Rating: ★★

The James Bond films were massive during the 1960s. Beginning with Dr No (1962), Sean Connery premiered the role of Bond on cinema screens and became a superstar as a result. Connery played Bond in a string of five films passing through From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965) before announcing his departure with You Only Live Twice (1967), only to make a return in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and a decade later in the rogue entry Never Say Never Again (1983). The spy movie caught on and there were a vast number of imitators and parodies – see my essay Spy Movies for a more detailed breakdown.

OK Connery, aka Operation Kid Brother, could be considered one of the earliest Mockbusters and was a blatant cash-in on the Bond films – it was released in April 1967, a month before You Only Live Twice where Sean Connery said never again to his original run of the Bond role. The film’s stunt casting coup was being able to obtain Neil Connery, the younger brother of Sean, who had never acted prior to this. There are a number of lines in the film that make a meta-reference to the Connery brothers – mention made of Neil’s brother being one of their top agents who has a 00 licence. “I think he’s more handsome,” Lois Maxwell says comparing the two brothers at one point. The film was sold with the byline that it was “too much for one mother.”

In addition to Neil Connery, the film features a number of other actors from the Bond series, including Bernard Lee who played M all the way through from Dr No until the eleventh Bond film Moonraker (1979) and Lois Maxwell, who was Miss Moneypenny all the way from the start to the fourteenth film A View to a Kill (1985) after which she was replaced with younger actresses, while she plays a character called Miss Maxwell. (The irony of this is that where Lee and Maxwell were largely confined to appearances at British Intelligence Hq offices at the start and end of each Bond film, here they get to go on location and are more involved in the action, particularly Maxwell).

There is also Adolfo Celi, who was the villain Largo in Thunderball; Daniela Bianchi, the female lead from Thunderball; and Anthony Dawson who had a supporting role in Dr No. Furthermore, whole scenes seem to mimic ones from the Bond films – the secret organisation Thanatos meets in a room with members around a conference table where disloyal associates are killed off in front of everybody just like in Thunderball, while Ana Marie Noe seems directly modelled on Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love.

OK Connery does feature some eccentric inventions, including Adolfo Celi remote piloting a car to crash into a Cessna as it lands on a runway, spring-loaded knife blades and Neil Connery’s mysterious powers of Hypnotism that include the ability to facially heal a plastic surgery patient. Adolfo Celi has a desk with a moving top that slides aside so that he can get into a zodiac raft to make an escape from his yacht. There’s an elaborate sequence set up where Ana Marie Noe abducts a hospital patient by placing them on a wheel and pulley and bodily winching them out the hospital window down to a waiting ambulance.

However, the main problem with OK Connery is that Neil Connery is not much of an actor. Or perhaps more so he has a director who does not highlight his presence to the best – with the Bond series, Sean Connery was always urbane, a ladies’ man who was charming, lethal when he had to be. Here Alberto De Martino, a genre-hopping hack of the Italian film industry (see below for De Martino’s other films), lacks the ability to shape Neil’s presence in that same way. Neil gets a brief handful of action and fight scenes, nothing exciting, and a single bedroom encounter (where he rebuffs the girl!). In fact, it is the supporting cast, especially Adolf Celi, who come to life far more than Neil Connery does. Also the film lacks much of an interesting plot – it is driven by the McGuffin of the atomic nucleus but plods from scene to scene, one international locale to another without much holding it together.

OK Connery is however worth seeing for the outrageousness of the 1960s costume designs. Daniela Bianchi turns up wearing a hat with a two-foot wide brim. Agata Flori wears a pink feather boa as a hat, while Daniel Bianchi emerges in a white dress that manages to wind orange feather boas into the ensemble.

Neil Connery (1938 -2021) played in two other films and a half-dozen parts in British tv series. His other genre work of note was the SF film The Body Stealers (1969). He is credited by the IMDB as playing a character called Mr Bond in the Hong Kong slapstick action caper Aces Go Places III (1984), but this is incorrect and he does not appear. He retired from acting to run a plastering business in Edinburgh.

Alberto De Martino (1929-2015) was a director who worked in the Italian exploitation genre and covered most genres during his career including the peplum and the giallo. His other genre films include:- Medusa Against the Son of Hercules (1962), the Gothic horror The Blancheville Monster (1963), The Triumph of Hercules (1964), the giallo The Man with the Icy Eyes (1971), the possession and exorcism film The Tempter/The Antichrist (1974), the Antichrist film Holocaust 2000/The Chosen (1977), the superhero film The Pumaman (1980), the psychic film Blood Link (1982), Miami Golem (1985) and Formula for a Murder (1985).

Trailer here