HELM#4: ol' Matt Teams up with British Intelligence
MASTER PLAN: Operation:Rainbow - steal a billion in gold and then take it in on a train. More so than the previous 3 Matt Helm adventures, this one has the earmarks of a regular thriller, though a lot of absurdity is retained: gold cannot be stacked as high as we see here; it's too heavy. Dino Martin is back in his final take as the boozy USA-Bond-type Helm, still snoozing to femme-infested dreams and ready with the off-the-cuff remarks, though some of it doesn't work. In an early scene at ICE's testing facility (copying the Q dept. from the James Bond films), he and his boss MacDonald test a new grenade device; 'Why don't we call it a little bit of hanky-panky?' Helm quips. MacDonald just looks at him like 'What are you talking about, please?' The actor James Gregory did not return as MacDonald, replaced by John Larch. There's an uneven tone to this Helmer, combining straight action with silliness. We have a bevy of femme fatales: Elke Sommer is pretty bloodthirsty as the head villain's main squeeze, but Nancy Kwan is also on hand to offer dangerous thrills. Tina Louise, off of "Gilligan's Island," shows up briefly. The real bright spot, however, is Sharon Tate as a clumsy agent, recalling the Stella Stevens character of the 1st Helmer "The Silencers." You can't decide whether she really is a dimwit or playing some undercover role (it turns out, she works for the Brits). Helm is really annoyed with her during most of the film and their repartee is quite amusing, suggesting what more could of been done with the female characters in the "Austin Powers" movies.The drawback to this Helm entry, which follows "The Ambushers," is the deadly slow pace in many scenes during the first half of the pic. A good example is Helm's scene with the Tina Louise character, which seems to drag on forever. Most of the action takes Helm to Denmark, where he must confront the super-rich Count Contini (Nigel Green), a villain patterned on such Bond foes as Goldfinger and Drax of the later "Moonraker." If one wanted an actor for a snide, sneaky, dastardly mustache-twirling role in the late sixties, actor Green was the 'go to' guy. He tries to bribe Helm at first, looking down at him as a typical agent, and eventually decides to have him killed. The action picks up in the final third of the film, with the story having to dispose of several key characters, and there's a lot of kicking, punching and shooting, not to mention cheesy explosions. Tate and Kwan have a martial arts confrontation to add some spice. Helm assembles a helicopter out of some equipment stored in his car's trunk and the climax shifts to a moving train. Helm would not return in "The Ravagers," as planned; there was no "The Ravagers," as the briefly-popular Helm persona could not sustain more than 4 features (by contrast with Bond, who went past 20 of 'em by the new millennium). Helm would return in a TV-movie and brief TV series in the seventies, with actor Tony Franciosa. Hero:5 Villain:6 Femme Fatales:7 Henchmen:6 (hey, Chuck Norris was one of these) Fights:6 Stunts/Chases:5 Gadgets:6 Auto:4 Locations:7 Pace:6 overall:6-
score 6/10
Bogmeister 20 August 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1715888/34847
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