I Watch Films: The Saint: The Fiction Makers
Simon Templar, The Saint (Roger Moore) impersonates Amos Klein the thriller writer. He and the real Klein (Sylvia Sims), pretending to be his secretary, are kidnapped by some criminals cosplaying as the bad guys from the thrillers. They created SWORD (Secret World Organisation for Retribution and Destruction) and used one of the plots of the books to rob a train carriage of ‘currency’. Now they want Klein to plot them into Hermetico, an impregnable vault.
In the 60s, people making spy-fi shows would find this stuff in the books and then everyone would nod and make the episode.
Anyway this is entertaining though it’s not as funny as it thinks it is; it wants to make the villains the real terrifying SWORD and also the goofy parody knock-off. And it doesn’t quite make it work. There’s a few scenes where they slip back and forth from pretend to real to pretend which are cool, and some where it really isn’t. The final break-in scene is fine if you’re willing to believe in glasses that can see infra-red lasers so we get the best of all worlds; they’re actually invisible and ALSO we get scenes of characters trying to weave their way through a weird red light net.
Watch This: For an amusing 60s spy-fi film
Don’t Watch This: If you want to take your thrillers seriously.
Originally: Aired as a two-part episode in the TV series, later stitched together and released as a theatrical film, which is pretty wacky, if less so than the plot.
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