'WHERE THE SPIES ARE'....A BOGUS BOND FINDS BEIRUT OF ALL EVIL......

Where The Spies Are (1966)  was another chunk of cinematic flotsam that washed in on the tidal wave of James Bond imitations that engulfed the world in the mid 1960's  (For those of you not around in those days, not only were American and British filmmakers jumping on the Bondwagon, the Italians commenced to pour out these faux-Bonds faster than IHOP pancakes on all-you-can-eat day. )

           But given its very British pedigree (led by its star, the ultimate Brit, David Niven), we thought we'd give "Where The Spies Are" a closer look.........and strangely enough, found it entertaining in fits and spurts.

          Like all of its fellow spy movies, the film makes a valiant attempt at the pendulum swinging tone of the Bond films.......veering back and forth from self-mocking parody to death-dealing action sequences that we're suddenly supposed to take seriously.  People get shot, stabbed, blown up.....and then it's time for some snappy dialogue zingers. This worked well for these movies, for a while,,,,,but the sheer volume of them quickly exhausted the formula and tired out the audiences. (And years later, made them ripe for distanced parody in the Austin Powers trilogy)

          Much humor is mined from David Niven's reluctant uppercrust spy, Jason Love, a classic car-loving doctor recruited by MI6 to seek out an agent who's gone MIA in Beirut. (Coincidentally, the opening scenes mirror Niven's role, one year  later, in the misbegotten, loony-tune version of "Casino Royale", where he played a retired Sir James Bond, scoffing at MI6 gadgets like exploding pens)

           So it's off to scenic Beirut.....yes, you heard that description correctly. 60's spy spoofs frequently cavorted all over Middle East locations before the region descended into a war torn terrorist hell on earth. (If there's ever a revival of these movies, producers will have to settle for somewhere outside of Vegas to duplicate their exotic locales....)

            As expected, Niven cheekily quips his way through assassination attempts, torture bouts,and the trickery of the requisite femme fatale, a fashion model-spy played by Francoise Dorleac. (Tragically, Dorleac, Catherine Deneuve's older sister, would make only one more film, the spy caper "Billion Dollar Brain", covered in a previous BQ post. She died at age 25 in a car accident.)

             Watching a movie like this from a distance of fifty years or more, you have to take for granted its cavalier attitude toward death.  Characters in spy spoofs were instantly disposable, like pop-up opponents in shooter video games. Early on in the story, the Russian bad guys blow up a Beirut-bound plane, thinking Niven's on it. To its credit, the script has Niven briefly agonize over the 60 or so innocent souls who lost their lives as collateral damage......but that's extraordinarily rare moral complexity for any 1960's tongue-in-cheek wanne-be Bond movie.

             The unflappable Niven is always a breezy pleasure to watch and he's bolstered by a large supporting cast, most of whom had small roles in Bond films at one time or another.  As a prize specimen of its long lost genre, we'll spy with our little eye 3 stars (***) for "Where The Spies Are".....or we should say were......any spies working the Middle East today would need helmets and kevlar vests instead of radio-watches and decoder rings......