Sixties Spies On The Big Screen In The Big Apple

And I thought all the great film events happened here in LA! After missing out on this winter's classic James Bond screening series at the Aero in Santa Monica (which was successfull enough to warrant a follow-up series focusing on the Roger Moore era coming this fall!), New Yorkers will get their revenge with a chance to see a whole slew of Bond and various Sixties spy movies at the Film Forum in April and May. The theater will play every Bond movie, official and unofficial, from Dr. No to A View To A Kill except for Moonraker. They will intersperse them with theatrical rarities The Silencers, Our Man Flint, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Our Man In Havana (which isn't even on DVD), Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, the unmissible Harry Palmer double feature of The Ipcress File and Billion Dollar Brain, and the equally heavenly double-bill of Fathom and Danger: Diabolik!

If you're a New Yorker who's never seen Fathom, and you consider yourself a spy fan, you really owe it to yourself to check this one out! Fathom is best described as a fluffy delight. Yes, I will hate myself in the morning for using that term, but it's pretty apt. It stars Raquel Welch at her very sexiest in a lime green bikini as a skydiving dental hygienist who gets mixed up with spies. Among these spies is the great Clive Revill in the scene-stealing role of Serapkin, a campy Sixties spy villain on par with Dirk Bogarde's tour-de-force turn as Gabriel in the otherwise disposable Modesty Blaise. It's a humongously enjoyable little film that I should really review soon for this blog.

Anyway, if you're in the Northeast, it looks like you're in for a good time this spring. And I'm jealous!

Thanks to a forum poster on CommanderBond.net for getting the word out on this series.