Warner Archive Releases 1939 Joel McCrea Spy Flick ESPIONAGE AGENT

It's been a while since the Warner Archive has dipped into their spy library. But last week WB's MOD branch announced the first-ever DVD release of the historically notable 1939 spy film Espionage Agent, starring Joel McCrea (Foreign Correspondent) and the stunning Brenda Marshall. Espionage Agent is not a great film, but its historic significance makes it one well worth seeking out for scholars of spy cinema and espionage history.

Like McCrea's next (and far better) spy film, Foreign Correspondent (1940, review here), Espionage Agent is pure propaganda. But it's espousing the exact opposite sentiment of the later Hitchcock movie! While Hitchcock's film serves to warn America that the dawn of WWII is no time for complacency, and that America has an obligation to come to the aid of her allies in Europe and to stand up to the Nazi menace, Espionage Agent makes a case for isolationism. Yet it also makes a case that America needs a dedicated, international counter-intelligence service, which, of course, it didn't have at the time. So for students of spy history, it's a very interesting picture. The basic case is that if the U.S.A. has a spy agency along the lines of what the CIA would eventually become, then that will be enough to keep the country safe from overseas threats like Hitler's Germany, and there need be no more discussion about getting involved with the war in Europe - talk that's all stirred up by German agents anyway, according to the movie. (Why would Germany have wanted America to enter the war? Britain certainly had agents working that angle, but Germany was pretty intent on keeping us out....) Naive politics that have dated poorly aside, Espionage Agent is also worth watching for its place in film history when Hollywood was struggling with how to portray a heroic American "espionage agent." At the time, remember, spies were nearly always bad guys, and it was up to policemen and reporters (as in Foreign Correspondent) and costumed avengers (in the serials) and regular Joes to thwart their nefarious schemes. It wouldn't be until the Cold War and James Bond that we started to see proper, professional spy heroes on screen with any regularity, but Espionage Agent is a curious stepping stone worth checking out.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD retails for $21.99 but can, as always, be found at a discount on Amazon. (Remember, purchases made through links on this blog benefit the Double O Section, which takes up far more of my time than any small commissions will ever compensate for, but every little bit helps!)

Read my full review of Espionage Agent, written in the early days of this blog, here.

New Spy DVDs: Warner Archive Releases Sol Madrid (1968)

Wow, the hits just keep coming from the Warner Archive Collection for spy fans! On top of last week's release of The Scorpio Letters and last month's Where the Spies Are, WAC today (finally!) released the long-awaited Sol Madrid (1968)! So apparently the recent TCM broadcasts were indeed a hint of things to come. Just as Robert Vaughn made The Venetian Affair (also available from WAC) to capitalize on his Man From U.N.C.L.E. stardom while at the same time broadening his horizons to grittier spy far, so his co-star McCallum made Sol Madrid (along with a bunch of U.N.C.L.E. guest stars!). Sol Madrid found McCallum starring as an agent tasked by Interpol to take down a drug kingpin (On Her Majesty's Secret Service's Telly Savalas, of "The Five Daughters Affair") hiding out in Acapulco. To accomplish the task, he goes undercover as a heroin smuggler and finds himself trapped with a beautiful woman (Stella Stevens, The Silencers) between Savalas's drug kingpin and the Mafia, in the person of Rip Torn ("The Alexander the Greater Affair"). Ricardo Montalban ("The Dove Affair"), Paul Lukas ("The Test Tube Killer Affair"), Michael Ansara ("The Arabian Affair") and Pat Hingle (The Ugly American) also star. Where Eagles Dare's Brian G. Hutton directed, and, as with The Venetian Affair, Lalo Schifrin provided the fantastic soundtrack. Sol Madrid is available as a made-on-demand (MOD) DVD from The Warner Archive Collection for $21.99, though it's currently on sale at a discount.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week From Warner Archive: The Scorpio Letters and Escape From East Berlin

The Warner Archive Collection have been dipping into their spy catalog again recently, and that makes me very happy! Following last month's long awaited made-on-demand release of the elusive David Niven Eurospy title Where the Spies Are, WAC has released two more rare Sixties Cold War movies this week. The Scorpio Letters stars Alex Cord (Airwolf, The Etruscan Kills Again), Laurence Naismith (The Persuaders!, Diamonds Are Forever) and Goldfinger's Golden Girl Shirley Eaton. The 1967 ABC TV movie is a real rarity. To be honest, I hardly know anything about it, so I'll let WAC's description do the talking:

Who is Scorpio and what's his connection to the suicide of a British spy? These are the questions Joe Christopher (Alex Cord, TV 's Airwolf) has been hired to answer. Working for one of England's Intelligence Services, the American ex-cop discovers Scorpio is an extortionist who pressured the agent into taking his life. Teamed with rival operative Phoebe Stewart (Shirley Eaton, Goldfinger), Christopher sets out to smash Scorpio's operation, unaware that the blackmailer knows of their plans and intends to strike the fatal blow first. Based on the novel by Victor Canning, The Scorpio Letters was directed by M-G-M veteran Richard Thorpe (Ivanhoe) and scored by ... Dave Grusin [The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.] in his feature film debut.

Escape from East Berlin (1962) isn't actually about spies per se, but it is about escaping from East Berlin at the height of that Cold War, and that's still very much a subject of interest to this spy fan. Shot in cinema verite style by noir master Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross) and based on true events, Escape From East Berlin is a gripping drama of a divided city. I was lucky enough to see it at LACMA several years ago on a double bill with Funeral in Berlin, and I've been hoping for a DVD release ever since. Here's WAC's description:

When his friend Gunther Jurgena attempts to break out of East Germany by crashing his truck through the Berlin Wall, Kurt Schröder (Don Murray) watches in horror as he is shot dead by the border guards. So when Gunther's sister Erika (Christine Kaufmann) follows her brother and barely escapes the same fate, Kurt offers to help. Aided by 26 family members and neighbors who also wish to defect, Kurt tunnels under the Wall, unaware that Erika's parents have betrayed them and that armed troops are about to move in. Based on an actual mass breakout attempt that occurred in January 1962, Escape from East Berlin is a masterful tale of thrills and suspense.

Both MOD titles are available directly from the Warner Archive Collection (The Scorpio Letters, Escape From East Berlin), or from Amazon (The Scorpio Letters, Escape from East Berlin). Retail is $21.99, but both vendors offer discounts.

New Spy Titles on MOD

Spy fans have been waiting a long time for the Warner Archive Collection to make the 1966 David Niven Eurospy title Where the Spies Are available as an MOD DVD. The title was added to WAC's streaming service two years ago, but finally becomes available to purchase on MOD next week! (It is no longer streaming, though.) Directed by Val Guest (Assignment K, Casino Royale), Where the Spies Are stars Niven (Casino Royale) as Dr. Jason Love, hero of ten books by James Leasor. (This one is based on the first entry, Passport to Oblivion.) The supporting cast will also be familiar to spy fans. It includes Francoise Dorleac (Billion Dollar Brain), John Le Mesurier (Hot Enough For June), Noel Harrison (The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.) and Eric Pohlmann (the original voice of Blofeld). Niven is a bit old for the role (which is probably why the hoped for series never materialized), but he's still charming and ably supported by gorgeous Beirut locations, a bevy of beautiful spy babes, a cornicopia of nifty gadgets, and a vintage Cord. The WAC DVD is presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

Another Sixties espionage title that was previously streaming only and is now available on MOD (also as of March 10) is The Alphabet Murders (1965), in which Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot gets a Bond-age tweak in the person of Tony Randall (Our Man in Marrakesh). Robert Morley (Some Girls Do) co-stars as a British Intelligence officer who can't keep up with the Belgian sleuth. Spy stalwarts Anita Ekberg (Call Me Bwana), James Villiers (Otley), Patrick Newell (The Avengers) and Julian Glover (For Your Eyes Only) round out the cast. Frank Tashlin's film arrives on Warner Archive in its original aspect ration of 1.78:1.

Additionally, Universal has made the the first (and quite likely only, given the poor ratings) season of the fledgling NBC spy drama State of Affairs, starring Katherine Heigl and Alfre Woodard, available as an MOD title. The 3-disc set, billed optimistically as State of Affairs: Season One, is available now through Amazon. This soapy mix of Scandal and Homeland had impressive credentials (with Joe Carnahan directing the pilot), but lost my interest after a few episodes. Still, maybe I'll check out the rest eventually on DVD. I do still really like that key art...

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Where the Spies Are?

Warner Archive recently started Beta testing an online streaming service and Roku channel called Warner Archive Instant. The Beta version doesn't have nearly all the titles that have been made available on MOD discs from the Warner Archive Collection over the years, but, interestingly, it does contain a few that haven't.  One of those is the 1965 David Niven Eurospy movie Where the Spies Are. Presumably, its inclusion here is indicative of a forthcoming disc release through WAC's standard MOD program. Directed by Val Guest (Assignment K, Casino Royale), Where the Spies Are stars Niven as Dr. Jason Love, hero of ten books by James Leasor. The supporting cast will also be familiar to spy fans. It includes Francoise Dorleac (Billion Dollar Brain), John Le Mesurier (Hot Enough For June), Noel Harrison (The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.) and Eric Pohlmann (the original voice of Blofeld). Personally, I've found that the film streams fine online, but won't play on my Roku. I'll chalk that up to the glitches of Beta testing, and hold out for the eventual DVD.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

I never expected to see a Region 1 release of the 1989-90 ITV series Frederick Forsyth Presents, but thanks to Timeless Media Group, here it is! That awkwardly Photoshopped cover isn't representative of the six classy TV movies contained on 3 discs within. These movies are mostly based on novellas contained in Forsyth's book The Deceiver. Alan Howard (best known as the voice of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings movies) plays unorthodox spymaster Sam McCready, Forsyth's answer to George Smiley. McCready generally takes a backseat, however, to the people he's manipulating in each story. This formula enabled the producers to bring in big guest stars for each film, including Elizabeth Hurley, Lauren Bacall, Brian Dennehy, Beau Bridges, Chris Cooper, Phillip Michael Thomas, David Threlfall and Peter Egan. The ones I've seen are solid productions, and I'm not sure why this series isn't better known. It deserves a place beside other solid Forsyth adaptations like The Day of the Jackal (indeed, one of these stories concerns Carlos, the international terrorist the media dubbed "the Jackal" after Forsyth's book!), and especially the Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine starrer The Fourth Protocol. (Fans of that film should definitely give this release a try.) This budget release, priced at just $14.98 (and even less on Amazon) will no doubt prove to be one of those nice little cheap gems for spy fans eager for more serious espionage dramas in the serious vein of le Carre. Since it's Valentine's Day, why not pick it up today for your spy-loving sweetheart?

You've probably seen, or at least heard of, last year's John Madden-directed, English-language version of The Debt starring Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain. Maybe you've even picked up the recent Blu-ray. But have you seen the original Israeli film on which that one was based? If not, now's your chance. American spy fans can now see the 2007 version (originally titled Ha-Hov) of this spy thriller about Mossad agents on the trail of a Nazi war criminal in Cold War Berlin, and the present-day ramifications of their mission, on DVD thanks to MPI. This version is in German and Hebrew with English subtitles. I wasn't crazy about the remake, but I've heard good things about the original and I'm curious to see how the compare. Retail is $24.98, but it's only $14.49 on Amazon right now.

Additionally, the Warner Archive unleashed a wave of MOD spy fare this week.

British Agent is Michael Curtiz's epic 1934 spy romance set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Leslie Howard is the titular British agent, and Kay Francis is a dedicated Communist who happens to love him... yet has orders to gather evidence against him that will surely lead to his death. Though this airs from time to time on TCM, I've never seen it. That cover, though, is pretty awesome, and makes me want to. British Agent is already available directly from the Warner Archive for $19.95, and available to pre-order from Amazon.

Forgotten funnymen Wheeler and Woolsey get up to 1930s-style antics in Diplomaniacs. The studio copy gives you some idea of exactly what those antics entail: "Whisked away by the oil-rich Oopadoop Indians, the pair are offered a million dollars by the chief of the tribe to represent them at the Geneva peace talks. What ensues is madcap hilarity on a steamship that goes in endless circles due to a drunken captain. The pair dodges assassination attempts and is spied on by the team of Schmerzenpuppen, Puppenschmerzen, Schmerzenschmerzen and Puppenpuppen!" If that sounds up your alley, Diplomaniacs is available today from Warner Archive and for pre-order from Amazon.

Straight-edge Efram Zimblast, Jr. leads the chase in the deadly serious 1960s Quinn Martin show The FBI, and The Second Season is available this week from the Warner Archive, split into Part One and Part Two, available this week from Warner Archive and to pre-order from Amazon. Part One features Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves as a guest star, along with Octopussy villain Louis Jourdan, On Her Majesty's Secret Service villain Telly Savalas and Archer's mom, Jessica Walter. A fact-based series, The FBI drew story ideas directly from the Bureau's actual casefiles, and J. Edgar Hoover himself served as a creative consultant up until his death in 1972. Like Dragnet, it's all a bit dry, but unlike Dragnet, the show frequently deals with espionage, since that falls within the Bureau's purview. You can actually watch one of those espionage-themed episodes, "The Courrier," guest starring a young Gene Hackman, for free right now. Warner Archive is streaming the episode here through February 17th.

More New Spy DVDs Out Today: The Venetian Affair (1966)

More New Spy DVDs Out Today: The Venetian Affair (1966)

Yesterday I speculated that Warner Bros. might slip another spy title in with today's exciting Warner Arvhive U.N.C.L.E. explosion (read about that here), and sure enough, they did. Appropriately, they're also releasing the Robert Vaughn Eurospy movie The Venetian Affair, co-starring the awesome combination of Elke Sommer and Luciana Paluzzi! (Too bad they couldn't co-ordinate with MGM to get David McCallum's Sol Madrid out at the same time, too.) Regular readers will doubtlessly be aware that Elke Sommer spy movies tend to be my favorites of all spy movies, so I'm personally thrilled to see The Venetian Affair on DVD at last. Despite its colorful, action-packed poster and purposefully resonant title, however, U.N.C.L.E. fans should be warned that The Venetian Affair, based on a novel by Helen MacInnes, is an altogether more down-to-earth sort of spy movie, and Vaughn's character of drunk, disgraced former CIA agent Bill Fenner is pretty far from Napoleon Solo. It's still a must for fans of Sixties spy movies, though, and Venice and Ms. Sommer both look great! Right now, The Venetian Affair is only available through the Warner Archive website for $19.95, but soon it will pop up on Oldies.com, Deep Discount and Amazon for less than that, so keep your eyes open.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: A Girl and More Men From U.N.C.L.E.!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: A Girl and More Men From U.N.C.L.E.!

Here's a nice surprise! TV Shows On DVD first sounded the alert this weekend that the 1966-67 spoofy spin-off series The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. is at last coming to DVD... tomorrow! The show will be available in two 4-disc, made on-demand sets comprising its entire run from the Warner Archive. At the height of the show's popularity, NBC decided to do a spin-off from its blockbuster spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The result was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., starring Stefanie Powers and Noel Harrison (son of Rex and sometime Eurospy dabbler) as U.N.C.L.E. agents April Dancer and Mark Slate. (Like "Napoleon Solo," the name "April Dancer" was actually dreamed up by James Bond creator Ian Fleming in a memo that amounted to his sole contribution to the series he was hired to develop.) Unfortunately, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. ended up debuting in the 1966 TV season, the same year that its parent show succumbed to high camp in an effort to emulate mega-hit Batman. That meant that The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. shared the sillier tone of Man's third season rather than that of its more serious (and better) first season. In my opinion, however, Girl managed to wear it better; camp seemed an appropriate match for April's fabulously mod Carnaby Street fashions.

Like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. attracted some first-rate guest stars, including Thunderball's Luciana Paluzzi (in the series premiere), Boris Karloff (in drag, no less!), Ed Asner, Gena Rowlands, Stan Freberg, Yvonne De Carlo and John Carradine. Robert Vaughn turned up as well, appearing as Napoleon Solo in the crossover episode "The Mother Muffin Affair" (with Karloff). Harrison also appeared on a Man episode, and Leo G. Carroll played U.N.C.L.E. boss Alexander Waverly on both series. (Girl was spun out of an episode of Man's previous season, in which Mary Ann Mobley and Norman Fell played Dancer and a very different Slate.)

Tomorrow, The Warner Archive will release all 29 episodes of Girl's sole season in two sets, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series - Part One and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series - Part 2. Both are available to pre-order from Warners' website now at $39.95 apiece, or together in a bundle as The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Pack for $59.95. (Right now the individual sets are listed on the Pre-Orders page discounted to $35.95 and the pack discounted to $53.95, but when you then click the linke to order, the prices revert to their full amount. I'm not sure what's going on with that.) For now you can only get them directly through The Warner Archive, but I suspect they'll pop up on Oldies.com (probably at a discount) by the end of the week and Amazon a month or so later. It's a little disappointing that Girl won't get the full, feature-laden Special Edition treatment like Man did a few years ago from Time-Life, but mainly I'm just glad it will finally be available! Between this and It Takes A Thief coming out this fall (something I keep meaning to do a post about), by the end of 2011 we should finally have most of the major Sixties spy shows on DVD! (Still waiting on T.H.E. Cat...) That's very exciting.

But April Dancer isn't the only U.N.C.L.E. agent The Warner Archive is unleashing tomorrow. Additionally, they'll release The Man From U.N.C.L.E 8 Movie Collection, which collects all eight theatrical U.N.C.L.E. films on Region 1 DVD for the first time in a 4-disc set. (Only one was included in the Time-Life box set.) While it's true that the U.N.C.L.E. features were created by combining two episodes of the show into a feature for overseas markets, they're still worth having for U.N.C.L.E. completists who already own the whole series because they add some extra footage (mostly sexy stuff to make them more Bond-like) and boast new (and, in my opinion, often better) score music. The episodes from the show's black-and-white first season are also viewable in color in the films. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 8 Movie Collection is available to pre-order from The Warner Archive for $39.95. I wonder if The Warner Archive will announce any more spy titles tomorrow to tie in with these major releases? Here's hoping!

DVD Review: Code of the Secret Service (1939)

It turns out George H. W. Bush was not the only former spook on the Republican ticket in 1980 and 1984. Bush may have run the CIA, but his running mate Ronald Reagan was actually a field man… in a series of four Warner Bros. B-programmers made between 1939 and 1940. Long before working for the government for real, Reagan played Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service, a square-jawed agent who pursued spies, counterfeiters and other threats to national security in exploits supposedly “based upon material compiled by W.H. Moran, ex-chief of the U.S. Secret Service”—at least according to the credits. The first Brass Bancroft movie, Code of the Secret Service, actually offers all the elements of a classic spy movie… on a poverty row budget, and packed into 60 minutes! All you’d need to add is color and booze and it could pass itself as a Eurospy movie. In one of many sequences audiences would come to associate with the genre two decades later, Bancroft’s adventure begins when he meets his boss at HQ to receive his assignment. Brass is far too wholesome, however, to engage in any flirtation with the pretty secretary. That sort of behavior is reserved for the comic relief sidekick, Gabby (Eddie Foy, Jr.).

The mission, to take down a counterfeiting gang flooding the US with their phony currency from South of the Border, takes Brass and Gabby all the way across America, from Washington D.C. to a Southwest border town, as an animated line on an Indiana Jones-style map superimposed over an airplane traces their route. Like any good agent in decades to come, Brass hits up a nightclub for his first clue—a disreputable establishment across the border, in Mexico. There (still strictly following a formula that technically hasn’t even been established yet), he naturally gets into a fight. His contact is killed—and the bad guys frame Brass for the murder.  Soon the Mexican authorities are after him in force, but instead of running for the border, Brass escapes by heading deeper into Mexico.

Quickly fulfilling another spy movie expectation (one already firmly in place in 1939), Brass soon enough finds himself embroiled in intrigue on a train as he tries to follow one of the villains back to his secret hideout. After some lame Thirties and Forties comedy bits from the faux-Mexican train conductor fall flat, the bad guy spots Brass on his tail and tips off the police that he’s on the train. This leads to a pretty great stunt for this kind of micro-budget programmer: as the train stops on a bridge and the police drive him to the caboose in a car-by-car sweep, Brass makes a daring and thrilling escape by diving off the high bridge into the water far below! (It's achieved more through clever editing than actual stunt work, but I still found it impressive.) There, he hides underwater using a reed to breath (as James Bond would one day do in Dr. No) as the police pursue him through a swamp. 

Of course, Code of the Secret Service can’t expend the entirety of its brief running time prefiguring Sixties spy movies. After all, Forties spy actioners have their own set of clichés to deliver, every bit as predictable as those in the Eurospies. For instance, when Gabby presents Brass with a book, Spanish in 7 Days, you just know he’ll put it in his breast pocket and it will stop a bullet… which, indeed, it dutifully does! (Though it doesn’t keep him from getting captured.) What I didn’t see coming, however, is that when Gabby tries to find a way to get Brass out of jail, he instead manage to get himself arrested for indecent exposure. Yes, things get very silly very quickly.

Brass does manage to escape, of course, and quickly finds himself on the run again, now handcuffed to a beautiful and innocent woman, Elaine (Rosella Towne). Yep, someone’s been watching Hitchcock! The plot in fact follows The 39 Steps pretty closely from there on, complete with the two of them being hauled off in a car by fake police who are really working for the enemy. The enemy in question, however, can be identified by his peg-leg instead of his missing finger. See what they did there? 

Eventually, Brass gets into more of an Indiana Jones kind of outfit with a leather jacket and puffy breeches he could have stolen from Katherine Hepburn. In this suitable attire, he’s able engage in some fisticuffs, cause—and escape from—some explosions, and even participate in a pretty good car chase which ends in a big wreck stunt! (Surely this footage is reused from something else, but I can’t identify the source.) Belying its immediately pre-war genesis, the movie concludes with a patriotic quote akin to the propaganda at the end of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies of the era, spoken over a waving American flag. It’s a fitting finale for a spy movie starring a future US president! Code of the Secret Service is predictable, cheap and cheesy—but quite a lot of fun for fans of the low budget films of that period. I’m hopeful that all the Brass Bancroft movies prove as entertaining. All four are collected in the 2-disc Warner Archive MOD DVD-R collection Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service (currently on sale for just $14.98 on Oldies.com—45% off!), and the audio and video quality are impressive, as with nearly all the Archive titles I’ve seen. With this sort of movie, if the picture is soft, it's more likely because the shot's out of focus than anything to do with the transfer!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: The Unknown Saint of Monte Carlo

I was going to lead this week's new DVD roundup with Warner Bros.' Unknown, but then the studio trumped themselves at the last minute by announcing a new collection of long-awaited Saint movies via The Warner Archive!  The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection includes all five of the RKO Saint films Sanders starred in between 1939 and '41: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint in Palm Springs.  The trouble with collecting Sanders' Saint outings is that it means omitting the four films starring Luis Hayward (my favorite of the RKO Saints) and Hugh Sinclair. And Hayward starred in the first of the Leslie Charteris adaptations, The Saint in New York. But hopefully those films will see release in a future collection. There's plenty of good news here to focus on!  Warner representatives promised way back in 2007 that all of the RKO Saint films would see release in 2008. That didn't happen, and it was about that time that the bottom fell out of the catalog DVD market entirely, so it seemed as if it would never happen.  Then the studio began its Warner Archive MOD program, producing DVD-Rs of classic films on demand, which started a trend and salvaged the catalog business.  It seemed inevitable that the Saint movies would pop up eventually as MODs, but even then the studio dragged its feet.  And now that these five have arrived, it seems like fans are actually better off for the delay. Instead of releasing each title individually for twenty bucks apiece, as they did with the Tarzan series, Warner are bundling five movies together for just $29.95.  That's a much better bargain!  (Very reasonable, actually.) I really hope that we see the remaining Saint titles (including the elusive final film in the RKO cycle, The Saint's Girl Friday, which was co-produced by Britain's Hammer Studios and saw Hayward return to the role he originated more than a decade later) soon in another such collection.  But for now, I'm very content to have these ones at long last!  So far The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection is available only directly through The Warner Archive, but it will assuredly pop up on Amazon and Deep Discount in a couple of months.

Also out from Warner Home Video today, in much wider release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo, is this year's Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy romp, Unknown. I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool thriller in its own right, though!  The wintery Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) Extras, unfortunately, are pretty scarce on both releases. The BD includes the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film; to the undoubted ire of those without Blu-ray players, the DVD includes only the first featurette.  DVD buyers shouldn't worry, though.  They're really not missing out on anything.  Both EPK featurettes are extremely brief, and despite that brevity still manage to cover some of the same ground. Still, this movie is worthwhile even without good bonus material. If you missed Unknown in theaters, definitely give it a try on disc. I'll be posting a full review shortly. Own it on Blu-ray for $35.99 (or just $22.99 currently from Amazon) or DVD for $28.99 (or just $14.99 from Amazon right now).

Finally, Olive Films, who have licensed a lot of cool catalog titles from Paramount, bring us the 1986 WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD today. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be had for slightly less on Amazon.

In addition to Monte Carlo, Olive has one more Joan Collins miniseries out today that might interest spy fans, though it's not itself a spy story. Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is notable here because it co-stars Timothy Dalton (immediately prior to becoming Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP of $39.99.

More New Spy DVDs Out Last Week
On Sale Today Only!

In addition to the sets that I wrote about on Tuesday, there were some other very exciting new spy releases last week. The Warner Archive splurged on spy titles in a nearly all-spy week, including a couple of great Eurospy titles.  And some of them are on sale through tonight (Monday)!

The Double Man
This cool, dark Eurospy entry finds Yul Brynner playing a double role as a tough, cold-blooded CIA agent and his potential doppelganger.  Future Bond Girl Britt Ekland is also on board, though her loyalties are questionable.  The Cold War intrigue unfolds in one of my favorite spy locations: the Swiss Alps.  It's a bit darker than a lot of Eurospy fare, but still delivers just about everything you could hope for from the genre.  The Double Man is available to pre-order from Amazon, and available now directly through The Warner Archive. (At a substantial discount if you act fast!)

Assignment To Kill
Spies get assigned to kill all the time. After all, they've got licenses for that.  But how often do insurance investigators receive an Assignment To Kill?  Quite often, actually, if you've dabbled a bit in the Eurospy genre!  Longtime readers will be aware that I'm a big fan of this particularly curious sub-genre.  For some reason, insurance investigators were so glamorized in the Sixties that European filmmakers tended to use them as proxy spies.  The best Eurospy movie of all, Deadlier Than the Male (review here), isn't about a spy at all, but an insurance investigator.  Other movies in this mold include Ring Around the World (review here) and 1968's Assignment To Kill, though the latter has been rather elusive until now.  Patrick O'Neal plays ultra-cool insurance investigator Richard Cutter, and a globe-trotting probe into big-time fraud takes him into contact with such spy movie regulars as Herbert Lom, John Gielgud, Peter van Eyck, Eric Portman and Oscar Homolka. The action unfolds against the same great Swiss backdrop as The Double Man.  Assignment To Kill is available now from The Warner Archive, and available to pre-order on Amazon.

Avalanche Express
I've never seen Avalanche Express (1979), but I do love spy movies on trains, so I'm eager to give it a go!  Lee Marvin plays CIA agent Harry Wargrave, whose assignment is to escort a Soviet defector (played by Robert Shaw, a seasoned veteran of train-based espionage!) on Europe’s Milan-to-Rotterdam express, then cross the Atlantic and deliver his charge to Washington. But enemy agents are out to stop him–and won't think twice about causing a devastating avalanche to do so! Other passengers on the train (some of whom are bound to be foreign spies) include such nefarious types as Maximilian Schell, Mike Connors, Horst Buchholz and the ubiquitous Vladek Sheybal. Avalanche Express is available for pre-order from Amazon at $18.99 or available now directly.

24 Hours To Kill
24 Hours To Kill doesn't have former Tarzan and Eurospy dabbler Lex Barker playing an actual spy, but as an international thriller set primarily in that favorite Eurospy location, the "Paris of the Middle East," Beirut, it's essentially part of the genre. The plot concerns smuggling, and the cast includes Mickey Rooney and Walter Slezak. 24 Hours To Kill has been available before on a dubious grey market label, but the Warner Archive edition marks its widescreen debut.  This MOD edition is available to pre-order from Amazon and available now directly.

Two more titles in this wave aren't quite spy titles, but they're Sixties adventures with guns and beautiful women, and that puts them close enough in my book.  Dark of the Sun is a 1968 men-on-a-mission movie in which Rod Taylor (The Liquidator) and Jim Brown lead a group of elite commandos on a perilous train journey across the Congo out to rescue endangered civilians and recover a huge cache of diamonds.  And just look at that cover art!  Kona Coast was an unsold pilot for a Hawaiian action series based on a book by John D. Macdonald. The Kremlin Letter's Richard Boone plays a charter boat captain who turns vigilante to avenge the death of his daughter. Finally, Once Before I Die is a war movie and not a spy movie in any sense, but it does star Bond Girl Ursula Andress...

Whew!  Quite a week!  How on earth are we spy fans to keep up with so many releases at once, you might ask?  Well, fortunately The Warner Archive is having a very nice Father's Day sale lasting through the end of the day today (Monday, June 13), in which all of these titles (and many other action movies) are available at a five dollar discount.  To me, that $5 makes all the difference in the world.  The regular Warner Archive retail price of $19.95 always strikes me as prohibitive for a made-on-demand DVD, but $14.95 sounds entirely reasonable–especially with free shipping on orders of two or more!  That's the way to go if you're buying these today, but if you miss the sale or want to hold off, they're all also available to pre-order on Amazon (where they won't be available until July) for $18.99 apiece.  Other titles in the sale that might interest spy fans include Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (a bona fide Tarzan spy movie - review here), Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (co-starring Sean Connery - review here), Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service, The Sell-Out and many, many more.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Probe (1972)

In this week's batch of new Warner Archive made-on-demand titles is the rare Seventies TV pilot Probe, which led to the slightly re-formatted series Search.  Probe stars Hugh O'Brian as Hugh Lockwood, agent of a secret international private spy agency called... Probe.  Coming from Outer Limits producer Leslie Stevens, Probe was considered a science fiction series at the time due to the fantastic gadgets Lockwood had at his fingertips... but today they don't seem all that fantastic.  In fact, things like tiny transistor radios implanted in an agent's ear to maintain constant contact with headquarters and miniaturized cameras hidden in rings and biometric scanners are pretty much de rigueur in today's spy shows.  (The pilot for Exit Strategy, a possible Fox series for this fall, features all three pretty heavily with no hint of sci-fi.)  In Probe, they were still considered a gimmick, one which let technicians at Probe Control (like Burgess Meredith) feed their agent in the field all sorts of information as he needed it in real time.  The Macguffin in the telefilm is a cache of stolen diamonds with a Nazi connection, and among the mysterious figures involved with the loot is sexy femme fatale Elke Sommer, well known to Eurospy fans from movies like the great, great Deadlier Than the Male (review here).  Regular readers will know that Sommer's presence always sparks my own interest in a movie, so I'm eager to seek out Probe!  This being the Warner Archive, retail for this DVD-R is a frustratingly inflated $19.95, so if you want Probe at a reasonable price you'll have to wait for it to become available on Deep Discount, or to get it as part of Warner Archive's occasional bulk sales. 

There's also another classic Seventies TV pilot in this wave, but it's less spyish: Smile Jenny, You're Dead, the second of two pilot films for the David Janssen private eye series Harry O.  Now if only Warner Archive would release those series themselves...

Sony MOD Titles in Great Deep Discount Sale

Deep Discount is having an amazing sale this month on Sony's made-on-demand 
DVD-Rs, the "Columbia Classics" series.  (Their version of the Warner Archive.) That includes such Sixties spy essentials as Otley, Duffy, The Executioner and The Deadly Affair, along with earlier spy titles like Assignment Paris and Man On a String.  It doesn't seem to include this week's new release of Hammerhead, unfortunately. But the titles on sale are just $11.96, as opposed to the regular twenty bucks! It's a really good opportunity to stock up... which is just what I'm going to do!  The sale lasts all month, until noon on March 31.

Hammerhead Comes to DVD!

Well, to DVD-R, at least, but then that's how things work nowadays, isn't it?  Still, this is very exciting!  Sony has included the 1968 Eurospy classic Hammerhead (review here) in its latest batch of made-on-demand "Columbia Classics" DVD-Rs.  (Or "Sony Screen Classics by Request" depending on where you look. Clearly the whole campaign, while laudable, wasn't that thought out. For one thing, it seems very hard to tell when new titles are announced.) Anyway, Hammerhead is remastered in 1.85:1 widescreen and looks better than ever, as you can see from the clip on Sony's website!  (And they did choose one of the very best moments from the film to demonstrate the picture quality. Don't you love it how in Eurospyland, you can always open a random door and be sure to find a beautiful girl in a bikini dancing behind it?) Hammerhead is one of my very favorite Eurospy movies, and a great next stop if you've enjoyed Deadlier Than the Male and want to wade gradually into deeper waters of the genre. You can order it now from the Columbia Classics website for $19.94 or from Oldies.com for $18.98 or wait and hope they turn up cheaper on Deep Discount like the earlier wave of titles did.  This is a must-have Eurospy film!

This batch also includes the John Le Carré adaptation The Deadly Affair with James Mason as Smiley in all but name (review here) and the 1952 Dana Andrews spy noir Assignment: Paris.  The former was already previously available as a Region 2 DVD, but it's good to have an R1 alternative at last for this fairly essential spy movie.

Additionally, on the non-spy front, the Hammer fan in me rejoices that Creatures the World Forgot is finally available and any fan of Michael Caine or Peter Sellers or Dudley Moore and Peter Cook or Sixties British cinema in general will be happy to finally have The Wrong Box on Region 1 disc, though it's been available in R2 for some time already.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Scarecrow And Mrs. King: Season 2

Lee Stetson and Amanda King are back!  Hurrah!  TVShowsOnDVD reports that Warner Home Video will release Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete Second Season on DVD this spring.  That's right, DVD, not MOD.  I was kind of worried that future Scarecrow seasons might end up at the Warner Archive instead of in stores.  (Which would, of course, be preferable to not being available at all, but an actual DVD release available in stores is by far the best scenario–and, fortunately, that's exactly what's happening.)  I really, really enjoyed the first season, which I saw for the first time on its DVD release last spring (reviewed here), and I was getting antsy about further seasons coming out.  I'm very glad to hear that Season 2 is on tap!  The 5-disc set, containing 23 episodes with guest stars like Sid Haig, Jean Stapleton and Tricia O'Neil, will be available on March 22 and retail for $39.98.  According to the studio's product description, Season 2 takes the superspy Stetson, aka "Scarecrow" (Bruce Boxleitner) and his housewife-turned-operative associate Mrs. King (Kate Jackson) out of Washington to London, Munich, Salzberg and the Caribbean.  While the Sixties and the Seventies had loads of popular spy shows, Scarecrow and Mrs. King occupies a fairly unique place in the annals of spydom: it was pretty much the only bona fide hit spy series of the 1980s.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Satan Bug (1965)

If you ever see a headline these days about any vintage catalog title coming out from a major studio that isn't The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind, you can bet it's probably an MOD (Manufactured On Demand) title, ala the Warner Archive.  I've weighed the pros and cons of this trend plenty in the past, but despite enabling the studios to charge twice what we paid before for a cheaper product with no special features, the upside is that the MOD format means we're at least getting some catalog releases, which isn't gonna happen any other way in this pitiful market.  (I've said it before and I'll say it again: I blame Blu-ray as much as I blame the economy for this sorry state of affairs.)  At least MGM is sweetening the deal on MOD titles a bit.  They're now expanding their titles' availability to more retailers (they were previously available only through Amazon), possibly even to brick and mortar stores who are interested.  (That bit's a little unclear from the press release, but it seems like physical retailers who have websites, like Borders and Barnes & Noble, will definitely be part of the equation.)  Furthermore, they're including theatrical trailers on their titles when they have the elements available.  I know, it's not much in terms of special features, but at least it's something.  And a pretty important something at that; I always like watching the trailer when I get a new DVD.  Anyway, MGM has announced an aggressive expansion of their "MGM Limited Edition Collection" of MOD titles.  The studio plans to release over 400 new-to-DVD titles in the next 18 months.  Among those in the first wave, available in December, is the 1965 Alistair Maclean spy movie The Satan Bug (review here). John Sturges directed what the studio describes as a "sizzling suspenser about a nerve-racking chase to recover flasks of a lethal virus which were stolen from a government lab by a deranged and dangerous scientist, who has decided that now it is his turn 'to play God'..."  Read my review to discover that I found it anything but sizzling, but I know that the movie has its fans, and you won't find me arguing with the release of more Sixties spy movies on DVD! The first-rate score, by Jerry Goldsmith, has been available for a while from FSM.

Tons Of New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Otley, Iron Man, Danger Man And More

Woo-whee! (As Sheriff J.W. Pepper might exclaim.)  There are a lot of new spy movies out today!  It's an embarrassment of riches that makes me embarrassed by my lack of riches, because I want them all but my poor wallet just can't handle it.  It's time to start making my Christmas list...  The flashiest new spy title is Iron Man 2, featuring Marvel's two top superspies, Nick Fury and Black Widow, but the best is Otley (1968), one of my very favorite spy movies of all time.  (And yes, as I've often threatened, I will eventually get around to writing a "My Favorite Spy Movies" piece about it, and now I can hopefully illustrate that with screencaps from a lovely new transfer.)  But Otley, unfortunately, isn't a straightforward DVD, and you can't buy it in stores.

With the market for catalog titles on DVD apparently and lamentably dead (thanks as much to the advent of Blu-ray as to the downturn in the economy if you ask me), more and more studios are noticing the success of Warner Brothers' burn-on-demand DVD-R program, the Warner Archive, and emulating it.  We've seen Universal and MGM launch similar (if far less extensive) programs through Amazon, offering movies on DVD-R burnt to order. There are a lot of drawbacks to the formula: while they do generally look pretty good (with the occasional exception, like MGM's pitiful House of Long Shadows), most of the catalog titles released this way are not remastered with anywhere near the precision that a studio puts into a regular DVD catalog release, and they never offer any of the special features like making-ofs or commentary tracks that consumers became accustomed to in the heyday of the DVD format. Then there's the little matter that they're on DVD-R, and not real DVDs. And, worst of all, there's the price point, which remains awfully high for a featureless, sometimes un-remastered DVD-R. But the upside is a big one: programs like the Warner Archive mean that we get to see titles released that might never even have made the cut in the halcyon days of deep catalog releases. And while the quality might not be up to the standards of the few big prestige catalog titles that still come out (like The African Queen earlier this year), it's generally a far sight better than the gray market alternatives.  These DVD-Rs are like legitimate bootlegs, using the best available elements. Overall, they're a good thing in this marketplace, and I'm glad that more studios are jumping on the bandwagon.  Sure, I miss the past, when even obscure catalog titles would get the Special Edition treatment, but the realist in me knows those days aren't coming back, so fans of classic films have no choice but to embrace the DVD-R programs.  Well, there is a choice, but it amounts to those titles never coming out at all, and that's not acceptable. 

The latest studio to launch a Warner Archive-like program is Sony.  A little over a month ago, pre-order listings quietly started turning up on Critic's Choice Video and (more cheaply) their sister site, Deep Discount. (Sadly this post has existed in some unfinished form since then, when it was an "Upcoming Spy DVDs" post!) A press release finally materialized a few weeks later announcing "Screen Classics by Request" from the website Columbia-Classics.com.  (Listings for some of them finally materialized on Amazon as well, although Deep Discount seems to remain the best bargain.) The first batch officially becomes available today, and included in the hundred-odd titles are several spy movies!

Foremost among them is Otley. The great Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who would later become Sean Connery's go-to script doctors, making uncredited but integral contributions to the scripts for Never Say Never Again and The Rock) wrote this 1968 counter-culture comedic spy caper starring Tom Courtenay and a host of faces familiar to Sixties spy fans, including James Villiers, Leonard Rossiter, Romy Schneider and Ronald Lacey.  This is a fresh take on the classic "wrong man" subgenre of spy movie, starring Courtenay as Otley, a drifter adrift in Swinging London who (thanks in part to a beautiful woman) becomes accidentally embroiled in complex espionage plot and finds himself relentlessly pursued by eccentric characters representing several different mysterious groups with different goals.  The standout scene is a driving exam that turns into a wild chase through busy streets and even the green of the Goldfinger golf club.  It's absolutely essential spy viewing, especially for fans of that era.  (And who isn't?) 

Other spy titles available from the Columbia Classics website include The Executioner, Man on a String and Duffy.  Duffy (also '68)is another incredible document of the late Sixties, again embracing the counter-culture.  James Coburn is the title character in this one, and the setting is the French Riviera.  The Executioner, starring George Peppard, Joan Collins and Charles Grey, represents the more serious side of the Eurospy genre.  It's a gritty and violent tale of double agents, double crosses and flawed heroes.  1960's Man on a String stars a pre-OSS 117 Kerwin Mathews in his first major spy role, as the handler of a real-life double agent played by Ernest Borgnine.  Borgnine's character is called Boris Mitrov in the film, but the real story is that of film producer and musical director (and spy) Boris Morros, whose extensive credits included a number of Bulldog Drummond movies in the 30s. 

Other Screen Classics by Request that excite me and are likely to excite most fans of Sixties spy stuff include Fragment of Fear, a mod psychological horror film written by Goldfinger and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold scribe Paul Dehn, the awesome Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper movie A Study in Terror and the campiest, craziest, trashiest American vehicle for Diabolik star John Phillip Law, The Love Machine.

But not all the spy titles out this week are made to order.  Iron Man 2 is not only available everywhere as a regular DVD, but also as a Blu-ray and in a confounding number of configurations on each format (single discs, double discs, combo discs, digital copies, etc). Spy fans will want to opt for the 2-disc Special Edition DVD or the 3-disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo (also available in special metal packaging exclusively from Target), which include the special features "Spotlight on Nick Fury" and "Spotlight on Black Widow," as well as "S.H.I.E.L.D. Files," whatever those are. 

Finally, A&E is re-releasing Secret Agent AKA Danger Man: The Complete Collection.  This seminal Sixties spy series starring Patrick McGoohan (really the cornerstone of the genre on television) has been available before, but now A&E has shrunk the price and shrunk the size of the box, both welcome changes.  The previous set housed each disc in its own slim case; I haven't seen the new one but I'm presuming that it fits two discs per slimline, like TV shows from most other companies.  This set is excellent, and you can read all about it in my review of the its last incarnation here.  (The content has not changed.)  Suffice it to say, Danger Man has gotten lost in the shadow of McGoohan's less successful (at its time) but more enduring follow-up, The Prisoner.  It's much more than just a potential prequel to the later show; Danger Man is the first serious espionage drama of the modern era, and set the template for just about everything to follow. Retail is $99.95, but as with many A&E titles you can find this 18-disc set (containing every single episode from both the half-hour and hour-long series) for nearly half that at a number of online retailers.