THE SPIES WHO CAME INTO THE FOLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210063-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 22, 2006
• Sequence Number: 63
• Publication Date: March 4, 1966
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2006f 2_F: CIA-RM48-0'f 3 1 15 RO 03 0210063-5
01
CINEMA
The Spies Who Came
into the Fold
Movie moguls have long sought the
perfect pop-art hero, the infallible mag-
netic moneymaker with equal pull for
kids under twelve and adolescents up to
and beyond retirement age. Tarzan, a
perennial favorite, still takes to the trees
occasionally to fight for right, but with
obsolete weapons. The Wild West gun-
fighter endures, though an hombre who
traditionally hates kissin' and gets his
kicks by digging spurs into horseflesh
seems equally ill-adapted to the times.
The exquisitely contemporary hero is
girl-happy, gadget-minded James Bond,
whose legend has already tempted a
host of imitators to bland larceny. Now
five new spy spoofs reverently ape Bond,
with more a-making to catch the rich
financial fallout from Goldfinger and
Thunderhall.
Naked Naiads. The biggest, noisiest
and naughtiest contender in the new
spystakes is The Silencers, with Crooner
Dean Martin playing Matt Helm, a se-
cret agent for ICE ,(Intelligence Coun-
ter Espionage)`- Ita lot pits helm
?eg6lc si the ntahlermind of one of those
atomic: conspiracies, headquartered in
what appears to be a sunken carrier un-
der the desert near Alamogordo. But
the real contest is between nudity and
gadgetry. The striptease 'fun, with Cyd
Charisse as team captain,. begins dur-
. ing the opening credits, then gets right
CROWLEY & VAUGHN IN "TRAP"
Elfery Queen for a day.
with nothing omitted save scrawling
feelthy pictures on the screen. Now and
then, Martin sleepily warbles a song'
parody, his way of adding sauce to all
the gleeful violence, drunken driving
and self-conscious smut. Chief compen-
sation over the long haul is Stella' Ste-
vens' zany, refreshing performance as
a tourist who flees a conducted 'bus
tour and plunges into escapades with
the resolute air of a girl making every
minute of her vacation count.
Keeping Clean. Intelligence men's in-
trigues wash cleaner in To Trap a Spy
down to business in Martin's circular,.? and The Spy with My Face. Originally
bed, which turns, travels, tilts, finally.. designed for home use, these television
plunges him naked into a swimming' :. retreads are expanded versions of two
pool with a naiad identified as Lovey ::'episodes from MGM's The Man /ro-n.
Kravezit. While the camera plays ana- U.N.C.L.E. series (the seams still show).
tomical peekaboo, they are dried on ' In race, Napoleon Solo (Robert
two cylindrical Freudian symbols, then Vaughn) seduces Thrush Agent Senta
dressed and breakfasted by machine. ..: Berger somewhat more explicitly than
Innuendo roars through Silencers, he could before, when he had to take
CYD CHARISSE IN "SILENCERS'! ,
Captain of the anatomictil team.
6.
Luciana Paluzzi adds sex appeal 'until
gunfire spoils her game, but the story
really concerns an ordinary' housewife
(Patricia Crowley) who helps Solo foil
an assassination plot. A kind of Ellery
Queen for a Day, she goes home with an
armful of presents, having scored a clear
win for small-screen morality.
The man least likely to threaten.
Bond's supremacy is That Man in Is-
tanbul,, with Horst Bucholz battling a
one-armed villain atop a minaret and
performine other improbable feats to
rescue a kidnaped scientist. A masnuer-
ade in a Turkish bath, long visits with
FBI Sexpot Sylva Koscina and a tour of
the city cannot save Istanbul, Deliver-
ing insouciant asides to the audience
brings out the unseasoned ham in Horst.
Another elusive scientist is the excuse
given for The 2nd Best Secret Agent in
the Whole Wide World, the most fla-
grantly imitative spoof of the lot. Its
second-best agent is played with studied
respect by one Tom Adams, who
.:vaguely resembles Sean Cannery. The
film sputters with genuine excitement
in the scramble for Regrav, a secret
'process for reversing the law of gravity.
But the laws of levity begin to go topsy-
turvy as well in Agent's craven acts of
homage to its prototype. 'Curling under
Adams' sheets, one pussycat purrs: "I
met someone like you in Florida. Called
himself James . . . James Something."
If the bogus Bonds abhor originality,
they should at least show enough pro-
fessional savvy to cover their tracks.
Mechanical Sin. The least that this
spate of spies signifies, it would seem,
is that ventures into vencry, sadism and
.furious action have set an' eyebrow-
raising new standard for family enter-
tainment. Kids adore the lethal, shiny
toy collection. Dads happily ogle a pre-
potent he-man, king of a computerized
wonderland in which every foe can be
swiftly vanquished, every voluptuous si-
ren bedded. And women seem quite
susceptible to the fantasy of being vi-
cariously mauled by a master of the art,
perhaps after flooring him with a karate
wrist chop. Slapdash, comic-strip plots,
more violent than suspenseful, are made
into a joke that viewers are invited to
share while soaking up the sin and
splendor of strange locales, gawking at
new, feats of technology. The sin is me-
chanical--.a series of clashes between
the hostile male and deadly female, cold
sensuality suggesting some futuristic
brand of electric sex.
The bizarre, decadent world of the
superspy naturally inspires a certain
amount of earnest speculation. The
Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Ro-
mano, denounces Bondomania as "a
dangerous mixture of violence, vulgar-,,
ity, sadism and sex," though permissive
Dr. Joseph Fletcher, author of Situa-
tion Ethics (TIME, Jan. 21), sees it as
"healthy fantasizing and myth-making." ?
Dr. Harold Lief of Tulane's Depart-
ment of Psychiatry thinks Bond's Play
boy philosophy may reflect society's
changing values and the shape of things
to come-"another manifestation of
the trend toward greater female aggres-
siveness, the separation of love and sex.
Though the surreal . James Bond
.wciL ld"probably stand up and jeer at'
such criticism, he' might agree with
pundits, who reason that, in an anxiety-
.ridden age, it is more fun to laugh at
Spectre, Thrush, and ZOWIE than to
ponder the threats posed by Mao Tse-
tung. The Bondsmen seem far too giddy
a crew to inflict any permanent injury
on young or old, male or female. As
art, the spy spoofs have little value, and
they lack even true satirical purpose, or
what Critic G. K. Chesterton in A De-
fence of Nonsense called "a kind of
exuberant capering round a discovered
truth." A craze occurs when an ac-
quired taste unaccountably becomes an
addiction. Without ever believing in it,
audiences find the spoofery, easy to
swallow. But mock espionage may be
hard put to survive a throng of second-
string undercover men who seem badly
I
T need of vocational
uidance
.
d,
T
g
.
Approved For Release 2006/11/22 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210063-5
 Apveddk 2006/11/22: CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210063-5
Approved For Release 2006/11/22 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210063-5