Steve Rossi

(On Cable TV, October 2021) The extraordinary success of the James Bond series at the beginning of the 1960s led to a long, long series of films attempting to replicate or spoof the secret-agent genre throughout the rest of the decade. The Last of the Secret Agents is one of those, and a would-be star vehicle for then-popular comedy duo Allen & Rossi. But here’s the problem: In designing a star vehicle, it’s best if the stars are worth vehiculating, and while straight-man Steve Rossi is agreeable (especially as a signer), the more ridiculous Marty Allen is borderline intolerable. That definitely puts a drag on a film whose best moments do not involve one of its two headliners. Director Norman Abbott gets things off on the right foot, so to speak, with a long one-shot following the transfer of confidential information that leaves a literal trail of bodies, setting the blackly comic tone of the film. Clearly belonging to the school of comedy that states that quantity of gags has a quality of its own, The Last of the Secret Agents throws all sorts of stuff on-screen, parodying and satirizing everything in sight. Some of it works, so there’s at least some value to the entire thing. But other material, often involving Allen, simply falls flat. Nancy Sinatra brings some welcome sex-appeal to the proceedings, with one musical number leading to a lingerie shot. (Sinatra was, at the time of shooting the film, less than a year away from the superstardom of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”) There’s some additional interest in the atmosphere of the time as portrayed by the film—we often focus on the last years of the 1960s as the defining moment of the decade, but much of the decade in film was a bright optimistic pop-infused concoction that still works well today. The Last of the Secret Agents is not that good of a film, but it does get a few laughs.