Finally Watched…In Like Flint

In our previous installment in this series we took a look at 1966’s Our Man Flint, starring James Coburn as secret agent Derek Flint. While it’s been said that Our Man Flint was a James Bond parody, I didn’t see it. Flint is nothing like Bond outside of how he draws women to him and even reforms the villainess with his raw sex appeal. It was more like a campy spy picture rather than a parody of spy pictures. One year later we get something closer to parody with In Like Flint, with Coburn returning for another adventure with the Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage group.

This time Derek is dealing with a whole villain group of women…well, mostly women. They need a few men to complete their goal. What is their goal? We’ll get into that in a moment. First, we have the usual stuff to do.

Thanks, trailer. Now I don’t have to worry about spoilers because you put most of them IN THE TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE! Sadly, we haven’t learned our lesson enough in modern day.

RELEASE DATE: 1967

RELEASED BY: 20th Century Fox, so now it’s owned by Disney (nobody tell them!)

RUNTIME: 1 hr, 54 min

RATING: the DVD is rated PG but I don’t know if that came from the movie

VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: Fox Movie Channel (FXM, during the “Retro” block)

STARRING: James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, Jean Hale, & Andrew Duggan

SCREENWRITER: Hal Fimberg–yes, just the one

BOX OFFICE: $11 Million USD according to Wikipedia

ESTIMATED BUDGET: $3,775,000 according to IMDB

The Plot: Something weird is going on and ZOWIE head honcho Cramden (Cobb) is convinced only Derek Flint (Coburn) can find out what it is. Not realizing they’re being monitored at every stage, our duo doesn’t even realize the President has been kidnapped by four ladies of industry seeking to replace the patriarchy with the matriarchy. (You can imagine how that plot would go in the 2020s but this is the 1960s.) Flint will find himself traveling around the world to find out who has infiltrated ZOWIE and clear his boss’ name when he’s framed for being with a prostitute. These girls have some devilish schemes, but it’s nothing our man Flint (wait, that was the last movie) can’t handle. Or can he?

Why did I want to see it?: Well, I saw the first movie and it was fun, so why not check out the sequel? I had the opportunity and I took it.

What did I think?: When it comes to sequels I don’t judge it on whether or not it was better than the first. All I care about is that it continues the story to my satisfaction as someone who enjoyed the previous version. Good thing, because it’s not as good as the first. While Our Man Flint was more campy, this one was outright silly at parts. You saw three of them in the trailer: Flint learns to talk to dolphins, which does have an equally silly payoff later, Flint takes part in a ballet to meet his contact (Yvonne Craig, making two Batman ’66 players, as Jean Hale the obligatory reformed villainess Lisa), and Flint’s gymkata fight along with the low-gravity fight, the cryostasis chamber…it’s not a dealbreaker. This is all part of what makes the movie fun, but they clearly wanted to up the silly side compared to the previous movie.

On the other hand, Flint’s new harem is almost unnecessary. They also get kidnapped, but while the original quartet were used to blackmail Flint, the trio here are basically forgotten about after they were introduced. When they get frozen later, I barely remembered they mattered to the story…because they don’t.

Finally, it misses a chance at showing the mistake in the villainesses’ plans, and unfortunately I have to spoil a big twist here, so jump to the next paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled. Seeking to replace the patriarchy with the matriarchy, they’re eventually betrayed by their men. Meanwhile the villainesses were brainwashing other women to join their cause through hair dryers that also messed with their brains. And the women have to help our heroes, including the rescued President (Duggan) and Cramden, stop the twist villains’ plans…whatever their ultimate goal is because darned if I know beyond “this is my evil scheme to take over now”.  Where both Flint and the President have a chance to spin a message that men and women need each other, each adding their individual skills where they best help, while also stressing the uniqueness of both genders’ typical mindset, it goes for the pro-patriarchy message, but doesn’t do it very well. Partial co-writer Ben Starr did have the start of a message, but he left partway through and his line from Flint “I’m sure all your facts are accurate but, like any other underdog in this world, you know more about the sickness than you do the cure. What you propose merely turns the coin over. It’s the same old coin. If it’s a slug on one side girls, it’s a slug on the other. Now, forget it!” was cut to “forget it”. I don’t need to be a 2020s “modern audience” to not like the message, and it’s not like our lady villains seemed to get it based on their facial expression.

Okay, spoilers over. So was there anything good about it? Yes, because I did enjoy the film. It may be sillier but it doesn’t overpower the action. The twist probably allows for Flint to have someone to beat up. Coburn and Cobbs continue to play their roles well, and as the trailer noted, Cobbs even gets to do more in the story than sit in his office or get dragged around by a dog, even though he does both. It feels like a good continuation of their story, though ZOWIE really needs to work on security. This is the second time they’ve been infiltrated and I have to suspect that if there had been a third movie instead of a made-for-TV reimagining this would keep happening.

All the villains are properly evil, but the women aren’t overt about it, like one of Flint’s lady friends turning out to be part of the plot. Whether that was the brainwashing hair dryer or something else I couldn’t say. The movie handles the harem wrong, outside of their being unbrainwashable because they’re that hot for Flint’s…you know, but the other women in this movie are well handled. You know what I mean, shut up!

Was it worth the wait: Not much of a wait. It was only a couple of months ago I wrote the first review. Overall, it’s not as good as the first movie, but still a fine continuation of the adventures of Derek Flint and I’m sorry it ended here. Both films are worth a watch.