AGENT FOR HARM (1966)

 

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

After I've bagged on many of the Eurospy flicks, I suppose I should be just as harsh on this American-made low-budget double-o-ripoff. And I did bag on at least one such U.S. agent, dissing A MAN CALLED DAGGER pretty thoroughly. However, as it happens, I rather like AGENT FOR HARM despite its many shortcomings.

One shortcoming is in the name of his organization, whose acronym I won't trouble to detail, and which sounds fatuous on the face of things. In addition, HARM was originally budgeted as a television pilot, and then reworked into a one-shot feature film, and the actor playing main hero Adam Chance, Peter Mark Richman, was rather bland. 

Nevertheless, despite a paucity of location work, director Gerd Oswald keeps things looking like SOMETHING interesting is going on, and not only when there are gorgeous women on camera. Eschewing the usual death-ray, this time all the spies are chasing around a gun that shoot alien spores, which in turn can devolve human beings into gooey globs. Despite that sci-fi angle, Chance runs around fighting enemy spies with mostly ordinary weapons. His villains include familiar faces like Martin Kosleck and Robert Quarry, and though there's not a great main villain, these secondary figures add a little extra pizzazz.

There are also some cute goofup-lines, such as when Chance tells a female agent, who's just flipped him, to "meet him on the judo range." 

It's not exactly good, but it's at least a decent timewaster.