The Venetian Affair (1967)

Mind-numbingly dull spy movie starring Robert Vaughn. I only watched this for Boris Karloff, who appears in a small role. He's good but not in this enough to matter much. Still, Karloff completists will want to check it out. Everyone else should just avoid it like the plague. It's such a boring, lifeless movie. I thought spy movies were supposed to be fun and full of action and intrigue? Apparently the people behind this didn't get the memo. Vaughn does fine as the lead but the script and direction give him little to work with. Elke Sommer and Felicia Farr provide the pretty. Ed Asner is decent in a supporting role. I fell asleep while watching this. I'm not kidding -- it literally put me to sleep during the scene where Vaughn finds the suitcase while the flute music is playing. When I woke up, I forced myself to rewind to this point and finish the movie. But man, it was a chore to do so. I can't and won't recommend this to anyone looking for a good '60s spy flick. This is the pits.

"The Venetian affair",in spite of the suicide bombing , starts very slowly and it's a muddled affair,in which Robert Vaugn seems lost and not that much interested .The female star,Elke Sommer,makes herself wait ,and it's finally a disappointing part.Ditto for Luciana Paluzzi,one of the best villain James Bond girls .The movie becomes more interesting in its third part ,partially thanks to Karl Boehm who succeeds in being disturbing:the scene of the cat and the mouse is certainly the best in the whole flick;incidentally the final segment of the last "Sissi" in which Boehm was the nice emperor was also filmed in Venice.But he was also "peeping tom" and it shows in this poor spy thriller,probably made to capitalize on the success of Bond.

NOT a compilation of MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. episodes, THE VENETIAN AFFAIR is an exciting spy film starring Robert Vaughn and Karl Böhm. Vaughn is an ex-CIA agent lured back into work by cranky former superior Ed Asner. Trying to figure out why a US diplomat set off a bomb, blowing himself up along with 13 others, Vaughn runs into the likes of Elke Sommmer (as a shifty triple agent), Boris Karloff and Böhm, who plays a certifiable madman. The plot involves cold war espionage and mind-control and it's handled well by Jerry Thorpe, an episodic television director making a rare foray into features. The location work in Venice helps a lot. Vaughn is very Napoleon Solo-like (minus even a hint of humor) and he's well teamed with Roger C. Carmel as a paranoid co-worker. Lalo Schifrin provided the fun music score.

When I saw this film advertised in my satellite listings mag, it merely said, "The Venetian Affair"...'67...starring Robert Vaughn. Hmm, I thought. I believed I'd SEEN all the "U.N.C.L.E." films - "The Helicopter Spies", "To Trap A Spy", "One Of Our Spies Is Missing", etc. And anyway, the "The...Affair" titles are only for the TV episodes from which the "movies" hail.So I began to watch it. The first thing I noticed was that it'd been made in scope. This further puzzled me, as the "U.N.C.L.E." "movies" are all in standard ratio, having been culled from TV.Of course, I now know better. The "Affair" in the title is merely what the producers must at the time have thought was a VERY happy COINCIDENCE, "The Venetian Affair" being the original title of the source novel by Helen MacInnes.But is it also a coincidence that they chose to star Robert Vaughn and a number of lightweight actors in the film? I suspect NOT. In those days, many people went to see a film solely on the strength of the POSTER (which is why the two "Carry On"s that for contractual reasons did not originally bear the Carry On prefix still did well) so they HAD to know that many would assume it was an "U.N.C.L.E." movie.Which means that I'm sure many viewers of this film, both on it's original theatrical release and later (if their TV listings mag only featured the basics) were BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED with it.It might have been better if it had turned out to be a serious and GOOD spy thriller - like "The Naked Runner" (athough those waiting for Sinatra to take off his clothes would have been disappointed too) - but it WASN'T. It was, and still is, SLOW, DREARY and BORING!I mean, after I'd realised it wasn't an "U.N.C.L.E." romp, I was happy to judge it on its own merit - but it doesn't HAVE any!Incidentally, I notice that various listings for this piece have it as coming out in 1957 - including THIS august service - whereas it ACTUALLY came out in the GOLDEN year of 1967. I wonder why?