The Helicopter Spies ** (1968, Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Carol Lynley, Julie London, Lola Albright, John Carradine, Bradford Dillman) – Classic Movie Review 6,924

Robert Vaughn and David McCallum star as U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, who are whisked across the world in their daring quest to gain control of a deadly weapon being used in a fiendish plot to take over the world. 

Director Boris Sagal’s 1967 thriller The Helicopter Spies is the 1968 feature-length film version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s fourth and final season two-part episode The Prince of Darkness Affair, originally broadcast in the United States on 2 and 9 October 1967 on NBC.

As usual, it stars Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, who are whisked across the world for a series of bizarre encounters, flights, chases and clinches in their daring quest to gain control of a deadly weapon being used in a fiendish plot to take over the world. Leo G Carroll is also present and correct as spy boss Alexander Waverly.

Carol Lynley as mini-skirted avenger Annie, Julie London as man-hungry divorcee Laurie Sebastian, and Lola Albright as kinkily-clad killer Azalea all have their moments, but John Carradine steals the show as an aged mystic, Third-Way Priest. Bradford Dillman, John Dehner, H M Wynant, and Roy Jenson also star.

Written by Dean Hargrove, it is the seventh feature to use a re-edited version of one or more episodes from the TV series. Like its predecessors The Spy in the Green Hat and The Karate Killers, it makes few and only small changes to the TV episodes, and comes closest of all to showing the TV show intact.

Also in the cast are Barbara Moore, Sid Haig, Arthur Malet, Kathleen Freeman, Robert Karnes, Lyzanne Ladue and Thoris Brandt.

The Helicopter Spies is directed by Boris Sagal, runs 90 minutes, is an Arena Productions and MGM Television production, distributed by MGM, is written by Dean Hargrove, is shot by Fred J Koenekamp, is produced by Norman Felton, Anthony Spinner, George Lehr and Irv Pearlberg, scored by Richard Shores and Jerry Goldsmith (theme), and designed by George W Davis and James W Sullivan.

It was not released in cinemas in the US but it had a wide release worldwide. It premiered at the Ritz cinema in London on 22 February 1968. It was released on DVD on 2 November 2011 in the Warner Archive Collection.

It is followed by How to Steal the World in 1968.

The eight films in the series: To Trap a Spy (1964), The Spy with My Face (1965), One Spy Too Many (1966), One of Our Spies Is Missing (1966), The Spy in the Green Hat (1966), The Karate Killers (1967), The Helicopter Spies (1968), and How to Steal the World (1968).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,924

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