Some years back, I had recorded this (on VHS) off the MGM cable channel but the reception had been so poor I did not make it through the film; eventually, I upgraded to a decent copy – albeit also sourced from MGM and, thus, panned-and-scanned! Anyway, I decided to check this out now (and the two remaining unwatched films from this promising but short-lived director) as a follow-up to star Richard Johnson's recently-viewed appearances – in the same mould – as Bulldog Drummond but also in anticipation of two upcoming Holt revisits in my ongoing tribute to the late Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster. Still, unlike those two lightweight spy films, this is anything but campy or glossy; in fact, typical of most Cold War espionage yarns of its era (equating realism with glumness), the plot is fairly obscure, so that the result proves oddly unmemorable despite careful work all around!
It is therefore up to an impressive cast (in uniformly fine form) to deliver the goods and keep one watching: Johnson, Carol Lynley (as his two-timing girlfriend who tries to poison him at the end – but her fish get it instead! – and whom he fells with a karate chop!), Barbara Bouchet (as an initially suspicious addition to the spy ring but who ultimately emerges a heroic trooper and even loses her life to the 'cause'), Harry Andrews (as Johnson's suave superior), Gordon Jackson (as the hero's seemingly laid-back skipper-partner but who turns out to be opportunistic, duplicitous and sadistic), Sylvia Syms (as Andrews' nagging wife who gets abducted on a train by Johnson), Diana Dors (as a housekeeper to a defecting scientist seduced by Johnson in the guise of a salesman), Sam Wanamaker (as the C.I.A.'s top man dubbed "Lucinda" and Bouchet's boss) and Maurice Denham (as Johnson's elderly team-mate whose murder starts the ball rolling).
The film opens in a movie theater where one is given to understand that Johnson will himself be eliminated by his own side once he completes his next mission, but this does not happen (having discovered the mole in their organization) but is nonetheless kept on a leash by the umbrella-carrying Andrews in the freeze-frame finale (incidentally, Holt's start as an editor at Ealing Studios is much in evidence here as the film's pacing is very tight, with scenes hardly being allowed to finish off or permitted to start gradually)! Apparently, Johnson was Terence Young's first choice to play James Bond but, as I said earlier, his world-weary 'eliminator' (the title of the original source novel) here is closer to the austerity of Harry Palmer. Johnson and Bouchet were once a romantic item and, as it happens, they probably both owe their popularity in cult movie circles today to Italian film-maker Lucio Fulci via, respectively, ZOMBIE (1979) and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1972)!
Interestingly enough, Holt (who worked for Hammer 3 times) is here employed by their main rivals, Amicus; for the record, he had already dabbled in the spy world by directing episodes of TV's DANGER MAN (1960-61) and ESPIONAGE (1964). The film under review – which the director apparently dismissed as "dreadful" and claimed he only made it because he "needed the bread"! – is Holt's final completed work (in the U.S. it was unceremoniously released as a double-feature, incongruously paired with Paul Wendkos' second-rate war movie ATTACK ON THE IRON COAST {1968}!), since alcoholism got the better of him
dying at the young age of 47 two-thirds of the way through shooting Hammer's superior BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1971)!; even so, Johnson later named him one of the best taskmasters he ever worked for.
