Dimension 5
                                                                                          
Director: Franklin Adreon
Year: 1966
Rating: 5.0
A very lightweight spy caper with Jeffrey Hunter and France Nuyen. It was produced on the cheap by United Pictures Corporation who focused on low budget thrillers. Not that there are a lot of thrills here, but it is a pleasant enough mindless 90-minutes of your life. It is a strange little film. Hunter plays the super suave hunky American spy who all the women swoon over, but he is terrible at his job and kind of a jerk. But I don't think he was meant to be. Times have changed and what might have been considered a masculine trait (his last name is Power), now just feels like a chauvinistic dick. And as a spy he is hopeless and it is his female partner (Nuyen) who keeps saving him.



China is bringing a nuclear bomb to Los Angeles and planning to blow it up. Goodbye Hollywood. In their later film Panic in the City, the producers try and blow up L.A. again. Maybe only being able to make low-budget films soured them on the city. The nefarious Chinese organization is named Dragon and their head in America is Big Buddha. Played by Oddjob aka Harold Sakata. Sakata had been a professional wrestler and actually won a Silver Medal at the 1948 Olympics in Weight Lifting. Not sure where he learned Hat Throwing. But I am a fan and always happy to come across him. The super secret American spy agency is Espionage Inc with three beautiful women handling the phones and desiring Hunter. He trades innuendos with them.



They have a Q in their organization as well, but he puts the Bond Q to shame. He has invented a device worn around the waist that will allow time travel, either backwards or forward. Handy if you are a spy. Rule 1 is don't kill anyone if you go in the past, but in the future it is fine. Nuyen joins him and is way smarter. She was one of the few Asian leading actresses at the time along with Nancy Kwan. In fact, Nuyen was to get the role in The World of Suzie Wong, but fell ill and Kwan got it and it made her a star. Nuyen later married Robert Culp. Robert Ito is also in the cast as a good guy spy. He looked familiar but could not place him till I checked his filmograpy. Quincy's assistant on that show. Nothing much happens in the film till the end, but an interesting cast helps. It was a film that doesn't travel that well to the present time.