The Ambushers, with a Special Guest Appearance by The Menacers
Scott Adams collaborated on the review of the Ambushers film.

The Murderers' Row book gave us a Matt Helm torn, and through his turmoil the reader discovers that, for all the brutality he sometimes exhibits and all the ruthlessness he is sometimes forced by his occupation to employ, he's not as hardened and cold-hearted as he tells us -- or as he tells himself. In previous adventures we've seen him adopt a gruff but somewhat lovable tenderness of a sort with some of the women he encounters. There are others he treats roughly, but he never really seems to do so with great conviction, even the evil ones. Changing social sensitivities may make some of what Helm does to and with women seem coarse and distasteful, sexist and shallow, but that's more a product of shifting social values and opinions than it is any indication of Matt Helm's attitude toward women. And frankly, given the maddenly hypocritical way in which we here in American deal with sex and sexuality, it's kind of nice to read a book from a time when adults just did stuff with adults, and they were all expected to just be adult about it free from any religious hang-ups or that "sex is the most beautiful, spiritual experience two people can share" mysticism. Additionally, it's nice to see people deal with problems and hang-ups by going, "I'm an adult, you know. I'm responsible for my own actions," instead of beating a path to the nearest head shrink or lawyer to tell them it's all someone else's fault. I freely admit to being something of an old-fashioned chap in much of my taste and opinions in regards to how things should work, so women in nylons and pumps don't make me angry and anxious to rush out into the streets and perform a heartfelt puppet theater bit about "the male gaze."

So while you may or may not be turned off by men and women acting like grown men and women, often caught in a dirty business where any moment's physical pleasure could be your last (followed shortly by your last breath) and thus in a position to appreciate the vitality of a spontaneous, even meaningless fling, I still maintain that in his way, Helm has his moments of tenderness in that "she was a swell looking dame" tough guy sort of manner. In Murderers' Row we got to also see Matt Helm in a new light: as the protective father figure that takes the screwball kid Teddy Michaelis under his wing and does his best to protect her. In The Ambushers (book number six, film number three), Matt assumes the same role with a female agent who, after being captured and subjected to unspeakable acts at the hands of her jailers, emerges from the steamy Central American jungle with an intense aversion to the touch or even presence of a man. Beaten, raped, starved nearly to the point of death, special operative Sheila becomes a shell of a woman, and only an older, wiser agent like Helm can nurse her back into some semblance of physical and mental well being.

The action begins south of the border in some remote Central American hot spot called Costa Verde, where Matt Helm joins forces with a detachment of battle-hardened jungle fighters in order to complete a two pronged mission: assassinate a communist-sympathizer revolutionary general with a nasty personality who commands an army of dedicated rebels threatening to usurp the government, and then rescue the American agent who failed to complete said assassination the first time around. He accomplishes both missions, because he's Matt Helm and that's what he does, but a couple complications arise, because he's Matt Helm and that's what happens to him. For starters, the agent, Sheila, who came before him, is emaciated and half-crazed with fear. Secondly, there's the unexpected appearance of one of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals, Von Sachs. And finally, as if all that wasn't enough, there's the little issue of a stray Russian nuke that managed not to find its way home from Cuba after the recent Bay of Pigs fiasco, and has somehow wound up out here in the hands of a hotheaded renegade general. Upon returning to the States, Helm is assigned to track down and kill Von Sachs, who seems to be trying to kick up some sort of Fourth Reich dust with white supremacists gathering down near Tucson. But first he has to check in for a little rehab at the organization's safe ranch which means he's giving Sheila, who he nicknames Skinny, a ride cross country.

Neither Helm nor, it turns out, Sheila, are happy to be at the ranch, which also serves as a retirement home for agents who are no longer in complete possession of their minds and bodies. Helm just wants to get on with his Von Sachs job, and Sheila has no interest in being prodded and coddled and treated like delicate china. In fact, the only thing she does have interest in is Matt Helm, who she says is the only one who has treated her like a regular person instead of a basket case to be studied and gingerly handled with a soothing voice. Though she's still not over her fear, she recognizes that the guy who carried her out of the jungle, talked to her like a normal adult and fed her milkshakes clear across the country even while she seemed to be semi-catatonic in the back seat can't be all bad. Before too long, Helm and Sheila have convinced Mac back at headquarters that the best therapy is simply to get out and start hustling again. She is thus assigned to be his assistant on the Von Sachs assassination. Unfortunately for the two of them, they aren't the only agents in town who are interested in Von Sachs.

We're used to seeing Helm with women who don't need or want to be protected. Gail Hendricks (who is, once again, mentioned throughout the story) certainly adapted well, as did most of the other women Matt came into contact with throughout the first five books. It wasn't until Teddy that Matt's father figure self emerged. He was, after all, a father of three before his civilian life fell apart. That part of his personality is further explored here, though of course eventually Sheila gets back on her feet and then right back off them again and into Helm's bed in one of the more complex moments in the man's sex life. And yes, in case you're thinking he's a heel for taking advantage of the woman who looks up to him as her savior, so does he. Like all secret agents, though, Matt has a weakness for the fairer sex, and in the end she tells him she's not a little inexperienced girl, and what happened to her as a prisoner will stay with her but damn well not dictate the rest of her life. The one thing you can say about any of these novels is that the women are generally as cavalier and, at times, relaxed about sex as the men. It's something adults do.

Once again, Helm is in his usual stomping ground of the American southwest and what lies just on the other side of the border. In six books, the most jet setting he gets to do is a mission in Sweden (where he spends much of the time in the muddy, desolate wilderness just shy of the Arctic Circle) and a jaunt out to Chesapeake Bay to get shot at by an enraged Martha Stewart. The rest of the stories have kept him pretty close to New Mexico, Arizona, and much to his distaste, Texas. Author Donald Hamilton never misses an opportunity to make a dig at Texans through his secret agent alter ego (incidentally, Hamilton brings so much realism to his stories partially because he served in the military). "Bragging like a Texan" is a frequently-hurled snide remark. All I know about Texans is they drive fast even on small roads and can't stop talking about being a Texan, which I guess makes them about the same as New Yorkers and Germans.

Anyway, as I've written previously, it's nice to see an agent who gets stuck puttering mostly around old desert towns and the suburbs of El Paso or places of that nature. Most other authors seemed all too happy to have their characters slide into international James Bond globetrotting mode with seemingly endless funds at their disposal. Matt Helm, once again, stays in midrange motels and has to drive a broken-down old car. Sheila gets a Volkswagon. Helm wouldn't get to use a nice car until several books later, when incidentally he also got to do another bit of jet-setting (this time in the cold, clammy, rainy, and rugged Scottish Highlands - still not quite Jamaica or the Riviera). That happens in The Devastators, book number nine. He also gets to go to a foreign country in book eight, The Ravagers, but it's only Canada and he has to drive the whole way in a Volkswagon.

Helm continues to be a well-written and increasingly well fleshed-out and complex lead character, and Sheila gives him a female counterpart with a little more complication and weirdness than he's seen previously. As the mysterious female agent who may or may not be working for the same goal as Helm but can't be trusted either way, Catherine Smith is falls into Hamilton's "tough female" sketch. She sasses, betrays, smokes, lounges around in lingerie, curses, and blows just about everything off, just like a female Helm. Hamilton never plays it soft with her. She's hard-nosed and every bit as cunning and ruthless as Matt Helm. In a way she's a fine example of feminine strength. She takes care of herself, commands her mission (she has a male assistant), and never needs to be saved by the hero, but she still managed to look spot-on in a pair of nylons and garter belt. Sheila is the more complex of the two, but it's obvious which woman is ultimately better suited for more hotel room escapades with a rough-and-tumble fella like Helm. Von Sachs is a pretty typical villain. There's a pretty good joke in which Helm comments to himself that all the man needs to be a stereotypical evil Nazi is a scar on the cheek and a monocle, then while peering through the scope on his rifle laughs when he sees the guy really does have a scar on his cheek.

As with all the previous books, The Ambushers is a tight, fast-paced story even when much of the action involves Matt and Sheila pretending to canvas neighborhoods as part of a market research initiative. The twist involving a second set of agents with a shady agenda is a nice twist and also gives Matt a more mature, less vulnerable female operative to fool around with. The fact that the nuke from the beginning of the story winds up playing a role in the end of the story as well despite a half-hearted attempt to make you forget about it is, obviously, no shock, but it hardly matters since the rest of the story is so good. Plus, there is a tangential but thoroughly amusing gag involving Helm's Costa Verde partner and a high-powered rifle that pays off with a nice joke in the end. It's alternately one of the darkest (because of Sheila's ordeal in Costa Verde) and most humorous of the stories so far. I can't remember exactly if it was this or a later story in which, after Von Sachs (or someone else if it was another book, but I think it was this one) makes the usual "I shall rise up and lead a new civilization" speech, Matt retaliates with his own "that tired old gag?" come-back. After a grueling examination of Matt's self-doubt and sanity in Murderers' Row, it was a nice switch to see him relatively relaxed and jokey.

And speaking of relaxed and jokey...

Anyone who says The Ambushers is one of the worst movies ever made simply has not seen enough movies. Most certainly there are qualities possessed by The Ambushers that fall, shall we say, rather short of any meritorious artistic or even entertainment value, but to call it one of the worst films ever made is less a comment on the film itself and more a comment on the sheltered naivety of the viewer. There are hundreds upon hundreds of movies far worse than this -- the next Matt Helm film, The Wrecking Crew, being among them incidentally enough. But even that one is a pretty mild affair to go calling one of the worst films ever. So if The Ambushers is the worst movie you've ever seen, you should be thankful, because in the grand scheme of things it's really not that bad, and in fact, it even has a ramshackle sort of charm to which you can't help but warm, provided you're warmed by things such as bra guns, go-go boots, and Dean Martin looking even drunker and more tired than he did the last time out -- and he was pretty drunk in Murderers' Row.

With women in white go-go boots, breast guns, fez-wearing men, and secret agent gadgets designed by Q's remedial school brother, The Ambushers has just about everything a swank spy movie devotee could ask for. As an added bonus for those of us with immature sensibilities, The Ambushers is full of Dean Martin leering at his Slaygirls (his own troupe of scantily-clad women), making bad puns and cracking elementary school sex jokes. If someone had the wisdom to let Benny Hill craft a spy movie, the results wouldn't have been too far away from The Ambushers.

America launches her newest spacecraft, a female-driven flying saucer. Down south in Mexico, a model truck shoots sparklers out of some roof-mounted guns and catches the saucer in a tractor beam. The saucer is captured, and a shadowy man arrives to steal the spacecraft and terrorize the female agent. At American spy headquarters (although not identified in the film, Helm worked for ICE, Intelligence and Counter Espionage) the Slaygirls are field testing our newest Cold War gadget, a device that drops men's pants, leading to many double entendres by the female spies.

I'm not sure exactly how useful such a device would be, but then again, didn't the CIA plan all sorts of exploding cigars and stuff to use against Castro? Chalk it up with other ultimate weapons of destruction like that spore gun from Agent for HARM and that ray gun that makes you go-go dance uncontrollably from Wild World of Batwoman. Don't these would-be despots every just sit in their hollowed-out base located inside an active volcano and think, "Well, we could just buy a bunch of nuclear missiles and blackmail the world like North Korea, or we could spend millions of dollars developing a weapon that will cause the forces of democracy to put the shama lama in their rama lama ding dong." These guys, for the most part, don't really want to take over the world. They just want an excuse to wear a silver Nehru jacket and use their cool oval viewscreen imbedded in the wall of their control center. You can bet if that weird little elf in North Korea could get himself one of those viewscreens and a big egg-shaped chair, he'd call the White House and swivel around menacingly to greet them on screen at least twice a day.

"Everybody Loves Somebody" is drifting through a window, and we catch Dean Martin making out with a woman who surprises him with a pair of guns in her bra, which leads to even more double entendre. If you had any doubts about the coolness of Dean Martin, consider this scene for a moment. He's using his own song as make-out music. Sure, everyone goes on and on about Sinatra being the leader of the Rat Pack, but even Frankie would put on someone else's record to set the mood. Now augment this with the fact that this all happens while Dean Martin is using his rotating waterbed that can, at the press of a button, roll forward, then tilt so that Dean and his inevitable female companion (or two, I would imagine) slide off the silk sheets and directly into the waiting hot tub which, of course, has been fitted with one of those wet bars that pops up out of the floor.

Shelia (Janice Rule), the driver of the flying saucer is back in the States, driven insane from her experiences in Mexico. Her hair has been bleached white from fright, and she will not allow men get close to her, except for Matt Helm, of course. Helm is assigned to travel with Shelia to Mexico, hoping she will find the man who assaulted her and stole America's newest spacecraft. Helm's boss assigns him this task by asking "Matt, have you ever seen a flying saucer?" Matt replies, "Is that your way of offering me a drink?" Now would be a good time to note that half of Dean's wisecracks, one-liners, and sex jokes actually make little or no sense at all.

So we have elements of the Sheila plot from the book, but what's all this about a flying saucer? Where the heck did they come up with something that wacky? Funny you should ask, because it comes straight out another one of Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm adventures, The Menacers, which was published the same year this movie was made. Of course, in the book, which is top-notch, there is no real flying saucer, just a crude prop used to spook the locals and make the Mexican government think the US military is clandestinely testing high-tech weapons right off the coast of Baja, unconcerned about the occasional death of some Mexican citizens as a result.

In Mexico, Matt and Shelia meet up with beer brewer Jose Ortega who has a hand in the saucer plot, much to Matt's delight, since he intends to thoroughly investigate the brewery. Agents and counter-agents run amok in Mexico, and Matt soon finds himself drowning in a vat of beer. Naturally, the only solution is to drink his way out. In case you were curious, this doesn't happen in any of the Matt Helm books, The Ambushers, The Menacers, or otherwise.

Matt and Shelia's gadgets get them out of a number of fixes, and everything concludes with the image of Dean Martin sliding ass-first down a set of railroad tracks. Years ago, I stumbled upon this scene at about four in the morning on late night television. It was sweltering, as always, and I hadn't been asleep for quite some time, thus placing me firmly in a state of mildly euphoric and disorienting delirium. For weeks, I wasn't quite sure if I'd actually seen this or was hallucinating or dreaming it. I just rewatched this damn thing last week, and I'm still not really all that sure. As of yet, I've not run across a scene in any book that requires Matt to slide ass-first down a steep mountain railroad while waving a levitiation gun.

The whole thing ends with Matt and Shelia safely back in the States. Matt tries to seduce a new agent by playing "Everybody Loves Somebody." Inconceivably, it doesn't work. She puts on Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" instead. "I didn't know you liked Perry Como that much," says Dean, looking into the camera before getting down to some "undercover work," if you know what I mean.

By this point in the series, the films were lifting only the most basic elements from their literary forefathers, basically what you might pick up if you read the blurbs on the back covers of the books. It was obvious with The Silencers that despite the change in tone, they'd at least made some effort to stick to the plot of the books. The Ambushers, on the other hand, keeps the female agent with a fear of men and the Central American setting of the first couple chapters (the rest of the book takes place in Arizona and just south in the Mexican desert) , and the rest of the script -- if there was one -- seems made up on the fly and tailored specifically so Dean could make as many booze and boob jokes as possible. And as for who the ambushers are -- well, in the book it was Helm himself. Here, according to the Boyce and Hart theme song (they wrote all the biggest hits for The Monkees), the ambushers are hot chicks in little bikinis who force you to watch them wiggle their buns.

Almost everyone seems on autopilot, and Dean hasn't aged well from the earlier movies. Instead of a suave, super-smooth secret agent, he seems a little too much like your drunk, creepy Uncle Larry. The Martin charm is still evident, but the half-assed acting, lame sex jokes and general cheapness try their best to keep it under wraps. As always, the dames are a sight for sore eyes. They're led here by Janice Rule as Sheila Sommers, but for my money the real female star is the scintillating Senta Berger, an alumnus of a whole slew of European spy films. Albert Salmi fulfills the role of the villain, Leopold Caselius, which was actually the name of the villain in the second Matt Helm novel, The Wrecking Crew. That movie is even less like the book than this one. In this movie, Caselius is sort of a blend of that character and the chief villain from the original Ambushers book, the Nazi war criminal Von Sachs who was trying to raise a Fourth Reich using south-of-the-border Nazis and their American sympathizers. Although Germans are indeed known for their beer drinking, it doesn't play an especially large role in the book. Similarly, the character of Sheila is lifted from the book, minus a lot of the dark and disturbing backstory that caused her to develop her psychological problems, which are used here more as a source for hijinks and comedy. Speaking of comedy, about the funniest thing in this movie besides the Sinatra jokes are the fight scenes, which are horribly choreographed even by the standards one would apply to the sorts of fight scenes that would be lead by a drunken, middle-aged Rat Packer. Sure they were a rowdy bunch, but Dean's boxing days were a long way behind him.

If you're the drinking sort, you could devise a game where you take a drink each time Dean does, or each time Dean makes a sex joke or someone says "Ole!" Of course, by strictly upholding these rules, you would soon be as drunk as everyone associated with The Ambushers seems to be. I mean, you expect Dean Martin to look tipsy; that's his job. But with the missed lines and flubbed cues, it looks like Dean was sharing his Scotch liberally with the cast and crew. Janice Rule is the only person who seems to care too much about the movie going on around her, and she even gets to slip in a Dean Martin-worthy line. When Dean counters her proposition with "Now? But it's broad daylight?" she gets to answer, "What's the matter with a broad in the daylight?"

Well, I thought it was funny.

Even with all these strikes against it, The Ambushers does manage to remain solidly entertaining throughout its running time. The fact that no one seems to care about the movie actually works in its favor, giving it an agreeable breeziness. Or maybe I really like Benny Hill-type comedy. Judging from many of our reader responses, I think you probably do too. So mix up a martini, cue up "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes" and enjoy the only spy film endorsed by both James Bond and Benny Hill.

Labels: Espionage