"The Avengers" A Touch of Brimstone (1966)

User Rating:

8.6/10   

Director:

Sidney Hayers

Writer:

Philip Levene (teleplay)

TV Series:

"The Avengers" (1961)

Original Air Date:

19 February 1966 (Season 4, Episode 21)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Crime | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Sexual Tension | Boots | Agent | John Steed | British

Cast

Patrick Macnee	...	John Steed
Diana Rigg	...	Emma Peel
Peter Wyngarde	...	The Honorable John Cleverly Cartney
Colin Jeavons	...	Lord Darcy
Carol Cleveland	...	Sara Bradley
Robert Cawdron	...	Horace
Michael Latimer	...	Roger Winthrop / Lord Lakeham
Jeremy Young	...	Willy Frant / Lord Castigan
Bill Wallis	...	Tubby Bunn / Lord Ragsland
Steve Plytas	...	Boris Kartovski
Art Thomas	...	Pierre
Alf Joint	...	Big Man
Bill Reed	...	Huge Man

Trivia:

This episode inspired part of the Dark Phoenix storyline in X-Men comics, in which a hypnotist using the name Wyngarde transformed Phoenix into his "Black Queen", with a costume based on that worn here by Diana Rigg.

Quotes:

Emma Peel: I've come here to appeal to you, Mr. Cartney.
The Honorable John Cleverly Cartney: You certainly do that.

Ministry of Dirty Tricks

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

* Some spoilers *

While best known for Diana Rigg's notorious "Queen of Sin" costume, this installment of 'The Avengers' succeeds based on good writing and atmospheric direction. As a black-and-white 1960s spy spoof, the show may not appeal to everyone. But this clever, atmospheric episode is one of the series' high points and arguably one of the great stand-alone outings of any show.

A series of increasingly dangerous pranks are disrupting official functions and undermining the UK's attempts to reach a treaty with a rival power. (Here, you are free to imagine Russians under the bed.)

On the case as always is well-tailored spy/counterspy John Steed, suavely played by Patrick Macnee, the fixture of this series. By this time, thin, leggy Diana Rigg was well established as Steed's latest partner, wealthy woman-about-town Emma Peel.

Much of the pleasure of 'The Avengers' lies in the by-play between Macnee and his various co-stars. By now, the writers had rubbed some of the rough edges off Steed, originally a shadowy, slightly untrustworthy bad boy on the good side. He became the arch-English gentleman, oozing affability. While Macnee worked well with all his partners, his chemistry with Rigg, and the Steed-Emma dialogue, was generally the best of all the pairings.

One of the series' chief writers, Brian Clemens, borrows some bits of English history to add spice to the more modern plotting. A nervous prankster leads Steed into contact with a revived "Hellfire Club," the name popularly applied to the 18th circle that gathered around Sir Francis Dashwood, "Poor Fred" Frederick, Prince of Wales, William Hogarth, John Wilkes and other luminaries, including occasional guest Benjamin Franklin. Using the Rabelesian motto Fay ce que vouldras, "Do what thou wilt," they were primarily interested in a good time.

That aspect is well-represented here, as Mrs. Peel investigates,and is attracted to, Peter Wyngrade as the new club's libertine leader, the cruelly handsome John Cartney. He already has a far better-endowed girlfriend in the person of Carol Cleveland (later of Monty Python), but she's a doormat compared to the independent-minded Mrs. Peel,and Cartney relishes a challenge.

Steed insinuates himself into the club with a mix of bonhomie and cheating, disappointing steely eyed Jeremy Young as swordsman/enforcer Willy Brant. Ever polite, Steed prefers to outwit bad guys, beating them up only as necessary. And as Steeds observes the goings-on, he gets a whiff that Cartney and company are more like Guy Fawkes plotters than Dashwood's revelers.

Emma comes in through the front door, courtesy of Cartney's invitation, but she's equally suspicious. That doesn't stop Diana Rigg from putting on a fashion show. First, she's mod yet reserved; then Rigg is ornate if tiny-busted in a beautiful Regency gown; finally, she's on display as a dominatrix with spiked dog collar, spiked boots, jeweled eyelids, black silk panties and a whale-bone corset. Oh yes, there's that snake coiled on her arm. The costume was designed by Diana Rigg and has one significant deviation from historical accuracy. Instead of a flat front, it is curved, underwired and padded to allow the under-endowed Rigg to create the illusion of cleavage.

Though tame by modern standards, all that was enough to get the episode banned during the show's original run in the US. Even in the UK censors trimmed a later scene with a whip. But their loss in the Sixties is our gain today. How does it all end? You'll have to watch and see.