In Like Flint

 

Acting On Inflint

In Like Flint
20th Century Fox 1967
Directed by Gordon Douglas
French Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Light spoilers.

You have eyes that keep attracting me,
Dazzling and distracting me,
It’s your Zowie face.
You have a smile, this is disarming,
And style that is alarming,
And such a wowie face.
From Nelson RIddle’s lyrics to the greatest song in movie history, Jerry Goldsmith’s In Like Flint theme.


After the incredible success of Bond spoof/parody Our Man Flint the previous year (reviewed here), in fact, even before that film’s release it would seem, a sequel called In Like Flint was enthusiastically commissioned. It would appear however, according to lead actor James Coburn who played Derek Flint, that the filmmakers, including the director, were not that interested in the film they were making. Coburn has gone on record that it was himself and the stunt choreographer who directed a lot of the finished film between them. Not sure I totally believe that (and I may be prejudiced because I think Douglas has made some good movies) but there may be some truth in that, from a certain point of view, I would guess.

Either way, the lack of backing from the production team doesn’t really come across in the final product, which is another breezy and fun spy movie parody in the vein of the first film. Coburn is back and so is Lee J. Cobb as former boss Lloyd Cramden. After the president is switched under his nose using a special paralysing gas, Cramden is left with the mystery of why the president’s golf swing, which he was timing with his stop watch, took three minutes but only passed in a half a second from his point of view. And then, after a run in with one of the film’s main, soft antagonists played by Jean Hale, Cramden is discredited and suspended from his organisation. Flint believes the problem is coming from within ZOWIE (Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage) itself and, he’s half right. The real problem is a network of women operating out of a chain of beauty parlours called Fabulous Face... they want to take control of the world and deliver it into the safer hands of women (and who can blame them), something Flint mocks openly when discovering the truth. Despite acknowledging that the real power in the world is really in the hands of secretaries and mistresses. 

And, yes, the women have been guilty of infiltrating various organisations and causing untold damage but, also, slowly brainwashing women to their ways of thinking and diminishing faith in men via thousands of subliminally loaded hairdryers in various salons around the world. However, when the men they’ve been working with in ZOWIE take the operation from their hands, the last quarter of the movie becomes about the ladies and Flint working together to stop the turncoats’ mad plan to dominate or destroy the world (or something). 

And it’s a great film, which always lands differently every time I revisit it. When I was a kid I always preferred this one slightly more than the excellent original but I’ve flip flopped on that as I’ve got older. In Like Flint is fantastic but, I think it’s just a little less ingenious than the first one. However there’s still a lot to recommend in this and much that’s worthy of note. 

Like actress Yvonne Craig, who plays a scene or two as Natasha the ballerina. Of course, this actress was ballet trained herself so is perfect in this role and that training must have helped her out considerably when she was playing her regular spot as Batgirl opposite Adam West and Burt Ward on the third series of the Batman TV show that same year. Genre fans will also know her for little roles in a couple of The Man From UNCLE episodes (and one of the film ‘assemblies’) and from a role in the third and final season of Star Trek, a couple of years later. 

Then there’s all the silly Flintisms and gadgets which pop up. It’s curious because recurring gags like the pulse arm watch to restart Flint’s heart are used without explaining them to the audience this time around and absolutely require knowledge of the first film. However, unlike the first one, where Flint’s arsenal of sleuthing props make their debut on use, mostly, this one goes for a more formulaic introduction of setting up things to bring them back in a deus ex machina capacity later in the film. 

For instance, the wonderfully comic scene where Flint is talking to a dolphin in his pool so he can compile a human/dolphin dictionary, has an absurd pay off later in he film when Flint calls out to any passing dolphins in their own language, to hitch a ride under the security barbed wire on the Fabulous Face beauty resort in the Virgin Islands. The people at the resort have Flint’s three women held hostage in cryogenic suspension. The point is made that they’re all new women, Flint having found his former four aides husbands to marry, earlier in the film. When Cramden asks why there are only three now, Flint replies that he’s ‘cutting down’. 

Another item is the sonic gizmo which Flint shows Cramden at the start of the film, when Cramden calls on Flint for help. This device which doubles as Flint’s belt buckle emits a variety of sonic notes which can either push objects around, like a billiard ball or, if turned up, cause an object to burst apart. Flint uses this device at least twice in the second half of the movie, both to break the glass in the suspended animation chamber in which he is being frozen and also to push himself through space towards the ship containing lady cosmonauts at the film’s conclusion. 

Other moments of fun are less advertised ahead of schedule... such as when Flint poses as the man on the ZOWIE recruitment poster to hide himself in plain sight via a ‘trompe l'oeil’ effect... or the moment when he starts a plane full of Russians he is hastily leaving, to singing a Russian song. Remember those films where the lyrics would pop up on screen and a bouncing ball would stress the word you were supposed to be singing to join in? Well, the Russian letters to the song pop up here with a bouncing red star. So, yeah, you get the idea, the film is still as silly and as entertaining as the previous Flint adventure. 

Once again, Jerry Goldsmith provides scoring duties and, if you think the score to Our Man Flint was one of the greatest film scores of all time (and if you didn’t then you’re not listening right), In Like Flint has a somehow vastly superior score to the original. Not only that but it also has the greatest song in cinematic movie history, some of the lyrics of which are reproduced at the opening of this review. If you want great music, In Like Flint is the movie to go for in soundtrack excellence.

And that just about wraps me up for In Like Flint and the Flint movies in general. In 1976 there was a TV pilot film for a series that never got made called Our Man Flint - Dead On Target, with a different actor and... it completely misses the point of what Flint is all about, even playing the character relatively poe faced and no longer the superman of the movies, relegated to kind of running a private detective agency. It’s truly dreadful and if you really want to see it, at least one DVD incarnation of the movies included it as an extra. I’d not bother though, if I were you. Meanwhile, the first two Flint cinema movies are still an absolute joy to watch and I shall certainly try to keep revisiting them regularly over the years. Trivia hounds might like to note that this is the last film that 20th Century Fox shot in actual Cinemascope. Highly recommended.

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.  

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs

Bomb Voyage

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs 
aka Le Spie Vengono Dal Semifreddo
Italy/USA 1966
Directed by Mario Bava
American International Pictures
DVD Region 1

Okay, so I watched the first film in this sequence of two, Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, very recently and reviewed it here. I didn’t think a heck of a lot of it, to be fair, even though it’s just the kind of oddity of a movie I usually relish. However, I was really looking forward to this sequel because Mario Bava is one of those amazing directors who can make even the blandest of subjects look interesting and inject it with some inspiring photography, imbibing it a vitality all his own. So I couldn’t wait to see what he did with subject matter like Dr. Goldfoot and his ridiculous schemes for world domination. Well... hmmm... to say I was underwhelmed would be a little harsh but, it has to be said, it’s a terrible movie and I was really surprised that Bava had ended up directing it

The history of the movie is somewhat strange in that it turns out that it started off life as a sequel to a film I mentioned, completely by coincidence, in my review of Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, namely the Goldfinger spoof Due Mafiosi Contro Goldginger, which starred a very famous duo of Italian comedians called Franco & Ciccio and this second Goldfoot film, also, features them quite heavily. However, to help secure funding, the producers got the help of American International Pictures and AIP would only come on board with the backing money if the film was a sequel to their own spy spoof, the aforementioned Doctor Goldfoot. So the plan was to have two completely different cuts of the film, one which would feature more of  Franco & Ciccio (as the Italian cut apparently does... although they’re all over this cut of the movie too) and one version which is a Dr. Goldfoot film... except in the UK where it apparently had to be released as Dr. G And The Girl bombs because a real Doctor named Goldfoot threatened legal action.

The other thing I learned, and I’m sure I knew all this before because I read Tim Lucas’ excellent Mario Bava bible, All The Colours Of The Dark, many years ago... is that Bava really didn’t want to be involved with this movie in any capacity and, frankly, it shows. He was, however, under contract so he... well... he did his best with it I guess.

The film opens up with a bizarre reminder of the first movie as the credits play out with footage from the previous installment with a voice over by Vincent Price, narrating what happened and bringing the audience up to speed. Except, it’s really weird because Price as Dr. Goldfoot is the only actor/character carried over from the first film and so footage of Franco, Ciccio and “singing sensation” Fabian from this movie is also inserted in the recap, to somehow try and fool the audience into thinking their characters were in the first movie too. Um... moving swiftly along...

Franco and Ciccio don’t dominate the movie as they apparently do in the Italian version but, it has to be said, they don’t seem to jell well with a lot of the surrounding story. I can kinda see the appeal of them actually and would love to see them in other stuff but, seriously, I suspect this movie is not a good vehicle for them. Their comedy is very broad, often slapstick in places, and with maybe a dash of the anarchic humour of the Marx Brothers thrown in... served up with a generous helping of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill comedy violence at the drop of a hat. They even throw in a version of the Harpo/Groucho mirror scene from Duck Soup, only performed with Vincent Price and one of these two in this one. So they really should have fit into this movie pretty well in theory... but the reality is it’s a clunker of a film they’re in and, sad to say, that if you think Frankie Avalon’s comedy performance in Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine was particularly bad (I know I did), well, lets just say that Fabian makes Frankie Avalon look like the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.

Price himself is enjoyable enough but, honestly, the tone of his performance in this one is at odds with what he did with the character in the first. He really hams it up even more and spends most of the film actually talking to the audience. He’s kind of brilliant but, honestly, he doesn’t just break the fourth wall, he torches it and then dances on its ashes. I think he probably spends as much time mugging at the audience and filling them in on what’s going on than he does interacting with the other characters, in all honesty. There’s some funny stuff here but, when you pitch it against the plot, it seems kind of out of place and unnecessary. He still has lady robots clad in gold bikinis, who explode when kissing their victims this time around but, they seem to lack even the intelligence of the gals in the first movie and somehow seem to be a bit unsteady on their feet, it seemed to me.

There’s some terrible Bondian references again... such as one of Goldfoot’s personal assistants being called Hard-Job, after Goldfinger’s Odd Job. There’s also an homage to the periscope spy scene in From Russia With Love but... with a ridiculous comedy periscope that extends wherever he wants it to go and follows people around, stretching around corners etc, without anyone seeming to notice it. Honestly awful. Maybe he should have just stuck to using the “magically seeing anywhere he wants to” cam he seemed to have invented in the first film, perhaps?

The film has not much of an excuse for a plot and, if you thought the overlong comedy chase at the end of the first movie was dull and monotonous... well you should try sitting through this one which, pretty much, lasts the entire last third of the movie and which is equally less than entertaining, devolving into a fight with fire extinguishers on an airplane.

Ultimately, I was expecting to see a lot of Mario Bava’s perfectly framed photography and trademark bright colours but, while there certainly is some in this movie at some points, I found myself wondering if Bava was even on the set half the time because... some of it looked like it had been directed by somebody else. I feel sorry for Bava having to direct this rubbish under contract and, looking at other reviews of this movie, I think it’s generally agreed that this is the worst film he ever put his hand to... something I didn’t know when I started watching this monstrosity.

There’s not much more to say about this. Lallo Gorri scored the Italian version of this film and I would certainly like to see that version and definitely hear his score. This American version of the film is scored, once again, by Les Baxter and I have to say that I liked this score a lot more than the one he did for the first movie. It’s a lot jazzier and bolder than that one, I think, and it reminded me a lot more of what other American composers were doing in spoof spy films at the time... which is honestly not a bad way to go with it.

One last thing. There’s an uncredited actor in this called George Wang who plays one of Goldfoot’s assistants. All the way through this I recognised him but couldn’t quite put a finger on where I’d seen him before. Turns out he’s the Chinese guy who gets killed by Ursula Andress with her bullet shooting bikini at the start of The 10th Victim (reviewed here) and he’s got quite a distinctive face. I also found out he died just a couple of weeks before I saw this film... which is kinda sad since he’s only just properly appeared on my radar. Apparently he used to turn up in a lot of spaghetti westerns also... so I’ll look forward to a bit of Wang spotting now as I watch more movies.

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girls Bombs is the weaker of two very bad movies. There’s a lot of potential entertainment value, I feel, in movies with villains who have ridiculous names and even more ridiculous plots for taking over the world but, alas, and much to my surprise, neither of the Dr. Goldfoot movies live up to that promise. I am, however, happy to have seen them because that particular box tick was a long time coming. If you are a fan of Vincent Price then it’s probably worth a watch. If, though, like me, you’re partial to a bit of Mario Bava, well... you might not like what you find here.