ONE SPY TOO MANY (1966)
Feature version of two episodes of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
Article 3834 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-2-2012
Posting Date: 2-12-2012
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Featuring Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Rip Torn
Country: USA
What it is: Spy thrills, TV style

A latter-day Alexander the Great has a plan to take over the world while breaking the ten commandments. Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin are sent on a mission to defeat him.

Here’s another theatrical version of two episodes of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” grafted together, in this case, the two part story “The Alexander the Greater Affair”. The title, like ONE OF OUR SPIES IS MISSING, has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It starts out with a Gizmo Maguffin in the form of a special gas devised by the military designed to make enemies docile, but once the gas is stolen, it ceases to play any active part in the plot other than to be occasionally mentioned; this is pretty poor use of a Maguffin, if you ask me. Overall, this seems to be one of the weaker of these movies; it’s a lot heavier on the comedy, which often feels stale and forced, and the pacing is a bit too turgid for the action sequences to keep things interesting. Even a potentially interesting scene in an Egyptian architectural dig falls flat. There’s a few fantastic touches here and there, including a sequence where a mad scientist tries to turn Ilya Kuryakin into a mummy, but I really suspect that this worked a lot better as two episodes of a TV series than it does here.