July 11 movie: Our Man Flint. Good golly, I love this movie. Best spy parody ever stars James Coburn as Derek Flint: super genius, super agent, sex machine. Made four years after Dr. No, Flint sends up the Bond movies and was clearly a main inspiration for Austin Powers. To its credit, the Powers movies acknowledge the debt with touches here and there (like the phone in Austin Powers' car, which makes the same funny ring as the red phone in the Flint movies).
I think Our Man Flint is better than the sequel, In Like Flint, except that the sequel includes Anna Lee, who I love, as a matriachal villainess in crazy wimpleish headgear. From the cigarette lighter with 82 secret functions (83, if you'd like to light a cigar), to Flint's four multinational girlfriends, to the spy organization called Z.O.W.I.E., to the "anti-American bald eagle" trained to attack Americans, to the whole bizarre "I am not a pleasure unit" scene, it's hard to pick out the funniest moment.
But the best thing about Flint, absolutely the best, is that he doesn't make stupid quips when he kills a bad guy; he just kills the guy and moves on. That's because he's Flint! Derek Flint is too cool for lame quips.
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I can't believe I haven't seen Our Man Flint yet! Is Peggy Moffitt in that movie? I have seen stills of her posing with James Coburn in fashion books before, and always wondered if they were from that movie.