Our Man Flint

After Dinner Flint

Our Man Flint
20th Century Fox 1966
Directed by Daniel Mann
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers a-go-go.

Our Man Flint was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid in the 1970s and remains so to this day. Essentially it’s a ‘band wagon’ film, in that it’s trying to capture some of the box office magic which the EON James Bond movies had been doing since four years before. Once a popular version of Bond had finally been unleashed on a largely unsuspecting public (the films were pretty ground breaking in their day), everyone was trying to rush their own knock off versions out into the cinematic wild, with perhaps the Italians and French churning out many of these things. 

The Americans, also, did a fair few and perhaps their most successful were their spoofs such as the four Matt Helm movies, which were absolutely nothing like the books they were based on and starred Dean Martin in the title role, where perhaps someone like John Wayne might have been closer to the character as written in Donald Hamilton’s popular novels (I’ll be reviewing those movies for the blog at some point too, of course). Their other big contribution was the Flint series of two films (and, much later, a truly terrible, missed the point TV pilot which I’m not sure I can be subjecting myself to again for a review). 

The Flint movies were where the Americans really got the formula right and the writers must have had their tongues lodged firmly in their cheeks as the title character, Derek Flint played by James Coburn, out does and sends up, not just Ian Fleming’s beloved character but also the whole idea of the secret agent movie. It’s absolutely ridiculous but, because the leads, including Lee J Cobb as Flint’s former war commander and Gila Golan as the turncoat femme fatale, all play it absolutely straight... the silliness works beautifully until you’re left with an absolutely perfect storm of spy tropes, action and ‘I can’t believe they just got away with that’ gags. 

How silly is it? Well, it’s beautifully over the top. How about the idea of Flint, observed by his four female ‘assistants’, with just his head and feet resting between two chairs, his body suspended off the ground in this manner while he rests (which apparently is something Coburn was able to do and was filmed as was), stopping his own heart for three hours and woken only when a little metronomic attachment comes out of his watch and starts his pulse ticking over again. Or the scene where he kills a fly in a room with a blow dart. Or the scene where he attacks two of the guards at the headquarters of ZOWIE (Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage) because he realises they are imposters... as he recognises they are wearing Battle Of The Bulge medals. But wait, “there’s no such as Battle Of The Bulge ribbons”... “exactly!” Yeah, brilliantly silly. 

Or how about the scene where Golan, dressed as a harpist, uses the strings of a harp to launch a poisoned dart at Flint, only to hit his boss Cramden (Cobb)... Flint grabs one of his keys, presses a button and a blade pops out the end so he can cut the poison out of the fallen man. A little later, he saves another man’s life by removing a light bulb from an overhead fitting, jamming Cramden’s fingers into it and then using his and Cramden’s body to pass the electrical current into a fallen victim to restart his heart. 

But while all this silliness is going on... and it’s great fun... there’s also a level of ‘over the top’ procedural, as Flint follows a trail of bizarre clues that nobody else on the planet would ever find, to lead him to the enemy threatening the world (known as GALAXY). There’s also a level of ingenuity in terms of how far the gadgetry and inventiveness of the film goes which, for my money, elevates this movie far above the Bond films. I love the Bond series but, for me, the Flint films are the absolute epitome of the spy genre... along with The IPCRESS File (reviewed here) and The Quiller Memorandum (reviewed here). 

For instance, in addition to the key blade, his watch has a rim which can be pulled up at an angle and combined with his pen to form a miniature microscope on his wrist with which he can analyse physical clues. And, of course, his cigarette lighter which contains 82 different weapons... this last item is first revealed in response to Cramden who is trying to equip Flint for the field, with a variety of things which are all refused by Flint. And this is one scene of many where the film doesn’t just spoof the Bond films, it blatantly calls them out...

So, after offering Flint a Walter PPK (Bond’s gun, acquired at the start of both the film and novel of Dr. No (reviewed here), after his Beretta failed him on a previous assignment, he tries to give Flint a briefcase which, with its retractable knives, is clearly modelled on the one in From Russia With Love (reviewed here). But the Bond riffs don’t stop there...

There’s a whole fight scene as Flint and another agent, 0008 (triple oh eight clearly being a riff but one better on 007), exchange intelligence information under cover of exchanging blows in a fist fight. The actor Robert Gunner is made up to look just like Sean Connery (the resemblance is uncanny) and he puts on a Scottish accent to complete the caricature. And during that fight, 0008 clearly states that it’s not SPECTRE behind the threat to the world. Later on in the movie, when Gila Golan’s character is reading a book of The Adventures Of 0008, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack quotes the four base line notes of part of John Barry’s contribution to Monty Norman’s original Bond theme, which I guess is just about as much as they could have gotten away with here without facing a lawsuit. 

And talking about that score. I don’t remember quite when my fascination with soundtrack music began, probably when I first saw the Flash Gordon serials but, Jerry Goldsmith’s absolutely stonking scores for Our Man Flint and its sequel In Like Flint really captivated me as a young ‘un and I still put the insubstantial (can we have an expanded version please Varese?) but absolutely amazing scores on for a spin at least a few times every year. It’s fantastic stuff and the original studio album recording (which is also way different but equally brilliant) featured a track, Galaxy A-Go-Go, which was co-written by a young Randy Newman.

Okay, I think that’s me done with Our Man Flint for the time being. There’s a scene were Flint quickly browns his face up, grabs a revolving towel out of its housing in a bathroom and uses it as a turban to appear Indian at one point which, I suspect, wouldn’t go down great with today’s overly politically correct crowd. But, who cares, it’s just a fun moment and it’s certainly not meant as a mockery in the context of the scene. And I have to say that, rather than pay out way too much money for a very pricey limited US edition, I found more or less the same Blu Ray edition in a French disc (and the second movie) and, although there are no extras (that’s okay, I have two different DVDs of the movie with different extras anyway), I have to say that I’ve never seen the films looking this good. And it’s the full cinemascope frame as always but in a stunning transfer so you can pick up little details you might have missed before. For instance, it’s not even made much of but, when Flint sends a GALAXY guard falling to his death, a quick look down at the body shows his hard hat spinning round and around on the floor at the left of the shot, which I’d never noticed before. 

All in all then, the Flint films are absolutely exceptional and, especially Our Man Flint. I’m not sure why these films aren’t being made more of these days. There’s no Blu Ray release in the UK, the US one was a blink and you’ll miss it affair and even the French editions I have were hard to get for the right price. These films deserve to find a new audience with a younger generation of film goers and, as far as I’m concerned, are absolutely essential viewing for any cinephile worth their salt.  

Lightning Bolt

Most Eisley

Lightning Bolt
(aka Operazione Goldman)
Italy/Mexico 1966
Directed by Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Dawson)
Rare Flix Region 1 DVD

Wow. Are there really any words I can use to describe just how awful this movie turned out to be?

I bought this as a special order a couple of years ago and it’s because I just assumed, from the artwork, that this was one of those awful Italian superhero movies I can have a lot of fun with. The poster shows a red lycra clad, amply endowed blonde lady... judo throwing some kind of masked ninja. I mean. c’mon... who’s not going to go after a film that promises a buxom superheroine meting out justice to an army of masked blokes. A similar poster I’ve recently discovered under another of the film’s release titles, Operazione Goldman, similarly features the red clad blonde lady at rest on the barrel of a gun belonging to the leading actor.

I’d like to say that either of these posters is a good representation of what’s in the movie but, truth be told, there is no blonde, red lycra clad super lady to be found in this one in any shape or form... unless you count the main character’s not so blonde boss, ‘never clad in red lycra’ lady, Captain Patricia Flanagan (played by Diana Lorys), who only seems to be in about of the third movie. And she just seems to be there purely as eye candy for the other characters to look at and act surprised that their government is employing the services of one of the fairer sex. The only other things she does in this movie are get in trouble and be a damsel in distress for the main protagonist, not-so-superspy Harry Sennet (played not so convincingly by Anthony Eisley) and, in one scene, shoot a not so prominent villainess played by Wandisa Guida in the back to stop her from killing Harry with a squirty acid gun. In fact, you could just as easily use this poster and change the title to, say, one of the Star Wars movies and it would still have as much resemblance to the movie it is trying to advertise as it does here. Which is, of course, absolutely nothing.

What can I say about this film? I’ve not seen that many Italian spy movies, yet, but this one... which is presumably called Lightning Bolt to cash in on the previous year’s James Bond title Thunderball... has surely got to be one of the worst of its kind... I hope. There are movies which are so bad they’re good... a pleasure to spend time with as you watch the cast and crew stumble around and try to fashion what they’re doing into a fairly coherent viewing experience but, in the case of this one, I have to say that it’s just bad, period.

The story seems to involve a plot very similar, pretty much stolen in fact, from the movie version of Ian Fleming’s Dr. No... the idea of toppling rockets. The reason that the supervillian here is doing it is because he wants to reach the moon first and control mankind with the threat of his giant, moon based laser rocket. So, you know, he needs to stop everybody else from getting there first so he can get his mad laser of death built in the most effortless way possible. Did I also mention that this man is the owner of his own worldwide beer company? His lair is in one of his factory warehouses and... yeah... so there’s that.

We see two people exploring what could be the underwater cause of the rocket toppling early on as one of them goes down to investigate a giant dome. Two mechanical arms come out of the dome and then they... ‘something’ him to death. I couldn’t quite work out what was supposed to be going on here but the diver was obviously having a hard time as he was reacting to what looks like something that should probably have been added in as a special effect later... I’m guessing. So, whatever it is that the arms held... lethal electricity or strange beams of death defying otherness... they’re pretty much an invisible version of that and I’m sure that must have helped the budget tremendously. Doesn’t help the audience much but... hey... at least it was a cheap death.

The guy left in the boat above is presumed killed when it explodes for some unknown reason. Luckily and inexplicably, he is a very clever scientist that the villain somehow manages to save and who he can use to develop the laser he wants to install on the moon for him. Seriously? What kind of plan is that? Do these guys not go to Supervillain Business College where they can find out about the simple things like not spending a load of their beer profits on building a rocket to the moon before they’ve actually finished developing the laser they’re going to put up there? This makes no sense.

Anyway, red headed Harry Sennet is sent to investigate. He was supposed to be blonde but, from what I can gather,  when they tried to dye Anthony Eisley’s hair that colour it just went red instead. So.... anyway, his voice-over narrative provides clues to what’s going on about 70% of the time (you can try and navigate the logic of the rest yourself) and there are some genuinely corny and puntastic lines, befitting the downmarket Bond character that this guy is trying so hard to be... at least for a while. Bits of dialogue such as when he’s asked by a poolside lady, “Do you like my tan Harry?” to which he answers, “Tan-talising.” Or his unfettered wit when he informs the audience about a possible romantic conquest like this... “She carried around a silencer. Her husband, Archie.” But after a fairly short time the dialogue just pitches down to an even lesser level of banter than this and the voice-over moments become fairly interminable.

One of the real problems with this pun slinging and confident but beyond sexist, bottom swatting special agent is that he never really looks the part. There are some actors... Sean Connery, Charlton Heston, Angelina Jolie, Arnold Schwarzenneger, to name a few... and they look like they can pretty much handle anything the world could throw at them quite credibly... whether they actually could or not. In Eisley’s case he doesn’t, I’ll be honest, look like he is that young or fit enough to hold his own against any kind of henchman or supervillain... of any kind. I’m wondering if the producers of this movie thought so too because, most of the time, he just seems to be walking around trying to talk the villains out of his way. The one time when he does get kinda physical is when he and Captain Patricia enter... one of the most ridiculous and self defeating deathtraps ever put in a movie, I reckon.

So, the two of them get locked into a small but very tall chamber.... a set which is inexplicably re-used as a completely different room with a completely different function at a completely different location later in the movie. And then one of the wealth of completely non-functional looking pipes, which is open at the end for some reason, presumably for just this purpose, starts gushing out water and slowly, oh so slowly, filling the tall chamber. It’s a good job there are lots of pipes jutting out from the wall or Harry wouldn’t have somewhere to leave the good lady sitting while he both climbs and swims to alleviate their diabolical predicament. So how do our heroes escape? They can’t shoot their way out because the old ricochet sound effect on the soundtrack says they can’t, when they try.

Well... the first thing Harry does is climb up to the top of the chamber and plug a hole which he says must be sucking all the water into the room. Um... what? So, yes, he plugs the little hole in the top of the chamber and, indeed, the pipe does suddenly defy logic and stop gushing water. We’re through the looking glass here people! Then, the villain, who can see him and pretty much anyone, anywhere in the world with his science bending, magical view screen... tries to stop Harry tinkering with the locked trap door at the bottom of the chamber. He says to his assistant to open it if he tries to get it open again... because, um, yeah, that’ll teach him. And he does. Presumably his twisted thinking is that Harry will be killed from all the water pressure as the chamber empties him out and washes him into the surrounding landscape. Golly, never saw that completely ludicrous escape coming... as Harry just walks back into the chamber and escapes with his pipe perched lady friend.

And that about sums up the level of the movie, I’m afraid. It sounds like it could be at least entertaining, purely on a comedy level... but it really isn’t.  And when Harry finally despatches the supervillain by having him fall off a gantry to his death before reviving just in time to be rolled over by red hot magma midst all the random explosions... Harry comes out with probably the most completely witless quip in superspy history... “I didn't like your beer, either.” No, seriously. Comedy genius here.

The print is in terrible shape and while I must give a big thank you and well done to Rare Flix for somehow managing to preserve this thing as best they can, including retaining the scope aspect ratio... the print degradation kinda offsets any chance the transfer had of getting this into the realm of quality viewing. But, you know, it’s really good that they’ve made the effort because films like this are a) a useful reminder of some of the most dire films out there and b) means you can find out how much you didn’t want to see it as soon as possible, rather than spending a lifetime trying to track such a terrible disappointment of a movie down. If you like 1960s spy movies, you may just welcome the idea of seeing what Lightning Bolt is like. If you don’t have that much of an interest though... I’d say it’s fairly safe to give this one a miss.