The Matt Helm Series
                                                                                                              
The Silencers (1966) - 6.0



If you come into this film expecting to find the Matt Helm of the 27 novels, you are knocking on the wrong door. I will confess to having read all 27 of those a few years back. Helm was a cold hearted assassin for the good guys. Us. He was given an assignment to kill a target and he did with total detachment and professionalism. As the series continued, the author Donald Hamilton used Helm to voice his own grievances against communism, modern life and modern women. If a woman was wearing slacks he would go on a four page tirade about how trampy that was. The four film series of Matt Helm adaptations is absolutely nothing like the character in the books. Initially, the producer planned on making serious spy movies to capitalize on Bond and the spy craze that was going on. But they were unable to find an actor willing to play the part - hoping at one point to get Paul Newman.



They ended up with Deano. Dean Martin, the Rat Pack and ex-partner of Jerry Lewis. Martin could sing, dance, do comedy and was decent as an actor. Called the King of Cool. They could have still gone serious, but Martin was a celebrity as well with a well-established persona as a drinker and skirt chaser. Both of which apparently were exaggerated. In 1965 he had started the Dean Martin TV show as the host of a variety show. So serious was out and instead they molded the show around Martin's talents and public persona. Helm had to be a swinger, have the coolest pad, seduce women as easy as making a sandwich, be ready with a quip, defeat the villains and of course sing.



These are really The Dean Martin Show spoofing Bond. Filled with lovely actresses all wanting to get in the prone position with the sun-tanned Martin. These films were quite popular at the time of their release, but time has badly aged them - true I would say of most spoofs - Martin is no longer the King of Cool and the sexual conquests of the fifty year old Martin with much younger women is now frowned upon. These are campy Man Cave films. Still, taking all that into account, I enjoyed this - it is light, frothy, silly, charming in a smarmy way and filled with beautiful women. The Tate Brothers give their sign of approval to the films,



It takes about five minutes to realize this isn't trying to be Bond. During the opening credits, three women do a strip tease, then transitions to Helm in his round rotating bed dreaming about kissing three women with his songs being played, he wakes up pushes a button that slides him into a large bath where Lovey Kravezit (Beverly Adams) pronounced "craves it" is waiting to scrub him. Then right out of the Jetsons, they are automatically dried off. Eventually, he is persuaded by the head of ICE (James Gregory) to come out of retirement to stop a dastardly plan by Big O (Victor Bueno) to spread radioactive fallout all over the south west. He is first partnered with the chiseled beauty of Daliah Lavi and then about halfway through is stuck with Stella Stevens who may be an enemy spy. Stevens as a complete furniture breaking klutz nearly steals the show and her scene in the muddy field should have won her an award for Good Sport. Oddly, the action ending when he thwarts Big O is played seriously and feels right out of a Bond film.


Murderer's Row (1966) - 5.5



I like that though most of the film takes place in Europe, Dean Martin refused to travel there. It says how seriously he took the film. Not at all. And neither should we. Damn, if you were too troubled to go to Europe in the swinging 1960s, you were one stay at home guy. This is the second in the Dean Martin Matt Helm series. The best that can really be said about these films is that they were of a time. Wonderful pop fashions, spy gadgets, beautiful women and Old Man River with a couple tunes. Martin's career was basically him being him. Casual, relaxed, comfortable, pally, never pushing the envelope.



Have you ever watched his live concerts? He never finishes a song. Maybe gets bored with it or bored with the whole deal but he stops singing constantly and yammers effortlessly with the audience like they are his best friends. That is him - a cigarette, a drink and charming. That is also his Matt Helm. It makes it impossible to create any tension or suspense. You don't watch these for any drama or excitement but for all the fluff. The girls in bikinis, the cars, the scenery, the smart-assery, the pop. Definitely, not the car chases. There is a car chase here that would put an insomniac to sleep.



The evil organization The Big O (get it) has plans to blow up Washington D.C. Now of course no one would care or even notice, but back in the 60s it was a big deal. Big O kills the top agents of the Brits, the French and the Japanese, but fail with Helm. He goes off to Europe to make contact with an agent but finds her dead in a refrigerator. He is being watched by the heads of the operation, Karl Malden and Camilla Sparv, who is wearing something that resembles a leaf of lettuce. He bumps into Ann-Margret at the pool who is bubbly like a just opened bottle of champagne and is the definition of pop when she dances the frug in the disco. The plot unfolds at the pace of a slow Sunday afternoon after a large meal. Malden is a Dr. No styled madman with his own little island and has an enforcer who has a large metal plate in his head. A trick revolver that takes seven seconds to shoot, bombs the size of pins, a giant magnet, a score by Lalo Schifrin and Martin acting like month old cheese going bad is part of the fun.


The Ambushers (1967) - 5.5



I am sure that I saw all the Dean Martin Matt Helms films years ago, but I have had zero recollection of them. That is partly my failing memory but also these films. There is no reason to remember them. Like the hot dog, I ate last week. I am not even sure how much of the previous two films in the series that I recall and that was last week. At least in this one Dean Martin was willing to travel. All the way to Acapulco. I was hoping he would run into Elvis but if not him, Ursula Andress. Not that Martin aka Matt Helm is lacking in women. They come out of the woodworks in droves in this film, all very fit and available. In the opening credits there are more women than in a Busby Berkeley musical.



This film has some reputation. As one of the fifty worst films in a book written by the Medveds - and the well-known film critic Judith Crist buried it with this review "The sole distinction of this vomitous mess is that it just about reaches the nadir of witlessness, smirky sexiness and bad taste – and it's dull, dull, dull to boot." She must have been fun to hang out with, at the morgue. But it is easy to see why a female would feel this way - even with two tough female agents, it is basically a gaggle of female legs, arms and cleavage. But I have to mildly disagree with her. Not that she is all wrong, but after the first two films in the series, what did she expect? The Spy Who Came in from the Cold? It delivers the cheap silly thrills that one expects. If I was sixteen this would have given my hormones a kick. It is ridiculous, absurd, witless and Martin goes through it calmly like he is doing a long whiskey commercial or at a cocktail party.



America has developed a space ship that it sends into space piloted by Sheila (Janice Rule) but using some powerful electro gadget, Ortega (Albert Salmi) is able to hijack it and bring it back to earth. Months later Sheila appears out of the jungle unable to remember anything. Till she sees her fellow agent Helm and it all comes back as does her sex drive. Helm is at the ICE (Intelligence and Counter Espionage) training center that is populated by nubile females learning the ropes of spycraft. He gladly has a hands on approach to teaching them.  Off the two of them go to Mexico looking for Ortega. They cross paths with the delectable Francesca (Senta Berger) who wants to kill Ortega. Senta by simply being there gives a film style. Helm gets out of a firing squad by blowing laughing gas from a cigarette, uses a heat gadget to melt men's belt buckles and have their pants fall down, takes a bath in a pool of beer and other silly things. Not one of the worst films of all time. Damn, it has Senta Berger in it.


The Wrecking Crew (1968) - 5.0



I have to admit that this was a struggle to get through. The fourth and final one in the series was one too many. Just too much of the same nonsense with Dean Martin barely acting and getting to kiss all the girls. It has a terrific cast though with four lovely women and the wonderfully reptilian Nigel Green as the villain. The four females make for an eyeful of delight - Elke Sommer never looking so good, Nancy Kwan as the Chinese Dragon Lady, Tina Louise all sultry and the tragic Sharon Tate. They all get some good screen time. But there is so little to the plot. Basically, have a younger woman throwing themselves at the wrinkly Martin. The women either try to bed him or kill him or both.



A billion dollars worth of gold is stolen while being transported by train across Europe. If not recovered, the world's currencies will crash and the American debt will overwhelm the economy. Clearly, a billion went a lot further back in 1968. ICE has only one man who can recover the gold, Matt Helm who is interrupted while in the middle of a dream of kissing women to his own soundtrack. On the villain side along with Green are Elke and Nancy, both psychopaths wanting to kill Helm but not before bonking him. Every time, he returns to his hotel room, a woman is waiting for him to have sex. Never happened to me even once. Sadly, his seductions are always interrupted by Tate, who plays a clumsy agent who gets nothing right. Kind of a female Clouseau. But not very funny.



Like all four of these films, they spend much of the budget on an action packed finale. These endings would actually fit into a good spy film. Interestingly, the fights were choreographed by Bruce Lee. He said of Martin, "tried to teach Dean Martin how to kick but he was too lazy and too clumsy". That sounds about right but to give Martin credit, he was fifty years old back when fifty was considered old. Lee praised Tate and Kwan though and their fight is good fun.



At the end, the next film is announced, The Ravagers which already had a script. But Martin bowed out after the death of Sharon Tate because he was so depressed by it. This was her final film to be released while she was alive. And for trivia buffs, this was the debut of Chuck Norris as one of the henchman, but I didn't spot him. This is directed by Phil Karlson who had helmed some fine gritty crime films in the 1950s, but times had changed. He had also directed The Silencers. Just to finish where I started these reviews, the Matt Helm books are pretty terrific - especially the early ones and nothing like the movie Matt Helm. Maybe someday, he will be  portrayed as he was meant to be.