Our Man Flint

With the success of a certain Mr. Bond, James Bond, and his films of the early ‘60s, every studio had to have their own. Some took the serious route, with even the likes of Hitchcock (sadly) roped in, giving us the quite unmemorable likes of Topaz and Torn Curtain. Others decided to have a bit more of a poke at the genre, and Our Man Flint stands tall as possibly the finest example.

So who is our man Flint? Bearing an uncanny resemblance to James Coburn, there’s none of your poncy Britishness here folks, oh no – he’s American goddammit, and thus he doesn’t require all manner of fancy gadgets to see him through – well, except for his 83-function cigarette lighter, his personal jet and, of course, the obligatory funky watch. Only one woman at a time? Pah! He has his own personal four-gal harem! He’s also well-versed in karate, fencing – even ballet teaching, is one hell of a bug zapper and he has the uncanny ability to stop his heart at will for remarkable lengths of time. He even has nice teeth. What an extraordinarily versatile chap – erm, bloke, umm, MAN he is! Such is his renown that when the call goes out from the US Government’s agency known as Z.O.W.I.E. (standing for “Zonal Organisation World Intelligence Espionage� - Fox’s Fancy Acronym Requisition Team worked long and hard on that one...) for help against the latest nefarious threat to the world, only one man’s name is spat out by the rooms full of computers.

"An anti-American eagle, it’s diabolical!"

Now, just what is Flint up against in this adventure? Oh come on, need you really ask? World domination is, of course, the goal, from a group of somewhat misguided pacifists known as Galaxy who are out to make a Utopian world for us all – by essentially threatening to blow it up if they don’t get their way, naturally. They have an island full of mind bogglingly complex gadgetry with such wonderful labels as “Mega Drill Megathrust� and “Electro-Fragmentizer� – enough equipment to make the Thunderbirds’ resident boffin Brains’ glasses fog over and then some, and naturally it’s built very much like a game of Ker-Plunk – pull the wrong little stick and the whole kit and caboodle goes “PHUT!� quicker than you can scream, “Oh bother, I think all of my marbles are rolling about the floor uncontrollably�. Despite this obvious design flaw, they’re certainly not afraid to use it all, by controlling the world’s weather in ways that – well, ways that aren’t really explained terribly much at all. But hey, for some reason the island is also super-packed with scantily clad babes and enough henchmen to keep a steamroller busy steamrolling for many a long year – so who cares if it’s a tad unstable and run by nasty folk? Just get down and have fun baby, yeah!

Oh, and silly me - naturally there’s a love interest for Flint, for as you would all be aware a real swinger needs more than a simple quartet to get by...

Some surprises are nasty – like being karate chopped across the neck whilst just going about doing your job. Other surprises offer great pleasure – like seeing Our Man Flint presented in its Cinemascope ratio of 2.35:1 on DVD, complete with anamorphic enhancement and exhibiting remarkably little in the way of hints at its age.

The confetti-like colours of Flint’s ‘60s world all bound to glorious and vivid life on screen, black levels are pleasing and even shadow detail – so often lost in films of this vintage – is damned fine, thankyouverymuch. Specks and dirt are at a minimum – you will notice some, but they’re hardly in plague proportions – and grain only really rears its ugly head on the odd occasion, usually on what appears to be stock footage. Many scene changes, accomplished with a crossfade, see a slight change in colour, this is a fairly common problem with many films of the ‘50s and ‘60s, so it seems a bit pointless whining about it – it certainly isn’t the transfer at fault.

There isn’t even a layer change to get in our faces, as this is on a single-layered disc, yet without any obvious compression-related problems introduced.

For all the mind-boggling technology at Flint’s and Galaxy’s disposal, even devices able to control the world’s weather, it seems a shame that none of either side’s boffins could come up with a means of conveying decent cinematic sound at the time. All we get is a mono soundtrack delivered via Dolby Digital 2.0, and it is fairly lacklustre.

Despite there being nothing to get excited about, dialogue never suffers in the clarity stakes, and it’s all synched quite spiffily. Some of the effects and portions of Jerry Goldsmith’s funky-meets-campy score tend to be a bit harsh at times, but what are you going to do? Those with Prologic encoders will get a little more from the audio – with the key word being “little�.

Oh, and fans of a chappie named Austin Powers will no doubt emit a giggle or two of recognition when the Big Red Phone rings...

A static, “shhh, we’re hunting wascally wabbits� menu only offers up one morsel of special feature-ness – a trailer. Running for 3:12, in an un-enhanced ratio of around 1.85:1, it’s quite blotchy, speckly and screechy, but is otherwise a fine example of silly ‘60s trailerdom.

Derek Flint is so cool he makes a cucumber look like it just spurted forth from the bowels of a volcano, and dammit if Our Man Flint ain’t a mighty fine slice of campy, goofy fun, given to us on DVD with fabulous vision, even if the sound and bonus goodies are only so-so. It’s all so rampantly misogynistic that it makes 007 look like Gloria Steinem in a natty suit by comparison, but despite this dated and of-its-time hiccup it truly is a fab and entertaining blast, and face it – if this never existed it’s pretty obvious that neither would Austin Powers, and THAT would be a crime so diabolical, so dastardly, so despicable, so disgraceful, so decidedly drat-worthy even that Dr Evil would have to cock his hat out of respect.

No henchmen were harmed during the production of this review. Well, one or two were tickled a little, and I did pinch one of them on the jacksy, but otherwise...