The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Spy films are thrillers and action films that deal with international espionage. Common story elements centre around the efforts to obtain information from the enemy, to prevent plots to attack domestic territory or world-domination schemes and assorted manoeuvrings around.
The spy film as we know it emerged on screen with the first James Bond film Dr No (1962) adapted from the popular books by Ian Fleming. The Bond films introduced the tropes of the genre – the suave womanising super-spy; the super-villain with the world domination plot and his near-invincible henchmen; and the gadgetry and weapons employed by the villain, which frequently took the works into the realm of science-fiction. The Bond films became a long-running series passing through different actors and continuing to the present day. There was also a large body of imitators during the 1960s that rarely took themselves seriously and attained a psychedelic absurdity.
From the late 1960s, the spy film has made a move back towards a greater realism. The late 1990s/2000s brought the spy parody in the form of the Austin Powers films, spoofing the look and tropes of the James Bond films and these too led to a number of imitators. The variant that is discussed here that features assorted science-fictional elements has been nicknamed ‘spy-fi’.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Spy Films.
The fifth of the theatrically released films based on tv’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. This is one of the more overtly comic films with an entertainingly madcap plot that has Napoleon Solo forced into a shotgun wedding and Jack Palance as a mad winemaker attempting to divert the Gulf Stream
With the success of the James Bond films in the 1960s, someone had the idea of casting Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil in a spy film
Modesty Blaise was a classic British comic-book about a smart female thief. On screen, it is turned into a copy of the James Bond films that goes for excruciatingly over-the-top camp excess
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tv series was construed as lighter take on the James Bond films. This, the third theatrical film recut from tv episodes, is one of the most entertaining, creating a memorable super-villain and almost entirely consisting of over-the-top death traps and action set-pieces
An excruciating copy of the James Bond films, the second of the Matt Helm films starring Dean Martin as a drunken lounge lizard spy
One of the more amusing of the numerous James Bond copies of the 1960s featuring James Coburn as agent Derek Flint, this plants tongue in cheek and cheerfully spoofs the whole spy fad
The title is misleading as the film doesn’t feature any robots but a group of mind-controlled assassins. An entry in the mid-1960s spy film fad from cult exploitation director Jess Franco
The first and probably the least worst in a series of James Bond copycat films starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. Martin plays the part as a tipsy lounge lizard and the film comes stuffed with excruciating double entendres
The third cinematically released film repackaged from episodes of the cultish 1960s spy tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Despite a scattershot plot that doglegs all over the place, the film is made with a wonderfully droll sense of humour that makes it undeniably appealing
Italian-made sequel to the campy Vincent Price starring Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Directed by the usually great Mario Bava and overrun by the buffoonish clowning of Italian comics Franco and Ciccio
The fourth James Bond film and crippled by the misfortune of coming just after Goldfinger, which defined the formula and became the peak of the series. By contrast, this is stuck with having to make everything bigger and more spectacular
Soviet film about the invention of a death ray. The first half is a spy thriller, which is fascinating to see from the other side of the fence to James Bond while the second half concerns a great engineering discovery
Very silly AIP comedy that parodies the massively popular James Bond films of the era, as well as features Vincent Price as the villain spoofing his appearances in the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe films
The second of the feature films repackaged from the tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., one of the better copies of the James Bond spy fad of the 1960s. Despite the low conceptual horizons of a tv episode, this plays itself with a splendidly droll tongue-in-cheek panache
The third of the James Bond films and the point where everything that has been defined as the formula of the series – the gadgets, the villains, the henchmen, the cars, the world domination plots – falls into place perfectly
This was the eighth of the Carry On films. The popular British comedy series turn their bawdy sights to conducting a spoof the James Bond film during the height of the spy movie fad
A legendarily awful spy movie where assorted characters run around a ranch in ethnic disguise trying to stop a Russian who is unleashing a rabbit that contains a deadly virus
The first of the James Bond films. While the formula of the series is not quite established yet, this is a slick exciting work that did a number of groundbreaking things and created some iconic images
After a decade, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby returned for their sixth and final Road movie. Both they and the knockabout comedy are on great form with the show taking on the influence of the 60s spy movie fad and even sending them to The Moon
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
From the early days of Hammer Films, one of several films based on Dick Barton, a popular radio hero. A progenitor of the spy movie with the title hero trying to prevent foreign agents unleashing a deadly sonic ray