Le mur des espions

Let's say you're a refugee scientist from some foreigny country, hiding in Southern California working on antidote to some killer spore virus that's going to be sprayed on America's crops, to be baked into apple pies. Would you let a smug, fifty-ish, cardigan-wearing, skill-less "secret agent" into your home, to sleep next to you and your sexy, sexy, sexy neice? I wouldn't.

Anyway, Peter Mark Richman, who you may remember from "Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhatten", IS Adam Chance, Agent for H.A.R.M. He answers to one- except Wendell Corey, as the head of H.A.R.M. Here, Wendell is as drunk as he was in "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" but not as drunk as he was in "Astro-Zombies".

Enjoy!

There's not much left to say about this movie...it was bad, the characters were lousy, there were maybe three locations in the whole film, and it was less devoid of action than "The Starfighters". Adam Chance is an old, feeble man. Correction, an old, feeble, CRADLE ROBBING man! He has more skill at taking apart televisions and being repulsive than he does fighting crime. Thank God that we have the FBI and CIA and what not, instead of HARM (Huge Angular Red Marshmallows). I like how the only one who can save the day is the "elderly, wounded scientist" (in Crow's words). One of my absolute favorite lines in the whole movie is, "The combination of the pocket wound and the spaz chop was just too much for the old man." I think either Crow or Tom say it, but it doesn't matter. The only, repeat ONLY! redeeming factor of the movie is that the Russian woman is very attractive. I think it's her hair, she has hair like my girlfriend...who is Russian...hmmmm....maybe I should go buy a Cardigan....or not.

I saw this movie back in the summer of 1968 when I was eleven years old and it scared the pants off me and my friends. We never spoke once for nearly ninety minutes it was so absorbing. And that was unusual for us as we used to lark about a lot in those days - you know?

As I recall, the plot revolves around a group of evil men who have developed a gun which fires little pellets containing a virulent designer fungus, which firstly knocks the victim cold and then consumes his entire body within a matter of hours. One minute you have a living guy - next he's just a mass of green, gungy stuff. Yuk! Horrible.

I think the reason we found it so disturbing was the implied biological warfare element. In other words it could have been possible at that particular point in history, and certainly nowadays in the twenty-first century. So I guess it's still relevant.

I'd love to see this movie again sometime and I give it ten out of ten on the scary scale.

This is a "must see" movie for nostalgic science fiction fans. Mark Richman and Wendell Cory deliver plenty of action and suspense. Gerd Oswald, the director, is known for his work on the original "OUTER LIMITS". The entire plot is a combination of action, science fiction and horror.

Sorry, but Mark Richman is no Sean Connery. On his best day he might be a Neal Connery (see Operation Double-007). Here he stumbles through this effort to cash in on the 60's superspy bondwagon. His character seems perplexed by the entire plot...and he's not alone. What the heck is going on is anybody's guess. There's action, and bad guys, and a secret device (a manufactured flesh-eating virus: the movie's prophetic despite itself). But it's like watching a slide show. Nothing connects to anything, nothing flows. At the end you find yourself wondering why you wasted 90 minutes.