No. 1 of the Secret Service

Last updated

No. 1 of the Secret Service
No1sspos.jpg
Original US film poster
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Written by Lindsay Shonteff (as Howard Craig)
Produced byElizabeth Gray
Starring Nicky Henson
Richard Todd
Aimi MacDonald
Geoffrey Keen
Sue Lloyd
Dudley Sutton
Jon Pertwee
Milton Reid
CinematographyIvan Strasberg
Edited byJohn Luton
Music byLeonard Young
Production
company
Lindsay Shonteff Film Productions
Distributed by Hemdale Film Corporation
Release date
  • 1977 (1977)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

No. 1 of the Secret Service is a 1977 imitation James Bond film directed and written by Lindsay Shonteff and starring Nicky Henson as British secret agent Charles Bind. [1] It was produced by Shonteff his wife Elizabeth Gray. The film had the working title of 008 of the Secret Service. [2] It was released on VHS under the title Her Majesty’s Top Gun. [3]

Contents

Plot

Eccentric Arthur Loveday decides to do his bit for world peace by having influential financiers assassinated. With regular law enforcement agencies powerless to prevent their deaths, Her Majesty's Government sends in their top agent Charles Bind who is licensed to kill.

Loveday accomplishes his deeds through an organisation of mercenaries named K.R.A.S.H. (Killing Rape Arson Slaughter and Hit). Bind takes them on with his pair of .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 66 revolvers and a .50 calibre M2 Browning machine gun for crowds.

Cast

Production

In 1965, Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff directed and co-wrote Licensed to Kill , a low budget British made James Bond imitation/parody exploitation film. Produced by James Ward, it starred Tom Adams as Charles Vine imitating Sean Connery as James Bond. With the popularity of the mid-1960s spy movie craze, American producer Joseph E. Levine picked up the film for American and worldwide distribution. He retitled the film The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World and added a new title song sung by Sammy Davis Jr.

The international success of the film led to producer Ward and Tom Adams reprising Charles Vine in two sequels; Where the Bullets Fly (1966) directed by John Gilling and presented by Levine and the 1967 made in Spain film Somebody's Stolen Our Russian Spy /O.K. Yevtushenko that languished in a vault until a release in the mid 1970s. Shonteff had nothing to do with those films.

With the continued popularity of the James Bond films starring Roger Moore in the mid 1970s, talk of Sean Connery reprising his 007 role in the planned James Bond of the Secret Service and the delay in the production of Eon Productions The Spy Who Loved Me , [4] Shonteff thought he would return to the imitation James Bond field with his own film. The original title of 008 of the Secret Service was replaced by No. 1 of the Secret Service.

Perhaps to avoid rights difficulties with producer James Ward, Shonteff replaced the name of "Charles Vine" with "Charles Bind", that was also the name of one of the characters in Carry On Spying (1964). Bind was played by a fair haired Roger Moore imitator, Nicky Henson. Bind's M type superior Rockwell who was previously played by John Arnatt is now played by Geoffrey Keen who would later make appearances in several Bond films as the Minister of Defence.

With production beginning in October 1976, [5] a sequel was announced during production entitled An Orchid for No. 1. [6]

The sequel was not released until 1979 under the title Licensed to Love and Kill with Gareth Hunt replacing Nicky Henson who had signed with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Soundtrack

Simon Bell wrote and performed the theme song "Givin' It Plenty" that was also used in the first sequel Licensed to Love and Kill and reused in Tintorera (1977).

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A good deal more violent but no less appealing than the Charles Vine James Bond spoofs of the Sixties, this knockabout spy picture returns to familiar territory. ...The censor is reported to have taken a dim view of the gratuitous murders of the KRASH training course and the flying limbs in the docskide massacre, and to have rejected the producers view that the repeated sight a lightly-clad Aimi Macdonald being doused with water (one of several over-worked running gags) was suitable viewing for under-fourteens. Nicky Henson is undoubtedly a more animated Bond substitute than Tom Adams, and Lindsay Shonteff hurries the proceedings along with a certain breathless verve. There remain, however, few signs of genuine life in this over-exploited old workhorse." [7]

Alan Burton in Historical Dictionary of British Spy Fiction, which cites that "the cycle of spy films began to lose steam in the 1970s", and mentions No. 1 of the Secret Service and its sequel Licensed to Love and Kill as "the odd picture [that] turned up in the cinema schedules", refers to both films as "crude parodies". [8]

Sequels

Related Research Articles

<i>James Bond</i> Media franchise about a British spy

The James Bond series focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Dalton</span> British actor (born 1946)

Timothy Leonard Dalton Leggett is a British actor. He gained international prominence as the fourth actor to portray fictional secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, starring in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989).

<i>Diamonds Are Forever</i> (film) 1971 James Bond film by Guy Hamilton

Diamonds Are Forever is a 1971 spy film and the seventh film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth and final Eon film to star Sean Connery, who returned to the role as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, having declined to reprise the role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

<i>Never Say Never Again</i> 1983 James Bond film directed by Irvin Kershner

Never Say Never Again is a 1983 spy film directed by Irvin Kershner. The film is based on the 1961 James Bond novel Thunderball by Ian Fleming, which in turn was based on an original story by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, and Fleming. The novel had been previously adapted as the 1965 film Thunderball. Never Say Never Again is the second and most recent James Bond film not to be produced by Eon Productions but instead by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm, and was distributed by Warner Bros. The film was executive produced by Kevin McClory, one of the original writers of the Thunderball storyline. McClory had retained the filming rights of the novel following a long legal battle dating from the 1960s.

<i>O.K. Connery</i> 1967 Italian comedy film

O.K. Connery, released in America as Operation Kid Brother, is a 1967 Italian Eurospy comedy film shot in Technicolor and Techniscope and directed by Alberto De Martino. The spy-fi plot involves the brother of the British spy James Bond, played by Neil Connery, who is obliged to take the lead in foiling a world-domination plot. The film's cast included several actors from the Eon-produced James Bond film series: From Russia with Love's Daniela Bianchi, Thunderball's Adolfo Celi, Dr. No's Anthony Dawson, Bernard Lee (M), and Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny), as well as the producer's wife Agata Flori, Gina Lollobrigida's cousin Guido Lollobrigida, and Yasuko Yama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Adams (actor)</span> English actor (1938–2014)

Tom Adams, born Anthony Frederick Charles Adams, was an English actor with roles in adventure, horror and mystery films, and several TV shows. He was known for his appearance in The Great Escape (1963) and as Daniel Fogarty in several series of The Onedin Line.

<i>You Only Live Twice</i> (film) 1967 James Bond film by Lewis Gilbert

You Only Live Twice is a 1967 spy film and the fifth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is the first Bond film to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, who later directed the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me and the 1979 film Moonraker, both starring Roger Moore. The screenplay of You Only Live Twice was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel of the same name. It is the first James Bond film to discard most of Fleming's plot, using only a few characters and locations from the book as the background for an entirely new story.

<i>On Her Majestys Secret Service</i> (film) 1969 James Bond film by Peter R. Hunt

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a 1969 spy film and the sixth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is based on the 1963 novel by Ian Fleming. Following Sean Connery's decision to retire from the role after You Only Live Twice, Eon selected George Lazenby, a model with no prior acting credits, to play the part of James Bond. During filming, Lazenby announced that he would play the role of Bond only once. Connery returned to portray Bond in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever.

<i>Dr. No</i> (film) 1962 James Bond film directed by Terence Young

Dr. No is a 1962 spy film directed by Terence Young. It is the first film in the James Bond series. Starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman and Jack Lord, it was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather from the 1958 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, a partnership that continued until 1975. It was followed by From Russia with Love in 1963. In the film, James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a fellow British agent. The trail leads him to the underground base of Dr. Julius No, who is plotting to disrupt an early American space launch from Cape Canaveral with a radio beam weapon.

<i>From Russia with Love</i> (film) 1963 James Bond film by Terence Young

From Russia with Love is a 1963 spy film and the second in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, as well as Sean Connery's second role as MI6 agent 007 James Bond.

<i>OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies</i> 2006 film by Michel Hazanavicius

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a 2006 French spy comedy film directed and co-written by Michel Hazanavicius in his feature directorial debut. Starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, and Aure Atika, the film has been widely praised for its cinematography, editing, and score. Set in 1955, the film follows the exploits of a French secret agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath/OSS 117, as he is sent to Cairo to investigate the disappearance of his best friend and fellow spy Jack Jefferson, only to stumble into a web of international intrigue.

Lindsay Craig Shonteff was a Canadian born film director, film producer and screenwriter who achieved fame for low-budget films produced in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurospy film</span> Genre of spy films

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.

<i>Licensed to Kill</i> (1965 film) 1965 British film by Lindsay Shonteff

Licensed to Kill is an Eastmancolor 1965 superspy imitation James Bond film starring Tom Adams as British secret agent Charles Vine. It was directed and co-written by Lindsay Shonteff. Producer Joseph E. Levine picked it up for American and worldwide distribution and reedited it under the title The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to James Bond:

<i>Where the Bullets Fly</i> 1966 British film by John Gilling

Where the Bullets Fly is a 1966 British comedy spy film directed by John Gilling and starring Tom Adams, John Arnatt, Dawn Addams, Tim Barrett and Michael Ripper.

<i>Licensed to Love and Kill</i> 1979 British film Lindsay Shonteff

Licensed to Love and Kill is a 1979 imitation James Bond film directed by Lindsay Shontef and starring Gareth Hunt. It was written by Shonteff and produced by his wife Elizabeth Gray.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portrayal of James Bond in film</span> Fictional character

James Bond is a fictional character created by the British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1952. The character first appeared in a series of twelve novels and two short story collections written by Fleming and a number of continuation novels and spin-off works after Fleming's death in 1964. Bond's literary portrayal differs in some ways from his treatment in the James Bond films, of which there have been twenty-seven in total, produced and released between 1962 and 2021.

References

  1. "No. 1 of the Secret Service". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  2. Todd, Richard Caught in the Act Hutchinson (July 1986)
  3. "No. 1 of the Secret Service". 1 April 1978 via IMDb.
  4. p.72 Wood, Christopher James Bond, the Spy I Loved Twenty First Century Publishers Ltd, 31/08/2006
  5. "No. 1 of the Secret Service (1978)". Archived from the original on 14 January 2009.
  6. p. 288 Derry, Charles The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock McFarland, 2001
  7. "No. 1 of the Secret Service". The Monthly Film Bulletin . 45 (528): 117. 1 January 1978 via ProQuest.
  8. Burton, Alan (2016). Historical Dictionary of British Spy Fiction. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 20. ISBN   9781442255876.