Plot
The film begins with a shot of the United States Capitol being destroyed. It is actually a scale model being used in the demonstration of a heliobeam [3] weapon in the headquarters of the Bureau of International Government and Order ("BIG O"). BIG O is a secret organization with the goal of world domination that previously appeared in The Silencers .
With the aid of a mole, BIG O conducts a worldwide assassination campaign against various secret agents working for ICE (Intelligence Counter Espionage). Matt Helm fakes his own death in preparation for investigating the scheme undetected.
Helm meets his boss, Mac, for a mission briefing. They watch a film showing Solaris enjoying himself with young women on the beaches of Cannes. Helm is to track down the now missing Dr. Solaris, who has developed the powerful "heliobeam" weapon, a device that uses the concentrated power of sunlight for mass destruction. Helm is told if he can not rescue Solaris he is to kill him, and if captured to kill himself, lest BIG O brainwash him. He is to work under the name of James A. Peters.
Posing as a Chicago gangster named Jim Peters, an alias of "Lash" Petroni, Helm travels to the French Riviera, flying into Nice Airport. A large customised Ford Thunderbird awaits him and he drives along the coast. He takes a package from the glove compartment containing a gun and a bottle of Ballantine's Irish whiskey. Trying to drink as he drives he finds the bottle holds a small tape recorder with a message from Mac instead of whiskey.
He goes to a discotheque where he meets Suzie, an attractive girl who dances with him, but is arrested by the police: being framed for a murder. At the police line up he is not picked out and he is freed.
He then goes to the harbour at Marseille where he is picked up by a mechanical grabber for a high-level discussion with Julian Wall. They leave in a hovercraft to reach Wall's island hideout. He is imprisoned but after escaping he beats Wall's henchman, Ironhead, and takes the hovercraft back to the mainland. He drives the hovercraft up the street to the disco where Suzie is wearing a booby-trapped brooch which is just about to explode. Helm rips it off her and throws it at the wall where it hits a poster of Frank Sinatra and explodes. Helm says "Sorry Frank".
Suzie and Helm are then pursued on the road in a car chase with Ironhead shooting at them. Ironhead's car goes over a cliff but Ironhead survives. They then take a speedboat back to Wall's island where another henchman, Dr Rogas, is torturing Solaris. However Suzie and Helm are both captured. Wall tortures Suzie until Solaris gives in, and tells the secret of getting his weapon to work. Meanwhile, Helm is put in a giant shaker machine to shake him to death. They escape and end up in a dockyard where Helm fights Ironhead until Suzie brings a giant magnetic crane over his head and picks him up.
The final scene shows the two rivals on two separate hovercraft and a duel between them. Wall picks up Helm's trick gun which has a ten-second delay and thereby shoots himself in his confusion.
They save Washington, D.C., from being destroyed.
Production
The film was the second of four produced by Albert R. Broccoli's former partner Irving Allen and Martin's Meadway-Claude Production company for Columbia Pictures in the mid-1960s starring Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. Euan Lloyd, a former Warwick Films publicity specialist and producer of The Poppy Is Also a Flower , assisted Allen in production chores.
Like its predecessor The Silencers , it took a much more light-hearted approach to the source material, treating it more as a gadget-laden spoof of James Bond films than Hamilton's original serious spy story. Unlike Hamilton's world weary professional, Martin plays Helm with his own persona, a fun-loving, wise-cracking alcoholic playboy.
Co-starring is Karl Malden as Dr. Julian Wall, whom New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther describes as a "Kansas type Dr. No". [4] Malden had the idea that his character speaking in a different accent every time he spoke would be amusing. [5]
Also in the film are Tom Reese as his Oddjob-type henchman named "Ironhead" and Beverly Adams returns as secretary Lovey Kravezit, as do the Slaygirls, a group of beautiful and dangerous women. Columbia starlet Camilla Sparv plays Malden's assistant Coco Duquette and Soon Tek-Oh makes a brief appearance as a Japanese agent killed in his bath.
The first script was by Oscar Saul, who had written The Silencers. Herbert Baker, who had received a screen credit after he wrote the final version of The Silencers script, was brought in to rewrite Saul's first draft of Murderers' Row and received sole credit. [6] Baker had written several Martin and Lewis screenplays and was a writer for The Dean Martin Show .
Filming began 18 July 1966. [7]
The film was originally intended to be shot totally on location, but Martin, who also co-produced the film, refused to go to Europe. Second unit teams shot sequences in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Monte Carlo and the Isle of Wight for the hovercraft and helicopter [8] sequences instead. The then-new SR.N6 hovercraft appearing in the film's sea sequences (with the land chase through the streets of Juan-les-Pins and scenes with Martin using a studio mockup of the hovercraft interior and back projection [9] ) was provided by Hoverwork Hovercraft as their first assignment [10] [11] with a Cushioncraft CC5 appearing as well. [12]
Henry Levin had previously directed the Dino De Laurentiis superspy film Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die for Columbia. He would also direct the following Matt Helm film, The Ambushers. The titles are again by Wayne Fitzgerald, and James Curtis Havens continued in the series as second unit director.
Like its predecessor, the film is full of jokes, [13] bizarre secret weapons like a Hy Hunter Bolomauser modified AR-7 pistol configuration that only fires ten seconds after the trigger is pulled, plenty of beautiful women, and fashionable mod 1966 costumes by Moss Mabry. Karl Malden's character uses a Gyrojet spearfiring pistol and a volley gun type pistol. [14] [15] Helm kills a guard with a dart fired out of a cigarette; a weapon also used in You Only Live Twice. [16] Martin's Helm drove a 1966 Ford Thunderbird landau. [17] [18]
Reception
Released only ten months after The Silencers, Murderers' Row was the eleventh highest-grossing film of the year. [19] The film received 1967 second place Laurel Awards for Best Action Drama and Best Action Performance for Martin. [20]
Murderers' Row was followed by The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1968). A fifth film, The Ravagers with Sharon Tate reprising her Wrecking Crew character and Dean Martin doing a dual role, was announced but never produced. Martin refused to make The Ravagers so Columbia reportedly held up Martin's share of the profits on Murderers' Row. [21]
The 1960s Helm spoofs (as well as the two Derek Flint movies with James Coburn, the first of which came out the same year as the first Helm feature) seemed to become the template of the 1970s Bond films and in some cases Helm film set pieces were copied by the later Bonds. In Diamonds Are Forever , SPECTRE threatens the world with a heliobeam device from an orbiting satellite. The electromagnetic demise of Ironhead in the film happens to the giant "Jaws" villain in The Spy Who Loved Me , the hovercraft chase on sea and land reoccurs with a gadget-filled gondola in Moonraker with that film's evil mastermind Hugo Drax making jokes similar to Julian Wall.
Soundtrack
The film score is by Lalo Schifrin, replacing Elmer Bernstein. In addition to the driving main theme and spy time score, Schifrin includes some jazz pieces, with one having a cover version by Bud Shank, as well as a song with lyrics by Howard Greenfield ("I'm Not the Marrying Kind") for Martin that, due to contractual rights, didn't appear on the soundtrack album. It did, however, appear on Martin's LP, Happiness is Dean Martin. [22]
Billy Strange slightly changed Schifrin's main title to be an "original" composition entitled "Spanish Spy" on his James Bond Double Feature album.
The pop group Dino, Desi & Billy (which featured Martin's son, Dean Paul Martin, who calls Helm "Dad" in the film) makes an appearance and sings the Boyce & Hart song, "If You're Thinkin' What I'm Thinkin'".
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events. A Man for All Seasons won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Donald Bengtsson Hamilton was an American writer of novels, short stories, and non-fiction about the outdoors. His novels consist mostly of paperback originals, principally spy fiction, but also crime fiction and westerns, such as The Big Country. He is known best for his long-running Matt Helm series (1960-1993), which chronicles the adventures of an undercover counter-agent/assassin working for a secret American government agency. The noted critic Anthony Boucher wrote: "Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told."
Matt Helm is a fictional character created by American author Donald Hamilton (1916-2006). Helm is a U.S. government counter-agent, a man whose primary job is to kill or nullify enemy agents—not a spy or secret agent in the ordinary sense of the term as used in most spy thrillers.
Irving Allen was an Austro-Hungarian–born American theatrical and cinematic producer and director.
James Gregory was an American character actor who played roles such as Schaffer in Al Capone (1959), the McCarthy-like Sen. John Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the audacious General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), and crusty Inspector Frank Luger in the television sitcom Barney Miller (1975–1982).
The Silencers is the title of a 1962 spy novel by Donald Hamilton, the fourth in a series of books featuring assassin Matt Helm.
Daliah Lavi was an Israeli actress, singer, and model.
The Wrecking Crew is a 1968 American spy comedy film directed by Phil Karlson and starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, along with Elke Sommer, Sharon Tate, Nancy Kwan, Nigel Green, and Tina Louise. It is the fourth and final film in the Matt Helm series, and is loosely based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton. The film opened in Canada in December 1968 before premiering in the United States in February 1969.
Death of a Citizen is a 1960 spy novel by Donald Hamilton, and was the first in a long-running series of books featuring the adventures of assassin Matt Helm. The title refers to the metaphorical death of peaceful citizen and family man Matt Helm and the rebirth of the deadly and relentless assassin of World War II.
A post-credits scene is a short teaser clip that appears after the closing credits have rolled and sometimes after a production logo of a film, TV series, or video game has run. It is usually included to reward the audience for having the patience to watch through the credits sequence; it may be a scene written for humour or to set up a sequel.
Murderers' Row is the title of a 1962 spy novel by Donald Hamilton. It was the fifth novel featuring his creation Matt Helm, a Second World War assassin recruited as a counter-agent by a secret American agency. This was the last Matt Helm novel to not use Hamilton's naming convention of The (Verb)-ers. The expression "murderers' row" had been used previously to describe the batting line-up of the New York Yankees baseball team in the late 1920s.
The Silencers is a 1966 American spy comedy film directed by Phil Karlson, starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. The screenplay by Oscar Saul is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton, while also adapting elements of Hamilton's first Helm novel, Death of a Citizen (1960). The film co-stars Stella Stevens, Daliah Lavi, Victor Buono, Arthur O'Connell, Robert Webber, James Gregory, Roger C. Carmel, Beverly Adams, and Cyd Charisse.
The Silencers may refer to:
The Ambushers is a 1967 American spy comedy film directed by Henry Levin starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, along with Senta Berger and Janice Rule. It is the third of four films in the Matt Helm series, and is based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton, as well as The Menacers (1968) that featured UFOs and a Mexican setting. When a government-built flying saucer is hijacked mid-flight by Jose Ortega, the exiled ruler for an outlaw nation, secret agent Matt Helm and the ship's former pilot Sheila Sommers are sent to recover it.
Moss Mabry was an American costume designer.
Eurospy film, or Spaghetti spy film, is a genre of spy films produced in Europe, especially in Italy, France, and Spain, that either sincerely imitated or else parodied the British James Bond spy series feature films. The first wave of Eurospy films was released in 1964, two years after the first James Bond film, Dr. No, and in the same year as the premiere of what many consider to be the apotheosis of the Bond series, Goldfinger. For the most part, the Eurospy craze lasted until around 1967 or 1968. In Italy, where most of these films were produced, this trend replaced the declining sword-and-sandal genre.
Herbert Baker was a songwriter and screenwriter for television and films.
Murderer's Row is a soundtrack album to the motion picture of the same name by Argentine composer, pianist and conductor Lalo Schifrin recorded in 1966 and released on the Colgems label. As with The Silencers, due to contractual arrangements Dean Martin's image is not on the album cover, nor is there any songs sung by him. His version of "I'm Not The Marrying Kind" that appears in the film is his Reprise album Happiness Is Dean Martin.
Happiness Is Dean Martin is a 1967 studio album by Dean Martin arranged by Ernie Freeman and Bill Justis.
Dean Martin Sings Songs from "The Silencers" is a 1966 studio album by Dean Martin of songs that featured in his film The Silencers, the first of the four films featuring the Matt Helm character that Martin would appear in. The album was arranged by Ernie Freeman and Gene Page.
