They made a movie with Peter Sellers, Orson Wells and Woody Allen, and I wasn't informed?

You go now!

I would be lying if I said that I didn't own almost everything those two men did.

In the 70s, this was on one of those great New York stations (either wpix, wor, or wnew) constantly, and everybody loved it. I remember having a discussion with a fellow cinema student at SUNY Binghamton about it. He used the word "episodic" to describe it. I'd never heard the word before, and it was pretty fucking apt.

Arbitrary values like "good" or "bad" don't so it justice. It's a shapeless 1960s psychedelic mess. It's also bodacious fun, somewhere between The Avengers TV series (the one with Diana Rigg), and the Monkees. I don't think Woody Allen has ever been funnier, though he doesn't get a lot of screen time. There's a scene where someone is kidnapped by men on horseback, and the horses escape on a giant flying saucer. It culminates in in of those big messy 1960's crowd scenes. There are cowboys and indians for no particular reason. The indians parachute in, yelling "GERONIMO!" as they leap out of a plane. And it all ends in an explosion when the super villain played by Woody Allen is tricked into swallowing his own WMD.

the 1960's MOVIE! a 1960's MOVIE!

From Netflix customer reviews



It's a glorious, grand celebration of a kind of hip that never existed, scored with Bacharach and Herb Alpert, set in a sixties pop psychedelic funhouse. More a place than a movie, really, a place where if you lift the right manhole cover you'll hear Tom Jones singing "What's New, Pussycat", where George Raft flips a coin next to Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) from the Man From Uncle, while a seal with a 007 tag on its collar claps its flippers and a nuclear weapon counts down. Great turns from Niven, Sellers, Allen, Wells, and more, plus the presence of nearly every B list sex symbol of the 60s, all in the service of a goofy hit and miss fantasia that follows a sequence which lampoons German expressionism with a giant flying saucer landing in London. The scene between Sellers and Wells alone (filmed at different times because they couldn't stand to be in one another's presence) is worth a viewing. Is it a good movie? Sometimes that just doesn't matter.

162 out of 162 members found this review helpful

Seriously, this is a mess of a movie, a sprawling dog's breakfast of a film, an example of wretched excess in film 60's style, "let's cram in everything we can". I don't hate it, but it is not good at all, even with a Bacharach theme.

I'm sort of glad they don't make movies like this any more

I don't remember if I like this movie or not, but if you ever want to know what it's like watching a Bond film while down with the flu, go for it.

Positively medieval illuminated capitals!