THE INNOCENT: Kipp Hamilton as Lavinia Brown, a geography and history school teacher having a miserable time in the Riviera (mostly getting drunk at her hotel), until the Men from UNCLE offer her money to act as bait for THRUSH. Notably, she's quite antagonistic towards Solo, but under truth serum, does admit he's nice and pretty. Hamilton worked mostly in television between 1958 and 1967, and is the younger sister of Carol Burnett's husband Joe Hamilton.
REVIEW: This is kind of prime UNCLE. The spies are witty, the villains have a gimmick, lots of action, a drop of sci-fi... We even have a returning THRUSH villain (all too rare!) in Dr. Egret, the woman of a thousand disguises, leaving Mission: Impossible masks behind wherever she goes (sadly, she doesn't return as a third actress). So I rather like this one, even if it isn't perfect. Solo and Illya are in the French Riviera the week of the Cannes Grand Prix (which doesn't exist, I suppose the UNCLE-verse has a Monte Carlo Film Festival) to pick up a rejuvenation formula from a scientist. Except he's been kidnapped and blond assassins kill the only witness right under their noses. They'll follow the clues to a garage where race car driver Lucia Nazarone is gunned down before their eyes, only to be magically healed by the serum later. I think we can guess from her manic behavior that she's going to "burn up", just like the scientist did, but her profession promises a car chase, and delivers.
Solo and Illya are a great team, one smoothly causing a distraction while the other gets the hotel keys to the scientist's room. The Innocent has already moved in, and they just ignore her as they search for clues, and fast talk/bribe the staff into doing their bidding (and her, too, ultimately). Amusingly, and unusually at this point, Lavinia isn't charmed by either of them, and Solo also gets rebuffed by Nazarone. What happened to his mojo? But if seduction isn't working, their ploy to make THRUSH think Lavinia was the doc's assistant and gave them the formula does. There's a nice play on the arms race, here, and while it gets everyone into trouble, the boys never break character and keep their con alive long enough to keep the bad guys in a state of panic. They avoid nasty booby-trapped pillows, Illya gets dropped down a well, and Solo and Lavinia into a salty death trap. Fun stuff. And I'm consistently impressed at how many stunts David McCallum does himself. He really takes a breakaway bucket to the head, and really climbs up part of that well. Compare to Robert Vaughn who has stunt men do simple two-foot drops (it's not a dig, protect yourself, stunt performers are trained for this, but it's still impressive that one star does a lot of physical stuff). Similarly, I thought Danica D'Hondt might have been a precision driver or something because she does some of the more dangerous driving herself AND is an unashamed over-actor, but no, that doesn't appear to be the case.
They REALLY wanted that "Guns of the Navarone" pun in the title, because the so-called Thrushettes aren't really in HER service, but Egret's (AKA Madame Alceste Streigau, with Marian McCargo taking over from Lee Meriwether). Nazarone IS the main one, of course, super-powered where the others are merely athletic. It's a fun conceit that they're all blondes, as Solo can warn Lavinia off blondes, but they can still riposte with a brunette wig. It does feel a little strange today to spot Sharon Tate, a Manson Family victim, among the group (as Nazarone's physical therapist). I wonder if, either because of social mores or a lack of stuntwomen, this caused the fight sequences to be so lame? When Solo escapes from the pool, for example, the guards are simply pushed in and disappear. In the final garage fight, Solo allows them to slap him around, unwilling to lay a hand on them, and then we cut to the epilogue and are told he overcame them eventually. It's rather humiliating, which I do think they pay off in the final joke (I'm not big on "final jokes"), where Solo realizes he didn't even have to run to the garage for the formula because it doesn't work, something Illya neglected to tell him (by cigarette case communicator, I suppose).
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "Do glance at it from time to time. Flash cards still work with children of all ages." (Lavinia, swinging DO NOT DISTURB sign at Solo)
BONDED: The episode's athletic all-female thugs are much like Pussy Galore's squadron from Goldfinger (Nazarone herself, though not the leader, is herself a pilot, of cars if not of planes). Their holing up at a clinic (and the use of the Alps) reminds us of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (the film is in show's future, of course). Die Another Day is another Bond film with a gene-therapy clinic. Sharon Tate appeared in a Bond spoof called The Wrecking Crew.
REWATCHABILITY - High: Though the hand-to-hand is weak, this is a real cracker anchored in the superspy genre.
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