Novelist Helen MacInnes didn't write her espionage stories in a vacuum, as her husband served as an actual agent for England's MI6. Bought by MGM in 1942, MacInnes' spy novel Above Suspicion featured Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford. Amateur secret agents, they flit across Nazi-held Europe like tourists on a scavenger hunt. A full generation later, MGM filmed MacInnes' The Venetian Affair as part of the swinging '60s superspy trend. Partly filmed in Italy, it carried a breezy advertising tag line: "Enjoy the Fine Arts of Venice... Murder! Spies! Women!" Fresh from his lead role as Napoleon Solo in TV's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn was an obvious candidate for big screen spy-dom. He plays a CIA operative fired over a marriage to a suspected Communist agent, who must go back into action when an American diplomat unaccountably carries a suicide bomb into an international peace conference. The German-born beauty Elke Sommer is the potentially duplicitous spouse, while Karlheinz Boehm serves as one of the main villains. In a late career role, Boris Karloff is a French political expert with special information about the blast. The mandatory decorative femmes fatales encountered by Vaughn's suave agent include Felicia Farr (Kiss Me, Stupid), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball) and Sigrid Valdis (Our Man Flint). As with most '60s spy films, the story relies on a science fiction premise: using a mind-control drug, evil enemies of freedom are programming diplomats as involuntary suicide bombers. MacInnes' book had been a best-seller but the film reviews were mixed at best: The New York Times' critic described Elke Sommer's duplicitous spy as being, 'voluptuously ridiculous.'

by Glenn Erickson