In Like Flint
| In Like Flint | |
|---|---|
 original film poster by Bob Peak |
|
| Directed by | Gordon Douglas |
| Produced by | Saul David |
| Written by | Hal Fimberg |
| Starring | James Coburn Lee J. Cobb Jean Hale Andrew Duggan |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | William H. Daniels, ASC |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) |
|
| Running time | 99 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,775,000[1] |
| Box office | $11,000,000[2] |
In Like Flint (1967) is a film directed by Gordon Douglas, the sequel to the parody spy film Our Man Flint (1966).
It posits an international feminist conspiracy to depose the ruling American patriarchy with a feminist matriarchy. To achieve and establish it, they kidnap and replace the U.S. President, discredit the head of the Z.O.W.I.E. intelligence agency, and commandeer a nuclear-armed space platform, all directed from Fabulous Face, a women's spa in the Virgin Islands. Circumstances compel ex-secret agent Derek Flint to help his ex-boss, and so uncover the conspiracy.
Actors James Coburn and Lee J. Cobb reprise their roles as "Derek Flint" and spy chief "Lloyd C. Cramden", Flint's ex-boss. The ad campaign featured a classic piece of movie poster artwork by Bob Peak.
This film and Caprice with Doris Day were the last films made in CinemaScope, with Fox and other studios moving to Panavision and other widescreen processes. The title is a play on the phrase "in like Flynn."[3]
Contents |
Plot [edit]
After observing the launch of a new space platform, Z.O.W.I.E. Chief Lloyd C. Cramden joins the President of the United States for a game of golf. While on the links they are interrupted by a small group,two women disguised as boys and the actor disguised as an old man from the Fabulous Face organization. Discreetly substituting the presidential golf ball with a small gas bomb they succeed in temporarily immobilizing the presidential party and replacing the president with an actor surgically altered to look exactly like him. The Amazons have conceived a plot to gain control of the world and run it entirely by women. Cramden has stumbled upon a plot to take over the world by a group of likable women led by Elisabeth Anna Lee. The women want to establish a matriarchy, and the first step is to gain control of a US space facility in the Virgin Islands. Elisabeth has established a beauty farm there as a cover. The girls establish their headquarters near the rocket base to brainwash their male-oriented sisters by planting tape recorders in their hair dryers.
Puzzled by a stopwatch that was active during the switch, Cramden visits former agent Derek Flint at his New York City apartment. Derek Flints' three women tell Mister Cremden that Flint is experimenting with creating a dalphin language dictionary. Being intelligent creatures Derek Flint states these undersea mammals use sounds or sonics to communicate. Flint shows Lloyd Cramden a sonic device he has invented attached to his cigarette lighter, first moving and then shattering a white cue ball on the pool table. Cremden asks that he investigate the "lost" three minutes recorded by the stopwatch. Flint agrees to take up the matter after his return from a survival exercise in the Mojave Desert. During Cramden and Flint's meeting, Lisa Norton, an operative of Fabulous Face, is meeting with Flint's three live-in girl friends in the living room of Flint's spacious Manhattan apartment. Lisa Norton tricks the girls into accepting a free visit to the Fabulous Face Spa in the Virgin Islands. That evening Mister Cramden encounters Lisa, the operative for Fabulous Face, at an Italian restaurant. Disguised as a southern schoolteacher visiting the city she drugs him using cigarettes treated with a soporific substance and stages a compromising scene with a prostitute at a hotel; the scene is then photographed and published by General Carter, who is working with Fabulous Face. With Cramden framed as a libertine, the "imposter" President publicly suspends the disgraced spy chief from active duty.
Recalled from his exercise, Derek Flint hypnotizes with his watch lights,Cramden and learns the details of the encounter with Lisa. Tests of trimmings from Cramden's mustache reveal traces of "euphoric acid", a drug when mixed with alcohol leaves the subject mildly sedated and aroused. Investigating further, Flint breaks into Z.O.W.I.E. headquarters and discovers that the two astronauts on the recently-launched space platform are, in fact, Russian female cosmonauts. Flint is interrupted by General Carter and a force of turncoat guards who, after a struggle, believe they have killed Flint when he apparently falls into a document incinerator.
Having escaped, Flint travels to the Soviet Union to investigate the cosmonaut connection. Dancing in the Bolshoi ballet, he makes contact with ballerina Natasha, unaware that she is a Fabulous Face operative until she attempts to drug him with drugged cigarettes. His interrogation of her is interrupted by the KGB, who arrive at her apartment to bring Flint to the Soviet Premier. Flint leads the KGB agents across the roof, tricking one agent to looking over the ledge by making cooing noises then pulling the man to his death. Flint hopping over roof again evades the other agent and manages to propel his grappling hook link shot by the cigarette lighter to another nearby roof and climbs into a lower vent hatch. After escaping the KGB agents, Flint sneaks into the Kremlin, where he overhears the Premier bluffing the U.S. President; conversational clues point Flint to the Fabulous Face spa in the Virgin Islands.
Cramden has also traveled to the Fabulous Face Spa to investigate further but he is captured and imprisoned with the real President. The Fabulous Face staff in anticipation of Flint coming to the spa has imprisoned his girl friend in cryogenic freezing chambers. Flint boards an Aeroflot flight for Cuba disguised as a bearded Cuban Revolutionary. There’s a very amusing scene on a Cuban airliner which has fun with the idea of how an airline would be run in the Caribbean socialist paradise. Distracting the other passengers, he ties up the pilots, parachutes out over the Virgin Islands and swims to the Fabulous Face complex. There he is met by Lisa, who brings him before the Fabulous Face leadership, a group of female business executives who explain their plan to brainwash women through subliminal messages transmitted in salon hairdryers into overthrowing the male-dominated political order. Indeed, when Flint hears that this society of women are intending to rule the world, he bursts out laughing as if to say, what a ridiculous idea! Women in charge of the planet! As Flint attempts to talk the women out of it, he is interrupted by General Carter, who is dissatisfied with his subordinate role and plans to take power himself with the aid of the fake president. After a fight, Flint is captured by Carter's men and placed, along with Cramden, the captive president and the Fabulous Face leadership and lead staff, into cryogenic suspension. Derek Flint escapes his freezing chamber, imprisoned with the lovely Miss Norton, with a sonic wave amplifier device which is disguised as a cigarette lighter and belt buckle. The spy is only too happy to oblige, and soon, with his lady friends away at an exclusive retreat that is in fact the baddies' lair, he is cottoning on to the notion that it might not just be the women who are behind this plot, Our Man Flint decides to join sides with the Amazon women. Determined to stop Carter's plan to atomically arm the space station, Mister Flint, Cramden, the President Trent, and the women of Fabulous Face travel to the nearby island where the launch is scheduled to take place. Once they arrive, the women execute "Operation Smooch", using their beauty and sexual allure to distract, seduce, and subdue the male guards. After the women take over the control room, Carter (who is on board the rocket) threatens to activate the atomic warheads under his control unless he is allowed to proceed with the launch. Flint manages to board the capsule just before it takes off; once in orbit they fight in zero gravity, causing the spacecraft to tumble. After overpowering Carter, Flint escapes the capsule, which is then destroyed with a nuclear missile launched from the surface. Using his wave amplifier, Flint floats to the nearby space platform, where he enjoys the hospitality of the female cosmonauts there while awaiting return to Earth.
Cast [edit]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| James Coburn | Derek Flint |
| Lee J. Cobb | Lloyd Cramden |
| Jean Hale | Lisa |
| Andrew Duggan | U.S. President Trent |
| Anna Lee | Elisabeth |
| Hanna Landy | Helena |
| Totty Ames | Simone |
| Steve Ihnat | General Carter |
| Thomas Hasson | Lieutenant Avery |
| Herb Edelman | Russian Premier |
| Yvonne Craig | Natasha |
| Jennifer Gan | Amazon |
Critical reaction [edit]
In Like Flint received mixed reviews when released in 1967; a New York Times critic said: "Although the film crawls with dime-store beauties, there is a noticeable lack of sexiness in it. Women bent on being tyrants evidently haven't much time for anything else".[4]
Roger Ebert had similar criticisms: "The sexiest thing in the new Derek Flint misadventure, In Like Flint, is Flint's cigarette lighter, which is supposed to know eighty-two tricks, but actually delivers only five, of which, one is the not extraordinary ability to clip Lee J. Cobb's moustache".[5]
Reception [edit]
The film earned $5 million in rentals in North America in 1967.[6]
In popular culture [edit]
In the movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, the main character Austin Powers (while being on honeymoon with his new wife Vanessa Kensington) switches on the TV to a scene from In Like Flint. He mentions to Vanessa that it is his favorite movie.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p255
- ^ "In Like Flint, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
- ^ Quinion, Michael (2000-12-09). "World Wide Words: In like Flynn". Retrieved 4 December 2007.
- ^ "We're Sorry". The New York Times.
- ^ "In Like Flint". Chicago Sun-Times.
- ^ "Big Rental Films of 1967", Variety, 3 January 1968 p 25. Please note these figures refer to rentals accruing to the distributors.
