Director – Barry Shear, Screenplay – Norman Hudis, Story/Producer – Boris Ingster, Photography – Fred Koenekamp, Music – Gerald Fried, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Theme by Jerry Goldsmith, Art Direction – George W. Davis & James W. Sullivan. Production Company – Arena Productions.
Cast
Robert Vaughn (Napoleon Solo), David McCallum (Illya Kuryakin), Kim Darby (Sandy True), Herbert Lom (Randolph), Curt Jurgens (Carl Von Kesser), Jill Ireland (Imogene Smythe), Joan Crawford (Amanda True), Terry-Thomas (Constable), Telly Savalas (Count De Fanzini), Leo G. Carroll (Alexander Waverly), Dian McBain (Contessa Margo De Fanzini), Danielle De Metz (Yvonne), Irene Tsu (Rekko), Philip Ahn (Sazami Kyushu), Jim Boles (Dr Simon True), Arthur Gould-Porter (Magistrate)
Plot
U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin visit Dr Simon True who demonstrates to them his formula to extract gold from seawater just before he is blown up by T.H.R.U.S.H. sabotage. The only clue to the whereabouts of Dr True’s formula Napoleon and Illya have is his saying ‘daughter’ to them just before he died. They go to see True’s daughter Sandy. They arrive just after the T.H.R.U.S.H. agent Randolph has killed True’s wife Amanda while trying to obtain the formula. With the realisation that True had four stepdaughters, Napoleon, Illya and Sandy travel from Italy to London, Switzerland and Tokyo to find the other daughters and piece together the pieces of the formula that he has distributed on photos of himself sent to each daughter. Pursuing them all the way are Randolph and the T.H.R.U.S.H. agents.
This was the sixth cinematically-released film compiled from episodes of the tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-8). The other Man from U.N.C.L.E. theatrical films consisted of To Trap a Spy (non-genre, 1965), The Spy With My Face (1966), One Spy Too Many (1966), One of Our Spies is Missing (1966), The Spy in the Green Hat (1966), The Helicopter Spies (1967) and How to Steal the World (1968). The Karate Killers was edited together from the two-part episode The Five Daughters Affair (1967) with extra material added for the theatrical cut.
I enjoyed the other The Man from U.N.C.L.E. films, which maintain a smartness while playing the whole Spy Movie thing with tongue planted in cheek. On the other hand, when it comes to The Karate Killers, it feels as though that drollness has toppled over into slapstick comedy in director Barry Shear’s hands. At the film’s most inane point, Shear directs a Keystone Kops routine with firemen bumbling around Telly Savalas’s villa, tripping over one another and their ladders in undercranked motion. Or the overly comedic scenes with Jill Ireland as a go-go dancer stripping and flirting with Terry-Thomas’s tongue-tied constable in a very serious British courtroom.
The Karate Killers is held together with a very bitsy plot. This is what is called a Plot Coupons story, something that is more common in fantasy and adventure stories, where the protagonists must visit various locations to pick up essential items. This involves Napoleon and Illya hopping between assorted European countries and a brief scene that never amounts to much involving each sister in the location. (Oddly, for a story that was originally entitled The Five Daughters Affair, we only ever meet four of the sisters). All the international locations are cut-price ones seen only in terms of stock and back-projected footage of airports and street scenes.
(l to r) David McCallum, Kim Darby and Robert Vaughn
Perhaps the biggest issue is the title The Karate Killers, which gives the misleading impression that you are going to be watching a Martial Arts film, a genre that was in its infancy in Hong Kong at the time. Certainly, the idea of U.N.C.L.E. agents up against martial artists seem a promising one. However, this disappointingly only amounts to a brief fight with black clad men (not ninja) in Japan that is over within thirty seconds and where nobody has bothered to choreograph a proper fight. Why the film chose to make this negligible scene into its title focus is a mystery. There is also an opening microlight chase sequence, which does not appear to relate to anything that subsequently occurs.
Some of the set-ups are reminiscent of other films of the spy fad – the microlight chase reminds of the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967) that came out one month earlier the same year, while the ski slope chase looks forward to the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). The scenes where Napoleon and Illya are welcomed into a Japanese geisha house are not dissimilar to the Japanification that Sean Connery underwent in You Only Live Twice.
The one thing that must be said of The Karate Killers is what an incredible cast line-up it has – from Joan Crawford in the midst of her latter-day post What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) career revival as the wife of the murdered scientist who is herself killed; Telly Savalas with an atrocious Italian accent as a count; Terry-Thomas as a comic British bobby; German actor Herbert Lom as the principal T.H.R.U.S.H. agent; Austrian actor Curt/Curd Jurgens of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) fame as a Swiss businessman; David McCallum’s then wife Jill Ireland as the British sister with a habit of stripping in public; and Kim Darby, best known as the teenager in True Grit (1969), as the sister who accompanies Napoleon and Illya. That said, most of these actors appearances amount to only one or two scenes. With the tv episodes being repackaged as films, you wonder by this point whether this was still considered a tv episode or was being made with one eye towards how the episode would play as a film.
Jill Ireland strips in a British courtroom
Following the end of the series, the characters were later revived in the tv movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair (1983). The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) was a big-screen remake of the tv series starring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as Napoleon and Illya, although this is very different from the tv series and has no genre elements. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-7) starring Stefanie Powers was a spinoff tv series, although only lasted for one season of 29 episodes.
Director Barry Shear mostly worked in television – his other genre releases were the satiric future film Wild in the Streets (1968) and the cinematically-released spy tv movie Billion Dollar Threat (1979). Shear’s best film was the fascinating and little-seen The Todd Killings (1971) about a series of teen murders.
