Let’s do something fun this week. Enough with the social commentary. This site analyzes and celebrates storytelling.
Ever hear of a movie called James Bond? I doubt it because it’s never been the name of a movie, just a character in a series of movies based on a series of novels. There was James Bond Jr, but nobody wants to talk about that.
His uncle? Dude’s probably got more offspring than Nick Cannon. Anyway, there’s other movies and shows inspired by the antics of 007, including parodies. Few of them get past one movie or a couple seasons. Derek Flint was lucky. He got two movies, and I just got done watching the first one, Our Man Flint. It stars James Coburn as the suave and independent minded Derek Flint. He doesn’t work for the government but they’ll ask for his help to stop the bad guys. I caught part of this once and found it curious. So I decided to watch the whole thing. Was it any good?
RELEASE DATE: 1966
RELEASED BY: 20th Century Fox, so now it’s owned by Disney (fear)
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 48 min
RATING: beats me, I couldn’t find it
VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: Fox Movie Channel (FXM, during the “Retro” block)
STARRING: James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, Gila Golan, and Edward Mulhare
SCREENWRITERS: Hal Fimberg, Ben Starr,…wait, that’s it? I’m so used to like 5-10 writers on a movie.
DIRECTOR: Daniel Mann
BOX OFFICE: $16 Million USD according to Google
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $3,525,000 according to IMDB…compare that to today’s movies, geez. This is what profit looks like, 2020s Disney!
The Plot: Three mad scientists (not one, like the title suggested) have a device that controls the weather through seismic manipulation. (You didn’t come here for science fact.) ZOWIE, the Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage, isn’t just fighting for an acronym, but everyone inside the group has failed to stop these scientists and their organization, GALAXY, a group who didn’t bother with an acronym and just likes capitalized letters I guess. ZOWIE’s only hope is an outside agent, Derek Flint (Coburn), if he can get along with his old boss (Cobb) long enough. Leaving the high life to fight lowlifes, Flint is armed with a multitool cigarette lighter and pocket watch that has a few functions, like telling him when to stop being dead. GALAXY sends out their agent, Gila (Golan using her real first name for some reason), and her rival, Malcolm Rodney (Mulhare). Can Flint save the world and his four girlfriends? Save some for the rest of us, Derek!
Why did I want to see it?: Partly because of Mulhare. I always find it interesting to see what actors in my favorite shows did on the other side of the moral fence. Mulhare’s Devon Miles in Knight Rider was fun to watch as he played off David Hasselhoff, but I have seen him as a villain in smaller roles. Here he’s one of the main villains (not that he gets to do much except complain Flint’s not dead and argue with Gila). I was also curious to see what a James Bond spoof with more effort than your usual MST3K fodder would produce, and watching a few minutes of it got my attention.
What did I think?: I rather enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d call it a spoof, though. There are three jokes at Bond’s expense I won’t spoil and that’s it. Otherwise, Flint is like Bond only in bedding his female adversary to reform her and being a spy. Derek Flint is a playboy and retired agent brought back into the fold. He knows many fighting techniques (we see martial arts and fencing both in training and in use), a few techniques and bits of obscure trivia that Bruce Wayne would be envious of, and a lighter that has almost as many uses than the Sonic Screwdriver (83, including the lighter), plus a wrist watch that has additional functions (though I don’t know how it tells time with no hands). He’s also surrounded by four beautiful girls, whose kidnapping only delays our hero for a bit and otherwise just seems to exist to provoke a fight on the villains’ turf and get him kisses at the end.
Coburn does a good job as Flint. You can believe he can attracts the ladies, has a lot of knowledge and investigatory skills, and only uses a gun once when hired assassins come with their guns. Not that he won’t kill, but he’s more of a hands-and-feet on kind of guy. At first he seemed rather rude when they’re trying to recruit him to save the world, which he only finally listens to when Gila and fellow GALAXY agent Hans Gruber (Michael St. Clair) try to take him out and gets the chief instead. Then he saves the chief’s life and shows he may want to mess with the guy but doesn’t necessarily hate him.
Of course Mulhare makes a good villain, someone who wants Flint dead because he knows he’s a threat to his boss’ plans…but why would Rodney want to join GALAXY? He’s happy to do the killin’ while his scientist bosses (Benson Fong, Rhys Williams, and Peter Brocco) are very anti violence. The whole reason they want to conquer the world is they think they can solve all of humanity’s problems at the cost of our freedoms and liberties. He seems out of place as a result. There’s a difference between having to kill and wanting to kill, and Rodney dances over that line quite a bit when it comes to Flint.
Gila in turn is good as…Gila, the henchwoman who, in typical Bond ripoff fashion, falls for the hero, is betrayed by her bosses, and turns to the good guys thanks to the power of the hero’s bedside skills. That’s basically her story, but it’s hardly a spoiler as this is what ripoff Bond Girls do. An actual spoof of Bond Girls would be her rejecting Flint and being evil rather than just needing a night with the lead to turn good. That’s not a complaint, mind you, but that is all she does in the movie outside of her failed assassination attempts. That’s more than the eye candy Flint already had in his apartment. All of this makes it feel less like a parody and more “it was the 1960s and this is a James Bond ripoff” outside of the three joke references.
It all works well. Only one of those jokes felt actually forced into the story. How Flint fakes his death and what skills he has are shown off through the events of his introduction and attempted recruitment so when he uses them in the field you already know what he can do and they’re not just pulling saves out of their rears. I question the need to name the UN style spy organization having to force the name ZOWIE, Flint does start off looking like a jerk, and I think they scrambled the names (why is the white dude Doctor Wu and not the Chinese one?). Otherwise the effects weren’t bad for their time and budget, and what you get is a light and occasionally silly spy story. I’m not buying how he brings that one guy back to life, though. Science doesn’t work that way. They should have more bodies, not less.
Was it worth the wait?: It wasn’t much of a wait. Thanks to cable provider switching costing me a recording and having to re-record it, it was still only a year or so after learning about it before I finally had a chance to watch it. Our Man Flint was a fun movie and I could watch it again. It’s still on the DVR along with the sequel we’ll have to get to next time, In Like Flint. There’s also a TV pilot called Dead On Target that changed so much of Flint’s backstory and made him a PI that I won’t be bothering with it, but I do want to see the proper sequel at some point.
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