One of favorite cinematic guilty pleasures are the spy spoof films of the 1960's,most especially the Flint films starring James Coburn as the suave, super intelligent and crafty super secret agent Derek Flint that only appeared in the two films OUR MAN FLINT(1966) and IN LIKE FLINT(1967) Here I'm giving my impressions on both Flint films as a movie reviewer and also as a bonafide fan of 1960's secret agent movies.
OUR MAN FLINT(1966)*** out of **** Written by Hal Fimberg & Ben Starr Directed by Daniel Mann,Music by Jerry Goldsmith Starring James Coburn,Lee J. Cobb, Gila Golan Edward Mulhare Unrated 107 minutes Released by 20th Centiry Fox Home Video
Back in the mid 1960's, when James Bond films became the new motion picture craze, every Hollywood studio wanted to jump into the so called "Bondmania" film craze so to speak. Each movie studio had their version of "007" such as Columbia Pictures' Matt Helm, MGM's Man From UNCLE, Paramount's Harry Palmer,Universal's "Bulldog" Drummond and even AIP's Dr. Goldfoot films. But contrary to the other film studios who found their cinematic spies thru literary means,20th Century Fox's Derek Flint was purely a creation of screenwriters Hal Fimberg & Ben Starr and producer Saul David(FANTASTIC VOYAGE, VON RYAN'S EXPRESS, LOGAN'S RUN) They created a superspy that was a lampoon of James Bond but with the intelligence and deduction talents of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes with the libido and sexy charm of real life Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner. Originally producer Saul David was going to cast Frank Sinatra as Flint since Sinatra had just finished starring in the war epic VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965) and most especially because Columbia Pictures had cast fellow Rat Packer Dean Martin as Matt Helm. But Sinatra (thankfully for us) turned down the role and it then went to rugged character actor James Coburn(THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE) who had the opportunity to play his first leading role in this film and proved to be the perfect actor for the role with right touch of self deprecating tongue in cheek humor, suave sexiness and lithe action capabilities. The first Flint film empitomizes the essence of the 60's decade with not only satirizing the James Bond phenomenon but the Playboy philosophy and the top position of the US as world leader as well. The sequence in the first Flint film in which Flint is attacked by an anti-American eagle on the villain's secret island complex indicates the level of satire that exists in the film.. Another virtue of the film is the marvelous score by Oscar winner Jerry Goldsmith(THE OMEN, STAR TREK, POLTERGEIST, PLANET OF THE APES) which clearly demonstrates the MAN FROM UNCLE influence which Goldsmith also composed.
IN LIKE FLINT(1967)*** out of **** Written by Hal Fimberg based on characters created by Fimberg & Ben Starr Directed by Gordon Douglas Music by Jerry Goldsmith Starring James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb,Jean Hale, Andrew Duggan, Steve Inhat,Yvonne Craig Unrated 114 minutes Released by 20th Century Fox Home Video
After the enormous critical and box office success of the first Flint film, 20th Century Fox immediately commissioned a sequel called IN LIKE FLINT whose title was a ploy on the famous saying,"In Like Flynn" regarding famous movie star Errol Flynn's sexual exploits but although it is a very enjoyable film with a great performance by Coburn as Flint as always, the film's main flaw is that the movie's plot and sequences are very reminiscent of the first Flint film's script in which a trio of evil but well meaning geniuses(three mad scientists in the first movie, three female fashion moguls in the sequel) plans to conquer the world and to trap Flint, the villains kidnap Flint's mistresses, even to the sequence in which Flint fakes his own death. But Coburn's portrayal of Flint as well as composer Jerry Goldsmith's always fabulous entertaining score for IN LIKE FLINT is what makes this sequel very watchable and fun to watch. Ironically the sequel made money at the box office (although less than OUR MAN FLINT) back then and Fox was ready to do another Flint sequel. But producer Saul David had a terrible fallout with Fox executive Richard Zanuck in 1967 previous to the release of IN LIKE FLINT in which Zanuck ordered 10 minutes cut from the original release of the film from 125 minutes to 115 minutes to speed out the film without producer David's consent. Then Saul David to countermand Zanuck's decision, had three influential film critics(Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris & Stanley Kaufmann) to see the original cut of the IN LIKE FLINT film and give their review based on that cut. When Zanuck found out about this,he immediately had David fired and thrown out of the 20th Century Fox lot and when Coburn found out about it, he decided not to do any more Flint films without David as producer even to the point that Coburn refused to play Flint for a TV film pilot made in 1975 called OUR MAN FLINT, DEAD ON TARGET which cast Ray Danton as Flint in a very disappointing film that never became a TV series.There is a DVD Box Set that has both Flint films with Coburn in anamorphic widescreen as well as the 1975 TV Flint film with audio commentaries by film historians Lee Pfeiffer of Cinema Retro and Eddie Friedfeld, together with featurettes on the making of the Flint films and Flint film trailers.
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