The Ambushers
The Ambushers
NR | 22 December 1967 (USA)
The Ambushers Trailers

When an experimental flying saucer crashes, secret agent Matt Helm has to bring back the secret weapons hidden on board.

Reviews
StuOz

My God! What a great UNDER-RATED movie! Where do I start? The opening theme song and the images that go with it get ten out of ten. Then after we are finished with the cool theme music we cut to the spaceship...with some cool Hugo Montenergo music playing over the spaceship footage. From this point I am hooked on this fun,fun,fun, very 1960s movie! Dean Martin is outstanding in this film and soon-to-be Land Of The Giants cast member Kurt Kasznar is fine as well. Albert Salmi is here and he will join Kurt as a guest star in one episode of Land Of The Giants (Graveyard Of Fools).The only thing I have against the film is the train-track scene where it is a bit too obvious that the actors are actually in the studio and not out on location at all. The Ambushers is FUN.

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Simon Foster

I'd like to know more about the people writing negative reviews of a movie like this: how old are they? were they even alive during the 60s? This movie is a product of a different age. It was a simpler time. You could get away with making movies that had this kind of production values, script and, yes - allusions to rape in an action-comedy notwithstanding - moral values (I'm not saying they're high, they're just an indicator of the time).Do you watch Charlie Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy and complain about the cinematography? You're watching a movie from the 60s guys - it's a time capsule. It can teach you about what life was like then, because at the time the Matt Helm movies were all completely acceptable and even successful.I dread to think how you lot would handle a 'Carry On' film - yet they were some of the most successful movies ever made in England. You'd probably brand them sexist, vulgar, childish and uninventive though...duh!

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bkoganbing

The Matt Helm series never quite had the class that James Bond did. 007 is still going strong with many actors who now have done the role and it shows no signs of slowing down. But the locker room type humor that typifies the Matt Helm series was definitely wearing thin when The Ambushers came out.Dean Martin is once again intrepid secret agent Matt Helm whose cover as a fashion photographer takes him to Acapulco in search of a satellite that was captured. By of all people, a Mexican beer baron who is considerably more than that. Try and imagine August Busch or Jacob Ruppert in the spy business as well and you have the part Albert Salmi plays.Salmi did vile and disgusting things to pilot Janice Rule upon her capture because, well he's Albert Salmi. She's traumatized and only in the company of Dean Martin with whom she shared some tender moments back in the day will she go back and try to find the thing.Oh by the way, they need Rule because the satellite can't be flown by a man. Something in the atmosphere when the switch is thrown kills all members of the male species. The bad guys don't find this out until too late.Dino walked through this one as did the rest of the cast which looks bored, but also eager because the Matt Helm films did make money back in the day.Well at least we know that the hormonal kinks must have been worked out before July of 1969 when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins went to the moon

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dethjstr

The Matt Helm series of movies featuring Dean Martin are based upon the novels of the same character (loosely), but they are all parody movies. Similar to how "Naked Gun" spoofed many popular themes at the time, these films all poke fun at the spy movies by featuring the outrageousness of the films right in your face. Bond drinks martinis, Helm drinks - a lot. Bond beds a girl or two, Helm beds them all. Bond has fancy gadgets, Helm has them plus his home has them too. Bond has villains with sinister purpose (and sometimes a quirk or two), Helm has villains that are sometimes freaks or simply idiotic. These movies are blatantly obvious as spoofs and their value is that they are interesting to watch at least once or twice.

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