Review: The Assassination Bureau

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2023
Images from the Internet

The Assassination Bureau
Directed by Basil Dearden
Heathfield; Paramount Pictures; Arrow Video; MVD Visual
110 minutes, 1969 / 2023
www.ArrowVideo.com
www.MVDVisual.com

Initiated by the James Bond (Sean Connery era) series of spy films, this lead to a number of knockoffs, such as the Matt Helm (Dean Martin), Derek Flint (James Colburn) and Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) releases, which could loosely include the 1967 version of Casino Royale (which had almost nothing to do with the original Ian Fleming novel). In most cases, the secondary ones were comedies, be it dark or broad (I would like to add that I really enjoyed the Helm, Flint, and Royale films, as well as “Get Smart”).

Added to this list is The Assassination Bureau, which is a throwback to the pre-World War I period, and is, naturally, a comedy. It has a foot in the action genre, and another in the British retro-history subgenre (such as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, 1965). For Bureau, as the press release states, on the writing side, this film is “(b)ased on a novel by Jack London (The Call of the Wild, 1903) from a story by Nobel Prize-winner Sinclair Lewis (Babbit, 1922) completed in 1963 by Robert L. Fish (Bullitt, 1968) and adapted into the screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz (Casino Royale, 1967).”

Diana Rigg, Oliver Reed

The film focuses on a group (of men) whose purpose is to assassinate powerful people who “deserve it.” They are well paid for their services. This Bureau, headquartered in London, is run by Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed; d. 1999). He is both a cold-hearted killer for hire, and the love interest. Yep, you read that right. Remember, it is a comedy. The Bureau’s board is filled with British actors of renown at the time, such as Beryl Reid, (The Killing of Sister George, 1968; d. 1996), Clive Revill (who I always think of being the lead investigator in The Legend of Hell House, 1973, though he did appear in a couple of later Mel Brooks releases), and Kurt Jürgens (the lead villain in The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977; d. 1982).

Hot on the trail of the Bureau is strong-willed First Wave feminist who is seeking to be a journalist, Sonya Winter (The Diana Rigg, hot off her role of Emma Peel in “The Avengers”; d. 2021). She wants to investigate them with the help of a newspaper run by Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas, d. 1994). She connects to the clandestine Bureau that she wants someone assassinated and is willing to hire them. Her choice target is Dragomiloff (perfect set-up for romantic encounters, as they avoid being killed in various ways). This gives Draggy and Winter the chance to circle the globe in cities such as Paris and Zurich, among many others.

Telly Savalas, Kurt Jürgens

The deal is, if Dragomiloff is not assassinated, he will kill the international ultra rich and power-/money-hungry board members first. It is obvious (purposefully) and disclosed early who is the key lead villain, and why, who is assisted by the humorously dour Yugoslavian Fagin-equse-looking lacky Baron Muntzof (Vernon Dobtcheff). Trump would be too dumb to be on this board, by the way, though he fits the greed criteria.

Winter, through the early stages of the film, looks remarkably like Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964), in both manner (strict and to the point, yet kind) and dress. She even has the cloth bag. Of course, she also gets to dress up and dress down, in gowns, corsets and bath towels. While looking back this can be seen as a bit misogynistic, as I found the ending, it is important to note that Winter is a main character (though often seen as confused and duped by Dragomiloff), and there is also a major female villain in Eleanora Spado (Annabella Incontrera, who was in a few gialllo films, often directed by Paolo Cavara; d. 2004)

It is notable that for its time and in a mainstream release, there is a high level of sexual proclivity (e.g., a brothel) where there are near-naked women, and at least a few tips of nips. Wild for those days, but relatively tame for modern cinema viewers. However, I was more disturbed by the subtle antisemitism of the character of Weiss (Warren Mitchell, who was in The Crawling Eye, 1958, and Jabberwocky, 1977), a banker from Switzerland, who is exceedingly focused on money. As Baron Muntzof states, “Weiss understands the value of money.”

As a mild digression, I was amused that the President of France is played by an actor named John Adams.

For the basics of the extras, this High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray uses the original lossless English mono audio, with optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. There is a brand new audio commentary with thick British-accented authors Sean Hogan and Kim Newman. They are not the most exciting speakers, but their topics are wide ranging, from discussing the rise of Victorian period pieces at the time (e.g., Mary Poppins, 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) to how the film was formulated and its place in both the story’s history and in the time of its release. Of course, there are also some nice anecdotes.

Rigg, Vernon Dobtcheff

“Right Film, Wrong Time,” (27-min) is an also new featurette by British cultural historian and critic Matthew Sweet. He discusses the socio-political world London and Lewis were living in when they came up with the story idea for the book that became this film. He also talks about how London’s unfinished book morphed into the completed story. He keeps it pretty interesting mixing talking head commentary and clips from the film, though I started to get distracted about two-thirds through it. Along with the original trailer, and an Image gallery, you get a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork choices.

This is a high-budget, big cast of British stars, that is fun. One could say that it was a subgenre initiated by the likes of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1965) or The Russians are Coming, The Russians Are Coming! (1966).

Filmed during the uptick in the Vietnam War era/error and the year after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the film is a commentary on political violence and the desire for power by the rich and corrupt (aka Marg T. Greene heaven). Part of the way they show this is through parody, the absurdity of it all, and the enormous amount of collateral damage or, as Mel Brooks’ Governor Lepetomane put it, “Innocent people blown to bits!”

Considering all these murderous explosions that occur, in the words of Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, “May the good lord take a likin’ to ya, and blow you up real soon!”

IMDB listing HERE