The Eurospy era, during which French, Italian and German producers competed to see who could release the cheapest James Bond knock-offs at the height of the suave British secret agent’s success, may now belong to some long-forgotten, deeply dubious 1960s belle époque, but 007 continues to have his imitators across the globe. Only this week, the makers of the controversial Valley of the Wolves saga, long considered a Turkish answer to Bond, announced plans for a new instalment about the recent failed coup against president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. It will see suave ultra-nationalist spook Polat Alemdar (Necati Şaşmaz) helping to rescue the dear leader from his loathsome military aggressors.

Alemdar’s previous missions include the 2011 episode The Valley of the Wolves: Palestine, in which the spy travels to Israel. Once there, a local man threatens him by saying: “You know you won’t make it out of our promised land.” Alemdar responds with disdainful, cod-Schwarzeneggerian brio: “I don’t know what part of these lands were promised to you, but I promise you six feet under.” Knock it if you like, but the franchise is about to enter its fifth movie and has already notched up three TV shows.

Yet even Valley of the Wolves pales in comparison with other fabulously terrible offerings from around the world when it comes to ersatz Fleming lunacy. Here are seven to have you choking on your minimally mixed Martini.

The Filipino Bond who’s only three feet tall

Released in 1981, the same year as the Roger Moore-led For Your Eyes Only, For Your Height Only features 2 ft 9” martial arts star Weng Weng as the diminutive agent 00. His task is to defeat the perfidious villain Mr Giant, who’s trying to take over the world with N-bomb technology, while romancing beautiful women almost twice his height. Featuring heroically shonky dubbing, Eddie Nicart’s film is perhaps most impressive for the variety of techniques tiny 00 uses to take down his much larger opponents. These range from poisoned darts to a remote control flying hat (like a hi-tech upgrade on Oddjob’s famous steel-rimmed Sandringham) and tiny, quick-assembly machine gun. But mostly he just creeps up unseen, thanks to his tiny stature, and chopping his rivals in the back of the legs.

The Italian-made Bond who’s Sean Connery’s plasterer brother

How do you get around your lack of rights to any of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories, characters, or themes? Well, in the case of Italian producer Dario Sabatello the answer is to recruit Neil Connery, younger brother of then 007 Sean, as well as Bond girl Daniela Bianchi (Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love) and Bond stalwarts Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell (M and Moneypenny respectively in the Eon series). Released under a flurry of unsubtle alternative titles, including OK Connery, Operation Kid Brother and Operation 007, Alberto De Martino’s movie pitches plasterer Neil (his performance entirely dubbed by an unknown American actor) as Dr Neil Connery, a plastic surgeon bizarrely recruited by a tired-looking Lee (here named Commander Cunningham) for a mission to take down the evil THANATOS organisation. As if the Bond allusions weren’t enough already, two of the main villains were played by Adolfo Celi (Thunderball’s Emilio Largo) and Anthony Dawson (Dr No’s Professor Dent). At the end, Lee turns to his successful agent and shamelessly breaks the fourth wall by telling him: “OK Connery! You were almost better than your brother.”

The Bollywood Bond vying to stop a child-mashing villain

Notable for racy scenes in which hairy-chested Bollywood icon Akshay Kumar frolics with his glistening leading lady in a steaming swimming pool (while singing, naturally), Mr Bond also stars Pankaj Dheer as a white-haired, apparently Chinese-inspired villain named Dragon, who boasts a luxurious pet moustache so substantial that it puts Blofeld’s cat to shame.

Dragon’s uniquely cruel signature turn of evil involves crushing small children to death beneath a large steamroller: not to be put off, Kumar’s Mr Bond fights back with lots of crooning and disco dancing. The movie’s finest sequence features our hero being sung back to life by a gaggle of tiny kiddies after taking a beating from an enemy henchman.

The blonde, buxom ‘Swedish Bonds’ who used to be in a beer advert

Quite why John Rhys-Davies, fresh from the Lord of the Rings movies, felt the need to appear as an agent for evil terrorist organisation INTERR in this grubby 2001 spy spoof will perhaps never be explained. Part Austin Powers, part Charlie’s Angels, Never Say Never Mind: The Swedish Bikini Team pitches the titular quartet of blonde, leather-clad models as international crimefighters tasked by mysterious boss Mr Blue (Bruce Payne) with helping friendly governments and worthy private corporations in the fight against evil. The buxom Swedish Bikini Team first came to public attention in a 1991 advert for Old Milwaukee Beer, drawing complaints of misogyny. So at least they had something in common with Fleming’s famous secret agent.

The American teenage Bond who fights a hermaphrodite villain

When George Lazenby turned down the chance to return as 007 in a sequel to 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he probably never imagined it would get this bad. Less than two decades later, the dimple-chinned Australian turned up as veteran secret agent Drew Stargrove in the 1986 B-movie Never Too Young To Die. A denim-clad John Stamos stars as the ostensibly Flemingesque lead, Stargrove’s high school gymnast son who takes revenge following the death of his father at the hands of hermaphrodite villain Velvet Von Ragner (a leering, gurning Gene Simmons of Kiss). The bad guy’s signature kill move involves penetrating his victims with a sharply-filed fingernail, a murder method known as “the finger”, and which sounds deeply unpleasant.

The home counties-shot Bond starring that guy out of The New Avengers

Licensed to Love and Kill (aka The Man from S.E.X.), was in fact the second in a series of Bond spoofs based around agent No 1 of the Secret Service, aka Charles Bind. But for the 1979 instalment, Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff somehow managed to convince The New Avengers’ Gareth Hunt to take the lead in a battle against sinister organisation K.R.A.S.H. (Killing Rape Arson Slaughter and Hit), its evil boss, the subtly titled Senator Lucifer Orchid, and a dozen nefarious female henchmen, one of whom fights Bind using nothing more than a pair of spinning boobies. Despite being ostensibly set in the US, the entire film was shot in the home counties – and it shows. Early on, Bind asks himself: “What am I doing”, and you have to wonder if Hunt was experiencing similar emotions.

The French Bond spoof set in Hong Kong

Maxwell and Lee went moonlighting once again in 1975’s From Hong Kong, With Love, this time seemingly appearing as M and Moneypenny in an early cameo, which must have gone down well with Bond rights holders Eon Productions. Yvan Chiffe’s spoof stars the popular Marx brothers-inspired French group Les Charlots as a team of spies tasked with taking down the villainous Marty, played by an all-singing, all-dancing Mickey Rooney. It was filmed mostly at the Shaw Brothers’ studio in Hong Kong and features a shameless parody of the famous 007 gun barrel sequence in which one of the Charlots apparently shoots himself in the face by accident. Because blowing your own brains out is always hilarious.