The Venetian Affair *** (1966, Robert Vaughn, Elke Sommer, Felicia Farr, Boris Karloff, Karl Boehm, Luciana Paluzzi) – Classic Movie Review 6011

The ever-suave Robert Vaughn and smooth Sixties spy intrigue thrillers of course went together perfectly. He was a big star in 1966 – this action espionage thriller was simply advertised as ‘Vaughn! Venice! Vooom!’ It was also advertised as ‘Enjoy the fine arts of Venice… murder! spies! women’, covering most of the bases, though leaving out the more important and essential ‘food! and wine!’

However, you do not expect to find horror icon Boris Karloff in this Swinging Sixties company. But it is good that he is, even confined to a wheelchair, co-starring as Dr Pierre Vaugiroud.

Vaughn is excellent as Bill Fenner, an ex-CIA man, now a mere humble reporter in Venice to probe diplomats’ deaths by bombing at a peace conference. Karl Boehm [Karlheinz Böhm] (from Peeping Tom) plays Robert Wahl, a foreign spy who shoots his enemies with a serum that makes them robots and Edward Asner plays the grouchy CIA boss Frank Rosenfeld who gets Fenner on the case.

MGM backs up E Jack Neuman’s efficient and tidy screenplay based on Helen MacInnes’s novel with a neat production, and director Jerry Thorpe takes his cast, crew and cameras globetrotting (Milton Krasner is the main cinematographer, while Enzo Serafin does the Venice photography).

Despite the title, this spy thriller is not campy in The Man for UNCLE vein but serious. Achievement-wise and entertainment-wise, it is on the modest side, just a routine diversion. However, it is certainly engaging and effective enough, and lifted by the undervalued Vaughn and the rest of the lively and likeable cast: Elke Sommer as Sandra Fane, Felicia Farr as Claire Connor, Roger C Carmel, Luciana Paluzzi, Joe de Santis, Wesley Lau, Fabrizzio Mioni, Bill Weiss and Sigrid Valdis.

Felicia Farr was Jack Lemmon’s real-life wife.

Luciana Paluzzi appeared in the same year in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and as Fiona Volpe in the Bond movie Thunderball (1965).

Karl Boehm [Karlheinz Böhm] died on 29 May 2014.

Robert Vaughn died on 11 November 2016.

Robert Vaughn died on 11 November 2016, aged 83.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6011

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