The second reboot of Charlie’s Angels presents a worldwide secret mission force of women, represented in this movie by Elizabeth Banks (who also directed), Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska.

It didn’t do well at the box office, which was blamed on the fact that so many men have issues with women in power. I’m not qualified to comment on these matters, but for what it’s worth, I liked the movie. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s frothy fun, as they say.

In this universe, the name Bosley is a title given to those that command the agents. One of them, played by Patrick Stewart, has gone rogue and the agents must stop him. If you are wondering, “Isn’t this the same plot as the sequel to the last reboot?” you may not be wrong.

The film does attempt to fit itself in some universe building by showing photos of past Angel teams including the original Angels (Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Ladd) and the early 2000’s version (Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore).

Neil Connery was a plasterer in Scotland who lost his tools and got fired. This story made the international news and reached the ear of Bond director Terence Young (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball), who told Italian producer Dario Sabatello that Neil sounded just like his older brother.

The producer met Neil in his native Scotland and got him to screentest for a Eurospy film. The younger brother of Sean just kept saying, “OK, Connery, OK,” which ended up being one of the many titles for this movie.

To make it happen, they recruited Alberto De Martino, who already had experience in this genre thanks to his films Special Mission Lady Chaplin, Upperseven and The Man to Kill.

Then, Sabatello went all out to make the most Bond non-Bond movie ever, hiring Adolfo Celi (Emilio Largo from Thunderball), Daniela Bianchi (who was Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love), Anthony Dawson (Dr. No himself) and Bernard Lee as Commander Cunningham (he’s the same character as M, who he played in many of the Bond movies) and Lois Maxwell, playing Miss Maxwell, who is exactly the same as her more famous Miss Moneypenny character. Somehow, Lee and Maxwell kept showing up in Bond movies after this.

Sadly, Maxwell claimed that she earned more money for OK Connery than her combined salary from all the times that she played Moneypenny put together. She also claimed that Sean Connery yelled, “You betrayed me!” when she told him she was going to be in this film.

You have to give it up to Sabatello’s balls. He had huge ones. He even asked Sean to join his brother in this movie. That didn’t go well.

He even went so far as to hire Yee-Wah Young, one of the Japanese bath girls from You Only Live Twice. Then again, she’d been in the papers thanks to her relationship with James Mason, so it was like killing two birds with one Q-designed stone.

The movie starts with James Bond — not named — murdered and Miss Maxwell (Lois Maxwell) looking for the spy’s girlfriend Miss Yashuko (Yee-Wah Young). She has information that puts her life in danger, but she’s getting plastic surgery with hypnotism from Dr. Neil Connery (yeah, that guy).

However, Mr. Thayer (Celi) and Maya Rafis (Bianchi) — agents of THANATOS — kidnap her and Connery ends up roped in on a mission with no training whatsoever. Then again, he can hypnotize women, which dudes used to do in 1967 as a pick up trick, one assumes.

He finds out where his brother’s girlfriend is from a gorgeous woman (Agata Flori, who was in the Hallelujah films and was married to Sabatello) and then rescues Miss Yashuko from a Spanish castle, where he discovers that THANATOS is building a supermagnet that will shut down the world’s power supply. Indeed — magnets. How do they work?

That giant weapon is being built in a Moroccan rug factory filled with blind employees, which feels like a story beat out of an Alejandro Jodorowsky film, not an Italian spy ripoff.

There’s some inter-THANATOS fighting, Scottish archers killing evil agents, Anthony Dawson making an appearance and the final line, “O.K. Connery! You were almost better than your brother.”

Call it Operation Double 007, Secret Agent 00 or Operation Kid Brother. No matter what, it’s a strange footnote in Bond history. I love how brazen it is, lifting characters whole cloth for a movie that we’re never sure that we should be taking seriously.

Hey — they even got Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai to compose the score together! And it has its own theme song, “Se Chiami Amore” (“If You Call Love”) by Christie that the two titans of Italian movie music co-wrote, sung by Maria Cristina Brancucci, who would sing “Deep Deep Down” for Danger: Diabolik the next year!

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi with commentary from Mystery Science Theater 3000. There’s also a version with no commentary on Amazon Prime.

After James Bond gets killed, who can stop the evil Goldginger? If you said Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia — yes, the same duo from Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs — then you’d be right. How did you guess?

Somehow, this movie was bought by American International Pictures, dubbed into English and sold as part of their AIP-TV movie package as The Amazing Dr. G. It’s also known as Goldginger.

Just as a warning: the comedy duo spends a great deal of time in this movie in blackface. This was 1965, long before people understood how horrible this behavior was. It’s not an excuse, but I want you to go in warned.

The henchman Molok is played by Dakar, a Peruvian pro wrestler who fought in the Luna Park against Martín Karadagián as part of Titanes en el Ring. He’s also in the Umberto Lenzi spy film Last Man to Kill, Zombie and played the High Priest of the Spider in Ator the Fighting Eagle.

Rosalba Neri is also on hand. She’s in plenty of Eurospy movies like Superseven Calls on Cairo, Lucky the Inscrutable, OSS 117 – Double Agent and Password: Kill Agent Gordon. She also shows up in Lucifera: Demon Lover, Amuck!, Lady Frankenstein and Franco’s 99 Women.

George Hilton is in this for just a second as Bond. What perfect casting.

You can watch this on Tubi under its American title, Two Crazy Secret Agents.

After one movie, George Lazenby was out. He was offered seven movies and left after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on the advice of his agent. John Gavin, Adam Westm Burt Reynolds, Michael Gambon were all up for the role until United Artists made a demand: get Sean Connery back. Money be damned.

Connery came back for 1.25 million pounds, which is about $22 million dollars in today’s money and two back-to-back movies of his choice. To his credit, Connery used the money to establish the Scottish International Education Trust, where Scottish artists could apply for funding without having to leave their homeland. Connery’s made The Offence, directed by Sidney Lumet and was to make an all-Scottish version of Macbeth, which was abandoned because Roman Polanski’s version of the story was in production.

John Gavin came off the best, as he had a pay or play deal to be Bond, so he got his full salary.

The film starts with Bond chasing the man who killed his wife, SPECTRE boss Blofeld, catching him in a facility packed with clones of the villain. Bond kills a clone and then, supposedly, the real Blofeld (this time played by Charles Gray instead of Telly Savalas).

Bond is up against SPECTRE agents Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (Bruce Glover and Putter Smith) who are killing diamond smugglers. Glover and Smith had Connery convinced that the two were actually openly homosexual, but years later, while flying first class and flirting with a female flight attendant, Glover heard a Scottish voice say, “You son of a bitch.” Sitting behind him was Connery.

Our hero is accompanied by Tiffany Case, a diamond smuggler who is played by the first American Bond girl, Jill St. John. Felix Leiter is also on hand, this time played by Norman Burton (Simon King of the Witches, Mausoleum).

Ironically — as Jill St. John later married Robert Wagner — another Bond girl, Plenty O’Toole, is played by Wagner’s other wife Natalie Wood’s sister Lana. Wait — it gets nuttier.

The two have been involved in a decades-long feud that started during the filming of this movie as both were dating Sean Connery at the same time. And yes, Wagner started dating St. John three months after the mysterious drowning of Lana’s sister. At a photoshoot of former Bond girls for Vanity Fair magazine, an altercation occurred between them got so bad that Wood started crying. To top that off, Wood crashed an event honoring St. John in 2016 and with cameras in tow, began angrily demanding to know if Wagner killed her sister.

They have one thing in common: bad relationships. St. John was divorced three times by the age of 28 and Wood had two annulments and four divorces by 34.

Sausage pitchman Jimmy Dean is also in this as the Howard Hughes-like Willard Whyte. Dean was hesitant to play this part, as he had been an employee of the inventor at the Desert Inn.

Marc Lawrence, who directed Pigs, is in this as an attendant at the Morton Slumber Funeral Home, ably assisted by Sid Haig.

At the end, it looks like Bond is triumphant and Blofeld is dead again. Thanks to the McClory lawsuit, this is also the last movie with SPECTRE in it.

There’s one part of this that was always interesting to me. The moon landing set was a reference to the fake moon landing just two years after it happened, predating the mainstream belief in this conspiracy theory.

The Angels are all back, as is Crispin Glover as The Thin Man in the next installment of this series. This time, however, Bosley’s half brother, played by Bernie Mac, is in charge and the Angels are going up against one of their own. This entire film is packed with cameos and more comedy than the original, which is OK. In times like these, it’s a nice bit of fluff that goes down easy.

Natalie Cook (Cameron Diaz), Dylan Sanders (Drew Barrymore) and Alex Munday (Lucy Liu) are up against former angel Madison Lee (Demi Moore) as well as numerous criminal organizations.

Jaclyn Smith returns as one of the original girls. You also get John Cleese as Alex’s dad, Bruce Willis as a federal agent, Robert Forester, the Olsen twins, Carrie Fisher as a nun and many, many, many early 00’s celebrities. You can have a great time just naming each new one who appears.

There were plans for two more sequels, but they never happened.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As part of James Bond month, I’ve brought back this review, originally published on December 29, 2019, for you to check out. This has just been re-released on blu ray by Mill Creek, so it’s easy to find.

Based on the 1960’s TV series that starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, this 2002 remake unites Owen Wilson as Special Agent Alex Scott and Eddie Murphy as boxer Kelly Robinson. Together, they must bring back a stolen spyplane from arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell).

Plus, you also get to see Famke Janssen as Special Agent Rachel Wright and well, that’s pretty much worth watching this movie for.

Evil arms dealer Gundars is sponsoring Robinson’s next match and using the event to auction off the stolen plane called the Switchblade. The agency has assigned Robinson as the civilian cover for Scott’s mission to get the plane back. Gary Cole, a long-time favorite of mine, also plays Carlos, the agent that everyone else wants to be.

This was directed by Betty Thomas, who was also behind Only You, The Brady Bunch Movie, Private Parts and 28 Days amongst others. It was written by Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, who wrote The 6th Day, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II and both National Treasure movies. They were joined by Jay Scherick and David Ronn on the scriptwriting duties. They both worked on the Baywatch theatrical film and Zookeeper.

There’s a cute cameo when Robinson speaks to George W. Bush, as that’s Will Ferrell doing the voice.

I Spy is a strange show to remake, as I don’t know anyone that would be clamoring for a new version of the show. That said, it’s a fun movie and Murphy and Wilson mesh well together.

This has just been re-released by the great people at Mill Creek Entertainment. Check out their new blu ray release right here.

DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by Mill Creek.