The Wrecking Crew (1968)

Jeez, there's really nothing good to say about this movie. Dean Martin was always an inept actor, even when he had good scripts, which he did not have here. I have seen Sharon Tate in a few good roles, but I think her voice was looped by other actresses. Nancy Kwan was good in a few other roles, but she has nothing to work with here. Elke Sommer, often wooden, gives the best performance, oddly enough, and looks wonderful.But the real problem is the rotten script. Random explosions, inexplicable car chases, unconvincing fights. None of it very good, and most of it repeated pointlessly in multiple scenes.Is it bad enough to be funny-good? I think it's just bad. I think the producers wanted it to be a parody of the James Bond movies, without realizing that the Bond movies were already self-parodies.

The movie is fantastic in its execution, not its substance, but it was never intended to be serious. The movie has all the glamor, and opulence that only American movies seems to be able to deliver. The choice of color, the character, and of course the girls.Dean Martin's Matt Helm was a product of the swinging '60s, and it's a beautiful movie in its own way. I wish that the modern movies had more of this kind of opulence to its style. Why not live a little like the way these people did ?It's intentionally silly, but if you take away the silly it still has the glamor like nothing you see these days. The movie is worth seeing for this alone.Elke Sommer, and Sharon Tate were beautiful, and we don't see beauties like this anymore either.

The final film in the 'Matt Helm' ( Dean Martin ) franchise saw a few interesting changes. The spy fad was all but over, so it was decided to make 'The Wrecking Crew' more of a caper movie akin to 'The Italian Job'. It opens with the hijacking in Denmark of a train carrying one billion dollars in gold bullion. It is panic time on the world's money markets, so I.C.E. sends for its best agent ( guess who ). The only lead is a beautiful gypsy dancer named Lola Medina ( Tina Louise ), ex-girlfriend of Count Massimo Contini, a multi-millionaire dreaming of becoming a multi-billionaire. Lola claims that Contini is behind the heist. Equipped with a do-it-yourself helicopter, a camera that bellows incapacitating gas, and explosive handkerchiefs, Matt flies out to Copenhagen, knowing that MacDonald has broken his cover...After a run of two ( outrageous ) movies scripted by Herbert Baker and directed by Henry Levin, crime novelist William McGivern and director Phil Karlson ( who launched the series five years earlier with 'The Silencers' ) brought Matt down to Earth. Out went 'BIG O', 'Lovey Kravezit', and the sci-fi paraphernalia. Donald Hamilton's book was unfilmable - set in Sweden, it had Matt on a manhunt to find a killer named 'Caselius' - so the movie was replotted. Unfortunately, the new story was not much better, lacking in excitement and wit. It was also riddled with longueurs ( such as the Lola/Linka/Yu-Rang seduction scenes ). The Bruce Lee-supervised karate fights look suspiciously like an attempt to cash in on 'Our Man Flint'. The excellent Nigel Green was evil genius 'Carl Petersen' in 'Deadlier Than The Male' ( 1966 ), which starred Richard Johnson as 'Bulldog Drummond'. But Contini is nowhere near as interesting, and does little apart from issue threats and stare at television screens ( one of his henchmen is a young Chuck Norris ).As for Dino, by this time, he was looking more than a little heavy and tired, despite his sun tan and trendy suits. He moves and speaks so slowly at times you think he's impersonating Frankenstein's monster. When Freya ( Sharon Tate ) accidentally bumps into Matt's car, we get: FREYA: Mr.Helm, our cars are stuck. MATT: What? FREYA: We're stuck. MATT: We're stuck? FREYA: Yes. MATT: Good! FREYA: Is that all you've got to say? And with that, she walks off in a huff. Hard to believe someone got paid for writing such drivel. Nancy Kwan's 'Yu-Rang' should have been excised from the script and Elke Sommer's ( 'Irma Eckman' in 'Deadlier Than The Male' ) 'Linka Karensky' beefed up to become the movie's main femme fatale. Of the women only Sharon Tate makes an impression as accident-prone British agent 'Freya Carlson', while John Larch shines in his few scenes as MacDonald. Nice to see him getting in a punch or two.Hugo Montenegro's sub-Bacharach score grates dreadfully, particularly the la-la-la-la-la cue heard whenever Tate goofs. The opening theme contains the ( politically incorrect ) refrain: 'Ah-so, ah-so, vedy vedy nice!'. Oh boy! On the plus side, the film is beautifully photographed by Sam Leavitt ( who had earlier worked on 'Murderers' Row' ), and has some impressive helicopter action. I liked the scene in 'The House Of Seven Joys' club when Matt's table and seat suddenly spins around, taking him to Contini's lair. It preempts a similar scene in 'Live & Let Die' four years later. Dean was booked for one more romp - 'The Ravagers' - but hung up his camera and gun for good after this. 'Matt Helm' would next be seen on television, in a short-lived series starring Tony Franciosa.Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson Family soon after completing the film. 'The Wrecking Crew' was both a sad epitaph to her career and the Matt Helm series.

Someone once said that Dean Martin was so laid-back he made Perry Como look like a nervous wreck. It was said if a nuclear bomb went off behind him he wouldn't even drop his martini glass. Martin and his fellow Rat-packer Frank Sinatra were among our few recording giants who achieved in films as well. Although not as good an actor as Sinatra, Martin had a charming presence on the screen and was always entertaining to watch, even when you knew he wasn't taking it too seriously. The Matt Helm films came out at the same time as Sean Connery was playing Bond and have been largely forgotten today. Martin played the reluctant spy with tongue firmly in cheek. The Wrecking Crew was the last of the four Helm films and I feel it was the best. A gold train has been hijacked by a criminal mastermind. The one billion dollar theft will cause world wide financial panic and its up to Matt Helm to save the day. Of course in any spy film of this nature, you have to have beautiful women and there are plenty here. Elke Sommer and Tina Louise light up the screen, but it is Sharon Tate who steals the show as bumbling MI5 agent Freya Carlson. I thought it was so funny how she kept getting Helm into deeper and deeper trouble, even getting him arrested at one point. She tells him "I wont desert you Mister Helm". He says "Do me a favor PLEASE DESERT ME!". However, she comes through in the end and there is a good fight scene between her and Nancy Kwan. (For trivia lovers, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee helped to set up the fight scenes for this film). People have commented the fight scenes involving Helm are fakey, what do you expect? Dean Martin was 52 when this film was made. Sharon really stole the show in this one, in fact they later based one of the characters in the Austin Powers films on her character here. This was her last film before she was murdered by the Charles Manson family. Its chilling when you watch it and think of how horribly her life ended.