Cinema Tuesdays {In Like Flint}

Yes, He's back! In this 1967 sequel, the bad guys are not mad scientists. Instead, we have four well-dressed, wealthy, powerful women who want the world to be controlled by women. Their plan involves putting two female Russian cosmonauts on the launch of the first space lab and arming it with nuclear bombs, taking up in the supply ship. They've also been calmly brainwashing women for years, through their Fabulous Face brand salon hairdryers.

They've also replaced the President with a double in the middle of a golf game with Cramden, the head of Z.O.W.I.E.

When you're going to take over the world, you might as well have a cool hat to do it in.

However, Cramden knows that three minutes were lost during the golf game and so he asks the one man in the world whom he can trust to investigate.

Not only does James Coburn walk cool, he even makes getting out of a car look cool.

In the two years since the last time he saved the world, Flint has redecorated. Actually, with most of the sets and costumes in the movie, you can see the first inklings of '70's fashion.

His five girlfriends are now happily married and so he has three new ones (he's trying to cut down)

His cigarette lighter now has 84 functions. If he attaches his belt buckle to it, a sonic device is created, which allows him to blow up billiard balls.

Flint can also talk to dolphins. He's actually too busy writing a dictionary to help out Cramden investigate.

Ah yes, the old dropped-purse trick. Cramden is then drugged, posed in a picture with a lady of the night and then fired by the President and top General, placed in Washington by Fabulous Face. He was asking too many questions.

When the paper boy delivers the news, Flint agrees to help his friend.

He starts by breaking into the government document incinerator. After nearly being killed in the resulting fight, he flies himself to Moscow.

And performs with the State Ballet.

He also asks Yvonne Craig (Batgirl!) some questions about the cosmonauts.

After Batgirl tries to kill him, he finally figures out what's going on.

After jumping across the rooftops of the Kremlin, he stumbles across the Russian War Room. After eavesdropping on the Soviet President's "Hello Dmitri" conversation with the American President Double regarding the status of Flint, we learn that the Fabulous Face spa is in the Virgin Islands.

Flint takes the next flight to Cuba and bribes the plane crew with a dead chicken and some cigars so that he can jump out over the Virgin Islands.

And uses a dolphin to swim into the sauna.

Since Flint is always well-dressed, he brought along a spare outfit in a water-proof bag.

He wears this for the rest of the film and never, ever gets a mark on it (like Tony Curtis in The Great Race)!

Unlike Bond, Flint cannot hit a woman.

The ladies explain their plan for world domination and assure Flint that "once women control the world, everything will settle down".

I love the buttons on her tunic.

Flint objects to the plan, because they are using nuclear threats in order to achieve something that will just "fall into your laps sooner or later".

Unfortunately, the General that the ladies put in power has decided that can use the plan instead and cut the ladies out, using some guns.

Luckily, Flint has a plan.

I wont tell you how he saves the world or why he's wearing a space suit, but he does save the world in time to spend the weekend with a couple of friends.

I wish that they had made more Derek Flint films. I actually enjoy watching these two films more then all of the James Bond ones, mostly because Flint is the better character of the two.

Here's Flint in action: