MATCHLESS (1967)

Former soldier Perry Liston (Patrick O'Neal, at right) is now a reporter for a New York paper who writes a column under the name "Matchless"—a nickname he was given in the service. We meet him in China as he is mistaken for a spy and tortured. Since he has no information to give, he is tossed into a cell to await execution along with Hank, a real spy (Henry Silva), and an old Chinese man on the verge of death. When Liston tries to comfort him, the old man, with his dying breath, gives Liston a ring which can make the wearer invisible for 20 minutes and which cannot be used again for 10 hours. Liston uses it and makes his escape, naked, as it were, since his clothes would still be visible. He materializes in the home of the lovely O-Lan, mistress to one of the torturers but actually an American spy. She helps him get back to the States where he is tortured again because the Americans think he must be a spy. When that all gets straightened out, he is recruited by the Americans and paired with the beautiful spy Arabella (Ira von Furstenberg) to steal some dangerous chemicals from British millionaire bad guy Gregori Andreanu (Donald Pleasance) who lives in a castle with robot servants. But on their trail is the escaped Hank and the lovely but evil Tipsey (Nicoletta Machiavelli), who don't seem to be working for anyone but themselves. Shenanigans follow—subway chase, fixed boxing match—climaxing with a long car and motorcycle chase in which the cars wind up on the top of a moving train.

The 1960s spy spoofs are odd ducks, partly because the movies that they are spoofing, the early James Bond films, already had a sense of humor about their material, and later, especially in the Roger Moore years, largely became exercises in campy style. This movie stands out a bit from the Flint (James Coburn) and Matt Helm (Dean Martin) movies because it substitutes magic for science –instead of a nifty electronic gadget, Liston gets a magic invisibility ring. This leads to several scenes playing on the fact that when Liston reappears, he's naked. Aside from the comic tone present throughout, we also get Donald Pleasance as a villain who I can only describe as restrainedly campy. When he gets angry, he snaps on a pair of ostentatious sunglasses, a gesture that never failed to get a chuckle from me. O'Neal is no better than average in the lead, more or less sleepwalking through the one-dimensional character he plays. (Yes, I wish someone younger and handsomer and with a better body had played the occasionally naked hero.) The two lead women outshine him, and Henry Silva seems to be having fun playing the snarling Hank whose motivation was never clear to me. The 60s look of the movie is just right, and I loved the credit sequence featuring close-ups of beakers filled with bubbling, colorful fluids. This might have worked better as a campy superhero movie, but it was generally fun and undemanding, though the dubbing of this Italian film is bad, even though it looks like all the actors were speaking English. [TCM]