1966: Time reviews the other spies

By early 1966, there were several movies hoping to get a piece of the spy action started by Bondomania. So Time magazine did a review summarizing what was in theaters at the time, including the film debut of Matt Helm and movie versions of episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. with Robert Vaughn and David McCallum.
First, the magazine gave its view of the genre as a whole:

Movie moguls have long sought the perfect pop-art hero, the infallible magnetic moneymaker with equal pull for kids under twelve and adolescents up to and beyond retirement age. Tarzan, a perennial favorite, still takes to the trees occasionally to fight for right, but with obsolete weapons. The Wild West gunfighter endures, though an hombre who traditionally hates kissin’ and gets his kicks by digging spurs into horseflesh seems equally ill-adapted to the times. The exquisitely contemporary hero is girl-happy, gadget-minded James Bond, whose legend has already tempted a host of imitators to bland larceny. Now five new spy spoofs reverently ape Bond, with more a-making to catch the rich financial fallout from Goldfinger and Thunderball.
The magzine then got down to cases. First off, it examined Matt Helm.
The biggest, noisiest and naughtiest contender in the new spystakes is The Silencers, with Crooner Dean Martin playing Matt Helm, a secret agent for ICE (Intelligence Counter Espionage)….The striptease fun, with Cyd Charisse as team captain, begins during the opening credits, then gets right down to business in Martin’s circular bed, which turns, travels, tilts, finally plunges him naked into a swimming pool with a naiad identified as Lovey Kravezit….Innuendo roars through Silencers, with nothing omitted save scrawling feelthy pictures on the screen. Now and then, Martin sleepily warbles a song parody, his way of adding sauce to all the gleeful violence, drunken driving and self-conscious smut.

As Jack Benny used to say, “Wellllllll….” Next up, a look at U.N.C.L.E.’s screen debut (kind of) in the double feature which added footage to two television episodes (plus alternative versions of some scenes intended for the screen rather than TV audiences).

Intelligence men’s intrigues wash cleaner in To Trap a Spy and The Spy with My Face. Originally designed for home use, these television retreads are expanded versions of two episodes from MGM’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series (the seams still show).

Time didn’t seem all that impressed with the others.

The man least likely to threaten Bond’s supremacy is That Man in Istanbul, with Horst Bucholz battling a one-armed villain atop a minaret and performing other improbable feats to rescue a kidnaped scientist. …Another elusive scientist is the excuse given for The 2nd Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, the most flagrantly imitative spoof of the lot. Its second-best agent is played with studied respect by one Tom Adams, who vaguely resembles Sean Connery.

The magzine also said this era of spy movies couldn’t last.
A craze occurs when an acquired taste unaccountably becomes an addiction. Without ever believing in it, audiences find the spoofery easy to swallow. But mock espionage may be hard put to survive a throng of second-string undercover men who seem badly in need of vocational guidance.

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