The Ambushers (1967)

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

NOTES: Number three of the four "Matt Helm" films: The others: The Silencers, Murderers Row (both 1966), The Wrecking Crew (1969).Despite almost unanimously bad reviews, the movie turned in a tidy domestic rentals gross of $4.7 million, but overseas returns were somewhat disappointing. COMMENT: The third and least entertaining of the Matt Helm adventures, this one has an even sillier script than Murderer's Row. Dean Martin gives an extremely lack-luster performance, delivering even his few witty lines in a bored, listless fashion. Levin's direction is tired too, and the action scenes lack punch. There is a comic execution scene that is not even a fraction as funny as that performed by Raymond Griffith way back in 1926 in "Hands Up". Albert Salmi over-acts, but Kurt Kasznar turns in a delightfully amusing portrayal, and Senta Berger is eye-catchingly decorative. For the first time (and in response no doubt to numerous requests), the Slaygirls are given a few lines to speak. In future, I guarantee they will keep their mouths closed. And personally, I found their costumes on this occasion too grotesque.

...in probably the weakest entry of the Matt Helm series. Dino's familiar leering, boozing men's magazine photographer / secret agent returns with his patented stock of gimmicky cameras and legendary thirst, this time heading to Acapulco with an amnesiac female astronaut (Janice Rule). They are trying to recover a stolen spaceship prototype which only women can fly, since its electromagnetic field selectively kills males! (Right... Note to producers: bad science fiction doesn't make comedy funnier.) Some of the sight gags and booze jokes get a laugh, but the whole exercise seems shoddier and less inventive this time around. Plus the Las Vegas lounge act tone of everything looks a bit Squaresville for cinema's psychedelic era (1968). There is little of the mind-bending experimental visuals that were creeping into even mainstream movies at this time. The opening credits feature a hit song by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, plus the usual bevy of bouncing bikini-clad beauties in a quick-cutting Monkees style montage, with some of those wacky acid rock era camera tilts and spins intact, which is almost worth the rental right there.

The Matt Helm series never quite had the class that James Bond did. 007 is still going strong with many actors who now have done the role and it shows no signs of slowing down. But the locker room type humor that typifies the Matt Helm series was definitely wearing thin when The Ambushers came out.Dean Martin is once again intrepid secret agent Matt Helm whose cover as a fashion photographer takes him to Acapulco in search of a satellite that was captured. By of all people, a Mexican beer baron who is considerably more than that. Try and imagine August Busch or Jacob Ruppert in the spy business as well and you have the part Albert Salmi plays.Salmi did vile and disgusting things to pilot Janice Rule upon her capture because, well he's Albert Salmi. She's traumatized and only in the company of Dean Martin with whom she shared some tender moments back in the day will she go back and try to find the thing.Oh by the way, they need Rule because the satellite can't be flown by a man. Something in the atmosphere when the switch is thrown kills all members of the male species. The bad guys don't find this out until too late.Dino walked through this one as did the rest of the cast which looks bored, but also eager because the Matt Helm films did make money back in the day.Well at least we know that the hormonal kinks must have been worked out before July of 1969 when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins went to the moon

The hoariest old relic of the sixties spy-spoof boom, 'The Ambushers' is an extremely poor film dragged lower by what may be the single laziest performance ever given by a major Hollywood star. Everything has been laid out for Dean Martin in this film - it is written specifically for him, constructed for his screen persona to allow him to capitalise on his strengths. All he has to do is deliver the one liners, punch the bad guys, and kiss the girls. Unbelievably, he can't seem to work up much enthusiasm for any of these tasks. His delivery of the gags is appalling - he's so laid back he sucks them dry, draining them of what wit they have, and throws them away. It may not be comedy gold, but a good comic makes even bad jokes tolerable. Martin isn't even trying, but worse, he seems to be winking at the camera, inviting the audience to collude in his sloppiness. His very presence seems to be meant to be enough. It may be the ugliest display of star ego before Sean Connery got his hands on 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'.His female co-stars are much better. Janice Rule really seems to be trying to find something in her character, but the script doesn't really know what she's playing, so it's hardly surprising that she doesn't either. She goes from crazy woman to able spy to helpless damsel over the course of the film, and she isn't helped by ugly hair and costumes. The real star performance in this film is Senta Berger. She's truly funny and sexy in exactly the way the script needs for the film to work. Unfortunately, she's maybe too good - everything else seems dead without her (in Martin's case, you may occasionally suspect that he's actually expired on screen). The film-makers prove themselves incompetent when her bad-girl character is killed off towards the end. It isn't just the mistake of dispatching their most talented performer, but the casual way she is strangled and thrown off a platform by a none-too-interesting minor villain. It isn't even clear that she is dead, until she simply fails to reappear. This is terribly off-hand treatment of the character - and actress - who come closest to making the film work. Killing off such a fun character in such a light-hearted comedy feels like a total mistake anyway, as though Jessica Rabbit had been bumped off during the final reel of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'(and as she's just helped the heroine escape from a lecherous villain, it doesn't even make Hollywood-moral sense).On the whole, this is a profoundly bad film - I've no idea if the other Matt Helm films are any better. The casual sexism, however, is a worthwhile reminder that by Sixties standards, the Bond films actually border on the progressive. Those much parodied big-band Bond themes sound a lot better, too, when compared to the irritating sub-surf-pop theme that opens the film. Couldn't Dean Martin have recorded something himself, or would that have been too much effort?