Agent for H.A.R.M.

Here we have the epic adventures of a super-swinging spy from the '60s, complete with loads of gorgeous women, fantastic gadgets, and awe-inspiring adventure set pieces...

Actually, no we don't.

What we have instead is a painfully low-budget, underwritten, generally icky movie filled with token attempts at the girls, gadgets, and adventures of our pal double-oh-seven, but all falling faaaar short of that goal. Think of it as the movie you and your friends might make one Saturday afternoon if you tried to make a Bond movie with community theater actors and a camcorder. Only without the comedy.

Buh-duh DAH-duuuuuh!

A paunchy, fiftyish sleazeball is...agent for H.A.R.M! He hits on girls young enough to be his daughter! And cops a feel while he's got his hands on them! He's smug, ineffectual, pompous and smarmy. The only reason he half way succeeds in his mission is because the bad guys are so lame. And he still managed to botch the case. That's what he gets for leaving that one location! And for some reason, his yellow cardigan didn't protect him. That must be the reason why he wore it for six straight days in a row, right? I must say-I've never seen a secret agent who wore a CARDIGAN before. Only grandfathers wear cardigans. Couldn't they have gotten a better wardrobe person for this movie? I mean, they saved all that money on the location scouting, they could have afforded to hire someone who wouldn't have put grandpa secret agent in a yellow cardigan!

As with many cinematic stinkers, I never would have encountered this one if it hadn't been for MST3K. Perhaps in editing the movie for the show the producers had to cut out the part of the flick that explained what H.A.R.M. stood for, if such an explanation was ever given at all.

One could tell this was going to blow chunks from the tone set by the opening scene, with the elderly dude and his assistant fleeing through a culvert, being chased by a lone Soviet soldier armed with an American battle rifle (seeing as how the credits so kindly thanked Colt Firearms for the weapons used in the film, I guess I'll have to overlook that faux pas, seeing as how the mini pistol carried by the 'Agent for H.A.R.M. was so non-descript as to leave me guessing who might have manufactured it).

The rest of the movie was quite unintentionally funny, from the drunk sounding spymaster to the evil henchman who resembled Prince, to the much maligned cardigan worn by our hero Adam Chance. Although at his age, bones chill more easily, so I can understand his choice of such a sensible garment, although he could have picked a better color than that gawdawful yellow. The one shining spot in this whole mess was Eva, who, despite being a dirty commie spy, was pretty hot. I sure miss the Cold War, don't you?

Let's say you're a refugee scientist from some foreigny country, hiding in Southern California working on antidote to some killer spore virus that's going to be sprayed on America's crops, to be baked into apple pies. Would you let a smug, fifty-ish, cardigan-wearing, skill-less "secret agent" into your home, to sleep next to you and your sexy, sexy, sexy neice? I wouldn't.

Anyway, Peter Mark Richman, who you may remember from "Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhatten", IS Adam Chance, Agent for H.A.R.M. He answers to one- except Wendell Corey, as the head of H.A.R.M. Here, Wendell is as drunk as he was in "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" but not as drunk as he was in "Astro-Zombies".

Enjoy!

Sorry, but Mark Richman is no Sean Connery. On his best day he might be a Neal Connery (see Operation Double-007). Here he stumbles through this effort to cash in on the 60's superspy bondwagon. His character seems perplexed by the entire plot...and he's not alone. What the heck is going on is anybody's guess. There's action, and bad guys, and a secret device (a manufactured flesh-eating virus: the movie's prophetic despite itself). But it's like watching a slide show. Nothing connects to anything, nothing flows. At the end you find yourself wondering why you wasted 90 minutes.