In 1976 James Bond was at the centre of a high-profile legal battle between franchise owner Cubby Broccoli and writer Kevin McClory, who’d co-written Thunderball with Ian Fleming, and wanted to film his own version of the novel as James Bond of the Secret Service. Broccoli blocked the project (it eventually became Never Say Never Again) but the hoo-hah gave Shonteff the impetus to revive his MI5 muse. This was the result, with dashing Nicky Henson as Charles Bind, protecting the world’s top bankers from assassination with an orgy of showy gun twirling and blokey bum pinching. The violence levels were upped, rather nifty cod-blaxploitation theme tune ‘Givin’ it Plenty’ was slapped on, Jon Pertwee picked up a day’s work linking scenes on a very red GPO telephone as the Reverend Walter Braithwaite, and Shonteff made enough on his meagre outlay to justify a sequel, The Man from SEX (1979) featuring Gareth Hunt and Space 1999’s Nick Tate in a very vague plot involving cloned world leaders.
George White
March 31, 2024 at 12:17 pm
Astonishingly getting a blu-ray release in the US, despite years of rumours that Shonteff’s self-produced films were in a Russ Meyer-esque legal mire.