Alright, here we go, quiet! Hello and welcome to the Big Picture Podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of yesterday, and today, and try to make it all make some sort of sense. I'm your host, editor-in-chief of Film Buff Online, Rich Dries. Across the microphone for me would normally be my co-host, Film Buff Online contributing editor Natasha Bogutsky.
However, we're both kind of really crazy busy right now with some other things, as we sometimes do, and that's why we take some short hiatus's here on the podcast. However, we got an opportunity to do an interview with an author, and I wanted to, you know, make that happen because, A, I know that the author, and B, I read his new book and I really enjoyed it, and I think it's something that our audience would be very interested in. So, this is kind of like a special mid hiatus bonus episode for everybody here. It's an interview I just did a couple days ago with writer Tom Shabula, who also lives in Our Corner of Pennsylvania, and on the occasion of the publishing of his second book, Entite with James Bond and the 60 Spy craze.
I'm sure you all know that in the 1960s, after the James Bond movies were gigantic at the box office and seeped into the public consciousness in a way that nothing really had before. Everybody else wanted a piece of that financial pie, so there was a lot of knock-offs, imitators, parodies, satires, et cetera, et cetera. Everything from like TV series like A Man from Uncle or The Comedy Gets Smart to a couple of movie series with like Dean Martin, this Matt Helm series, and a couple of other things. And Shabula takes all of that and kind of charts that whole history out through the 60s and into the 70s, and he just doesn't do it with American films.
He doesn't worldwide because there's some countries, their film industry just loves to make knock-offs of stuff. So he really dug deep. I mean, this is a topic I've always been interested in to begin with, and he dug deeper than I've even seen for some really hidden gems, or at least hidden films from like South America and things like that that I had not even heard of. And it's a great book, it's a great overview of the whole thing.
And just a couple of days ago, we sat down in a coffee shop and had a great conversation. So here it is, and please enjoy. I'm here with author Thomas Shabula at a secret clandestine location, a coffee shop. And we're not very clandestine because we've got my phone sitting here in the coffee shop.
True. And we're here to talk about his brand new book, James Bond and the 60s Spycraze. Yes. First of all, welcome.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you about this. Yeah, you know, and I'm always really excited to talk about it, and really any of my projects.
I just, anything that I write about are projects that I care a lot about and obsess over, and I'm sure you're the same way. Oh, God, yes. So over the past two years, I have been obsessing over just that over James Bond, and the subsequent knockoffs and spoofs and adjacent films that came in the 1960s. Well, how did you come to this obsession to write about it?
I've always loved James Bond and Spymovies and the 60s movies. My first book was entitled Prime Time 1966, 67. It was about the first season every show was in color. And I kind of came about it two ways.
Number one, the original plan was Beatles Bond and Batman. That's always been kind of a core obsession of mine is that in the late 1960s, there were the Beatles, James Bond and Batman. And then everything that spawned off of those three things. And then two summers ago, I was on vacation, actually, and I was reading a spy novel written by my friend Gary.
And it was kind of a period piece. And I started reading it, and then I started thinking about James Bond films. I started thinking about spy films, and I just started writing. And again, much like my first book, I didn't know what it was going to be.
I didn't know it would turn into a book, but I knew I had something. As a Bond fan already, was the research period not as long as maybe you think it would be? Well, I knew where to look, and one thing that I like to do in my books is not necessarily give you information that you would have gotten in 2024, 2023 or whenever I wrote a book. I wanted to look at from the time, so almost looking at it from a historical perspective.
If you were reading the newspaper in 1963, this is the information that you would have about the book. I tried to keep kind of a modern perspective and a modern look at things as far away from it as possible, if that makes sense. Okay. I got the book over the weekend, but I was a film festival all weekend with my own things, and so I hadn't had a chance really to dig too deep into it.
But one thing I noted, you cover a lot of ground in terms of some of the other main franchises that were born out of this, like Matt Helm or Harry Palmer, and of course, but you also kind of dig deep into some of the weirder European and South American, not American. The one criteria that I had, it had to have played on television or in a theater in the 1960s, Fort DePaul fight. The Euro Spy genre was vast, and I think I'd still be writing the book if I included every Euro Spy book, and there's a book about Euro Spy that's pretty comprehensive, and not all of them are James Bond, adjacent necessarily, not all of them are a true knockoff of James Bond. They just happened to be a spy film, whereas most things in America were direct, and that's the one other thing that I always tried, is that it had to have some James Bond adjacent.
So, whether the comparison was made, they were trying to do something similar to James Bond, or in the case of a lot of them, push the boundary with James Bond, because I think a lot of those spoofs and a lot of those knockoffs gave their characters more outlandish plots, more outlandish gadgets, which almost pushed Bond into that, making him like a, quote unquote, Super Spy. Okay, now I'm a child of the 70s and 80s, so I've seen, lived through the whole Star Wars repositioning of the zeitgeist, and then everybody chasing after Star Wars. Yeah. Well, they did that with James Bond with Moonraker.
Well, I mean, there's a thing about the 60s where the Bond films, the standard that everybody changed, and then it seemed like in the 70s, Bond was chasing things like Star Wars with Moonraker, or Dirty Harry, he chased Black's Waitation films, yeah, Black's Waitation films with Livin' My Dies, and what I was trying to pull up, and so what was it about the Bond films? That everybody, besides, okay, maybe it was just the dollars, but what was it about the Bond films where everybody says, we need us one of them? Well, they were really the first, I guess, in modern sense, action film. Very few films before that really had that much action where it was like, you know, these chase scenes, elaborate chase scenes, car crashes, explosions, things like that, you know, even if you look into, you know, like a film, the War film, yeah, there'd be maybe a foot chase here and there, but it was never elaborate.
We're Bond kind of brought in that kind of elaborate chase, elaborate action that certainly set the standard for it, and there was a fair amount of sex as well, so sex and violence, there we go. Yeah. Sex and violence, certainly, not necessarily at the same time, but sometimes, but, yeah, so that certainly set the standard where, you know, you have sex, you have violence, previous to 1962, you know, you didn't really have it, it was more implied, well, you had a loosening and pretty much a dissolving of the production, right at that time, too, I'm sure that had to have played a part of it. Right, and certainly, and the fact that they were British made, you know, that that certainly, you know, they kind of had a different standard of rating, and I'm sure we could do a whole podcast on that, but yeah, no, by 62 in America there certainly was a loosening of the production code, and by 69 it was completely abandoned.
I have a really great story in the book talking about Salt and Pepper, which is the Sammy Dave's Jr. and Peter Laufer spice move, and that was one of the first movies to get, like, a rating, and I think it had the R rating, and there was a conversation, like, well, what happens if somebody from under 18 goes to buy a ticket, what do we do, you know, it was never, it was a legally enforceable right, yeah, it's just a guideline, right. And also, too, I think it's interesting because this is like the first real, like, big franchise, I mean, you had series pictures before under the studio system, like, anything from, like, Andy Hardy to the Thin Man, what was my old time favorite, the St. Falcon, Maisie, all those, but you never had something like Bond before.
Right, yeah, I know, and there's a reason why, I mean, Bond and Godzilla, I mean, are the two real continuous franchises to the current day, and yeah, I think those early ones were under the studio system, and none of those really ever translated to modern audiences, as much as I love the Thin Man, you know, it's hard to, you know, modern audiences, like, moonlight waiting, or Remington Steel maybe, but even that, I'm talking 40 years old now, which makes me want to crumble a little pile of dust and blow away the wind. We're close to that. I know. So yeah, so basically you're saying then that, you know, the Bond movies were popular, the knockoffs tried to outdo Bond, and then Bond had to outdo his own imitates, and that's what kind of pushed it.
Would you say that's ultimately why there's such a remarkable difference between, like, the main core Connery films, and I would lump in, um, dumplings and be, uh, on Her Majesty Secret Service, and the majority of the tone of the Roger Moore films, and I would kind of push Diamonds are forever more towards that, because it definitely felt like a Roger Moore film before they put Roger Moore in. Right. Yeah, they probably should have desired Roger Moore at that point. I think it was being held back with, um, other persuaders, but to take on Diamonds are forever, but, uh, yeah, no, that's absolutely what happened.
It was, it, it was trying to chase something else. It was chasing its imitators, and then it was chasing other popular films that outdid James Bond. Yes, if that makes sense. I almost would argue that, uh, in the 80s, when they started to have some legal issues and there were long gaps between films, uh, people were having fights in court and everything, it was probably for the best, because you get a, a soft reset with, um, Timothy Dalton, uh, a bit of a reset with Pierce Brosnan, and then of course Daniel Craig is hard to see.
Yeah. Let's do over. Pierce, the Pierce Brosnan ones, there was, uh, seemingly at the beginning of GoldenEye, there was, uh, at least, yeah, a feel of a reset, I guess. And every, I always, I always love every, every new James Bond film that we're getting back to basics, let's always listen, I'm always like, well, what is basics?
Like, you know, it's always, and then it gets out of control. You had, with GoldenEye, you had very few gadgets, I think the, um, the wristwatch with the laser, that was kind of the biggest. And then by a later one, it was an invisible car, nine other day, and I was like, no offense to Mr. Brosnan, but that might've been one Bond film too many for me, because it was not, and when they announced we're getting back to basics with a new guy, I was like, oh good.
And then they did Casino Royale, which really felt like one of the old school, you know, novels, they didn't really deviate too much from that, which was nice. Um, but let's get back to the 90s, you know, let's take a look first at the, um, the, the main imitators, pretenders, uh, to the throne of Bond, um, the Mad Helm series, Harry Palmer, and in like Flint, which was your favorite? Who, uh, I really like the Mad Helm films with the Martin, I think they're pretty cool, and they're really tongue-in-cheek, um, they don't really take themselves too seriously. Uh, it's Pique D.
Martin as well, just kind of being a drinking womanizer, Dean Martin. And he just happens to be a spy as well, which is, I mean, if you're looking to play off of that womanizing aspect of Bond, the drinking aspect of Bond, I could say we're Dean Martin. He drinks up to ten, uh, yeah, and certainly, and had, uh, I think cranked up kind of the Bond girl thing to ten by having that, um, yeah, I definitely have to go, uh, go Dean Martin with those. I don't really have a particular reason, other than I think it's, they really did a good job of spoofing.
And it was based on a series of books themselves. Yes. Yeah. So we're actually pretty good sellers.
It's pretty, uh, because they sold very well, as well as, you know, James Bond film, as along with James Bond books. Yeah. I like the flint films. It's a low status of entry.
If you're looking to watch all of them, because there's only two, yeah, whereas what, there's four Harry Palmer films and five now. Yeah. Okay. It was supposed to be six, but apparently Dean Martin didn't show up.
Whoops. I kind of cancelled it. Yeah, that's fair. Um, by that point, again, and I think, and it's really funny that all of these films, aside from James Bond, I mean, everything really fell apart by 1970, you know, it was in this book, I tried really hard to stick and stick within the 1960s, and that was kind of my, my goal.
And it, I thought, I should say, I thought it was going to be difficult, and it wasn't. Everything fell apart late 1969, 1970. Well, it's, it's interesting because, you know, from like, I would say, 67 through into 70, 71, 72, great social upheaval going on. And very quickly, a lot of that stuff probably became passe in the culture, you know, with the hippie movement, disillusionment of Vietnam, starting women's rights, movement and stuff like that.
Uh, would you say, how does Bond survive through that where so many of these other, uh, franchises kind of went? Bond reinfected himself a little bit. And Bond just became iconic where the others were imitators, you know, it was, uh, again, um, you know, even, you know, a horror film franchise, you know, sometimes there's like an original that kind of sticks around, and then there's the imitators, they don't really stick around too much, and they knew what they had, and they knew they were able to, um, some people knew when to go away, and then Bond, you know, we, we still have something here. And, you know, and that's one of the reasons why, uh, George Lazenby, uh, left, you know, because he was kind of figured, well, people aren't, people aren't going to be interested in James Bond anymore.
This is maybe a bygone era. This may be a, uh, by 1970, you know, the world changed again, you know, and, uh, maybe, maybe people would be interested in James Bond, and he even had a quote, something like, I'm about peace now or something like that. Which is, I mean, on a certain level, I think it's a shame because I think he does a really great job in the film, and I think to quote them themselves, it's kind of a bit of a back to basic spawn. You don't have as many, um, gadgets and things like that in, on her Majesty Secret Service.
Uh, it has a character arc, has a very poignant ending, uh, which does get referenced, uh, you know, in, in future films, obliquely, mostly, but, you know, I always wondered, I was like, man, if he had stuck, if he had stuck with that franchise, where would it have gone, or would it have, um, you know, would have moved in like a more, maybe a more dramatic, or dramatic death? Yeah, yeah, that's what's possible. More dramatic, uh, direction, maybe, maybe it would have sizzled out too. Who knows?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, it may have been good that they, there was three bonds in three movies. Yeah.
True. But, um, I think that also demonstrated the, uh, the flexibility of the franchise. Sure. Yeah.
And it definitely was, there was a lot of flexibility. Again, though, even in, in the 1960s, I, I always think like the throughout, especially those early bonds, the world changed a lot, you know, from 62 to 65, the world was a much different place. You know, you had, you know, the assassination of President Kennedy, you had, you know, escalation of Vietnam, you had a lot of social upheaval where bond, originally kind of working for like a Western government was okay, and then all of a sudden, you know, bond was kind of a square, I guess, on the surface. Yeah.
I mean, you start, you know, very much in the depths of the Cold War, and, you know, even by the mid 70s, when I start to have, you know, memories of like first grade, second grade and stuff like that, a Cold War didn't seem like as big a deal, you weren't doing a lot of duck and cover drills anymore and stuff like that. So, um, you know, I can see where that initial mission of bond, if you will, you know, to protect the, and that's something I interviewed John Gardner, one of the bond novel extension writers, uh, years ago. And I said, you know, how do you keep on relevant? He's like, whatever it is, that is a threat to the British Empire.
And so you can talk about, you know, okay, uh, a giant drug cartel needs to be taken out by bond because they're flooding the streets of London with heroin or whatever, or you have to make, make a little magical guy in a spaceship with, uh, poison gas that he's going to flood the earth with so he can restart humanity. Uh, and then even, uh, you know, the, uh, uh, oh gosh, the world is not enough, uh, the newspaper magnet. Yes. The media magnet, um, very thinly disguised version of, um, not Murdoch, but, uh, it was a murder guy who owned, uh, the star and then, right, drowned when he fell overboard.
Right. I forgot about his yacht. Yeah. I can't remember his name either.
Uh, so so much for all that money. Don't remember your name. So, uh, let's go back though. I was not familiar with any of the Latin America bonds, uh, you know, you know, knock off stuff.
Right. It came as no surprise to me that, of course, you know, like Santo the wrestler had one. So, so Santo, uh, one of my favorite things to talk about, uh, Santo, if for those of you who don't know, uh, it was a Mexican wrestler, mask, mask, mask, Mexican wrestler, uh, he had his own line of comic books in Mexico, lasted a very long time. Uh, he was Mexico's resident monster hunter in the films fought, uh, every conceivable classic monster across the board.
I have a disc of him as Santo versus the blob, but it's, it's not a big red jelly like monster, which was a little bit of a surprise, but okay, it's a lot of people in a rubber thing. Yes. Uh, so Santo, yeah, he fought the blob Dracula Wolfman Frankenstein, which is zombies, Martians, you name it. He fought it.
Um, anyway, 1966 turned in his, uh, monster hunting, uh, hat for his spy hat, became a, a spy in a film, Operation 67. Um, and thankfully I desperately wanted to write about a Santo movie. And again, I had that criteria of it had to play in America in a theater. And I found that it played in a drive-in in El Paso, I believe, and a great, okay, wonderful.
So, so we got included in the book. However, his acting partner, uh, the Blue Demon was in two, um, spy films, uh, and, uh, that did not make the cut, unfortunate, uh, Blue Demon destructor of spies and, uh, passport to death, which was the, the sequel. So he was in some cool retro 1960s spy films as well. Uh, there was also another guy, uh, uh, in the, uh, that's included in the book, uh, Alex Dynamo.
Pretty explicitly, every individual I find is, no, this is the Latin American damn spot. They are saying, no, no, no, we're not, we're not going, he's our own guy now. Like, Alex Dynamo is our guy. Mm hmm.
So how effective of a spy can you be with a Lucio Nordemus guy? That's what I'm saying right now. He really seemed to, again, uh, Blue Demon, El Santo, uh, two guys, two masks, wrestlers, uh, that never took their masks off, but never, uh, uh, not even to go undercover. And again, and, and a secret identity is only good when you're another guy.
Batman becomes Bruce Wayne. Superman becomes Clark Kent. They're another guy. El Santo was always El Santo, whether he was, so it would be like Batman just wearing the outfit all the time, like going to Wayne Enterprise board meetings in his Batman outfit.
There's a reason why he wears the mask. Okay. Um, yeah, let's hop across the Atlantic then to, um, Europe, because I've seen, you know, obviously the British were doing their own James Bond riffs. I know later on the French were doing something which reduced the OSS series, but that came after the 60s.
Yeah. They were not included in the book. Uh, so it was some Italian films, a lot of European co-productions, a lot of them you run across. It was, you've kind of this Italian, West German, Spanish, French conglomerate of, of films.
Um, so yeah, certainly Italian, uh, and I think one of the best being, uh, secret agent, super dragon. Okay. Uh, again, I, I think it's one of those films that really did push the boundary of where James Bond, you know, kind of, they made him go above and beyond with what he was already doing. Um, one that I've seen even outside of it being on Mr.
Sensory 3000 is, um, Operation Kid Brother, yes, with Sean Connery's younger brother, uh, Neil, who is not an actor, he was a house painter and, uh, somehow they convinced him to make his own film and, uh, yeah, Operation Kid Brother were, uh, also an okay Connery, uh, which, which is amazing to me is they got Adolph Ocelli from Goldfinger, Miss Money Penny, Miss Money Penny, Lois Maxwell, and, uh, Bernard, Bernard Hugh, yeah, and I was surprised that Lois Maxwell and Bernard Hugh were allowed back into the main franchise after, after doing, uh, doing such a knock-off like that. Yeah, Adolph had to have been some recognizes. I, uh, there had to have been, again, at the time, I found article after article stating that Sean Connery was mad at his brother over this, but I couldn't find anything concrete. I could never find an interview with Sean Connery where he directly talked about it saying, yeah, I was upset.
Um, the only thing that we really had, I think Neil Connery kind of said, no, no, Sean's okay. Don't worry about Sean. Don't worry about Sean. I know if my brother's mad at me.
I'm not telling everybody either, but, you know, so I, I'm going to take that with the greatest salt. Yeah. But that takes some balls to do. And it was, and it was a direct knock-off because they even specifically mentioned Double Seven.
You know, they specifically mentioned that he's James Bond's brother. Yeah. I think it may say Double Seven. I don't think James Bond specifically, but, uh, there is a movie, there's a British movie.
It's called The Second Best Secret Agent in the World. And that movie, James Bond does the character James Bond, specifically mentioning James Bond dies in the first part of the scene. So they, the first part of the movie, um, so they get the second best secret agent in the world to take his place on the mission in Avengers now. It's crazy that they would skate that close or, uh, right over the borderline, really.
Especially in, in a English film, you know, it's kind of Italian films are kind of, uh, notorious for that. You know, there's, there's a million Terminator knock-offs and, uh, Alien knock-offs in Italy and, and things like that. I've seen some Italian science fiction films where they just lifted wholesale, like, video, uh, visual effects shots from Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica, stuff like that. Yeah.
So, uh, yeah, Italy, I see. England, I would think it was a little bit, you know, in, in a country that respects copyright laws. Yeah. Yeah.
It's crazy. Um, one other thing I kind of, uh, thought about too while I was going through the book and it just kind of reinforced something in my mind was the leap to comedy versions of the James Bond film. It seemed really fast. Usually it feels like something becomes the craze.
It lasts several years. And then the parodies become the tail end of that craze. Like, what was the distance and time between, uh, Star Wars and space balls, like 12 years or something like that? This was like 12 months.
It feels like, you know, and something Marty Allen is out there with, uh, the last of the secret agents. 1966 was seemingly the peak era of everything. That's when, and that was the high tide of the spy craze and the high tide of 66, 67. Again, and that, that seems to be my wheelhouse.
That's my strike zone. That's where everything kind of hit. It was television. It was spoofs.
It was knockoffs. Uh, a ton came out in 1966. So I don't know. Everybody was just fighting for a piece of the pie on this one.
I don't know. You know, and sometimes I wonder too if, um, because this is something I'm fascinated by in like the late sixties, early seventies when a lot of old guard, uh, entertainers were looking at the new younger generation and not getting it at all or trying to still be relevant. So you'll have like Jack Benny show up on his, um, on his show wearing like a sergeant pepper jacket or a neighbor jacket or something. And I sometimes, and for the bond franchise itself made fun of, uh, the Beatles, you know, like, and then finally it was, uh, oh, it's like, uh, it's like, uh, it's like listening to the Beatles without ear muffs.
Yes. Uh, and then four, four films later, Paul McCartney's doing your things on the scene. Yeah, yeah. You're right.
I never thought of that. Even, even in Batman Batman TV show, the last season of Batman, I always thought that these old actors, you know, they, they flooded the show with these old actors like Ethel moment, you know, uh, uh, uncle number one, uh, shot at board. You know, people that were like, you know, just trying to stay relevant and that's why that last season was awful. It was, you know, I put up feeling to a younger crowd.
It was like, I don't know, let's appeal to people like an older generation in sixties. So I'm thinking back even to like auto, auto-preminger, how preimager like Mr. Mr. Freeze on that hand and then he directed skidoo which is I think what the pinnacle of old Hollywood trying to be relevant and hip and just completely missing the mark.
Yeah that's exactly what that film is is old Hollywood just desperately clinging to some culture counter-culture film and just falling apart and crazily enough that that Harry Nilsen documentary that came out a couple years ago had a clip from Nilsen being on Playboy After Dark again yeah early 60s trying to still remain relevant. Preminger was on there promoting skidoo because if you look in the background of these shots you can see him in like the neighbor jacket and it's just like oof the neighbor jacket was the the absolute I'm trying to stay relevant look in 1967 yeah for about four months and then no everybody moved on but yeah it's always interesting to watch that struggle there and the Bond franchise I think got through most of that relatively smoothly. Yes yeah they they especially in the 1960s were not desperately trying to cling to relevance they did not have Sean Connery in hippie beads and a frilly shirt shirt piece necklace and he brought his hair he was still appropriately square and not to say that James Bond isn't cool but I mean the tuxedo was a tuxedo you know and it has a certain cache I guess you fashion cache across anything I don't know yeah absolutely yeah James James Bond did again yeah did not try to radically change his look throughout the 1960s to stay hip or young although in you know the twice he did try to become Japanese that's a story for another point yes very much so yikes that's a fun movie yeah you know you've got to make it a volcano there that's you know a little bond I think did it for no reason by the way there's no real rhyme I've watched I love that movie and I'm like why did they do this so we could be going to cover in that fishing village for about four seconds it's like I mean and somewhere I'm sure Mickey Rooney is just sitting there going and you yelled at me so what was the hardest film to track down that you knew you wanted to include there was a couple films that I certainly had to send away for the DVD kind of a gray market convention in DVDs spy in your eye operation Thunderbolt and oh there's a Swedish film strike first Freddie I think it's called okay and those three I remember specifically I'm okay went through the usual sources I say okay can I scream it no can I buy the DVD no is it on YouTube no okay all right so I had to find you know kind of a third third run of again convention DVR type stuff thing yeah I'm sure the copyright is in some weird legal limbo in Bulgaria dare say I have a few of those titles myself at home yes was there anything you couldn't find or did you make it a point to watch everything you were talking about a couple of titles I made a point to watch everything and I did find I mean if it played in the United States I mean you could find it you know I think that there was some that I I couldn't necessarily find the entire entire film but for the most part I got the gist of the film that's fair if you were going to recommend just a couple of the deeper cut to one it's not just not like Matt Holmes or anything like that but say you know operation kid brother or something like that which would be the ones that you would say oh you know what this was a low-budget knockoff but it was actually really well worth my time so certainly the one that I mentioned of secret agent Super Dragon I love that film and it was a Mr. Science Theater as well I think I just thought of Mr.
Science Theater but definitely a cool film just to watch on its own I think another cool one again something I mentioned a spy in your eye really cool really cool film you know electronic eye was placed in somebody's head and so the bad guys could spy everybody yeah it's really cool film oh that man Rio which was really early on to the spy genre and very serious apparently Steven Spielberg really loved the film referenced it for Indiana Jones and things like that okay certainly that try to think there was a bunch I don't know I do like I do like I watched for a podcast where you watch a film and talk about it last of the secret agents and the podcast host hated me for making him watch last of the secret agents of Marty Allen so and Margaret's and that was right before you know she did she did her own and I would recommend you know any of the shows secret agent man the prisoner ventures things like that man from uncle girl from uncle all first television universe yes I got smart I was gonna say I'd seen last of the secret agents years ago when Turner Classic's ran it and I'm sorry once was enough once was good I like I'd knock this off I but I've always had like at least a mild interest in like films that have spun off of the Bond franchise so yes seen fathom and you know the Flynn movies the Harry Palmer films madhomes stuff like that and I found it weird that even other franchises would kind of hop on that bandwagon as well I'm thinking specifically on this something I mentioned to you before a couple weeks ago we're at the that movie screening for Kevin Kerry on spying oh right Kerry on series of British comedies yes so yeah though that was that was a tough one as well I think yeah Kerry on films you know they must have bet you know and I love I like British humor some things maybe with that maybe it's just a little too British for me I don't know I don't know I just don't get him Kerry on screaming was okay I'm not really that well versed in the Kerry on franchise so maybe there's something I missed the Kerry on spying was actually my first Kerry on film so that didn't really endear me much franchise I'll admit but you know since then people said go back and see some of the early ones like Kerry on Sergeant the one that sent the Navy and yeah there are a lot of wink wink nudge nudge say no more suave you know after I started to get familiar with like some of them because it's very you know kind of like vaudeville bodiness and I had to think that that's what they were doing in Python was just taking the piss out of Kerry on film yeah it was not a good introduction but I think we're talking about there's there was a I think the last one the last Kerry on was Kerry on Emmanuel which was lovely Emmanuel kind of softcore porno films yes which I can imagine that being very good no and then they tried to relaunch it like the early 80s with Kerry on Columbus and I only saw that as a doctor who fan because John purk we was okay for about four seconds I never saw they had some other British comics in there the only other one I can remember was Dennis Cleary I think his name is who you know was on the original whose line is it anyways but anyways we're once again we're wondering for a field here I don't know what to say on track here I'm neither am I so do you think that any of the bond knockoffs could ever be successfully revived or they just too much of a too much of a too much of a 60s product and you know even sometimes you get a movie where they revive it and people like well that's a that's a title that's a choice like okay why you know and then it's again it's just revised because it's a name like and I saw recently that there was a there's a movie I think it's starting somebody from Stranger Things and somebody from Euphoria but it's Faces of Death what yes that's a feature film based on a fake documentary the from the 80s correct so and I'm going well what's that and then I said well it's a title and they probably won't even they'll probably be a loose reference to a VHS tape they'll maybe set in the 80s other than that I don't think they're gonna be eating monkey brains in it no I don't think so again sometimes something is made because it's a title mm-hmm and I don't know if any of those other films are a title maybe in like Flint that could be something that's like somewhat recognizable I think in like the early 80s they tried to revive it Harlan Ellison was involved with it somehow he's in the recall yeah but and a bad helm they tried to recreate for television in the 70s that didn't really work and again at even at that point those were still in kind of recent memory if you were an adult you know maybe you remember it as a child you remember the name or you know you saw it as a younger adult whereas you know now we're so far removed I just I can't imagine a title where somebody would say oh that's a thing I mean they did it with a man for Uncle Avengers Avengers you can't do now because everybody's a Marvel gets smart it's been done so TV being done again yeah so TV maybe maybe like a secret agent man or danger man or something like that again it's a title but and any similarities to this 1960 film or television may be purely coincidental I know a few times when they've tried to do a Avengers as a comic book you know in the last 20 years I it's always been Steed and Mrs. Peel mm-hmm not the Avengers obviously but even then it felt like this is an astalgia piece for fans of the old series and it never really felt like it needed to be brought into the present yeah very few things do yeah again and sometimes it's it's it's you look at it you go okay that's that's a title that I know and that's that's about it so what is next you said you were all about Batman Bond in the Beatles is the next book the rock and roll movie so okay my only problem is so my agent tells me that that that books about a singular subject sell more now okay so I need to find a an exact film to talk about or a so biography or entire film and maybe we'll build around that I don't know I've been kicking around some ideas I don't I'm sorry I don't have it I don't have a problem okay all right all right man well thank you so much for your time it's a great great discussion I hope you enjoy yourself all right thank you again Tom thank you okay that was our conversation with Tom Shabula the author of James Bond and the 60s spy craze this book is available wherever you go I've been a couple places and have seen it at me like your Barnes and Nobles or everything it's from applause books who is a great publisher of books on film and television and theater history I have in my reference libraries I jokingly call my spare bedroom that's just full of bookshelves with books I have a number of books from that publisher and they're always worth a read and Tom's book especially is it's a wonderful wonderful book and highly recommended it here from us at the big picture podcast now we're gonna be back like I said at the top of the show this was just a mid season hiatus mid hiatus kind of bonus episode that we were dropping we will be back hopefully let's see probably not gonna be until the end of June though simply because we're both taking some vacation time we both have a couple of projects that we need to finish off because of deadlines and by the time we'll be able to get back to you all it's probably gonna be about mid mid June mid it's gonna be before July 4th I promise you that so hopefully you guys can hang out talks amongst yourselves and we'll be back in about two months and we thank you for your patience there and we'll see you then until then once again like thank Tom Shabola for a wonderful chat I'd like to thank the coffee house that let us set up in a corner with some microphones and didn't kick us out even though we sat there for almost an hour and I was like thank you we'll be back next time but until then remember you can find us at all your favorite pod catchers and please leave a review if you like what you're hearing because that always helps us connect with new listeners and we'll catch you next time on the big picture podcast