Fathom *** (1967, Raquel Welch, Tony Franciosa, Richard Briers, Clive Revill, Ronald Fraser) – Classic Movie Review 6215

Probably you never expected to see a movie with Raquel Welch and Richard Briers paired up together, but this is it in director Leslie H Martinson’s engagingly daft 1967 British caper. There’s a place for air-headed fun, and this is it.

Welch stars as Fathom Harvill, an itsy-bitsy bikinied bobby-dazzler undercover agent, who skydives into Southern Spain to recover a a vital lost atomic mega-bomb’s explosive device that has fallen into the sea. Martinson’s ripping spy spoof boasts a lively cast and an even livelier plot about a bunch of villains after what turns out to be a stolen figurine.

Tony [Anthony] Franciosa plays Peter Merriwether, either a Chinese agent or a detective after the figurine and soon also after Raquel Welch’s Fathom. Go fathom!

Lorenzo Semple Jr’s far-from-semple screenplay, based on Larry Forrester’s novel, is enjoyably unfathomable but Martinson (who also made the 1966 Batman: The Movie with writer Semple Jr) keeps the light-as-air fun bubbling along at a fast pace. Briers agreed, saying he found the plot hard to fathom. It is based on Forrester’s second Fathom novel, then in draft form at the time of filming. Forrester’s first Fathom novel, A Girl Called Fathom, was published in 1967.

The film looks good too thanks to Raquel Welch, the location filming and Douglas Slocombe’s sleek widescreen cinematography. But of course it was the kind of film that Welch became desperate to live down later.

Also in the cast are Clive Revill as Serapkin, Ronald Fraser as the Scottish Colonel Campbell, Greta Chi, Tom Adams, Reg Lye, Ann Lancaster, Tutte Lemkow and Elizabeth Ercy.

It is produced by John Kohn and scored by Johnny Dankworth.

Fathom’s name is formed from the first letters of the names of the character’s uncles – Freddie, Arthur, Tom, Harry, Oscar and Milton.

HADES stands for Headquarters Allied Defences, Espionage and Security.

Roger Ebert didn’t see the joke and gave it a rare Zero Stars rating.

National Bikini Day is July 5, celebrating Parisian engineer Louis Réard’s 1946 invention in France, naming it after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear bomb testing. Forties modesty kept the bikini largely out of sight until Sixties icons Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress and Raquel Welch made it popular.

In 1960, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini (written by Vance and Pockriss) was a number one hit in the US for the 16-year-old Brian Hyland, selling over two million records and sending bikini sales booming.

And of course itsy-bitsy bikinied bobby-dazzler Andress emerged from the water in the James Bond film Dr No in 1962. In 1964, AIP released Bikini Beach, the third of its Beach Party movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, with How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) to follow.

Brian Hyland: bikini man.

Teen idol Brian Hyland had a major hit in 1962 with the melancholic, haunting ballad Sealed with a Kiss.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6215

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