mo

Atmospheric Gas Analysis System - QGA

The Hiden QGA is a compact bench-top gas analysis system for real time gas and vapour analysis.




mo

447: With His Bro, Scotty Mo

In which our heroes are reunited. With Scott Mosier! SPONSOR: Go to https://keeps.com/smod if you're ready to take action to prevent hair loss and get your first month of treatment for FREE!




mo

449: Hall Monitor: Talking to the Legendary Anthony Michael Hall

In which our hero meets a childhood hero of his, and borrows his underpants for ten minutes. With Special Guest Anthony Michael Hall.




mo

NYC Weekend Watch: Ken Kelsch, Il Grido, Flesh for Frankenstein 3D & More

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Roxy CinemaIn honor of Ken Kelsch, Abel Ferrara’s The Blackout and The Addiction screen on 35mm; prints of Douglas Buck’s Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America and the 2006 Sisters remake screen Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Film ForumA 4K restoration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido begins; 42 screens on Sunday. […]

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Ken Kelsch, Il Grido, Flesh for Frankenstein 3D & More first appeared on The Film Stage.




mo

New to Streaming: A Different Man, The Outrun, My Old Ass, Used Cars & More

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg) There are a lot of ways A Different Man could go and a lot of things it could be. Aaron Schimberg’s uniquely uncomfortable, uncomfortably unique feature […]

The post New to Streaming: A Different Man, The Outrun, My Old Ass, Used Cars & More first appeared on The Film Stage.




mo

Asif Kapadia and Samantha Morton Imagine the Future in Trailer for La Jetée-Inspired 2073

The future looked quite bleak even before the events of last week, but now Asif Kapadia’s speculative hybrid feature 2073 feels all the more relevant following the disastrous American election. Following its Venice Film Festival premiere, the Samatha Morton-led project will arrive on December 27 and now the new trailer has been unveiled from NEON. […]

The post Asif Kapadia and Samantha Morton Imagine the Future in Trailer for La Jetée-Inspired 2073 first appeared on The Film Stage.




mo

Sail Repair with Wally Moran - Pt. 5


CLICK TO PLAY

In this 5-part, 56 minute series, sailing writer, Contributing Editor to SAIL Magazine and charter skipper, Wally Moran tackles his first sail repair project using Sailrite's powerful yet easy to use Ultrafeed LSZ-1 sewing machine.
In Part 5, Wally bends on the mainsail, reviews his repairs, and takes his boat out on the creek where he hoists the repaired main for inspection.

5-Part Series Available on Vimeo On Demand
https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/557582082/0/thesailingchannel
HD Download $9.99 | Streaming Rental $3.99
The series begins in the Sailrite booth at the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, MD. There, with the help of Sailrite's Matt Grant, Wally assess the repairs to a torn batten pocket and leechline on his mainsail. In realtime, we watch Matt make the batten pocket repair with the LSZ-1 sewing machine. In the next 3 episodes, Wally takes on the leechline repair, working outdoors at a local Annapolis marina. He uses the LSZ-1 and Sailrite's proven techniques to repair the leechline.

Brought to you by TheSailingChannel.TV

     




mo

Trailer for EON's New Spy Movie THE RHYTHM SECTION

On Friday Paramount dropped the trailer for the second most anticipated EON Production of 2020, The Rhythm Section! The Rhythm Section has been delayed several times (first when star Blake Lively suffered an on-set injury), but here's proof that it's finally really coming... and it looks great! While an adaptation of Mark Burnell's 1999 spy novel would be something for spy fans to be seriously excited about anyway, it's even more exciting because it hails from Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson's EON Productions, the producers behind the James Bond movies. While EON has been venturing outside the realm of 007 lately, this marks their first new foray into the genre that defined them—and that they defined, under the auspices of first-generation Bond producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. And it's not only a new EON spy movie; it's potentially the start of a new, female-fronted EON spy series! (Burnell wrote four Stephanie Patrick thrillers.) Will Lively end up being the Sean Connery of a long lasting Stephanie Patrick film series?

The books are quite good, and remind me of a female Callan. Like Callan, Stephanie ends up working as an assassin for a particularly unpleasant boss in an ultra-secret branch of British Intelligence. And like Callan, she doesn't do this work by choice. Instead she's forced into it by that unpleasant boss. But she's also got very personal motivations (motivations he ruthlessly manipulates) for her initial mission: an opportunity to get revenge on the terrorists responsible for the death of her parents and siblings. Burnell's book is very dark and very serious, and judging from this trailer the movie will be true to that tone. In fact, the movie (directed by Reed Morano and scripted by Burnell himself) looks quite faithful to the book overall, though it's obvious that the ending has been changed, which was pretty much a given. (The villains' plot in the '99 book had eerie similarities to 9/11, which simply wouldn't play in today's world.) And it looks great!

The first of two major EON spy movies coming out next year, The Rhythm Section opens on January 31, 2020. It stars Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline), Jude Law (Spy), Raza Jaffrey (Spooks/MI-5), and Sterling K. Brown (Black Panther).




mo

Tradecraft: Jamie Bell Joins Clancy Adaptation WITHOUT REMORSE

It looks like this time, Paramount's decades-held hopes of making a movie out of Tom Clancy's epic saga Without Remorse are really going to happen! Last month, Variety reported that Jamie Bell will join the previously announced Michael B. Jordan (playing frequent Clancy hero John Clark) in the movie from director Stefano Sollima (helmer of the very Clancy-esque Sicario: Day of the Soldado). Bell will play a familiar character from the Tom Clancy universe, CIA Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter. Henry Czerny memorably essayed the role in 1994's Clear and Present Danger, in which Willem Dafoe played Clark.

Today, several more actors joined the cast, making this Without Remorse more and more of a reality! (Forgive my incredulity. It's just hard to believe this movie is finally happening after literally decades of development!) Deadline reports that Luke Mitchell (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Jacob Scipio (Bad Boys For Life), Cam Gigandet (Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden), Jack Kesy (12 Strong), and Todd Lasance (Spartacus) are all signing on as members of Clark's SEAL team. Nearly all of them have played special forces operators before. Additionally, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Last Ship, The Neon Demon) has been cast as a potential love interest for Jordan.

According to the trade, "Without Remorse is the origin story of John Clark, played by Jordan, a Navy SEAL-turned-CIA ops officer, who seeks revenge after his girlfriend is killed by a Baltimore drug lord." That sounds more or less like the novel, so if this capsule summary comes from the studio (and not just a Deadline writer Wikipedia-ing the book), then perhaps we can expect a fairly faithful adaptation. What I'm guessing we won't get is a period piece. I doubt Clark will serve in Vietnam in this version; I suspect they'll make it contemporary. (This was the plan back when Tom Hardy was supposed to play Clark in a series intended to cross over with Chris Pine's intended Jack Ryan franchise.) Paramount are very eager to launch a new film franchise with this movie, already eyeing Clancy's Rainbow Six as a follow-up. Also unclear is whether there will be any crossover with Amazon's Jack Ryan TV series, which hails from the same producers. The Clark character has been kept out of that series so far because of the percolating film franchise, but that doesn't necessarily preclude a cameo from John Krasinski in Without Remorse....

Without Remorse is slated to open September 18, 2020.




mo

First Trailer: Marvel's BLACK WIDOW Movie!

Black Widow will be the first of Marvel's superspies to get her own movie (preceding Shang Chi by a year), and today Marvel released the first trailer. And it looks pretty cool! I'm honestly surprised about how many images come directly from the various Black Widow comics over the years. Clearly, the character's first standalone film will contain some flashbacks to Natasha Romanoff's early days as a child raised to be a KGB assassin in Moscow's infamous Red Room. Scarlett Johansson has played the role in seven Marvel movies (most recently the all-time box office champ Avengers: Endgame), but this will be her first solo feature.


If you want to play catch-up on the comics and see where some of those images in the trailer come from, there are some collections out there that make that possible. (And even more are due next year in the lead up to the movie!) Three beautifully prodcued Marvel Premiere hardcovers collect this secret agent's most essential adventures in matching volumes. Black Widow: The Sting of the Widow presents the character's first appearance (in a silly costume in an issue of Iron Man) and earliest solo adventures from the early Seventies, after she'd gotten an Emma Peel makeover, ending up in the black catsuit with which she's still most closely associated. These early Black Widow comics will surely be of interest to collectors and hardcore fans, but casual fans looking for a great introduction to the character are better off picking up the second volume in the series, Black Widow: Web of Intrigue first.

Black Widow: Web of Intrigue offers an excellent primer on the character containing some of her classic appearances from the early Eighties, including an excellent comic drawn by my second-favorite spy artist (after Steranko), Paul Gulacy.  (Look for a cameo appearance by Michael Caine!) Black Widow: Web of Intrigue contains this and several other seminal tales of the red-haired Russian superspy. A third volume, Black Widow: The Itsy Bitsy Spider collects a pair of Marvel Knights stories from the late Nineties (including one by Queen & Country scribe Greg Rucka).

My two favorite modern-day Widow storylines have yet to receive the hardcover treatment, sadly, but are available in a pair of out-of-print trade paperbacks. (They'll also, happily, be collected in a new single volume next year!) Richard K. Morgan's Black Widow: Homecoming and Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her put the focus on espionage above superheroics and are among the very best Marvel spy stories of this century. Other recent Widow stories include Black Widow: Deadly Origin, Black Widow and the Marvel Girls, Black Widow: The Name of the Rose and Black Widow: Kiss or Kill. Most of the character's adventures with Daredevil from the 1970s are included in Essential Daredevil: Volume 3. as well as the color Daredevil Epic Collection: A Woman Called Widow.




mo

Tradecraft: Damian Lewis and Dominic West to Star in A SPY AMONG FRIENDS Miniseries

It's a real spies' reunion for the miniseries version of Ben MacIntyre's superb non-fiction book A Spy Among Friends! Nearly everyone involved has some serious spy experience on their resume--and many of them have worked together before. It's no wonder the book has attracted such an array of veteran talent; for my money it's a strong contender of the best spy biography ever. MacIntyre uses the close friendship between the notorious double agent Kim Philby and loyal MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott to frame the story of the notorious Cambridge spy ring that shook the foundations of British Intelligence--and the Cold War at large. 

According to Deadline, Damian Lewis (Our Kind of Traitor) will reunite with his Homeland producer Alexander Cary (the Taken TV show) to star as Elliott. Dominic West (The Hour, Johnny English Reborn) will play Philby, who has been portrayed in the past by Toby Stephens, Tom Hollander, Anthony Bate, and Billy Cruddup. Both Lewis and West were readers in the series of celebrity-read James Bond audiobooks.

Cary will write the six-episode miniseries, and Nick Murphy, who directed the recent dark BBC/FX version of A Christmas Carol, will direct. Both will produce, as will Lewis, whose production shingle Rookery was also behind the recent docu-series Spy Wars, which the actor hosted. The series will be a co-production of Sony and ITV Studios for Spectrum Originals and UK streamer BritBox. It's tentatively scheduled to air in fall of 2021, but of course like all things now that's dependent on the novel Coronavirus. Lewis has an obligation to finish his commitment to his Showtime series Billions first once production resumes.

MacIntyre's book has already been adapted as a two-part 2014 BBC documentary, Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal, which was presented by MacIntyre and starred David Oakes (You) as Philby and William Beck (Casualty) as Elliott in re-enactments. Previously, Lionsgate had optioned the TV rights to the book back in 2014 with writer Bill Broyles (Under Cover, Entrapment) attached, but nothing ever came of that.




mo

Tradecraft: As Many as 7 New Kingsman Movies in the Pipeline

Deadline reports that Marv Films (Matthew Vaughn's UK-based production company) "is plotting 'something like seven more Kingsman films' as part of the company’s expansion plans." That's... ambitious! But other spy franchises have certainly sustained that many or more. At least one of those seven films is expected to be a spinoff centered on the American spies (including Channing Tatum and Jeff Bridges) introduced in the second movie, Statesman. If previous plans mooted by Vaughn are still in effect, another is likely to be a third and supposedly final movie about the characters from the first two films, Eggsy (Taron Edgerton) and Harry Hart (Colin Firth), said to close out that trilogy. 

The next Kingsman movie we see will definitely be the WWI-set prequel The King's Man, long in the can and delayed by the global pandemic. That's currently slated for February, but likely to change again. It stars Harris Dickinson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Tom Hollander, and Daniel Brühl. With a cast like that an an exciting new time period less well mined by other spy franchises (and even a more serious tone judging from the trailers), I'm hopeful some more of these upcoming Kingsman films are sequels to The King's Man. Perhaps Dickinson and Fiennes will get as many movies as Edgerton and Firth.

According to Marv Group CEO Zygi Kamasa (per the trade), the company also has a Kingsman TV series in the works. 




mo

Tradecraft: Paramount Remakes THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST with Trevor Noah

Theodore J. Flicker's 1967 James Coburn satire The President's Analyst is one of my very favorite spy movies. (It's also Coburn's best spy movie... Sorry, Derek Flint.) When describing it to people, I always say that the comedy holds up surprisingly well today... sadly. America is still facing many of the same social  issues Flicker sent up over fifty years ago (from institutional racism to monolithic Big Tech), and it's easy to imagine a remake. Now, Paramount is imagining one... with The Daily Show host Trevor Noah on board to produce and potentially star. According to The Hollywood Reporter, former Obama White House staffer Pat Cunnane will write the script. The premise, about a psychotherapist burdened with all of the President's top secret stresses, will obviously be familiar ground for him! According to his publisher, Cunnane served as "President Barack Obama’s senior writer and deputy director of messaging at the White House, where he worked for six years in many roles."


Per the trade, "Details for the new take are being kept under the couch but it is described as a re-examining the 1967 satire through the lens of the contemporary political landscape." You really wouldn't have to change too much. I do hope the new film retains the original's almost Pink Panther-esque slapstick tone though. It's not too often you see slapstick and satire married together, but Flicker's film did it perfectly. Severn Darden and Godfrey Cambridge co-starred in the original.




mo

Movie Review: DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965)

AIP’s Vincent Price vehicle Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine was one of the first Sixties Bond parodies I ever heard of, long before I actually saw it. In a way, that was a good thing, because it afforded the movie years to percolate in my imagination, growing far beyond a potential it could possibly live up to when I finally saw it. Ultimately I was bound for disappointment, because, let’s face it, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is a far better title than it is a movie. But because of all those years that it lived in my mind as pure potential, I went into it for the first time after college (during college I had tried in vain to track down a 35mm print to program on campus) with a pre-built nostalgia, and nostalgia is a wonderful—and possibly essential—cushion for a movie like this. If you remember it from your childhood, you’ll probably enjoy it more than it deserves to be enjoyed. And the same can be said if you’ve somehow approximated such a nostalgia like I did. But even after that lengthy apologia for liking the movie, I have to admit that I only really like certain parts of it. Most of it is pretty bad.

Made at the height of the Sixties (and here I’m grudgingly conceding that that phrase, which I usually use very positively, can also have negative connotations), Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is a as much a blend of what was popular then as those Seltzer and Friedberg “parody” movies (usually with “movie” in the title) were in the early 2000s. (Though to be fair it’s a lot better than those!) And since it was made by American International Pictures, it’s a blend of its time that particularly reflects that studio’s output. Therefore it’s as much a parody of their two bread-and-butter genres—Frankie and Annette beach movies and Poe-inspired Vincent Price horror movies—as it is of James Bond. While I’m indifferent to beach movies, I do love those Poe movies… so I’m not being an espionage chauvinist when I say that the only bits that really work are those inspired by the spy craze. And even then the hit-to-miss ratio is probably 50/50... at best.

Appropriately, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine opens with one of the strangest title sequences of any Sixties spy movie. Under a rather great and undeniably infectious theme song performed by the Supremes (available on the stellar Ace Records Sixties spy theme compilation Come Spy With Us), instead of the Bond-style credits most spy spoofs opted for, Bikini Machine treats us to Claymation, courtesy of Gumby creator Art Clokey. And the entire Claymation sequence is built around the stupidest thing in the whole movie: a pair of stupid gold elf shoes with little bells on their pointed toes that Price’s character wears to justify his name, Dr. Goldfoot. I’m aware that I just used the word “stupid” twice in that sentence, but that’s because these shoes are seriously stupid. I don’t know whose idea they were, but I sure am glad that Ken Adam wasn’t struck by a similar necessity to equip Gert Frobe with jingling golden thimbles.

After the titles, we meet an attractive robot woman (Susan Hart) in a trenchcoat and fedora walking through the streets of San Francisco. We learn that she’s a robot woman through a series of stupid gags (there’s that word again… are you detecting a pattern?), like a car crashing into her and getting wrecked (because she’s metal, get it??), or two bank robbers escaping and crashing into her and getting knocked down (because she’s metal!), then shooting her full of holes with no discernable result (because… you’ve figured it out by now, haven’t you?). Then we meet Frankie Avalon being annoying in a restaurant and sporting a really annoying helmet of hair. (Uh-oh. There’s another word that bore repeating twice in one sentence!) The robot woman comes in and drinks a sip of his milk and then spouts out gallons of the white stuff (all from that one sip, apparently) through the “bullet holes” in her body. (John Cleese would recycle the same questionable gag years later in that Schweppes commercial on the original Licence to Kill VHS.) Despite her leakage, the holes (which aren’t visible) don’t seem to have damaged her mechanics one bit, and in minutes she’s successfully picked up Avalon and is heading back to his apartment with him.

Avalon is Craig Gamble, a bumbling agent of Secret Intelligence Command (or SIC, which I think is supposed to pass for a joke) who decorates his walls with a picture of Sherlock Holmes, apparently for inspiration. The robot woman is named Diane, and she talks with an annoying put-on Southern accent and, we and Gamble soon come to learn, wears only a gold lamé bikini underneath her fashionable spy trenchcoat! (The latter makes up for the former.) But what made her pick him?

The answer comes back at Dr. Goldfoot’s lair, where we meet the diabolical mastermind and his sidekick, Igor (occasional Elvis cohort Jack Mullaney). While Vincent Price deserves an iconic entrance in any movie he makes, it’s kind of undercut here by those stupid gold shoes, which really are quite stupid. (Have I mentioned that?) I am not a production designer, nor a fashion maven, but I am confident I could have designed much better gold shoes for the same purpose. And regular readers will know that I am not given to making such claims. Anyway, it transpires at Goldfoot HQ that the idiotic Igor programmed poor Diane to go after the wrong man. While Gamble hasn’t got two pennies to rub together, she was supposed to be seducing Avalon’s beach buddy Dwayne Hickman, as millionaire playboy Todd Armstrong. (As either an inside joke or laziness, Hickman’s character is named after Avalon’s character in Ski Party, and Avalon’s Craig Gamble is named after Hickman’s character from that movie.) To Igor’s credit, the two actors do look a lot alike (in a very generic Sixties heartthrob way), and that fact actually makes the movie a little bit confusing. The fact that Gamble turned out to be a secret agent was just bad luck—or bad scriptwriting. Luckily Dr. Goldfoot can operate Diane by remote control, and he’s able to reprogram her to suddenly walk out on Craig and set off to lay a trap for Todd.

Diane’s trap for Todd involves bending over and pulling her trenchcoat far enough aside to expose a glimpse of that golden behind as she pretends to inspect a flat tire. It also involves Dr. Goldfoot somehow taking remote control of Todd’s car, and driving him backwards until he sees Diane. (Dr. Goldfoot possesses a magical universal remote long before its time, and uses it primarily for making cars drive the wrong direction and various things blow up. He also threatens people with it a lot, though I’m not sure if he’s threatening to blow them up or to reverse them.) One glimpse of Diane, however, is enough to make Todd forget that it might be a little suspicious and just a tad weird to find yourself suddenly pulled backwards by an unseen force while driving. Their meeting also offers the movie’s choicest bit of dialogue—and, yes, it’s every bit as sexist as you would expect/hope for from a movie called Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.

“Thank heavens you came along, darling, I’m completely flat!” declares Diane as she opens the front of her trenchcoat.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” replies Todd, ogling her gold bikini-clad breasts jutting out of the London Fog.

So what’s all this about? Well, sadly all of Dr. Goldfoot’s ingenuity is expended on a simple gold digging scheme. Diane is supposed to get millionaire Todd to marry her and then make him sign over power of attorney to her (which is of course the same as signing it to Dr. Goldfoot). Honestly, I find it a little disappointing that Dr. Goldfoot has the ingenuity and the wherewithal to build perfectly human-looking robots and universal remotes that control anything, and yet the best scheme he can come up with is gold digging. Why not aim higher, Dr. G? Why not strive for world domination? (Well... that's what sequels are for!)

Anyway, Igor’s error with the target has accidentally tipped off an agent of SIC to the mad doctor’s big gold digging plot. Fortunately for Dr. Goldfoot, though, he’s not a very good agent.

Gamble’s code number is only Double O and a half. “Why they won’t even let you carry a gun until you get a digit instead of a fraction!” yells his boss and uncle, Uncle Donald (genuine comic genius Fred Clark, of Zotz! and Hammer's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb). Donald’s not really in any position to berate his nephew, though, because he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer himself. When Igor shows up in his office dressed in what looks like a Sherlock Holmes Halloween costume (deerstalker and Inverness cape) claiming to be SIC director Inspector Abernathy, Donald believes him despite Gamble’s protestations.

The gags in this movie are mostly lame (as opposed to lamé), and recycled for the hundredth time. When an upper file cabinet drawer is closed, a lower one pops out knocking someone on the head. A beautiful girl robot is mis-programmed (Igor!) and starts talking like a Brooklyn gorilla. When Igor tries to spy on his boss using a periscope, Dr. Goldfoot splashes some ink on the top end giving Igor a black ring around his eye from the viewer. (Actually, that one's still kind of funny.) Even the spy-specific jokes tend to fall flat a lot of the time. Igor shows Dr. G a new attaché case (pronounced the American way, not the British “attachee”) with its own From Russia With Love-style gadgetry. What surprises does it have in store?  Would you believe a fist with a boxing glove that pops out and punches someone when they open it? (Neatly and obviously accomplished by situating a stuntman underneath the table the case is set on, easily able to reach through a hole in the table and the case.)

While the jokes often fall flat, highlights come in the form of random outbursts of go-go dancing, whether from Dr. Goldfoot’s bikini girls (whose default mode seems to be set as “go-go,” befitting their gold bikini costumes) or in nightclubs. (There’s a odd number from a band all dressed up as Fred Flintstone credited as Sam and the Apemen and accompanied by—you guessed it—go-go girls. But for some reason the go-go girls aren’t dressed in fur bikinis, just regular bikinis.)

Price himself camps it up to the extreme (surprise, surprise), parodying his own other AIP performances and even donning costumes from a few of them at times. To that end, the movie becomes more and more of an AIP in-joke as it proceeds (complete with an Annette Funicello cameo), and eventually Gamble and Todd end up in Dr. Goldfoot’s torture chamber, getting a tour that includes portraits of all his illustrious forebears (again bearing certain resemblances to famous Price roles past) and lots of familiar torture implements. It’s poor Todd who ends up strapped down beneath the swinging pendulum from The Pit and the Pendulum.

But then, in its final act, something unexpected happens. The movie becomes… really fun! The undisputable high point of the film is the fifteen-minute-long final chase through the streets of San Francisco in which the heroes and villains keep changing vehicles. It’s accomplished mostly through obvious rear projection, but the San Francisco scenery is quite real. The heroes (Gamble and Todd) start out in a gadget-laden Cadillac spy car whose gags include inflatable seats that inflate when you don’t want them to and a steering wheel that switches sides between the driver and the passenger at inopportune moments. The villains start out in a motorcycle and sidecar that become detached in the course of the chase and eventually manage to re-attach themselves. When Dr. Goldfoot uses his magic remote control device to blow up their spy car, the heroes swipe a red convertible (a Sunbeam Alpine, like Bond drove in Dr. No), and when the motorcycle and sidecar end up smashed on the front of a train, the villains (their faces coated in black soot, just like a cartoon character’s after surviving such a collision) appropriate an E-Type Jag. Eventually the heroes are on a bicycle while the baddies commandeer a San Francisco cable car—and manage to drive it right off its tracks and all over town! By the end the good guys are in a boat on a boat trailer careening wildly down San Francisco’s steep hills. It’s all pretty fun, really, in a typically zany way.

The end titles feature those stupid gold shoes again (though not Claymation this time), performing a disembodied dance (accomplished simply—and effectively—enough with a dancer dressed all in black dancing in front of a pitch black background) alongside gold bikini-clad go-go dancers—and similarly disembodied writhing gold bikini tops and bottoms. (That’s actually a really cool effect!) All of which handily beats (and makes up for) the Claymation opening in my book.

Even though Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine leaves things open for a sequel with Dr. Goldfoot and Igor surviving their cable car crash (and subsequent bombardment by gunboats) and turning up on the plane winging our victorious heroes off to Europe, the end credits instead tout the next beach movie, The Girl in the Glass Bikini. Which kind of brings us back to this movie’s title. Say it out loud to yourself. Think about it. Based on that title more than my (or any) review, I suspect you already know if this movie is for you or not.




mo

Rare Lindsay Shonteff Spy Movies to Play on the Big Screen in LA

Los Angeles' legendary New Beverly Cinema (owned by director Quentin Tarantino) blew my mind today by announcing that they'll be showcasing movies helmed by exploitation auteur Lindsay Shonteff in late February! And the line-up includes two of his spy movies. No. 1 of the Secret Service (1977) is the top of bill at 7:30pm on Monday, February 27 (paired with "brutal British crime film" The Bullet Machine), and The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) closes out the double feature on Tuesday, February 28 (along with Curse of the Voodoo) at 9:25pm. 

Shonteff first became associated with the spy genre at the height of Bondmania when he introduced the world to Charles Vine in The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World (aka Licensed to Kill) in 1965. (Yes, the movie whose Sammy Davis, Jr. theme song is energetically sung by all the Circus staff in Tomas Alfredson's 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy!) Star Tom Adams reprised the role in two Sixties sequels which Shonteff sat out (Where the Bullets Fly and Somebody's Stolen Our Russian Spy), but Shonteff clearly felt a close attachment to the character, because he revived him under slightly altered names (for legal reasons) throughout the rest of his career with ever diminishing returns. The 1970s saw first Nicky Henson and then The New Avengers' Gareth Hunt essaying the role of "Charles Bind" in spy spoofs No. 1 of the Secret Service (1977) and The Man from S*E*X (1979), respectively, while 1990 found Michael Howe playing a Lamborghini Countach driving No. 1 in the nigh unwatchable Number One Gun. Just prior to No. 1 of the Secret Service (which one-time Bond contender Richard Todd steals as the urbane villain Arthur Loveday), Shonteff tried his hand at a serious spy movie adapting Len Deighton's Spy Story, the unofficial fourth "Harry Palmer" movie. 

But his finest hour in the genre may have come in 1967 when he updated the Sax Rohmer "Yellow Peril" femme fatale Sumuru for the spy craze, with Goldfinger's golden girl Shirley Eaton once more altering her skin color to play the Asian supervillain. Nope, there's nothing remotely PC about any of it, but if you can get past the appalling casting conventions of the time, The Million Eyes of Sumuru is a thoroughly entertaining Eurospy romp! It stars Eurospy stalwart George Nader (Jerry Cotton himself!) and Dr. Goldfoot foil Frankie Avalon as the intrepid agents who go up against Eaton. Amazingly, the New Beverly will be screening a 35mm IB Tech print of this cult classic!

Now let's be greedy and hope that perhaps this Shonteff celebration will continue into March with screenings of The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, Spy Story, and the two Big Zapper movies. (The Big Zapper was Shonteff's female private detective turned spy, an Emma Peel wannabe who could shoot lasers out of her... well, it was the Seventies and it was Shonteff, so you can guess.)




mo

"That's A Death Trap": Top Gun: Maverick Star Glen Powell Responds To Mission: Impossible Rumors About Being Tom Cruise's Replacement

Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell addresses whether or not he'll replace Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the iconic action franchise Mission: Impossible.




mo

Letters: Trump will fix it | Democracy is failing | Will economy improve?

Letter-writers take opposing sides on the impact of Tuesday's presidential election.




mo

Letters: Gender bias doomed Harris | DeSantis abused power on abortion | Democrats, blame yourselves

Readers offer a variety of reasons Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris -- gender bias, the presentation of Harris' policies and Democrats' track record under Joe Biden.




mo

Report: Convention market shrinks while Orange spends more | Commentary

Maxwell: The convention meeting market is shrinking. But Orange County continues to spend money to expand its money-losing center




mo

Disney Cruise Line hands new Lighthouse Point sailings mostly to Fort Lauderdale

Disney Cruise Line is pushing customers mostly to its second Florida home in Fort Lauderdale next summer if they want to try out the new Bahamas private destination Lighthouse Point.




mo

Disney’s Animal Kingdom: Flamingo fortunes may be found on baseball diamond

A flamingo success story at Disney's Animal Kingdom involves the birds and the bees ... and baseball?




mo

A year after Tyre Sampson’s death, father vows to keep teen’s memory alive

“Justice for Tyre will always be the case. His legacy is more important than anything,'' said the father of the teen who died on the Orlando Free Fall drop ride.




mo

Fun Spot goes even more huge with new roller coaster at Atlanta park

Fun Spot owner John Arie Jr. is enthused about his huge, new roller coaster coming to Atlanta park.




mo

Moody seeks Disney-Reedy Creek records; DeSantis says, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’

Gov. Ron DeSantis vows to keep fighting for control of Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District.




mo

Disney: New Tron ride’s timing melds moves and music

Disney World: Getting the new Tron roller coaster online is a matter of timing.




mo

Disney to resume new annual-pass sales this month

Walt Disney World will again start selling annual passes to its theme parks on April 20.




mo

Port Canaveral seeks solutions to broker smooth cruise and space relationship

It’s actually good one of the world’s largest cruise ships strayed into the safety zone and delayed a SpaceX rocket launch, Port Canaveral CEO Capt. John Murray says.




mo

Disney shares more Tiana ride tidbits

Disney unveils additional details for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, Splash Mountain's replacement. There will be animatronics, music and the smell of beignets




mo

Disney CEO Iger makes Time 100 ‘most influential people’ list

Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger has been named to the Time 100 “most influential people” list of 2023.




mo

Reedy Creek finds ‘no records exist’ for Moody’s probe into Disney agreements

Attorney General Ashley Moody came up empty on a public records request about agreements the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s board made with Disney.




mo

Bills to kill Disney-Reedy Creek deal move to Senate, House floors

Proposals to void Disney’s last-minute development agreement with Reedy Creek are their way to the House and Senate floors.




mo

‘Mickey’s Freedom’ act urges Disney World to move to North Carolina

North Carolina Democrats want to take advantage of the bad blood between Disney and the state by enticing Walt Disney World to relocate to the Tarheel State.




mo

Disney to unleash Round 2 of 7,000 total layoffs Monday, reports say

About 15% of The Walt Disney Co.’s entertainment staff could be cut next week as the company begins a second round of layoffs.




mo

Moody tells Disney its records could be open to the public in Florida

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody advised Disney that some of its records could be subject to public records law




mo

Lawmakers unveil plan to inspect Disney World monorails

Lawmakers will take up an amendment requiring the Florida Department of Transportation to inspect Disney World's monorails.




mo

Florida Senate panel OKs Disney World monorail inspections

Disney World’s monorail system is poised to get state oversight as Gov. Ron DeSantis battles the theme park giant.




mo

Hollywood Studios: Reimagined Pixar Place returns with Incredibles, Edna Mode in May

Disney reopening Pixar Place, an 'Incredibles' meet-and-greet at Hollywood Studios in May.




mo

Marni Jameson: Smile! Heirloom photographer elevates common keepsakes

The Home and Lifestyle author talks with keepsakes photographer Shana Novak about how she takes the poignant items in people's lives and elevates them.




mo

Chef Henry Moso’s handroll bar, Mosonori, has soft opening in Winter Park

Mosonori, a new handroll bar by James Beard Award finalist Henry Moso, has soft-opened in Winter Park.




mo

Plant Doctor: Some light pruning now could bring more blooms to impatiens

Tom MacCubbin gives advice on gardening in Florida including care of impatiens, poinsettias, squash, crape myrtles, ginger plants, hydrangeas and plumeria.




mo

Orlando Philharmonic shows magic of Bernstein, power of young voices | Review

The Orlando Philharmonic debuted "Seventeen," which gives young people a voice, and paid tribute to Leonard Bernstein in weekend concerts.






mo

Manatee Awareness Month: Florida’s sea cows coming to Blue Spring, other winter havens

November marks the 45th year for Manatee Awareness Month as well as the official start of manatee season, which runs from Nov. 15-March 31. During the winter season, hundreds of the gentle giants make their way into Florida's natural springs or power plant outflows as a way to keep warm.




mo

Fast facts: Learn more about Dolphins’ Day 2 picks in the NFL draft, CB Cam Smith and RB Devon Achane

Get to know South Carolina cornerback Cam Smith and Texas A&M running back Devon Achane, the Miami Dolphins' second- and third-round picks in the NFL draft, and more on how Miami will likely use them.




mo

Fast facts: Learn more about Dolphins TE Elijah Higgins and OT Ryan Hayes, Miami’s sixth- and seventh-round draft picks

Here’s what you need to know about Stanford WR-TE Elijah Higgins, the sixth-round pick for the Miami Dolphins, and Michigan OT Ryan Hayes, the seventh-round pick.




mo

Dolphins give big money to nose tackle, bring in prospects with local ties among undrafted free agents

The Miami Dolphins immediately got to work adding undrafted free agents to their rookie class upon completion of the NFL draft Saturday night.




mo

Dolphins undeterred by first-round forfeiture; Grier, McDaniel talk CB, RB situation, Taylor Lewan and more

Miami Dolphins general manager Chris Grier and coach Mike McDaniel detail operating without their first-round pick and answered other offseason questions.




mo

NASCAR’s Dover Cup race postponed by rain until noon Monday

Dover will hold a Monday race for the fifth time in 105 career Cup races — but third time since 2109.