A plotless spoof of James Bond movie with a mismatched cast , entertainment and bizarre amusement . Run-of-the-mill spy , rip-off movie with usual ingredients : wonderful girls with mini-skirts , pursuits , fights , fantastic gadgets , helicopters , luxurious cars and a complete mess . Silly spoof , resulting to be a typical product of the Sixties played by a motley cast of dozens . It deals with a veteran , retired spy , Matt Helm : Dean Martin , who's assigned a new mission . Matt is re-activated in order to take down an evil organization from exploding an atom bomb over the United States . It seems that the nasty organization Big O headed by Tung-Ze : Victor Buono has an evil scheme called "Operation: Fallout , as he will explode an atomic bomb over Alamogordo and subsequently to begin WWIII between USA and Russia . But only Matt Helm can stop them , that is if Matt can stay away from the babes and the booze. Follow Matt Helm secret agent from bedroom to bedlam with guns, girls and dynamite! Matt Helm shoots the works! . The Slaygirls will slay you! . Girls, Gags & Gadgets! . The Best Spy Thriller of Nineteen Sexty-Sex! . Meet Matt Helm and his Slaygirls! . Slaygirls will slay you and so will Lovey Kravezit! . Follow his secret from bedroom to bedlam, with guns, girls and dynamite!

This funny but virtually failed film can stand as one of the amusing spoofs marking the 1960s comedy . This first Matt Helm movie , being based on the novels "The Silencers" and "Death of a Citizen" from Donald Hamilton and really influenced by Sean Connery's James Bond series , Euro-spy movies and maybe ¨Get Smart¨ writers watched this film before making their series . It has entertainment and amusement enough , displaying some diverting sketches , though with lots of flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , but it has big fun , so it cares . And yet there are some attractive bits within , adding scenes of bizarre hilarity . It is a colorful lark , though very dated in its shiny Sixties pop-art way . Still , the all-star-cast is fun , and it stars Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm who must save the American atomic missile system from sabotage and standing out Daliah Lavi as gorgeous , sexy Tina . As the main enjoyment is to guess who's the beautiful girl appearing here and there , including the following ones : Daliah Lavi , Stella Stevens, Nancy Kovack , Cyd Charisse , Beverly Adams . Along with a plethota of notorious secondaries as Victor Buono , Arthur O'Connell , Robert Webber , James Gregory , Roger C. Carmel , Richard Devon , among others . It is followed ¨Murderer's Row¨(1966) and ¨The Wrecking Crew¨(1968) and there's a TV series : ¨Matt Helm¨ starred by David Janssen .

It packs a colorful and shimmering cinematography by Burnett Guffey. Likewise , catching and agreeable musical score by Elmer Bernstein , including an enjoyable leitmotif . This rompy spoof motion picture was professionally directed by Phil Karlson . There were no half measures in this filmmaker . He would make adventure movies or violent and noir films . As he directed Western as ¨Gunman's walk¨ , ¨They rode west¨, ¨Texas rangers, ¨Iroquois trail¨ and Gansters genre or Noir films as ¨Phoenix city story¨ and ¨Scarface mob¨ . Failure alternated with hits through his career, though Karlson's direction was more than successful in ¨ Walking tall¨ with invaluable help of Joe Don Baker . The Silencers(1966) rating : Acceptable and passable spy movie , 6/10 .The flick will appeal to Dean Martin fans . Not wanting to compete with the Sean Connery vehicles , this movie was intented to be a stylish spoof but it was wrong . It is funny and attractive ; nevertheless , for some reviewers , it's an overlong failure and overblown bore .

Dean Martin stars in this spy spoof, the beginning of the Matt Helm series. Matt may have a blase attitude about his duties and all the beautiful women around him throwing themselves at him, but he still carries out his duties well and ends up obliging the women, with good humor and lines. The screenplay is interspersed with Dean's singing, lending to the lighthearted atmosphere. While tongue in cheek, the plot is good, as Victor Buono plays the lead villain who is seeking to engineer a nuclear disaster. Among many gorgeous women in this male fantasy, the leading one is Stella Stevens, who plays Gail Hendrix, suspected of being a spy till the end. There is a nice scene when she and Dean are pulled over in a car on the highway in a rainstorm. Some people just don't enjoy spoofs, but I do if they are well done, and with its many nice elements I enjoyed this more than most real things.

The Silencers was the first of four films that Dean Martin made as secret agent Matt Helm. The original novels by Donald Hamilton have a far more serious Helm in them. So if you're not a Dean Martin fan expecting to see Dean Martin as himself, don't bother with the film.

But there are certainly plenty of those around to watch Dino become our American James Bond. You have to remember that Bond if he was anything was always a gentleman. Dino as Helm is more like a locker room version of Bond, you wouldn't see Bond in the training room bragging about all his conquests.

In between the women and his cover job as a photographer Dino does work for ICE, Intelligence and Counter Espionage. In this film Dean's got his assignment to track down a defecting US scientist who is working with the Goldfinger/Blofeld of this film, Victor Buono. Buono's got his own secret organization which wants to cause international mischief between the superpowers, in this case by diverting a missile to target a spot where an underground atomic test has taken place and to blow it up, unloosing all kinds of radioactivity over the Southwest USA.

One thing about the Helm films as well as the Bond films, you will always see plenty of beautiful women. In this case we've got Cyd Charisse, Dalilah Lavi, Stella Stevens, and as Dino's personal secretary Lovey Kravezit, Beverly Adams. Adams gets a lot farther with him than poor lovesick Moneypenny does with James Bond.

Stella Stevens is such a klutz we're not sure who she's really helping in this film. It's a nice comic performance, one of Stella's best on screen. With musical opportunities fewer and fewer it's always a pleasure to see Cyd Charisse dance with her voice dubbed by Vikki Carr.

The first Helm was the best, sadly they deteriorated in quality as the series continued. The Silencers also has Dino singing some nice parody lyrics to some popular standards that his generation and mine will recognize.