A Man Called Dagger

I think this is the worst movie I've ever seen. I would say that I couldn't imagine a worse one ever coming along in my lifetime, either, except that Steve Allen did the music and Steve Allen is never completely awful.

One abject moment of creative bankruptcy that has remained in my mind all these years is when Dagger and one of the temptresses swap reminiscences of all the exotic places they have met before. Well, not reminiscences. Just the names of cities. Maybe by their acting they were supposed to load the names with meaning, but the turkey in your average grade-school Thanksgiving play does more acting than anyone in this whole movie...

James Bond is a character often imitated, never duplicated -- especially by this unskilled production which offers spy fans Paul Mantee ("Robinson Crusoe on Mars") as agent Dick Dagger (!) and his female ally, Terry Moore ("Might Joe Young").

Mantee is armed with a laser-firing watch, but he doesn't use it often. The villain is played by Jan Murray, whose role wins him the dubious distinction of being the least believable Nazi war criminal in movie history.

But the story does succeed in creating a disgusting villain; Murray's meat-packing business is processing meat from human bodies, and he serves a fillet mignon to Mantee obtained from sexy Maureen Arthur! (Yuck). Murray's sexy accomplice is Sue Ann Langdon ("A Guide for the Married Man"). Directed by Richard Rush. Co-star Terry Moore, a former wife of Howard Hughes, later posed for a photo spread in Playboy magazine, looking remarkably good for a woman over fifty.

Wow a lot of the reviews for this movie have been rough. I've never actually seen the movie myself, even though my father Lew Horwitz. produced it. He sadly passed away last year. It was his only movie, and not surprisingly we moved from l.A to Boston in 1972 when I was a year old. Our German Shepards name was Daggar. Although I'm not sure which came first. It is cool to see that there are people who have actually seen the movie. I had thought it just existed in 5 by 3 poster and old film reel in our basement. Technology is a good and t the same time scary thing. I hope more people get the chance to watch this movie,hate it or love it, I know it would make my father happy.

Here is a movie with no redeeming values. It's not interesting. It's not funny. There's no compelling cinematography. The musical score is blah. The script is awful. The acting is bad. The action scenes are meh. Jan Murray, a former SS Nazi, wants Paul Mantee (Dagger) dead. That's the plot. There are several attractive women that are scantily dressed at various points in the film, one of which is Murray's secret weapon under his control. Richard Kiel (Jaws from Bond) makes a couple of appearances as another Murray henchman but is given almost nothing to do. No reason to watch this - no entertainment value.

Richard Rush is a good director, Paul Mantee is a first-rate character actor, and Eileen O'Neil is spectacularly beautiful besides being a very good actress. Put them together and what do you get? Junk.

While low-budget doesn't necessarily mean low quality, in this case it applies. The film's cheapness shows through in practically every frame, and there's not much Mantee or Rush can do about that. With all of the film's many faults, though, there are two that it can't overcome--an incoherent script with holes you can drive a truck through, and an hysterically awful performance by comic Jan Murray. Murray plays a Nazi scientist trying to revive the Third Reich and take over the world from a wheelchair. His "research" for the part must have consisted of watching dozens of old silent movies, as his performance is a virtual carbon copy of the stereotypical nostril-flaring, eye-rolling, teeth-gnashing, hand-flailing ham acting from a cheap melodrama of 1915. After a while you find yourself yelling at the screen, "For God's sake, shut up!" It's almost as bad as watching a Madonna movie.

If you're a fan of Paul Mantee (who did such a great job in 1964's "Robinson Crusoe on Mars") or Richard Rush ("The Stunt Man") or just want to stare open-mouthed at the gorgeous Eileen O'Neil, then go ahead and rent this movie. But do yourself a favour--turn the sound off.