Jason (Ty Hardin, Berserk) is a thief being taken back to Greece to do some jail time. However, he escapes and is forced to steal a tooth out of a dead man’s mouth to get a piece of microfilm. This leads to him being chased by everyone, including Michael Rennie (Klaatu from The Day the Eath Stood Still), Gordon Mitchell (Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks), the cops and two gangs.

His only help? His best friend Pizza and a dancer named Greta. You can do worse than to spend 90 minutes or so with a Sergio Corbucci-directed Eurospy film, even if this one’s a bit more serious than most of the fare that I enjoy.

You can watch it on YouTube:

Have I mentioned that I like Umberto Lenzi movies? Oh yeah. I totally have.

Well back in 1965 — he made this spy caper, which has Ingrid Schoeller (Son of Django) as Macdonald, also known as British Agent 006. She’s working with Frank Smith, American Agent 006. Together, they are hunting down something called “anti-radar.” But it seems like 006 is actually a Russian spy.

Hey — at least it has this great poster.

Lenzi would make more spy-related movies after this, like The Spy Who Loved Flowers, Kriminal and Super Seven Calling Cairo. I’d rather celebrate him for movies like Orgasmo, Eaten Alive!, Ghosthouse, Ironmaster, Seven Bloo Stained Orchids, Nightmare City and Nightmare Beach.

You can watch the whole thing on YouTube:

Paul Weiland, who directed City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold was, of course, the perfect person to make a James Bond spoof starring Bill Cosby. This is also supposed to be the sixth movie in a series of films where they never made any other ones. People never like that — ask Buckaroo Banzai.

Weiland would one day tell The Guardian, “It was a terrible mistake. … When anyone gets into that position (Bill Cosby’s position of power in the 1980s), they are surrounded by sycophants and no one tells them the truth. But Cosby just wasn’t funny. I couldn’t tell him directly. I’d say it feels slow, and he’d say, “You worry about construction, let me worry about funny.””

Leonard Parker (America’s dad at one point, Bill Cosby) is out of retirement and battling Medusa Johnson and her army of vegetarians. Joe Don Baker plays his boss, a similar role that he would play in the Bond films.

When the film was released, Cosby himself said that he was so disappointed with it that he publicly advised people not to waste their money on it. The dude wrote and produced it. He should know better. The Coke product placement is also near-constant, which upset so many people.

Cosby accepted his three Razzies — worst actor, worst screenplay and worst picture — on Fox’s The Late Show. I love that he had the ego to demand that the three Razzies he earned be specifically made out of 24 karat (99.99%) gold and Italian marble, which Fox paid for. Maybe he could have used the sizable money he made as an advance on this movie instead of taking more for so very little.

At least one person moved on from this to do something better. Cinematographer Jan de Bont would go on to direct Speed, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Twister and The Haunting. We won’t discuss Speed 2.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Seeing as how The Nude Bomb ran on our site today, would you believe that it felt like the right time to bring back this review, originally posted on February 11, 2019?

Peter Segal has made films that people love — Tommy Boy, 50 First Dates, The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps — and critics hate. Here, he’s remaking the Mel Brooks and Buck Henry show that ran from 1965 to 1970. Instead of Don Adams, Steve Carrell takes over as Maxwell Smart.

Smart is more geek than spy, in awe of agents like 23 (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and 99 (Anne Hathaway). Once KAOS (none of the spy agencies are acronyms here) exposes the identities of every CONTROL agent, he gets his chance to be a spy, going to battle with Siegfried (Terence Stamp!), one of the baddies from the 60’s show. It’s also great to see Alan Arkin as the Chief.

There are some fun cameos here, like Bill Murray as Agent 13, who must always be a tree); James Caan as the President; Terry Crews and David Koechner as CONTROL agents; Larry Miller and Kevin Nealon as CIA guys; former WWE wrestler The Great Khali as a henchman and Patrick Warburton as the robotic Hymie.

A sequel has been rumored for some time. There was a direct-to-video spin-off, Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control (featuring the tech geeks, Warburton, Crews and a cameo by Hathaway). It only lasted seven episodes. It was based on the reunion movie, Get Smart, Again!

I totally forgot that there was a 1995 Fox series with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon returning to their roles to help their son, Andy Dick, become a CONTROL agent.

I did not forget 1980’s The Nude Bomb, a film that brought Maxwell Smart back in again to battle a bomb that takes off clothes. Smart doesn’t even work for CONTROL in this one, but for the PITS. Agent 99 isn’t in it and Feldon wasn’t even informed that the movie was being made. You know who is? Sylvia Kristel, which probably explains why an 8-year-old me was so excited by this film. Actually, I have no idea if pre-puberty me would know how magical she was, but I’d like to think I knew what was up. It’s directed by Clive Donner, who was behind the TV movie Spectre and 1981’s Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, a movie that would never be made today because Peter Ustinov was Chan and Angie Dickinson was the Dragon Queen. Whitewashing has been real for years, people.

You can watch this film for free on Vudu.

Also known as Bang You’re Dead, this Eurospy film was released in the U.S. by American International Pictures and released as part of a double feature with Secret Agent Fireball.

Secret Agent Bert Morris (Brett Halsey, The Devil’s Honey) mist rescue Paula Krauss (Pier Angeli, lover to both James Dean and Kirk Douglas, she died of an overdose at only 31 after making Octaman), whose father has developed a death ay. However, his boss Colonel Lancaster (Dana Andrews, Laura) has had a miniature camera inserted into his eye, which is broadcasting everything to the Russians.

As a fan of Yor Hunter from the Future, I feel duty bound to report that Pag (Luciano Pigozzi) is in this. And, of course, the evil Asian is played by George Wang, who covered that role for nearly every Italian film.

You can watch the whole movie on YouTube:

Sylvia Kristel — yes, she who was Mata Hari, Emmanuelle and Young Lady Chatterley — shows up in this movie as Agent 34. She had tried over and over to be in a Bond movie and it sadly never happened. That’s better than Barbara Felton got. She wasn’t even told they were making the movie.

So yeah. The Nude Bomb is somehow a PG movie, despite the promise of the title.

Agent Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) is called back into service in order to stop KAOS from firing off the bomb that knocks off clothing. Now, instead of CONTROL, he works for PITS, or Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service.

The main villain is Norman Saint-Sauvage, a KAOS fashion designer, who can also clone people. There are some new agents to help Smart, like Agent 36 (Pamela Hensley, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Matt Houston), Agent 22 and Agent 13.

When this finally aired on TV, it had the title The Return of Maxwell Smart. While it was retconned out of existence by 1989’s Get Smart, Again! and Fox series — which did have Agent 99 — this is still fondly remembered by me. It was directed by Clive Donner, who also made Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen.

Don Adams pretty much hated this film and admitted he only did the movie for the money, because his wife was pregnant.

You can get this from Kino Lorber.

Mario Sequi made The Tramplers, a spaghetti western with Charles Band’s father Albert before this Eurospy film, which is all about Captain Kelly (Dana Andrews, who shows up in plenty of other spy films like Bang You’re Dead, Spy In Your Eye, The Satan Bug and Innocent Bystanders).

Peter Martell from Franco’s Killer Barbys vs. Dracula and Death Walks at Midnight is in this, as is George Eastman, who we all know is the patron saint of B&S About Movies. Elisa Montes from Franco’s 99 Women and Anita Ekberg also show up. Ekberg is best known for La Dolce Vita, but she also shows up in Killer Nun and S*H*E*, as well as the Bob Dylan song “I Shall Be Free.” Dylan sang, “Well, my telephone rang, it would not stop / It’s President Kennedy calling me up / He said, “My friend, Bob What do we need to make the country grow?” / I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren.” / Country’ll grow.”

You can watch this on YouTube:

Words