Popular culture time right here on the weblog.
I’ve a sure, barely embarrassing fondness for James Coburn’s Flint movies. Not precisely good, however full of excellent stuff, touchdown someplace between the heights of Coburn’s The President’s Analyst and the depths of Dean Martin’s Matt Helm movies. (Together with the Cisco Child, the Matt Helm movies have the excellence of being about as far in tone from their supply materials as you’re more likely to discover. The unique Donald Hamilton novels — as archetypical of the Gold Medal line as John D. MacDonald’s — are among the darkest books you’ll discover within the spy-fi catalog, portray a far bleaker image than, for instance, the The Ipcress File.)
As movies, the primary installment, Our Man Flint, is the higher of the 2. The second, In Like Flint (a slightly daring allusion to a scandalous incident involving Errol Flynn), was a troubled manufacturing saddled with a satiric tackle ladies’s lib that has aged like room-temperature milk. Nonetheless, it had some glorious set items. Rumor has it that among the motion sequences have been directed by the stunt coordinator, which tends to work out nicely.
One of many great issues about each films is the scores by Jerry Goldsmith. Our Man Flint options some very early work from the younger nephew of the studio’s music director, a child named Randy Newman. In Like Flint, by comparability, options the music “Zowie Face,” with very good music by Goldsmith and completely painful lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. That one misstep apart, it might be my favourite of the 2 soundtracks.
Each scores handle to perform brilliantly on two ranges, concurrently serving as first-rate spy film music whereas additionally performing as intelligent parodies of the style—propulsive, creative, and memorable when performed straight, witty, self-referential, and genuinely humorous when winking on the joke.
I can’t consider one other movie composer who may pull this off, and I by no means get bored with listening to him do it.
