Fanfare for a Death Scene (1964)

W…T…F…

I suppose the only redemption it has is that it was a made for tv movie in 1964.

The first couple minutes are great but as soon as Bannerman pulls out the trumpet it crashes into the ground.  That and the fact that so much of the movie is shot after shot of cars driving in the day, cars driving at night, planes taking off and planes landing.  The movie is almost an hour and 15 minutes and probably 30 minutes could have easily been shaved off.  Also – 2 years after Dr. No and they take it back to the worst of Spione.

Yay, tv stars in a resume builder.  What a piece.

Don’t watch it, it was terrible.  Stryker’s incompetence was legendary, at one point the crazy doctor was staying in the room next door?  And the whole proto-Mandarin (Iron Man) subplot was agonizing.  At one point the doctor walks by the police who are distracted by the woman in the black dress (shout-out to Matt Doran).  Stryker is supposedly such a big shot he can blow off phone calls from most of the US military and they beg him to come back with his failed Bondian and gadgets.  Keep in mind, he doesn’t actually succeed, even by the end of the movie.  He’s obsessed with a Khan who doesn’t actually have the professor and wastes almost all of his time and the search resources to get a meet and greet that accomplishes nothing.  That’s right, Stryker pursues his ridiculous schemes that don’t work.  That’s why Bond is popular, the stupid shit he does works.  We judge him more leniently because he actually saves the day or gets his man or saves the secret.  Pull the same stupid crap and worse only to fail?

The shot with Bannerman’s estranged wife in the bath tube was so shockingly out of place in the innuendo heavy conversation with the faux wife that I thought it was a mistake or some kind of kinky perversion of the couple in question.

I’m not sure I’d want to bequeath the “worst spy movie ever” award yet but this one is definitely a nomination at the very least.

–Kryptosfan