Science fictional super-spies (or) everything is Bondage

It won’t be news to most of our readers that James Bond was a very big deal in the 1960s. The years after Goldfinger (1964) were the era of “Bondage.” Spies were cooler than they’d ever been, or would be again, and everyone wanted in. Jimmy Olsen became Secret Agent Double Five ——while a Modern Stone Age family found themselves caught up in the 1966 spy thriller A Man Called Flintstone (1966).Inevitably this bled into science fiction as well. Not that the Bond films didn’t have SF elements themselves, but the two films I’m looking at today are much more of a genre mash-up. First, 1965’s The Human Duplicators.

The Bond figure here is super-spy Glenn Martin (George Nader), called in after a series of scientists working on government projects turn against their employers. Is it the Soviets? Red China? Given that one of the scientists was able to rip a steel door off its hinges, Martin suspect the answer is more way out. When one scientist shot during his rampage turns up dead, but without any bullet-holes, Martin’s even more convinced.

He’s right, of course. Martin’s investigation leads him to Dornheimer (George Macready), an arrogant genius who provides scientific consulting services for those he considers brilliant enough to deserve him. It turns out Dornheimer’s own research is in android-creation — hmm, could this tie in with all the renegade scientists? At one point Martin stares out his office window at the passing crowds, pointing out to his girl Friday, Gale (Barbara Nichols), that any of them could be androids. Maybe all of them. What if androids are among us, even as he speaks?

Martin’s on the nose again. The problem, though, isn’t Dornheimer but Kolos (Richard Kiel) an agent of the Galactic Masters who replaced the captive Dornheimer with an android possessing all the scientist’s knowledge. Droidheimer then provided more androids to advance Kolos’ ultimate plan, infiltrating human society to pave the way for a galactic invasion.  Policy requires Kolos also replace Dornheimer’s blind daughter, Lisa (Dolores Faith), but he’s in love with her so he holds back.

Knowing the truth doesn’t help Martin, who’s captured and replaced. His doppelganger reports to Martin’s boss that Dornheimer was a dead end, but Gale suspects the truth, sneaks into Dornheimer’s mansion and frees her boss. Meanwhile the Galactic Masters give Kolos a direct order to replace Lisa, but he defies them. When the androids realize Kolos has been blinded by emotion, they turn on him, declaring themselves the superior species. First he will fall, then the Galactic Masters themselves! Gale, however, brought Martin the equipment he needs to destroy the androids and he does so; his double, still loyal to Kolos, sacrifices himself to destroy Droidheimer. Kolos concedes defeat and tells the humans he will warn the Masters against attempting another invasion. They will annihilae him for this, but it matters not — he, himself, is merely another android.

The Human Duplicators isn’t a particularly good movie, but it’s much more watchable than Casino Royale. It may even be better than I think it is: I wrote it up in my book Screen Enemies of the American Way and watching umpty-zillion genre movies makes me jaundiced after a while (ho-hum, yet another evil android infiltrator story).

Dimension 5 (1966), by contrast, was fun to watch. It’s different from the other movies I caught for Now And Then We Time Travel (there are more spies vs. infiltrators films than time-traveling spy films. Go figure) and it has a better cast than Human Duplicators: Jeffrey Hunter as the lead spy, Frances Nuyen as his partner and Harold Sakata as the big bad. Nuyen in that blouse also makes for a much more eye-catching poster, at least as far as I’m concerned.

Hunter plays Justin Power, a secret agent for Espionage, Incorporated. Fresh off finishing a challenging assignment, he now faces an even bigger challenge. A Chinese spy ring, the Dragons, plans to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles unless the U.S. pulls its forces out of Vietnam. Power and his new partner, Kitty Tsu (Nuyen), must prevent China delivering the bomb to LA, where the Dragons’ leader, Big Buddha (Sakata), is waiting to receive it.

The two spies’ greatest edge in the fight is that they have wristwatch time-travel devices that let them leap up to eight weeks forward or back through time. For example, when Big Buddha has a captured Dragon agent killed before he can talk, the two spies jump back a few minutes to intercept the assassin.

Power and Tsu never really tap the full potential of the tech, either because the filmmakers were unimaginative or because it would shift Dimension 5 too far away from the spy formula. Once they learn where the components for the bomb are being delivered, they jump forward in time three weeks to intercept it. Tsu then blows everything by trying to kill Big Buddha: she was raped by him years earlier, and will stop at nothing to get revenge. Espionage Inc.’s plans would have fallen apart but fortunately one of Big Buddha’s female servants suddenly stabs him, for no particular reason (it’s Tuesday?). That gives our heroes the chance they need to win.

When it’s all over, however, Power tells Kitty they’ll now have to return in time to their departure point, wait three weeks, then relive the battle with the Dragons again — but this time, without Kitty trying to kill Big Buddha. No, this doesn’t make sense. But lord knows, I’ve sat through much, much worse films for my books.

#SFWApro.