Perhaps the best Bond knock-off was the campier spy flick Our Man Flint, starring the incredibly cool James Coburn. Flint was an independent operative, and so awesome that when a supercomputer is consulted by pretty much everybody in the UN to find an agent who can deal with a mad scientist cabal that’s whipped up a weather machine, the answer to every single query is DEREK FLINT. This is a big, Bond-like affair, with huge sets and outlandishness in nearly every frame. Even so, the movie treads the line between exaggeration and actual thrills extremely well.
The cast is great too, although with Coburn in there that’s almost a given. Edward “MegaForce” Mulhare, Michael Knight’s boss from Knight Rider, is great as the sneering villain. Oscar winner Lee J. Cobb is Flint’s highly dyspeptic and relunctant boss. Gina “Valley of Gwangi” Golan is highly decorative as The Girl. Most essential, perhaps, is the genuinely great Flint theme music (when did movies give up on great themes?), that comically is being played wherever he goes. Unlike the far goofier Matt Helm movies, this can be watched as either a genre spoof or a straight spy flick and come off equally well. Great stuff, and certainly the best of the would be Bond films that flooded the market back in the ’60s.
The second film, not so hot. They went more for comedy and through the balance off a bit, although there’s still some good stuff there. In any case, you should definately rent the first film, or buy both of them, as Amazon is selling them both for half off at $10. (You might also for about the same price want to check out the similarly ‘one great, one good’ western spoofs Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter, starring James Garner and available as a set for $10.50.)
I actually like spy films, from the outlandish ones like this to the much darker ones like the superlative The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Does anyone else have any favorites in this genre?
