I've seen more than my fair share of malodorous cinematic stinkers, so claiming that this horrifically horrendous dud is perhaps the smelliest celluloid skunk I've ever had the grave misfortune to stumble across is say a whole lot. Things get off to an unpromising start with a lone man stranded on a remote island wandering through the woods. His meandering thoughts serve as insufferably tedious narration. The man finds a cave and ventures inside. He discovers a bunch of old computers. He watches about twenty entire minutes worth of stock footage of both World Wars, Woodstock and Vietnam. Sound exciting? Well, trust me it sure ain't. Boring? Most definitely. It's more boring than watching two snails copulate for five hours straight.
The story proper finally kicks in and things only get worse. Much, much worse. Poor Robert Vaughn, a long way off from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," portrays a drippy stuffed shirt bargain basement James Bond-style government secret agent who discovers a nefarious Nazi plot in South America to start a Fourth Reich through cloning. Cranky superior Keenan Wynn huffs and puffs his disapproval. Leo Gordon is shamefully wasted in a nothing bit part as a useless FBI chief. The ubiquitous Aldo Ray pops up as an evil Nazi rat. None other than Hitler himself (badly played by a pitifully unconvincing actor) turns out to be behind the whole thing. Wynn also is revealed as being in cahoots with the Nazis (that's a big surprise -- NOT!). The limp direction by Kenneth Hartford and notorious Grade Z blunder wonder supreme David L. Hewitt (who also co-wrote the stale cookie cutter script), David E. Jackson's ugly, washed-out cinematography, the lethargic pacing, the infrequent and ineptly staged action scenes (the undeniable low point occurs when Vaughn very meekly fights a clone of himself), William Loose's terrible droning slushy score, the crummy acting, and the dreadful tin-eared dialogue ("I think you could do with a little less bump and a lot more grind") are all uniformly abominable. Naturally, this gruelingly godawful ordeal spent two years gathering dust on the shelves before it was purchased by legendary cruddy late-night TV titans Gold Key Entertainment so it could be rerun an endless amount of times at 1:00 a.m. in the morning much to the dismay of insomniacs the world over. This appalling atrocity comes across like a fifth-rate watered-down version of an "Ilsa" picture. The absolute pits.
The story proper finally kicks in and things only get worse. Much, much worse. Poor Robert Vaughn, a long way off from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," portrays a drippy stuffed shirt bargain basement James Bond-style government secret agent who discovers a nefarious Nazi plot in South America to start a Fourth Reich through cloning. Cranky superior Keenan Wynn huffs and puffs his disapproval. Leo Gordon is shamefully wasted in a nothing bit part as a useless FBI chief. The ubiquitous Aldo Ray pops up as an evil Nazi rat. None other than Hitler himself (badly played by a pitifully unconvincing actor) turns out to be behind the whole thing. Wynn also is revealed as being in cahoots with the Nazis (that's a big surprise -- NOT!). The limp direction by Kenneth Hartford and notorious Grade Z blunder wonder supreme David L. Hewitt (who also co-wrote the stale cookie cutter script), David E. Jackson's ugly, washed-out cinematography, the lethargic pacing, the infrequent and ineptly staged action scenes (the undeniable low point occurs when Vaughn very meekly fights a clone of himself), William Loose's terrible droning slushy score, the crummy acting, and the dreadful tin-eared dialogue ("I think you could do with a little less bump and a lot more grind") are all uniformly abominable. Naturally, this gruelingly godawful ordeal spent two years gathering dust on the shelves before it was purchased by legendary cruddy late-night TV titans Gold Key Entertainment so it could be rerun an endless amount of times at 1:00 a.m. in the morning much to the dismay of insomniacs the world over. This appalling atrocity comes across like a fifth-rate watered-down version of an "Ilsa" picture. The absolute pits.