By Lee Pfeiffer
The Warner Archive has released the TV pilot film The Delphi Bureau: The Merchant of Death Assignment as a burn to order title. The 1972 film stars Laurence Luckinbill as Glenn Garth Gregory, a mild-mannered, bookish intellectual with a photographic memory who works for a mysterious organization known as The Delphi Bureau that secretly advises the President of the United States on matters of national security. Even Gregory doesn't know anything about the Bureau and says he doesn't know whether there are thousands of other operatives or if he is the sole agent. His only contact is his superior, Sybil Van Loween (Celeste Holm) , a perpetually chirpy Washington D.C. socialite who gives him his assignments but refuses to come to assistance whenever he gets in trouble. As an agent, Gregory is completely on his own. He is unarmed and must rely on his own wits to extract himself from deadly situations, which leads one to believe that the character of MacGyver might have been somewhat influenced by this scenario. In this pilot film, Gregory is assigned to investigate the wholesale theft of surplus military equipment including fighter jets. The trail leads to a gigantic farming complex in Kansas, headed by Matthew Keller (Dean Jagger), a respected elderly philanthropist who is using his resources for experimental of growing food in order to stamp out world hunger. Gregory finds that the complex is actually a cover for the arms smuggling operation and is being run by Stokely, Keller's right hand man. As played by Cameron Mitchell, Stokely drips with phony charm and friendliness that hides the fact that he is a cold-blooded killer intent on preventing Gregory from revealing his findings. The script makes it obvious that in the pre-cell phone era, it was much easier to present scenarios in which the protagonists are completely isolated simply by the fact that they can't get to a public pay phone.
This pilot film spawned a short-lived TV series and it was created by the estimable talents of Sam Rolfe, who had also developed The Man From U.N.C.L.E. a decade previously. There are some similarities to the classic Alexander the Greater Affair two-part episodes of that series especially in a scene in which Gregory is attacked on a farm by a villain driving a tractor- a fate that befell U.N.C.L.E's Illya Kuryakin. Also, actor David Sheiner, who played a bad guy in the episodes, also turns up in the Delphi Bureau pilot flick. There is a tendency to believe that Hollywood's obsession with conspiracy movies went into high gear in the aftermath of Watergate. In fact, there were such films years prior to the 1972 break-in that brought down the Nixon administration. For example, The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, both classic political thrillers, were produced in the early 1960s. The Delphi Bureau was in production before Watergate but aired during the same year, thus making its premise of untrustworthy government officials quite timely. The movie also bares a coincidental resemblance to director Michael Ritchie's feature film Prime Cut, also released in 1972, in that it presents a rather cynical view of the American heartland with friendly, small town characters being revealed as sadistic murderers. (A chase through a corn field appears both in The Dephi Bureau and Prime Cut).
I very much enjoyed The Dephi Bureau on many levels. The production values are quite opulent and Luckinbill is refreshing as a hero, playing an everyday guy who is rather out of his element in going up against professional killers. Not much is made out of his photographic memory angle but he does have to rely on his wits rather than gadgetry to avoid numerous death traps. The film boasts an impressive cast with Holm particularly amusing as the unlikely head of the Bureau and other deft turns provided by Bob Crane, Joanna Pettet, Bradford Dillman, Dub Taylor and Frank Marth. Given the qualities of the pilot episode, its surprising that the offspring TV series wasn't a hit. However, fans of spy movies of the era will find the DVD well worth adding to their collections.
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