1966: Murderers’ Row fascination with dots in main title

It’s nothing significant but it seems too much just to be coincidence.

Some time back, we linked to the main titles of The Silencers, the first Matt Helm movie produced by Irving Allen, the ex-parter of Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli. Allen utilized women doing strip tease dances (plus Cyd Charisse lipsynching to Vicki Carr’s vocals) for the main titles.

For his followup effort, Allen went a bit more conservative, animated women in fur coats and go-go boots prancing to a Lalo Schifrin instrumental. The titles also had a bullseye motif, which meant lots of dots.

At the 1:00 mark, one of the dots starts moving an awfully lot like the dots at the start of a 007 gunbarrel sequence that started Broccoli’s Bond movies. In the case of Allen’s Murderers’ Row, the dot pulls up short for the credit of Sam Leavitt, the director of photography.

As the main titles conclude, a dot opens up with a shot of Washington, similar to the way Eon’s gunbarrel dot would reveal (starting with Thunderball) the opening shot.

As we said, nothing startling but take a look for yourself: