The Wrecking Crew (1968)

A train with $1 billion in gold is traversing the Danish countryside when it is hijacked.  The hijackers are employed by Count Massimo Contini (Nigel Green).  In Washington DC, there is panic.  Chief MacDonald (John Larch) of ICE (Intelligence and Counter Espionage) explains that revealing the theft would be economically catastrophic for both the United Kingdom and the United States; the money was being sent to London to shore up the British Pound.  On account of the need for secrecy, the recovery operation must be as small as possible.  As such, MacDonald calls on Matt Helm (Dean Martin).

Helm is once again photographing beautiful women and not terribly keen on another mission.  Nevertheless, he flies to Denmark with his cover already blown.  He is met by the over-eager and clumsy Freya Carlson (Sharon Tate).  She is to be his assistant though he never misses an opportunity to brush her off.  Once checked into his hotel, Helm is contacted by Lola Medina (Tina Louise), who offers information and maybe a good time.  He also has dalliances with Linka Karensky (Elke Sommer) and Wen Yu-Rang (Nancy Kwan), each of whom are minions of Count Contini.  Of course, before Matt can really get involved with other women, Freya inevitably arrives to spoil the mood.

In tone, The Wrecking Crew echoes The Silencers.  There is a dream sequence where he imagines some intimacy with the various models to the soundtrack of Dean Martin.  Every woman is agog over him.  The leading lady is mostly viewed as a nuisance and a klutz (i.e., Stella Stevens) but he is eventually won over by her beauty.  The battle with the goons is less goofy than in previous movies but still a bit corny.  Really, Dean Martin dispatched Chuck Norris with a lazy kick!  This was Chuck Norris' first movie and he plays a minor goon for Count Contini.  Speaking of fisticuffs, Martin still had an unconvincing double for his stuntman.

Elke Sommer is stunning as the main femme fatale.  She is so villainous and yet so gorgeous.  Sharon Tate is quite dazzling, but she spends much of the film in less flattering outfits than Sommer.  Nigel Green, who is usually outstanding, is unremarkable here.  The count pails when compared to Green's previous villain roles: Carl Petersen in Deadlier Than the Male or especially Major Dalby in The Ipcress File.  The count's constant concern over the schedule and his general indifference to his minions' deaths reminded me of Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill, another unremarkable villain.

This is the last of the Matt Helm films and certainly better than the previous one.  Many of the scenes appear in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) goes to see the film!  Good popcorn fun.

The Ambushers (1967)

Matt Helm (Dean Martin) is at an ICE (Intelligence & Counter Espionage) facility when he chances to encounter Sheila Sommers (Janice Rule), an agent he had previously worked with.  However, she is now a pale reflection of her old self, having suffered an extreme breakdown.  MacDonald (James Gregory) explains that she had test piloted an American flying saucer but vanished over Mexico.  When she returned, it was in this state and without the saucer.  Mac proposes that Matt and Sheila go to Mexico and find out what happened to her and where the saucer is now.  Once they arrive in Acapulco, a host of questionable characters are met: there is Quintana (Kurt Kasznar), a brewer of Mexican beer who has a surprising number of thugs and goons in his employ, Francesca (Senta Berger), a spy with a desire to find and kill Ortega, Jose Ortega, a spymaster and central villain who tortured Sheila during her long absence, Nassim, a mysterious Middle Easterner who is always on the periphery and clearly has machinations of his own.

The campiness of this Matt Helm outing is through the roof.  Right out the gate, the United States launches a UFO.  The UFO is brought down by an anti-gravity ray.  The smaller version of the anti-gravity gun is used to pour drinks, unzip ladies' zippers, lift folks into the air, and so forth.  We've gone full sci-fi, having repurposed Star Trek props.  The brawls are poorly choreographed, the gun battles are embarrassing, the jokes are rarely funny, the slapstick is cringy, and the plot is ludicrous.  Sure, it's a comedy but Helm should win not merely because he is supposed to but also because he is the more skilled spy.  Nah, he just sort of stumbles about and let's the villains fail around him.

The action is terrible.  At one point, Matt rides a motorcycle underwater.  Yeah.  Oh, when he comes out of the water, there is an alligator in the sidecar.  Ha ha.  Dean Martin on a green screen was alarmingly unconvincing.  One of his stunt doubles had a noticeably receding hairline.  Are you even going to make an effort?  Maybe that was played for laughs too.

Again, this is trying to be a comedy, but our heroine has suffered torture that turned her hair white and left her skin ghostly pale.  Yikes.  Then, she is nearly raped and murdered by one of Ortega's goons.  Then Ortega himself strips her and likewise tries to rape her.  What the hell?  Dark!

Skip this one.

Murderers' Row (1966)

Matt Helm (Dean Martin) has just finished a photo shoot with Miss January and plans to relax while he awaits the next model.  To his mild surprise, he finds January in his bed.  How nice.  However, he no sooner joins her than she tries to escape the bed and the plotted assassination for which she was bait!  Is this the end of Matt Helm?  Oddly enough, this faked assassination pre-dates the same thing from You Only Live Twice (1967) in the James Bond series.  Who is stealing from whom?

The same villainous organization from The Silencers is back and have now kidnapped a scientist on the French Riviera.  The scientist has developed a ray that can incinerate a city.  To prevent interference with their plans, Ironhead (Tom Reese) was dispatched to kill top agents around the world, including Matt Helm.  Ironhead thinks he has succeeded in every case.  Using the alias of Jim Peters, Helm arrives in Cannes to locate Dr. Solaris, the missing scientist.  However, he finds that his contact has been murdered and thus he instead teams with Suzie (Ann-Margret), a seemingly ditzy hippy girl who loves to dance and wear stylish clothes.  She also happens to be Dr. Solaris' daughter and is likewise searching for him.  Julian Wall (Karl Malden) knows there is something fishy about this Jim Peters and is particularly curious when he finds the man snooping around his operation.

Ironhead is bald but part of his scalp is metal.  Helm learns after one hit that it isn't just for show.  The guy really has an iron head.  This is humorous when Helm uses a giant magnet to lift Ironhead and take him out of the fight.  Wow, this predates a near identical scene from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) where James Bond (Roger Moore) used a giant magnet on the steel-toothed Jaws (Richard Kiel).  The Bond spoof inspired the Bond franchise.  How funny.

Karl Malden makes for an odd bad guy.  Playing to the comic nature of the show, he switches accents from time to time.  James Gregory returns as ICE Chief MacDonald and Beverly Adams is back as Lovey Kravezit.  Dean Martin's son, Dean Paul Martin, has a cameo along with Desi Arnaz Jr.  The banter between father and son was clever.  As in The Silencers, a dig is made at Frank Sinatra, but it's all in good fun.

There is more campiness in this one than the last.  The freeze gun was the most obvious case of silliness but the bomb that would explode after sufficient shaking was likewise corny.  Too often, the villains had to be stupid in order for Helm to succeed.  Nonetheless, generally entertaining.

Good popcorn fun.

The Silencers (1966)

Matt Helm (Dean Martin) works as a freelance photographer but was formerly at top agent with ICE (Intelligence & Counter Espionage).  An American scientist has gone missing and is suspected of assisting a rogue terrorist group bent one world domination.  Helm has no interest in returning to the agency and repeatedly hangs up on MacDonald (James Gregory), ICE Chief.  However, when Helm is targeted for assassination, he changes his mind.  Joining another agent, Tina (Daliah Lavi), he sets out for the American southwest to intercept the first MacGuffin.  During a performance, Sarita (Cyd Charisse) will hand off a secret tape.  This goes awry and, in the confusion, Gail Hendricks (Stella Stevens) gets the tape.  Though Gail claims to be an innocent bystander, Helm suspects she is an enemy agent.  In either case, he knows she is now targeted by the terrorists, and he sticks with her until they reveal themselves.

This is a James Bond spoof that is played mostly for laughs.  Matt Helm doesn't appear to be particularly competent but has plenty of witty comments.  He succeeds more thanks to his opponents incompetence.  His gadgets are somewhere between James Bond's spiffy Q branch gear and Maxwell Smart's shoe phone.  Helm even has a personal assistant with a name that Ian Fleming might have coined: Lovey Kravezit.

Dean Martin plays himself, an easy-going fellow who always has a drink in his hand and a woman on his arm.  Stella Stevens is a voluptuous klutz, a vapid bimbo who does slapstick humor.  The cleavage is stong in this one.  Wow.  It speaks to her talents with physical comedy that I was more often viewing her as an accident in progress rather than an obviously gorgeous woman.  Daliah Lavi plays the competent spy who clearly has a crush on Matt Helm.  She is conveniently sidelined when Stella enters the picture but returns for the third act.  She does such a great job that she was also cast in Casino Royale (1967) as a spy.  The cast of villains is plentiful, making them individually less memorable.  Victor Buono plays the chief villain, Tung-Tze.  Yes, he's supposed to be Chinese.  Awkward casting but this was the 60s.

Mostly goofy but generally entertaining.  Many of the sequences are carried on too long.  The car chase just drags on and on before it finally ends in the predictable crash.  Some of Stella Steven's comedic bits also drag - notably her repeated falling in the mud.  The villain guards all went to the Stormtrooper school of shooting.  Though the backward firing gun was fun, the whistling suit button grenades were a little too Get Smart!

Just okay.  Worthwhile for a Dean Martin fan or those who might enjoy a spoof of the spy genre.  On the other hand, fans of the Donald Hamilton novels will not recognize the character.  This is Matt Helm in name only.