Spy extraordinaire Derek Flint is an ex-agent of Z.O.W.I.E. (Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage) who is brought out of retirement to deal with the threat of Galaxy, a worldwide organization led by a trio of mad scientists: Doctor Krupov, Doctor Wu, and Doctor Schneider.[3] Impatient that the world's governments will never improve, the scientists demand that all nations capitulate to Galaxy. To enforce their demands, they initiate earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, and other natural disasters with their climate-control apparatus to force countries to dissolve their armed forces and stop using nuclear power to generate electricity.
Initially reluctant, Flint decides to take them on after a preemptive assassination attempt by Galaxy's section head, Gila, who replaces a restaurant's harpist while Flint is dining with his four live-in "playmates"— Leslie, Anna, Gina, and Sakito. Gila uses a harp string as a bow to fire a poisoned dart, which misses Flint but hits his former boss, Cramden.
Flint squeezes the poison out of the wound, saving Cramden's life. A chemical trace on the dart directs Flint to Marseille for bouillabaisse. In one of Marseille's lowest clubs, he stages a brawl to gain information from "famous" Agent 0008, which leads him to a narcotics trade which is financing Galaxy.
Galaxy agent Hans Gruber is in the club enjoying his favorite soup while waiting to rendezvous with Gila. Instead, Gila sends Gruber to ambush Flint in the lavatory. Flint ends up killing Gruber in a toilet stall while Gila escapes, leaving behind a cold cream jar she has booby-trapped with explosives. Flint detects the trap and chases the bystanders from the club before detonating the bomb.
The remains in the jar lead Flint to Rome. After investigating several cosmetic companies, Flint arrives at Exotica, where he meets Gila for the first time. Gila lets him come to her apartment for an exchange of information, and then a seduction. Following their encounter, he steals the keys to Exotica and breaks into the company's safe, learning of Galaxy's location before being trapped by Gila's assistant, Malcolm Rodney. Malcolm and Gila assume that Flint will soon run out of air in the safe as they transport it to a waiting submarine. However, during the journey, Flint learns that his playmates have been kidnapped and taken to the headquarters on Galaxy Island in the Mediterranean Sea.
He then uses his power of self-induced suspended animation to fool his captors into thinking they have successfully killed him. Gila and Rodney take an evidence photograph of the "body", which they send to Cramden, then carry Flint back to headquarters on the submarine.
Flint revives and sneaks into the Galaxy complex, but his infiltration is thwarted, and he is taken before Galaxy's trio of leaders. Offered a chance to join their new order, he refuses and is sentenced to death by disintegration.
Gila's failure to eliminate Flint results in her being stripped of her leadership role and reassigned to become a Pleasure Unit– a fate that has already befallen Flint's playmates. She then changes sides, slipping Flint his gadget-filled cigarette lighter before she is hauled away. With the help of the lighter, Flint again escapes, sabotages the machinery, rescues his playmates and Gila, and departs the island as it disintegrates.
A waiting American warship picks up Flint and the women as they watch a volcano erupt on the island. Gila presumably joins the other four women living with Flint. (In the sequel, when Flint is again called out of retirement for a mission, he lives with three women, saying that "five was just too many.")
The last shot is of the "Anti-American Eagle" that attacked Flint at Rodney's behest earlier in the film flying over the smoking ruins of the island.
The uncredited actor playing the overseer of the Pleasure Unit process is Dick Wilson, who later gained fame as "Mr. Whipple" in a long string of commercials for Charmin toilet paper. The voice of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson was provided by Van Williams, who provided the same voice-over effect later that year, in the film Batman: The Movie.
Production
Producer Saul David had just made Von Ryan's Express for Fox and Our Man Flint would be his second film for the studio. David told the press that Flint would be "an entirely different cup of tea" to James Bond, "a sensitive and sensible individual, loyal to his own code instead of to an arbitrary entity which we might call 'our side'. His pleasures will be taken with verve and gusto a la Tom Jones and his heroics will be treated with wit and vitality, a la Douglas Fairbanks."[4]
Coburn had appeared in a number of key supporting roles, particularly The Americanization of Emily and A High Wind in Jamaica but Our Man Flint was his first lead in a feature. His casting was announced in December 1964 and filming began in February 1965.[5]
David said Coburn "is undoubtedly one of the most interesting looking actors in the business today. I would describe him as a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Jean Paul Belmondo - a true descendant of that bygone generation of character actors who became leading men by accident... Coburn has a fantastic effect on women filmgoers and I think it's because ladies go more for masculinity and charm than prettiness in a male star."[4]
Coburn later said, "I credit the producer, Saul David, for the Flint films. He was responsible for the whole thing. He also cast me in the role. Of course, it was a spoof of the Bond and all the other spy films released at the time. What I liked about Flint was that he was his own man. He trained himself. We tried to work from that theme. It must have worked... after all, the film was a big hit."[6]
Fox were so happy with the film that head of production Richard Zanuck announced preparations for a sequel, F as in Flint, in November 1965, before the movie was even released.[7] (It was then retitled In Like Flint.)
Locations
Flint's apartment is located in The San Remo in New York City. The skyline projected out the window of the apartment is of Central Park South on 59th Street. The interiors of Galaxy Island were filmed at the Scattergood Generating Station.[8]
Influences
The film's direct nods to James Bond in a comedic and outlandish style. Flint is initially offered a Walther PPK and an attache case with a concealed throwing knife, with Flint dismissing both as "crude". During the French strip club sequence, Flint stages a mock brawl with a patron identified as Agent 0008, a British secret agent. Flint asks if SPECTRE (the criminal organization in the early Bond movies) is involved, to which Agent 0008 replies, "It's bigger than SPECTRE!" The actor playing the role is similar in appearance to Sean Connery. Later in the film, Gila is shown reading a 0008 novel, referencing the James Bond novels.
Soundtrack
20th Century Fox's house composer Jerry Goldsmith composed the film's score. The film's original soundtrack LP was rerecorded slower arrangements of the score, and a DVD of the surviving elements of the two Flint films was later released.
The distinctive ringtone of Cramden's "presidential hotline"[9] telephone was re-used in the films Hudson Hawk, and in Seattle children's television program, The J.P. Patches Show. Popular Los Angeles KIIS-FM disc jockey Rick Dees used the sound effect as the "hotline" phone sound whenever the station manager would call and yell at him during his 1980s and 1990s shows. A similar ringtone was used in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, clearly as a "nod and a wink" to the Flint films.
Hanna-Barbara's 1966 animated film The Man Called Flintstone includes nods to the Our Man Flint, especially on the theatrical poster.
A 1965 novelization of the film by Jack Pearl includes much material not seen on the screen that may have been taken from an earlier screenplay draft.
The name Hans Gruber was reused in two later films, Re-Animator and Die Hard.
The film was premiered in St Ann's Bay in Jamaica in December 1965 but not officially released in the US until January 1966. Coburn and Mann did not attend the premiere but Cobb and David did.[10]
Critical reception
Our Man Flint generally received positive reviews, having a "Fresh" score of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes from 33 critics.
Variety called it "a dazzling, action-jammed swashbuckling spoof of Ian Fleming’s valiant counterspy" where "in a cycle which sees virtually every studio clambering aboard the espionage bandwagon, indications point to blockbusting biz if film is properly exploited."[11]
Box office
The movie in the top ten highest grossing movies at the North American box office in 1966 with rentals of $6.500,000. (It was beaten by Thunderball and The Silencers.)[12]
According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $7,700,000 to break even (after distribution and overhead costs were added) and made $12,950,000 at the box office.[2]
Sequels
In Like Flint (1967) was directed by Gordon Douglas and again starred James Coburn, with Cobb also reprising his role as Lloyd C. Cramden.[13]
In 1972, Harlan Ellison wrote a teleplay entitled Flintlock as a continuation of the films with Coburn intended to reprise his role. Still, studios have passed on what would have been a pilot for a proposed television series, and it went unproduced.[14] A later attempt on the same format resulted in Dead on Target (1976), a Canadian-filmed television pilot directed by Joseph L. Scanlan, starring Ray Danton as Flint, here depicted as a private investigator. This originally aired on ABC-TV on March 17, 1976.[15]
The spy film, also known as the spy thriller, is a genre of film that deals with the subject of fictional espionage, either in a realistic way or as a basis for fantasy. Many novels in the spy fiction genre have been adapted as films, including works by John Buchan, le Carré, Ian Fleming (Bond) and Len Deighton. It is a significant aspect of British cinema, with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions and many films set in the British Secret Service.
James Harrison Coburn III was an American film and television actor who was featured in more than 70 films, largely action roles, and made 100 television appearances during a 45-year career.
A parody film or spoof film is a subgenre of comedy film that lampoons other film genres or films as pastiches, works created by imitation of the style of many different films reassembled together. Although the subgenre is often overlooked by critics, parody films are commonly profitable at the box office. Parody is related to satire, except that "parody is more often a representation of appreciation, while a satire is more often...pointing ...out the major flaws of an object through ridicule." J.M. Maher notes that the "difference is not always clear" and points out that "some films employ both techniques". Parody is found in a range of art and culture, including literature, music, theater, television, animation, and gaming.
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor, known both for film roles and his work on the Broadway stage, as well as for his television role in the series, The Virginian. He often played arrogant, intimidating and abrasive characters, but he also acted as respectable figures such as judges and police officers. Cobb originated the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman under the direction of Elia Kazan, and was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).
Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The film is about a submarine crew who is shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. In adapting the story for his script, Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.
Bruce Herbert Glover is an American character actor, who is best known for portraying the assassin Mr. Wint in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Other notable film appearances include roles in Walking Tall (1973), Chinatown (1974), and Hard Times (1975).
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Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round is a 1966 crime film written and directed by Bernard Girard, and starring James Coburn. It marked Harrison Ford's film debut.
Derek Flint is a fictional world adventurer and master spy featured in a series of movies and comic books. Flint, a parody of James Bond and Doc Savage, is an agent for Z.O.W.I.E..
In Like Flint is a 1967 American spy fi comedy film directed by Gordon Douglas, the sequel to the parody spy film Our Man Flint (1966).
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.
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.
James Tont operazione D.U.E. or The Wacky World of James Tont is a 1966 French/Italian international co-production spy film spoof based on James Bond's Thunderball and featuring elements predating the release of You Only Live Twice. Directed by Bruno Corbucci, the Eurospy spy-fi comedy adventure is the sequel to James Tont operazione U.N.O. (1965) with Lando Buzzanca repeating his role as 00 Agent James Tont, a satire of James Bond and Loris Gizzi as the black monocle wearing supervillain spoof of Emilio Largo.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to James Bond:
Hellmut Lange was an actor and journalist who became famous as an action hero on TV and eventually succeeded as presenter on popular TV show Kennen Sie Kino? or Do You Know Film?
Dead on Target is an American television film. The film originally aired on ABC on March 17, 1976, and was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. The film was a backdoor pilot for a possible weekly series, but it was not picked up to series, and it became the last Derek Flint movie. Ray Danton replaces James Coburn as Derek Flint, who is now a private detective and former Z.O.W.I.E. government agent. The cast also includes Sharon Acker, Susan Jane Sullivan, AKA Susan O'Sullivan, Lawrence Dane, Gay Rowan, Linda Woods, Donnelly Rhodes, and Kim Cattrall.
Diane Loretta Bond is an American former actress and feminist artist and writer, best known for her minor roles in movies during the 1960s. She appeared in films like In Like Flint (1967), House of 1,000 Dolls (1967), A Swingin' Summer (1965), Pajama Party (1964) and as a beach extra in the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies. Bond also had several uncredited roles such as an air hostess in Seconds (1966) and a body double for Claudia Cardinale in Blindfold (1965). After relocating to Italy and studying art, she became an artist using mainly feminist issues to fuel her creativity.
References
↑ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN978-0-8108-4244-1. p254
1 2 Silverman, Stephen M (1988). The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. L. Stuart. p.325.
↑ Rovin, Jeff (1987). The Encyclopedia of Supervillains. New York: Facts on File. p.107. ISBN0-8160-1356-X.
1 2 "Coburn just right for 'Our Man Flint'". The Los Angeles Times. February 5, 1965. p.9 Part 4.
↑ "Best of hollywood". The Philadelphia Inquirer. December 30, 1964. p.23.
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