Ten Statements About....WHERE THE BULLETS FLY (1966)

1) While this film is still painfully low budget--like The 2nd Greatest Secret Agent In The Whole Wide World, this Charles Vine adventure confines itself to London and its environs--it’s obvious more money was spent on this film.  There are more elaborate set pieces, including several multi-person gun battles, and a number of sets that seem more spy movie-like.

2) This film also learns from what its predecessor lacked by providing an actual villain in Michael Ripper’s Mr. Angel.  Now granted, Angel is a strange creation with an indeterminate accent and appearance, but at least he’s someone we can focus our animosity on.

3) It amazes me that the film was directed by veteran film and television director Lewis Gilling, because there’s a frequent sense of amateurness to the whole thing.  Particularly alarming is the way the camera is constantly shaking and readjusting itself as if we’re experiencing a very, very slow version of Shaky-cam.

4) I have to wonder if Tim Barrett’s Seraph was meant to be a parody of John Steed in the same way that Charles Vine is supposed to be a mockery of Bond.  It doesn’t quite work, but I will admit that his sudden exit from the film is one of its bigger shocks.

5) While Dawn Addams’ Felicity Moonlight is an upgrade from the previous film’s female lead by, you know, actually being a female lead as well as a spy-movie girl, it’s weird how the film doesn’t introduce her until the third act.  But then....

6) ....there are long stretches where Vine himself doesn’t appear, including a painful ten minute stretch where a ‘comedic’ minister and his secretary visits the air base where the film’s MacGuffin is stored.  It’s a peculiar choice in a peculiar franchise.

7) You know, I don’t think James Bond, even in the Roger Moore era, would stop in the middle of a running gun battle to watch the world’s most awkward stripper.

8) There are moments where Gilling is trying to be too artistic for what, at its core, is a bread and butter spy film.  The sequence where various actors in a room are reflected in a cat’s eyes is particularly jarring.

9)  Boy, you guys got the most out of the cooperation of the Royal Air Force, didn’t you?

10) While the jokes about Tom Adams’ resemblance to Sean Connery is gone, they’re replaced by some forced comedy.  Besides the minister scene, there’s an interminable one with Sidney James as a cranky mortician.

Overall...only a marginal improvement over the original, and still a curiosity that might be of interest to fans of 60's spy culture.

Ten Statements About....THE 2nd BEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD a.k.a. LICENSED TO KILL (1965)

"Why yes, I did get this job because I look vaguely like that
other fellow...."

1) Okay, we get that Tom Adams was hired to play Charles Vine because if you squint in a dark room, he sorta looks like Sean Connery....but do you have to keep reminding us with jokey references to 007?

2) I can’t decide if this film is meant to be taken straight or as a burlesque.  Adams and other actors play their role with a grim earnestness, but then we get villains named ‘HeShe’ and ‘Sadistico’ that seem a touch broad.

3) And since we’re on the subject of villains, the script never gives us a solid one.  We get a group of Soviets, a doppelganger and the aforementioned HeShe and Sadistico--but none of them are vividly enough drawn to qualify as a superspy baddie.

4) As non-sequitorial as the idea of Vine taking a first in Mathematics at Oxford is, it cleverly allows for the exposition about Regrav to be better disguised as a dialogue between peers and not a scientist explaining his work to a blunt object.

5) You know what’s really jarring?  That weird ass guitar based musical score.  It seems too jaunty to belong in a spy movie.

6) While it’s obvious that the film is very low budget, I have to admit I didn’t realize that the big MacGuffin was never seen until after the fact...which is pretty effective screenwriting by Lindsay Shonteff and Howard Griffiths.

7) I guess I should be grateful that Vine barely gives Veronica Hurst’s Julia the time of day save for looking at her legs because she’s....well, a very bad actress and decidedly mannish in appearance.  I almost expected her to be revealed as HeShe at one point.

8) Okay, you make a big deal about the soviet baddies having a doppelganger of Vine they plan to replace him with so he can assassinate Karel Stepanek’s Jacobsen.  Then why don’t you ever even tease that Vine has been replaced, rather showing him being thwarted in his attempts before being uncerimoniously killed at the climax?

9)  You know how you can tell a film’s low budget?  When they use stock footage to represent the hero showing his charge the sights of London.

10) This ending makes. No. Sense.  Even with that seemingly endless scene of Vine’s superior explaining the plot afterwards.

Overall...a peculiar little oddity that may not be the greatest low budget spy movie of the era, but has some charm.  And to think there are two sequels and three sort of rip off Shonteff wrote featuring ‘Charles Bind,’ one of which starred Gareth ‘I was in The New Avengers’ Hunt!