Directed by Phil Karlson
Written by Donald Hamilton, Oscar Saul
Starring Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Victor Buono
Unrated • 1966 • 102 minutes

by Mayzshon

I’m only a casual James Bond fan, I’m probably a bigger fan of the idea of 007 than I am of the actual character. I like the girls, the gadgets, big secret underground villain lairs, all of that sort of thing. Which may explain why in my list of favorite movie spies, Bond is third, behind Derek Flint, and today’s subject, Matt Helm.

Helm is based on a character from a series of books, written by Donald Hamilton, where the character is an assassin for the US government. I’ve never read any of them, but I gather they’re fairly serious, gritty pieces of work. Also from reading the plot synopsizes, it seems Helm suffers from “Travis McGee’s syndrome”, namely any woman he gets romantically involved with is going to die horribly, if not in this book, then the next one. The sort of hero for whom the act of kissing a woman should be grounds for an arrest on the charge of attempted homicide.

So Hollywood got the rights to the character, and being Hollywood, they stayed absolutely true to the novels, with out the slightest deviation.

I kid. This is Hollywood, so naturally someone looked at what they had and said, “Hey, this stuff is a natural for a Dean Martin comedy!” As much as the would be author screams at this thought, I think I really prefer the movie version.

Ain't that a kick in the head, and a gun in the ribs.

The film opens with a tight close-up of an eye. The camera backs up to reveal that this eye belongs to... Harry Mudd? That’s right, one of our villains is played by Roger C. Carmel, best known for a recurring role as the fast talking space scoundrel on the original Star Trek. We know he’s the villain because he’s engraving the name of Matt Helm on a bullet, which he give to a group obvious henchmen. I assume he’s made a Matt Helm Bullet for all of them, which sounds cool till you really think about it. I mean, what happens if they’ve loaded their special Matt Helm bullet into their guns, and somebody else attacks them?

Random agent: I’ve got you now! (Begins firing gun)

Henchman: Damn, I want to shoot back, but this bullet has Matt Helm’s name on it.

This goes into a catchy opening number, the some expository scenes, in which we learn that the government wants Helm to return to active duty, but that he’s retired and making a good living as a photographer. Cut to Dean Martin, lying on a big round bed, surrounded by blown up versions of magazine covers. This is our first clue, that not only is his a spy spoof, it’s also a spoof of Martin’s public persona.

He gets the call from Macdonald, his old boss, and pretends he isn’t there, after which he hits a button, and the bed glides across the floor, a section wall moves away, and the bed tilts up to deposit Dean in an enormous bubblebath, along with his secretary, Lovey Kravesit.

Really his swinging bachelor pad is stuffed with so many convenience gadgets, like towels that rise up out of the floor to dry you off, and coffee that pours itself, that after a while they stop being cool, and start making you think, “Jeez, what a lazy bastard.”

But this a Bond spoof, and what would a Bond spoof be without gadgets? In addition to the bachelor pad stuff, he also gets a jacket with buttons that double as grenades, a gun that shoots backwards (the trick is to let the enemy capture, then trick them into trying to shoot you with it), and a camera that shoots lethal darts. Oh yeah, and his super spy car, a... station wagon?

Matt Helm and pussy galore.

Yeah my first thought was “WTF?”, but actually it’s way cooler than Bond’s Aston Martin. Sure the Aston Martin has machine guns and an ejector seat, but Helm’s station wagon has a fully stocked mini-bar, and the back seats turn into beds. It’s a swinging bachelor pad on wheels.

The plot involves an organization called The Big O, headed by Victor “King Tut” Buono. Buono wears heavy eyeliner in this film, which I think was supposed to make him look Asian, but in reality just makes him look like a sort of a goth business man. The Big O wants to re-direct a missile to hit an underground atomic test, coating the American southwest in radioactive fallout. I’m not quite sure why, I guess it just one of those “Funtime activities” from the back pages of the Evil Organization monthly trade magazine.

Helm of course saves the day and gets laid repeatedly, and generally seems to have a lot more fun than Bond ever does. Along the way he hooks up with the klutzy, yet incredibly sexy Gail Hendricks (Stella Stevens), whom he suspects of being an enemy agent.

All in all a fun movie, although I should warn you, I like Dean Martin’s singing, but if you don’t care for it, he does it a lot in this film.