The Silencers

He's super spy Matt Helm.All the girls love him and all the men envy him.And some want to kill him.In the 1960's they made four Matt Helm movies.The Silencers (1966) is the first one of them directed by Phil Karlson.In this movie Matt Helm's job is to prevent WWIII.Not an easy job to do, except for Matt Helm.Matt Helm movies were James Bond parodies.They did the same Austin Powers did some decades later.And this agent could also sing! The actor who portrayed Matt Helm was super cool Dean Martin.The leading lady of this first movie was portrayed by super sexy Stella Stevens (Gail).Daliah Lavi plays Tina.The singing and dancing beauty Cyd Charisse is Sarita.The movie history has pretty much forgotten these movies.I found The Silencers rather entertaining.Matt Helm movies look very 60's.It's probably the nostalgia that raises the value of these movies.And the super cool Dean Martin.

Retired secret agent Matt Helm (Dean Martin) is a photographer of beautiful models with beautiful assistant Lovey Kravezit. His former boss Macdonald at Intelligence Counter Espionage with deadly Tina recruit him back in the fight against the evil Big O organization led by Tung-Tze who plans to use the underground atomic bomb test in New Mexico to start WWIII. Andreyev is the evil henchman. Matt encounters bumbling bosom blonde Gail Hendricks (Stella Stevens) and Sam Gunther.

Before Austin Powers, there was Matt Helm. This is a semi-spoof of Jimmy Bond. Dean Martin is the perfect lady's man to play the role. It's a lot of scantily clad beautiful women and outrageous spy stuff. It is semi-spoof because it's not that that far from the actual Bond franchise. It's got some song and dance as long as the dancing has the girls jiggling. The most important part is that this is fun and Martin seems to be having fun winking at the audience.

I recently bought the DVD, and I forgot how much fun it was. It's not rocket science at all, and one could argue that even as an obvious spy spoof (in the best Bond and Flint traditions) it hiccups a bit throughout its own pretensions: Dean Martin's photographer-as-spy is properly cool, but there's a fine line between being laid-back and appearing to sleep on camera. (I could also say something about a modern audience being more than a bit startled at the immense objectifying of women throughout the whole film, but society is currently enjoying a renaissance of all things politically INcorrect and telling the rest of us to shut up- so I'll shut up.) Martin's female co-stars are all a smörgåsbord of beauty and sex appeal- every last one of them, but the one who seems to have emerged with the strongest impression is Stella Stevens' accident-prone klutz (whose airhead personality got on my nerves after a while, but I cannot deny that she looked fantastic as a redhead). For me, I preferred the enigma that is Daliah Lavi (a black-haired siren of Mideastern gorgeousness), who emerges a double agent and semi-lover of Helm's. The film does two brilliant things which take its visual appeal to dizzying heights: It launches the film with clever opening credits which peek under a bevy of gorgeous strippers, each doing a 'legitimate' strip-tease (no true nudity). Ending the strip parade is the film's other secret weapon: Cyd Charisse. I love that TPTB had the foresight to acknowledge a younger and older demographic at the same time- while simultaneously spotlighting one of filmdom's greatest dancers in a cameo (at the age of 45)- with the longest, most gorgeous legs in history. After singing the title song Charisse emerges a second time about 37 minutes into the film (in an important plot point) to perform a stunning dance in a Vegas nightclub to the Vikki Carr song "In Santiago-" then disappears much too quickly. Otherwise, there is a lot of fun with Martin poking fun at his own persona: many songs become sexual double-entendre, an audio cameo by Sinatra is quickly nixed, and so forth.

My favorite part of this "tongue-in-cheek" espionage flick, is when Dean Martin, convinced that Stella Stevens has the micro-film tape on her, completely rips her dress off of her, leaving the sexy Stevens standing there in her bra, gartered-panties, nylons and high-heels. Great scene !! I'm sure it was Stella Stevens who kept the attention of male viewers throughout this silly movie. Sure , there were other attractive women in the movie. But Stevens was tops !! Dean martin, pretty much being himself as opposed to acting, was entertaining to a degree. However, it was Stella Stevens who stole the show. I didn't even consider being annoyed by her "flighty" character. She's just too damn pretty.

The first in the Matt helm series; some say the best of all the James Bond spoofs. Violence and humor are equally mixed, as they are in the Bond pictures. *The Silencers* probably has the most alluring collection of femmes fatales as Hollywood has ever assembled. Klutzy (or is she really?) Stella Stevens, brunette Dahlia Lavi, blond Nancy Kovack, and dancer Cyd Charisse all have important roles. It is not giving away too much to say that of these four women, two are good, two are bad, and three of them suffer the fate of getting shot to death at surprising moments.

A bit of trivia: Beverly Adams, Helm's curvaceous secretary, married Yvres St. Laurent. And deadly Nancy Kovack married conductor Zubin Mehta, the lucky devil. Kovack, clad in only her high heeled shoes and one of Martin's white shirts, tries to seduce him into coming back to work for ICE, his old outfit. It is perhaps the most erotic three minute scene in any spy movie.