I tried watching not one but two deadly dull, post-apocalyptic, no-budget sci-fi turkeys that seem to populate the majority of the Netflix basement. They will remain nameless because I watched maybe 10 minutes total of both movies and, to be honest, I don’t even remember their generic titles mere minutes after turning them off. So then I stumbled upon In Like Flint, a James Bond-ish spy parody featuring James Coburn as the man Flint, who is you know, In. The movie is a sequel to Our Man Flint, which I haven’t seen, either. But I figured this would be much livelier and entertaining than dreary no budget Netflix sci-fi. So let’s check it out.
In Like Flint (1967)
So immediately it’s much more exciting than your Netflix style post-apocalyptic dreck. The title sequence has naked ladies getting massaged and back-lit with a red hue. No complaints here. The un-Bondian theme song leaves something to be desired. It sounds like some loungy, swing music with strings and doesn’t suggest volcano villain hide-outs and karate chops. Then a shagalicious blonde makes a phone call from a phone in the butt of a statue. The movie then slowly and excruciatingly drives off the rails.
I watched In Like Flint specifically because Netflix seems to have no movies made before 2010. They mostly have the cheapest of “I’ve-never-heard-of-it-and-neither-have-you” crap from after 2010. And they have some “everybody’s seen them a hundred times” hits from the 80s and 90s like Back the Future, The Addams Family, and Sleepy Hollow, but I would love it if Netflix had some older, groovier movies. Other notable movies from 1967 that Netflix could offer are The Graduate, Look Who’s Coming To Dinner, and The Dirty Dozen. Who wouldn’t watch any of those over Grim Death Robot Kill? The James Bond offering from 1967 is You Only Live Twice… featuring Connery going undercover as a Japanese business man. So, yeah…. I’ll have to pass on that one, but I’d stop to consider it.
So back to the Flint story: now there’s a rocket ship with two blonde cosmonaut babes, a cabal of old biddies sporting outrageous hats plotting world conquering schemes. Then there’s a daring Presidential kidnapping using a smoke bomb golf ball where they swap out the real president for a look-alike. This is stupid but, based on the current political scene, not entirely implausible.
Finally we’re a long 15 minutes in and finally introduced to Flint as he’s trying to talk to dolphins using a reel to reel machine. This is not exactly Connery level Bond intrigue, or even Roger Moore style shenanigans. Coburn is wearing a white smoking jacket and sandals. In Flint’s version of the Q weapons testing scene, Flint uses a sonic emitting belt buckle to disintegrate a cue ball. Flint is a scientist, a writer, and a martial arts expert. But this seriously ridiculous plot utilizes none of those skills.
Flint is tasked with stopping a rocket from blowing up and rescuing the President. That’s it for story, and a lot of time is spent watching Flint parachute and swim into the villain’s spa resort so the plot can get started. Later on, Flint actually uses his sonic belt buckle several times and utilizes the help of a dolphin to swim around an underwater barbed-wire fence, so hurray for those stupid exposition scenes earlier on or it would’ve been totally ridiculous.
In the only decent action sequence, Flint is chased by nitwit guards and dropkicks a couple dudes and uses exercise equipment to defeat a few others. Then he is promptly captured, rendering the entire sequence moot. Later, an army of spa babes overcomes the bad guy white-helmeted henchmen by distracting them with a bikini on a stick. Flint gives even Austin Powers a run for the silliest spy movie prize.
In the most ludicrous scene in a ludicrous movie, Flint is fighting the baddie on a shuttle hurtling through space. They have a zero gravity donnybrook that rivals the crappiest of James Bond underwater fight sequences. At one point, the bad guy is about to pull the self destruct mechanism and Coburn, sitting right next to him, uses a Batman style grappling rope to pull his arm away from the ignition button, when it would have been easier just to reach over and grab his arm.
Then, spoiler alert, Flint uses his sonic destructo belt buckle to detonate the errant rocket, IN OUTER SPACE. The vacuum of space can’t stop Flint’s sound zapper. Then Flint winds up on the space shuttle with the two Russian cosmonaut babes and we last see Flint engaged in a zero gravity menage a trois. Let’s see James Bond pull that off.
BOTTOM LINE: I can’t get a grip on this film. Sure, it’s better than the Netflix Post-Apocalyptic pablum I couldn’t sit through, but this wasn’t very good, either. It’s a James Bond parody with no jokes. It’s a spy-thriller with no espionage and no drama or tension. It’s also ponderously paced where nothing really happens for the entire first hour. Every time Coburn is in space, jumping out of an airplane or underwater, he’s clearly in a wire harness. There’s an army of bikini babes in an effort to top James Bond with sheer quantity, but there are no action set pieces at all aside from the hoaky spaceship finale. This is far worse than even the most dire Bondian adventures, Diamonds are Forever, Moonraker, or Die Another Day. As a final insult to our intelligence, the closing theme song “Your Zowie Face” is a terrible piece of ca-ca that is somehow even worse than Madonna’s unlistenable Die Another Day theme. So hooray, Flint, you easily win “Worst Spy Movie Song.” Ouch.