BY LEE PFEIFFER
I'll admit I'm a soft touch for any spy movie of the 1960s, from the outright classics such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" to the endless Eurotrash James Bond rip-offs that flooded theaters like a tidal wave during this era. One of the more prominent spy flicks of the Sixties that evaded me until recently was "Hammerhead", in which the hero is Charles Hood, an American adventurer and playboy who is occasionally employed by Western intelligence services on a freelance basis. The film is based on a character in a series of novels by Stephen Coulter, who used the nom de plume James Mayo.The film was produced by Irving Allen, who blew the opportunity to make the James Bond movies with Cubby Broccoli in the 1950s. Broccoli instead teamed with Harry Saltzman and launched the most successful franchise the film industry had ever seen. Allen got some compensation by bringing Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm novels to the screen with considerable success. For "Hammerhead", Allen provided an adequate budget to allow for some lush production values and exotic scenery in Portugal.
Vince Edwards is well-cast as Hood and when we first meet him, he's been engaged by British Intelligence to thwart the theft of important NATO secrets that are due to be unveiled by a diplomat at a forthcoming conference in Portugal. The film opens in London with Hood attending a wild, "mod" hippie stage presentation that devolves into chaos. As he slips away, he meets cute with Sue Trenton (Judy Geeson), a dippy young hippie girl who jumps into his car. Before long, she's back at his bachelor pad but Hood doesn't have the time to engage her romantically, despite the fact that she obliges herself by taking a shower and slinking about in a wet towel. Hood receives orders to meet with the titular culprit, Mr. Hammerhead (Peter Vaughan), a tycoon whose hobby is to collect valuable examples of ancient artwork and sculptures depicting pornography. The business deal is designed to get Hood aboard Hammerhead's yacht, which the villain arrives at through his customary method of being lowered from his private helicopter in what appears to be an elaborate phone booth-like contraption. (Like most spy villains, he knows how to make an entrance.) Hood is shocked to find Sue is on board as well. What is she doing there? The plot never clarifies whether she is in league with Hammerhead or is also an agent trying to undermine him- or if she really is just a perky young woman with bad timing. It's just one confusing aspect of a fairly confusing story line that director David Miller manages to overcome by keeping the action flowing briskly and in an entertaining manner via punch-ups, hippie parties and chases on motorcycle and speedboat.
Vince Edwards makes for a dapper hero but although he cuts a dashing figure, he's a notch below Bond in that he occasionally loses a fight and lacks the rapier wit of 007, though he's not without the occasional wisecrack. It must be said that he's excellent in the action scenes, often performing many of his own stunts. Judy Geeson's character is easy on the eyes but quickly wears out her welcome through incessant giggling. She's a mod version of "Laugh-In" era Goldie Hawn and every bit as annoying.She is overshadowed by Beverly Adams (who appeared in two of the Matt Helm films) as Hammerhead's henchwoman. She's the epitome of a Sixties spy girl: promiscuous, sexy and adverse to wearing any extraneous items of clothing. In a scene that would make a modern feminist develop agita, her character demonstrates a prolonged exotic dance that is completely superfluous to the plot but which allows the camera to pan over every inch of her body. (In fact, the cinematographers spend so much time zooming in on bouncing breasts and shaking bottoms that it's surprising there isn't traces of drool on the lens.) Peter Vaughan is properly dour and pompous as Hammerhead, but aside from committing some ruthless acts against his own employees, the role is largely underwritten and the character never makes much of an impression. It should be said that the manner in which he meets his demise is possibly the most absurd death seen in a spy movie of this era, at least until Yaphet Kotto's Dr. Kananga turned into a human balloon and exploded in "Live and Let Die". Diana Dors, having become the British Shelley Winters, is another female accomplice of Hammerhead and one of the villain's thugs is played by future Darth Vader, David Prowse. Michael Bates has a good role as a master of disguise who is vital to pulling off the theft of NATO documents. There are also snippets of a title song, "Hammerhead", that will make you grateful the entire song was not used over the opening credits.
"Hammerhead" is akin to the Matt Helm movies in that it doesn't strive to be anything other than a fun time-killer. In that regard, it succeeds admirably.
"Hammerhead" has finally been released on video in America. Mill Creek Entertainment has included it with five other Cold War films
in a collection that features "Man on a String", "Otley", "The Deadly Affair",
"The Executioner" and "A Dandy in Aspic". The DVD transfer is excellent
but unfortunately there are no bonus features.
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