force bomber crash into the sea, its cargo a cache of nuclear weapons. The crew flee in a lifeboat, but Franco’s father and the others abandon the effort while Franco is stranded in the drifting craft that washes ashore. When he reaches land, he is seized by a covert operative from the international crime group SPECTRALIS, who wants to recover the weapon.

Back on land, Ciccio, held prisoner, fails to coax any information from Franco’s captors, and his attempt at a brutal demonstration backfires by exposing his own awkwardness. Franco escapes and ends up at a Cairo train station, unable to speak Arabic; an elderly Italian priest helps him understand where he is, and at the station bar Franco chats with Cinzia. At the SPECTRALLIS base in Egypt, three spies—James Bomb, Modesty Bluff, and Derek Flit—burst in to squeeze Franco for the bomb, but their bickering lets Ciccio slip away. Cinzia lures Franco to her hotel room, and while she turns her back, Bomb, Bluff, and Flit break in to abduct him. Ciccio arrives, retrieves his prisoner, and ferries them back to the base. Inside, Ciccio uses a lie detector to probe Franco’s mind about the bomb; discovering Franco knows nothing, Ciccio confides that his superiors will have him killed for failure. The two men hatch a plan to plant a fake bomb in a location where it will be found, hoping to throw their pursuers off the scent.

Franco and Ciccio reconnect with Cinzia, who believes their story about finding the bomb. They meet at the underground HQ of Dr. Yes, housed in a villa outside Cairo. Dr. Yes plans to revive an Egyptian mummy, Nabuco Sonor, the Queen of the Dead, using the bomb’s radiation. The exchange appears to work when a tremor signals life in a specimen. Franco and Ciccio deliver the fake bomb, only to be told they’ll be sacrificed to Nabuco Sonor on her revival. The “mummy” then approaches, but Dr. Yes’s plan is spoiled when the supposed mummy is revealed to be Derek Flit in disguise. Aided by Bomb and Bluff, Flit overpowers Yes’s men and abducts Franco and Ciccio.

Out in the desert, the spies briefly fall out over who gets credit for handing Franco and Ciccio over to their superiors. A live radio report interrupts their quarrel, announcing that the United States has declared there was no nuclear bomb aboard the crashed plane. Franco takes the disgraced Ciccio aboard his beached fishing boat to sail back to Italy. When they haul in the nets to cast off, the real bomb is tangled in the mesh. Weeks later, the two men are aboard a luxurious yacht, the bomb pointed across the sea as they continue to threaten world leaders by telephone to avert nuclear destruction.