Don’t just prep a single martini for The Silencers, you better just roll over the whole entire cart and settle in for a boozy, bouncy trip back to 1966 when Dino was the King of all lounge lizards and it was perfectly okay to make jokes about having a liquor cabinet in the dash of your car.
The Silencers Live Tweet. Follow #Bond_age_ hashtag. Show starts at 9pm ET.
The year was 1966. The year prior, Thunderball had just become the biggest James Bond in history (and held its title until Skyfall). The cinemascape had become saturated with spy flicks — both sincere… and not so sincere. If I had to pinpoint one year as the pinnacle of IMPOSTOR! that year would be 1966. Our Man Flint. Quiller Memorandum. Modesty Blaise. Funeral in Berlin. Just to name a few. On February 18th, 1966, Dean Martin appeared in The Silencers, the first of four appearances as Matt Helm.
Though not apparent at face value, Matt Helm and The Silencers has many direct ties to the James Bond series of films. Producer Irving Allen had been a partner with Cubby Broccoli in Warwick Productions. The partnership broke up due to Broccoli’s prolonged family drama (his first wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer) and because Broccoli desperately wanted to buy the rights to James Bond. Allen had no interest in a supposed “action-adventure” film.
The pair actually met with Fleming at Cubby’s urging. In this meeting, Allen told Fleming his novels weren’t even “good enough for television.” A costly commercial failure later (The Trials of Oscar Wilde), the partnership dissolved in bankruptcy.
Broccoli, of course, went on to start Eon Productions with Harry Saltzman, shepherded to screen by United Artists. Irving Allen struck out on his own. His most notable release after the break was a wildly inaccurate historical epic about Genghis Khan. After observing Broccoli’s success with the Bond series from afar in 1962, Allen began thinking about his own spy series. This led him, eventually, to Donald Hamilton.
Hamilton wrote about a dark, brooding American spy. He was to Matt Helm what Ian Fleming was to James Bond. Each put a lot of themselves and their WWII experiences into their creations. Both were former military servants turned novelists. One American and one British. Hamilton had been a chemist in the Navy and began writing heavily during his time of service.
Hamilton’s early output belonged to the Western genre, but after the success of Ian Fleming, he began writing spy novels based on his own experiences in the War. While Fleming’s James Bond lives the life of a playboy assassin — the stuff of male fantasy, Matt Helm exists in a place of dark malaise. Helm has semi-retired from his Nazi-killing ways to a life of convenience in Santa Fe with a wife and kids. Globe-trotting to Helm meant ratty motels in the armpits of the world.
And so Irving Allen cast Dean Martin. Obviously.
Allen had a reputation for being anywhere from abrasive to a complete asshole. When Allen stumbled upon Hamilton’s Matt Helm novels in an airport, he believed Helm would be the perfect American counterpoint to James Bond. Allen purchased the rights to the eight Helm novels and found a partner in Columbia Pictures who’d also passed on Bond. The two parties were an ideal match, forged in purgatorial regret and relatively empty coffers.
Turning to A Streetcar Named Desire‘s scribe Oscar Saul and noted film noir director Phil Karlson (who’d been rejected for the Dr. No gig due to salary demands), Allen had every intention of making his Matt Helm films a goddamn series spy incarnation. Then Allen hit a snag. Tony Curtis, Hugh O’Brien, Richard Boone, Paul Newman all turned him down. Either they were involved in their own pet projects at the time or they balked at the notion of being a second-fiddle Bond. Suddenly, Allen’s goddamn serious spy series became a spoof.
If you can’t beat ’em, spoof ’em.
Dean Martin feared his film career had ended with the dissolution of his partnership with Jerry Lewis, but he still feared that Allen was either a complete buffoon or yanking his chain. Why would he — charismatic drunk and lounge singer — ever be asked to play James Bond? So Dean Martin made a number of outlandish contractual demands to test the producer. Allen accepted, much to Martin’s surprise. The script transformed from brooding film noir to Dean Martin lounge act overnight with Martin himself bringing in his Rat Pack team of writers to “Dino” it up a bit.
Instead of a married man living in Santa Fe, Matt Helm became a swinging, alcohol-fueled bachelor living in a state-of-the-art lovers paradise. James Bond as technicolor lounge lizard. Critics considered the film both an affable spoof of 007 but also a cheap, distasteful attempt to cash in on the spy craze. And that’s exactly right. The Matt Helm films are, from our perspective, 1960’s exploitation. Campy and ill-conceived, viewers are merely meant to enjoy the parade of scantily clad women and cheap, boozy gags. Despite the critical division, audiences embraced Dean Martin as Matt Helm, turning The Silencers into a $16million success (the equivalent of $120million in 2016). The film resulted a financial windfall for Irving Allen, Columbia, Dean Martin and Donald Hamilton, who saw the popularity of his books spike in the wake of the film.
And then the Go-Go Dancing Stopped.
The Matt Helm film series would continue until 1968 with the fourth and final film, The Wrecking Crew. Though the film had announced a fifth Matt Helm called The Ravagers, dwindling box office returns and his sick mother caused Dean Martin to step away from the role. Silly spoofs had also fallen out of favor. The assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Vietnam War now a fixture of the country’s collective conscience. The murder of Sharon Tate (who’d appeared in The Wrecking Crew) likely proved to be the tipping point for Irving Allen. Allen tried to revive Helm in the 1970’s but the tone of American cinema had shifted. Only Hamilton’s original Matt Helm could have a place in the dark and dour American spy films of the 1970’s. Bond, of course, endured, with Roger Moore acting as counterprogramming. But Bond is Bond and Matt Helm was Dean Martin. Allen attempted on final Matt Helm revival on television with Tony Franciosa in the lead. The ABC series lasted for 13 episodes during the 1975-1976 season before being cancelled.
Join #Bond_age_ for the live tweet of The Silencers on Wednesday, August 23rd at 9pm. Follow #Bond_age_ hashtag. An embed will appear on the website shortly before showtime.
The Silencers Clip Reel Set to the Swingin’ Score:
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Tonight @ 9pmET, #Bond_age_ tackles the infamous ZARDOZ. It’s the least we can do for Slouchy Bond’s 86th birthday. By the way, Happy early birthday, Mr. Connery.
Zardoz Live Tweet. Follow #Bond_age_ hashtag. Show starts at 9pm ET.
On August 25th, we celebrate Sean Connery’s 86th birthday and since Slouchy Bond deserves the best of all possible birthday gifts, we here at #Bond_age_ believed that there was no better present than a #Bond_age_ riff on the great, the infamous ZARDOZ. It’s the ZARDOZ LIVE TWEET! You’re welcome, Sean.
Happy 86th birthday, Slouchy Bond!
John Boorman first conceived Zardoz while working on an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings for United Artists. As you may realize by now, nothing came of those Boorman-produced Tolkein adaptations. Instead, we have ZARDOZ, the movie that Roger Ebert called a “genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators…” Keep in mind as well that this was Boorman’s follow up to Deliverance. That’s right. Boorman went from banjo plucking rednecks with a vengeance to Zardoz.
In his post-Bond years, Sean Connery had trouble finding steady employment. He, in fact, approached Boorman and requested to be in his film. Connery agreed to work for $200,000 and Zardoz cost in total about $1million to make. Consider that Connery demanded a $1.25million salary to return to the role of Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, just three years earlier — which was at the time a record payout for one film. Connery displaced the original Zed, Burt Reynolds, who’d fallen ill before filming began. (Sidenote: Can you f’ing imagine Burt Reynolds in Zardoz?)
In the commentary track for Zardoz, John Boorman concedes that the film looks absolutely ridiculous, but suggests that enjoyment of the film requires entering into the film with the spirit in which it was intended. He says, “When I see the film now I’m astonished at my hubris in making this extraordinary farrago.” I can tell you, with 100% certainty, that #Bond_age_ will live tweet Zardoz with spirit and farrago coming out of our bleeding eye holes.
By the way, that same commentary track suggests that Connery had no problem with the infamous banana hammock jumpsuit thing, but resisted, with great persistence, wearing the bridal gown. So he’s got standards, you see.
Join us Wednesday, August 17th, as #Bond_age_ live tweets the infamous ZARDOZ to celebrate the great Sean Connery’s 86th. Follow #Bond_age_ hashtag. Embed will appear on the #Bond_age_ website just before showtime.
And now for the finale. Our MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE retrospective is coming to a close with the excellent action spectacle that handily out-Bonded Bond in 2015. By the time SPECTRE arrived in theaters in late November, it felt like stale potatoes. Threads of the plot eerily recalled this fifth entry in the Mission: Impossible movie series. Some may argue my feelings on this matter, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and M:I – Rogue Nation ran laps around Bond for pure fun and spectacle entertainment. James Bond in SPECTRE felt like EON chasing pop-culture, but pulling up halfway with the dry heaves.
Then when the whole Emily Blunt/Gillian Anderson as Bond Internet rabble gained momentum, I couldn’t help but consider how Mission: Impossible had again stolen even Bond’s hypothetical thunder. Rebecca Ferguson is the star of this here movie. Tom Cruise, of course, is Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt… but Rebecca Ferguson makes herself a legitimate star in Rogue Nation and made a strong case for taking over the entire series when Ethan Hunt does finally retire. No farcical Internet hyperbole or shoehorning necessary. Our female espionage heroine has already arrived…
Anywho. Commentary aside.
Join us on Wednesday, July 27th at 9pm ET for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation! Follow #Bond_age_ hashtag, supplement with #MIRN. Embed will appear on this here site Wednesday before showtime.
