In Cannes ,
Illya and Napoleon attempt to contact a Dr. Kelvin, who has developed a serum
with miraculous healing properties. To keep it out of the hands of miscreants, Dr.
Kelvin has sought the protection of U.N.C.L.E. Oh, Dr. Kelvin, how naïve of
you. When it comes to innocent civilians, U.N.C.L.E. doesn’t really do protection. Dangling civilians in
front of deadly enemy agents as bait? Hurling civilians directly into the path
of danger? Yeah, that’s really more U.N.C.L.E.’s speed. Protection? Not one of
their strengths.
Outside a hotel, a champagne-swilling flower vendor is
approached by a pair of pretty blonde women in a fancy sports car: sinister Madame
Streigau (Marian Moses), and famed racer Nazarone (Danica d’Hondt), who is in town
to compete in the upcoming Grand Prix. Madame Streigau asks the vendor to pose
for a photo, whereupon she discreetly passes him an envelope, then sticks him
with a corsage pin laced with deadly poison.
Unaware of the dastardly deeds going on under their pert noses,
Napoleon and Illya scope out Madame Streigau and Nazarone on their way into the
hotel. “I do love the Riviera ,”
Napoleon says. “You just like blondes,” replies his sexy blond partner.
Inside the hotel, Napoleon glances around the lobby and
assesses the occupants. “Brunettes,” he says glumly. Ah, Napoleon. Tap-dancing
right on that fine line between dashing and detestable, aren’t you?
Upon discovering that Dr. Kelvin has already checked out,
Illya and Napoleon break into his former room, which is now occupied by a prim
(brunette) grammar school teacher named Lavinia Brown (Kipp Hamilton). Above
Lavinia’s angry protests, they conduct a thorough search of her room. Alarmed,
Lavinia summons a porter to throw them out; Napoleon cheerfully slips him a hefty
tip, whereupon the porter saunters off, leaving the bathrobe-clad woman alone
in her room with two strange male intruders. Poor show, unnamed porter. Poor
show.
On the balcony, Illya finds a small, nondescript metal disk.
Because there is no limit to the amount of weirdly specific knowledge packed
inside his attractive head, he immediately identifies it as a modification disk
for a solenoid from a racecar. I mean, obviously.
(Hey, why does Illya wear a wedding band? Is this some
unexplored facet of his mysterious personal life, or could David McCallum not
be bothered to remove his own ring while filming?)
Directly beneath the balcony, the gardenia vendor collapses
and dies from the poison-laced pin. Illya rushes downstairs, dons dark glasses
and a French accent, and poses as a doctor to loot the corpse.
The envelope Madame Streigau gave the vendor contains twenty-five
thousand francs. Napoleon speculates—wildly but, as it turns out, accurately—that
she bribed the vendor to stay quiet about something that happened up on the
balcony. “I wonder what he had seen,” Napoleon muses, then shrugs and forgets
all about it. The mystery of what, exactly, the vendor saw on the balcony will
remain unaddressed for the remainder of the episode. Something to do with Dr.
Kelvin’s disappearance, clearly, but everyone sort of glosses over the
specifics.
Napoleon and Illya tromp around Cannes , visiting garages in search of anyone
who can give them more information about the solenoid. At long last, they run
across Nazarone. Alarmed at the sight of the solenoid, she brusquely sends them
on their way. Immediately thereafter, Madame Streigau and her henchwomen—all
blonde, all beautiful, all members of the diabolical global terrorist
organization T.H.R.U.S.H.—arrive at the garage. Madame Streigau whips out a gun
and, before Napoleon and Illya can intervene, riddles Nazarone full of bullets.
She drives off, taking Nazarone’s body with her.
But wait! According to the local papers the next day, a very
much alive Nazarone has checked herself into a clinic for a routine examination
before the Grand Prix. Napoleon heads to the clinic to investigate. Sure
enough, Nazarone is alive and uninjured and wants nothing to do with Napoleon.
When he attempts to: a) find out why she’s not dead, and b) flirt with her,
Nazarone violently punches and chokes him, then throws him out of her room.
Napoleon will spend much of this episode getting slugged and
throttled by enraged blondes. As much as I adore Napoleon, I can’t honestly say
he doesn’t deserve it.
Napoleon returns to the hotel to compare notes with Illya.
It’s unclear what Illya’s been doing all this time. From the looks of things,
he’s been hanging out in the hotel bar while quietly getting plastered on
excellent French wine. It’s a tough life, this secret-agent business.
Based on Nazarone’s miraculous recovery from, like, death,
Illya and Napoleon assume Dr. Kelvin and his super-healing formula are in the
hands of T.H.R.U.S.H. Napoleon immediately comes up with a risky and
unnecessarily complicated plan to get the formula back: He’ll trick Madame
Streigau into thinking innocent bystander Lavinia also has a copy of the formula, and as soon as T.H.R.U.S.H. tries
to capture and/or kill her to get it back, he and Illya will… I dunno, swipe
the original formula back from them somehow. He’s a little hazy on that part.
So Napoleon breaks into Lavinia’s hotel room, again, where she’s
just sitting around in her bathrobe while drinking champagne. In the glitzy,
bubbly, glorious world of this show, champagne is everyone’s default beverage
of choice, which is exactly how it should be. Napoleon hands Lavinia a check
for $25,000 and urges her to start throwing money around in a splashy manner:
“Buy things. Expensive things, like clothes, cars, fur coats, wolfhounds.” He
neglects to mention that this behavior will bring a cabal of murder-happy
terrorists down on her head, but I’m sure that was an oversight.
After Illya secretly observes a T.H.R.U.S.H. agent planting
hidden microphones in their room, Napoleon and Illya talk loudly about how
they’re paying Lavinia a great deal of money for her copy of the formula.
Madame Streigau swills champagne and eavesdrops on their conversation.
While searching their room for T.H.R.U.S.H. boobytraps,
Napoleon and Illya discover poisoned-laced needles stuck in their pillows. I’ve
been watching these episodes streaming on Amazon, and the closed captions,
which sometimes make freewheeling interpretive guesses as to the dialogue,
identify the poison as “methylated cob rocks”. While evocative, this can’t possibly be right. (The closed captions
also sometimes interpret “Mr. Solo” as “Mr. Zorro”. I thought “Napoleon Solo”
was the world’s most fabulous name, but “Napoleon Zorro” might actually have
the edge.)
Acting on Napoleon’s orders, Lavinia goes on a shopping
spree, buying a cute sports car and renting a cottage on the Riviera . Figuring she’s successfully attracted
the attention of T.H.R.U.S.H., Illya attempts to whisk her off to safety to a
cabin in the Alps , but Lavinia refuses to go. Hell,
Lavinia, hiding out in the Alps with Illya
sounds like a blast. Sign me up. We’d wear turtleneck sweaters and sprawl out
on the shag carpet in front of a blazing fireplace, drinking hot toddies and
eating fondue while listening to esoteric French jazz albums and debating the
merits of socialism. Some might call it paradise.
So Lavinia and Illya head off to her Riviera cottage, where they’re ambushed by a
gaggle of lethal blondes. Madame Streigau drags Lavinia off to the clinic to interrogate
her about the formula while a couple of henchwomen deal with Illya. After
stunning him with poison gas, they smooch him on the cheek and dump him into a
dry well. This is a waste of a perfectly good Illya.
Napoleon prowls around the clinic in search of Dr. Kelvin’s
formula. He runs into the clinic’s proprietor, Dr. Baurel (Ben Wright). A
gun-toting Napoleon greets Baurel with “What’s up, Doc?”; the line should be a
groaner, but Robert Vaughn delivers it in a low, husky, humorless growl that somehow
flips it right back around into hilarious. This is the magic of Vaughn.
Dr. Baurel confirms that T.H.R.U.S.H. kidnapped Dr. Kelvin
and stole his formula, but insists they did him no harm—per Baurel, Kelvin
wasted away from what seemed like severe exhaustion. After Kelvin’s death,
Baurel took over his research and tested the formula on Nazarone. Baurel drops
another bombshell: Madame Streigau is actually the diabolical face-changing
T.H.R.U.S.H. scientist Dr. Egret, first introduced in “The Mad, Mad Tea Party
Affair”, back when she was played by the fabulous Lee Meriwether. In exchange
for his life, Baurel offers to give Napoleon the sole copy of the formula,
which is located in a safe in Nazarone’s garage. Before they can leave,
however, Napoleon is ambushed and beaten to a pulp by Nazarone, who has become
supercharged with unnatural vim and vigor due to the formula.
(One of the beautiful blonde henchwomen, by the way, is
played by poor doomed Sharon Tate. Tate, who is billed simply as “Therapist”,
spends most of the episode scampering about in a sweater paired with seamed
stockings and ballet shoes; it’s a fun, fetching look, though to adopt it for
everyday wear, adding pants might not be a bad idea.)
Madame Streigau injects Lavinia with Pentothal and
interrogates her about the formula. Lavinia spills the beans about U.N.C.L.E.’s
scheme: Napoleon—or “nice, pretty Mr. Solo”, as a spaced-out Lavinia calls
him—gave her twenty-five grand to do nothing. In classic T.H.R.U.S.H. style,
Madame Streigau comes up with an elaborate and gimmicky way to kill Lavinia and
Napoleon: She ties them down to mattresses and sets them afloat in a swimming
pool. When the mattresses become saturated, they’ll sink and drown.
Illya climbs out of the well and races to the clinic in time
to save Napoleon and Lavinia from drowning. Madame Streigau heads for the
garage to get the formula, while a serum-crazed Nazarone hops in her car with
Dr. Baurel in tow and speeds off on a mad race to oblivion. Napoleon, Lavinia
and Illya pile into Lavinia’s new sports car, choosing to chase after Nazarone
instead of going after the formula. This doesn’t make all that much sense plotwise,
though it does give the actors a
chance to zip around madly in flashy cars (for those who care about such
things, Nazarone’s car is an AC Cobra), which: fair enough.
Eventually, after being thoroughly outraced by Nazarone, Napoleon
decides to cut his losses and head after Streigau. He leaves Illya behind with
orders to do whatever it takes to stop Nazarone. Illya wonders how he can
accomplish this without a car; Napoleon replies, “Why don’t you try showing
them your legs?” Ah, the sexual objectification of Illya is proceeding apace, I
see. Excellent.
Alas, Illya remains fully clothed (this time), opting
instead to build a makeshift barrier of hay bales to stop Nazarone. The car
skids to a halt; when Illya removes Nazarone’s helmet, he’s horrified to see
she’s turned into a grotesque, withered husk of her former self. Or, really,
that she’s turned into a beautiful young woman with unblended foundation smears
across her face, but I’m willing to accept that the makeup artists were trying to make her look prematurely aged
by the formula.
At Nazarone’s garage, Madame Streigau-née-Dr. Egret
retrieves the formula, rips off her wig and mask, and takes off. Napoleon
arrives at the garage too late to stop her. A pair of blonde T.H.R.U.S.H. henchwomen
beat the crap out of him, just for kicks.
Back at the hotel, Napoleon is dispirited about the utter
failure of the mission. Because their partnership is built largely upon
gratuitous cruelty and relentless one-upsmanship, Illya doesn’t bother to tell
him that the formula doesn’t work: “I’d be miserable too, if I had to explain
to Mr. Waverly how I let Dr. Egret and the formula get away from me.” After
Lavinia lets it slip that the formula is worthless, Napoleon rips off his coat
and advances on Illya, presumably to give his partner a well-deserved beating. “You
did say you like blonds,” Illya reminds him.
Comments
BTW, This is a waste of a perfectly good Illya is my new favorite phrase.
The movie is extraordinarily fun, and I highly recommend you try to see it ASAP, before it leaves theaters.
And finally, I've been poking around your blog a bit, and read your enormously satisfying and comprehensive post about Ioan Gruffudd from 2007 -- what a joy it was! I've adored him since the first Hornblower movies came out, and it was great to read someone's thoughts on some of his less-well-known roles, as well as the ones that I haven't seen yet. I actually bought a used copy of his Great Expectations on VHS recently and have been hesitant to watch it because I really don't like the book much... but you've convinced me that Ioan is not unlovable in it, so I'm going to give it a whirl soon. Thanks!
I'll try to see the film this weekend, if it's still in theaters. The show is just a crazy good time--anyone looking to understand the concept of onscreen chemistry could do worse than examining it, because McCallum and Vaughn play brilliantly off each other. It's just fun to watch.
Next week, we're going to start watching season 1 backwards, now that we've finished off your ep recommendations for it. That way we'll probably get to see all the really good end-of-season eps before I have to go home.
I do get amazed at how many passes you give to an episode—while I'm sitting there and watching a captured Napoleon and/or Illya and I'm saying, "Just shoot them. Shoot them NOW."
As for this Nazarone episode, I think the "show them your legs" comment was just a reference to how a woman would get a lift, thereby slowing down a passing car. "It Happened One Night" used that as the basis for a funny scene between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, as observed by Clem Robins above.
FWIW, The Guns of Navarone was the second top-grossing film of 1961.