HELICOPTERS! SPIES! CAROL LYNLEY! OH MY!

The latest issue of Cinema Retro has been released and once again it is jammed packed with great articles. Click here for more information. The one I am looking forward to most is on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie, The Helicopter Spies featuring Carol Lynley and as sexy Miss Zalamar, Glamour Girl Thordis Brandt.


Below is an excerpt on it from my book (co-written with Louis Paul) Film Fatales and a clip from the trailer:

Carol Lynley switched sides for The Helicopter Spies (1968), which was the feature film version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. two-part episode “The Prince of Darkness Affair” (10/2 &10/9/67), written by Dean Hargrove. THRUSH is after a ray generator called the Thermal Prism and Waverly recruits master criminal Luther Sebastian (Bradford Dillman) in aiding agents Solo and Illya in retrieving it. But Sebastian (the leader of a religious sect called The Third Way) plans to snatch the Prism to control the balance of power in the world. Lynley plays the episode’s innocent Annie who stumbles into the plot determined to get Napoleon to lead her to Sebastian because “my fiancé Hugh Winslow of the Bakersfield’s Winslow’s is in a Turkish prison because Sebastian framed him for a murder he committed. I’ve spent a whole year collecting evidence. I must free my poor Hugh from that awful prison.”

The episode’s running gag is that the brothers (each played by H. M. Wynant) of Hugh ‘s cellmate (also framed by Sebastian) accompany her and as one is killed off another takes his place. The U.N.C.L.E. agents are forced to bring Annie along but she becomes more of a thorn-in-the-side with her interference. Lynley looks fantastic in this role and gives a delightful performance as the misguided Annie. Her performance is truly a standout.