Year:  1968
Rating: 4.5

---

Vince Edwards was probably great as Ben Casey a doctor he played on TV from 1961 to 1966 that made him a star, but that calm low-key bedside manner doesn't play very well as a spy out to save the world. He generates the excitement of nun counting her rosaries. Not that it is all his fault. The director David Miller can't seem to make up his mind whether he wants to make an espionage thriller or a hip 1960's comedic cultural artifact. It sort of falls in the middle with no where to go. The fact that Herbert Baker was one of the writers gives us a clue - he was partly responsible for two of the Dean Martin/Matt Helm dreadful debacles.


Like those films there are a lot of attractive women dancing in bikinis - in fact Beverley Adams who had a recurring cameo role as Lovey Kravitezit in three of the Matt Helm films doing very little other than looking lovely. She dances a lot in this film and keeps telling Hood (Edwards) to turn the music louder, louder, louder - that was I expect taken for sexual innuendo in those days - as was a later scene when the dialogue would lead you to believe that Hood was getting a hand job in a coffin which he clearly wasn't. Too bad for him.


Hood is assigned to make contact with Hammerhead - one of those very rich very evil villains - by selling him artistic pornography. A ditzy blond (Judy Geeson) keeps popping up wherever he goes and the viewer might assume there is a covert reason for this - there isn't other than bringing in a ditzy blonde for our amusement. It is never really clear what Hammerhead's nefarious plan is - steal a report on NATO missiles - ok - so what. Hood in truth isn't much of an agent as we have come to expect of them - he keeps getting beat up and falls for that old standby drug in a drink trick - even I wouldn't fall for that even if it is being offered by that British wannabe Marilyn Monroe blonde bombshell Diana Dors who was red hot back in the 1950's.


This is the sort of film that is so stupid that as Hammerhead is about to escape with this report that will allow him to take over the world (or some such rubbish or perhaps to spread pornography to the youth of the world) two Brit agents have him in their gunsights but don't shoot him because Hammerhead threatens to kill a girl. A girl or the world as we know it. Tough decision. Or the baddies steal the report and instead of taking pictures of it with a camera they have the thief read the entire report into a tiny recorder! Huh? I wish I could go back in time and tell them to make this a serious spy film because it might have been decent. This is based on a series of five Hood novels written by James Mayo (aka Stephen Coulter) written in the 1960's.