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The Ambushers (film)
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| name = The Ambushers
| image = The Ambushers film poster.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Theatrical release poster by Robert McGinnis
| director = Henry Levin
| producer = Irving Allen
| writer = Donald Hamilton (novel)
Herbert Baker (screenplay)
| starring = Dean Martin
Senta Berger
| music = Herbert Baker
Hugo Montenegro
| cinematography = Edward Colman, ASC
Burnett Guffey, ASC
| editing = Harold F. Kress
| distributor = Columbia Pictures
| released = December 22, 1967
| runtime = 102 minutes
| country = United States
| language = English
|budget=$4 million
| gross = $10 million (US/Canada)
}}
'The Ambushers' is a 1967 American adventure comedy spy-fi film starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, along with Senta Berger and Janice Rule. It is the third of four films in the Matt Helm series, and is very loosely based upon the 1963 novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton as well as 'The Menacers' (1968) that featured UFOs and a Mexican setting. When a government-built flying saucer is hijacked mid-flight by Jose Ortega, the exiled ruler for an outlaw nation, secret agent Matt Helm and the ship's former pilot Sheila Sommers are sent to recover it.
Plot
Helm is sent to the ICE (Intelligence and Counter Espionage) Training Headquarters to uncover a traitor in the organisation. While there he meets ICE agent Sheila Sommers, a test pilot who has been recovered from a Central American jungle with no memory of what happened to the experimental flying saucer she flew. Due to the electro-magnetic power of the saucer, only a woman is able to fly it, as males of the species are killed by the energy.
Helm had worked with Sommers on an assignment where the two had posed as man and wife. When Sommers meets Helm, her memory comes back. Mac, the head of ICE, decides to send Helm and Sommers (posing again as his wife) undercover as a photographer doing a story on the Montezuma Beer Brewery, whose advertising jingle is the same tune as the anthem of Ortega's political movement.
Along the way, they must deal with Ortega's henchmen, Francesca Madeiros (an operative for Big O, Helm's main nemesis), who poses as a model and seduces Helm, an assassin named Nassim and a tough thug named Rocco.
Themes
The film was the third of four produced in the late 1960s starring Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. It followed 'The Silencers' and 'Murderers' Row' and like those earlier films followed the approach of being a spoof of the James Bond film series rather than a straight adaptation of Hamilton's novel. It was followed by one more, 'The Wrecking Crew' in 1969.'The Ambushers' features a scene similar to one in the later James Bond film 'Live and Let Die' (1973), in which one of the hero's love interests is stripped of her clothes by way of a magnetic gadget.
Cast
Production
The film was originally known as 'The Devastators'.
Reception
This film is generally considered the weakest of the four Helm films, and is cited in the book 'The Fifty Worst Films of All Time' by Harry and Michael Medved. The Medveds also cited a review of 'The Ambushers' by critic Judith Crist which stated: "The sole distinction of this vomitous mess is that it just about reaches the nadir of witlessness, smirky sexiness and bad taste and it's dull, dull, dull to boot.""Bombs",'Saint Petersburg Times', September 15, 1978 (p.16 D).
Box office
The film earned theatrical rentals of $4.7 million in the United States and Canada from an estimated gross of $10 million. Please note this figure is a rental accruing to distributors.Soundtrack
Hugo Montenegro became the third composer in as many films to do the score for the series. He wrote (along with Herbert Baker who worked on 'Murderer's Row') the theme song, "The Ambushers", which featured the vocals of Boyce & Hart, two of the songwriters from 'Murderer's Row'. Montenegro went on to compose the score solo for the next Matt Helm film, 'The Wrecking Crew'.
See also
*List of American films of 1967
* List of films featuring powered exoskeletons
References
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