User reviews

Let's say you're a refugee scientist from some foreigny country, hiding in Southern California working on antidote to some killer spore virus that's going to be sprayed on America's crops, to be baked into apple pies. Would you let a smug, fifty-ish, cardigan-wearing, skill-less "secret agent" into your home, to sleep next to you and your sexy, sexy, sexy neice? I wouldn't.

Anyway, Peter Mark Richman, who you may remember from "Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhatten", IS Adam Chance, Agent for H.A.R.M. He answers to one- except Wendell Corey, as the head of H.A.R.M. Here, Wendell is as drunk as he was in "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" but not as drunk as he was in "Astro-Zombies".

Enjoy!

Sorry, but Mark Richman is no Sean Connery. On his best day he might be a Neal Connery (see Operation Double-007). Here he stumbles through this effort to cash in on the 60's superspy bondwagon. His character seems perplexed by the entire plot...and he's not alone. What the heck is going on is anybody's guess. There's action, and bad guys, and a secret device (a manufactured flesh-eating virus: the movie's prophetic despite itself). But it's like watching a slide show. Nothing connects to anything, nothing flows. At the end you find yourself wondering why you wasted 90 minutes.

Here we have the epic adventures of a super-swinging spy from the '60s, complete with loads of gorgeous women, fantastic gadgets, and awe-inspiring adventure set pieces...

Actually, no we don't.

What we have instead is a painfully low-budget, underwritten, generally icky movie filled with token attempts at the girls, gadgets, and adventures of our pal double-oh-seven, but all falling faaaar short of that goal. Think of it as the movie you and your friends might make one Saturday afternoon if you tried to make a Bond movie with community theater actors and a camcorder. Only without the comedy.

Buh-duh DAH-duuuuuh!

I saw this movie back in the summer of 1968 when I was eleven years old and it scared the pants off me and my friends. We never spoke once for nearly ninety minutes it was so absorbing. And that was unusual for us as we used to lark about a lot in those days - you know?

As I recall, the plot revolves around a group of evil men who have developed a gun which fires little pellets containing a virulent designer fungus, which firstly knocks the victim cold and then consumes his entire body within a matter of hours. One minute you have a living guy - next he's just a mass of green, gungy stuff. Yuk! Horrible.

I think the reason we found it so disturbing was the implied biological warfare element. In other words it could have been possible at that particular point in history, and certainly nowadays in the twenty-first century. So I guess it's still relevant.

I'd love to see this movie again sometime and I give it ten out of ten on the scary scale.

fail. Yes the hero in this one will get no medal for his work in this one. The movie is trying to be a Bond movie, but when you only have a camera, 25 dollars, and one weekend to shoot...you may want to rethink that idea. The movie is about an agent protecting a scientist and his hot neice. He does this by hanging around their house for the weekend. Meanwhile, the villains including Prince and a bunch of other lugs are developing a biological weapon that turns people into fungus. The hero offs a couple of people once strangling a guy with a coat hanger and the second time by frying a person with a tv and of course he flirts endlessly with this gal who is young enough to be his daughter. He also reports to his boss who seems to be drunk. By the end of the movie our hero finally leaves the one location and then we find out why he so wanted to stay there because he really screws up big time away from it.

A paunchy, fiftyish sleazeball is...agent for H.A.R.M! He hits on girls young enough to be his daughter! And cops a feel while he's got his hands on them! He's smug, ineffectual, pompous and smarmy. The only reason he half way succeeds in his mission is because the bad guys are so lame. And he still managed to botch the case. That's what he gets for leaving that one location! And for some reason, his yellow cardigan didn't protect him. That must be the reason why he wore it for six straight days in a row, right? I must say-I've never seen a secret agent who wore a CARDIGAN before. Only grandfathers wear cardigans. Couldn't they have gotten a better wardrobe person for this movie? I mean, they saved all that money on the location scouting, they could have afforded to hire someone who wouldn't have put grandpa secret agent in a yellow cardigan!

If you thought Pierce Brosnan was a bad Bond, I think Peter Mark Richman will make you change your mind. Agent Adam Chance superficially is all the things Bond is: self-confident, good with women, and working for a secret organization. The problem is that the character also needs a little thing called charisma if the cockiness is going to work. With Richman, it just becomes laughable. Bouncing around in his yellow cardigan, it's a wonder the bad guys don't laugh themselves to death.

Agent for H.A.R.M.(whatever that stands for, we are never told) has absolutely no pace at all. After a hilarious first segment with some Russian spies, we get 80 minutes of boredom, odd dialogue (the "apple pie" part still doesn't make any sense to me), horrendous acting, and very little action, if there even is any.

The most blasphemous part is how our utterly hate-able, seemingly 60 years old "hero" gets the 20-ish blonde at the end. If this part doesn't make you want to throw up, I don't know what will (of course, there's a chance that you've already turned off the movie, or suffered a coma, at this point).

One of the dullest rip-offs ever made.(review#3)

Another triumph for MST3K (how do they manage to FIND these lousy movies?), as they make succotash of this lame-brained spy flick. The main character, Adam Chance, smirks and swaggers throughout with what is supposed to be dangerous charm. Considering his age (and the bots point out several times that he must be wearing a girdle) the result is painfully embarrassing, especially when two nubile cuties keep falling into his arms - ugh! The storyline is disjointed and confusing; and Russian scientist who has defected seems always to be in deadly peril, but he manages to escape the villains by - not being home when they come to call. Wow, those secret agents sure do earn their paycheck, don't they? The villains are unbelievably obvious, especially the "boss", who telegraphs his anti-democratic bona fides by mincing around effetely, smoking a cigarette in a long holder, and making his telephone calls on an antique candlestick phone! How unAmerican can you get?

In the end, the story just sort of peters out. The scientist has created an antidote against a deadly flesh-eating disease, but when he tries to use it on himself, the antidote doesn't work and he dies. The excuses for this failure are meandering and lame - maybe the change of pressure when he was brought to the hospital in a plane affected the antidote, maybe there never was an antidote...who knows? So the whole secret agent mission was a complete failure, and the world is still at risk. Thank goodness this never became a series, with the viewers watching the free world being failed by its most fearsome line of defence every week.

This is a "must see" movie for nostalgic science fiction fans. Mark Richman and Wendell Cory deliver plenty of action and suspense. Gerd Oswald, the director, is known for his work on the original "OUTER LIMITS". The entire plot is a combination of action, science fiction and horror.

What can you say about Agent For H.A.R.M.? Well, for starters it has a catchy theme song that pummels you in the opening credits. You have a spy that kind of hangs around the house for the duration of his mission, hitting on a girl who's about a third his age and protecting a scientist from several bad guys. One of them is The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Anyway, Adam Chance puts on a cardigan, gets his tiny gun and proceeds to take care of these cretins. Along the way we are treated to bad lines, spores and Truman Capote moonlighting as a madman. At the end, Prince is dead and ninety minutes have been wasted watching Adam Chance move about the house in his sensible cardigan.

This movie answers the question, "Is it possible to make a spy film totally devoid of action and suspense?" Yes is the resounding answer.

The truly sad story is that this film was made instead of other, more deserving films.

Agent Chance's pipsqueak popgun is a Smith & Wesson Model 61 "Escort", an ill-conceived .22 LR jam-a-matic meant to be carried as, believe it or not, a policeman's backup gun! Even after modifications to the design to correct reliability and accuracy issues, Smith & Wesson wisely discontinued them after just two years' production.

When new, the Model 61 retailed for around $60 but have since become a sought-after collectible...for die-hard S&W collectors and possible wannabe H.A.R.M. agents.

Not one of Smith & Wesson's better products, to be sure, though some of these little guns actually function well. I've never met anyone in law enforcement comfortable with using one as an actual back-up piece; most street cops preferred the Smith & Wesson J-frame revolvers for serious work. Many still do.

Why the makers of the film chose to arm Agent Chance with such an oddball pistol is unknown; perhaps they wanted something distinctive for their "hero" and if that was their goal, they achieved it. Poor Chance would be been better served by the issue of an ice-pick which of course is not only inexpensive, but far more reliable in a close encounter. Or perhaps a sharpened cold chisel as a truly memorable "termination device"...

I'll have to admit that I'm a bit biased since the only way I've seen this film was when it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. So at least I had two robots and Mike help me get through it.

Basically, in a world consisting of eight people tops, our "hero" must find and protect a scientist who has created a deadly form of "spores". A group of four bad guys have apparently stolen the formula and our "hero" must stop them. Oh yea, the scientist has a very hot niece who is also part of the bad guys, but don't worry, I haven't given away a thing.

There are a lot of problems with this film, foremost of which is the casting of Peter Mark Richmond in the lead. While he's a decent character actor, he's at his best playing either bad guys or know-it-all scientists. As a "super spy", he's waaay too smarmy for the role and becomes very unlikable in the final scene with the niece. Also Wendell Corey, once a respectable actor, was at the end of his career and the effects of alcoholism really show with his slurred speeches. About the only interesting thing in this very boring film is Corey's secretary who possesses one very long thumb (as pointed out on MST3K).

Perhaps the main problem is how unimaginative the entire plot is. Not to mention that the method of protecting the scientists results in the "hero" killing off the bad guys in an almost sadistic manner (wiring a TV set to a doorknob for example, what if the paperboy tried that doorknob?).

Unless you see two robots and a Mike in the corner, I would suggest avoiding this film at all cost.

They tried, they really did, to get on the Bond wagon, but they didn't have the money to pull it off. So the action scenes involve our hero doing things you or I could do with a mild headcold--riding a scooter at a sedate speed, jumping in the back of a van that's barely moving, and running a wire from a TV to a door. It's all they had money for, so I feel a bit bad for them. While spy movies are supposed to be goofily over-the-top (In Like Flint did it better and with humor), you have to put some money into the stunts and gadgets to reach that height of silly/amazing the genre depends on. Instead of fun, therefore, this spy film comes off as sad.

Harder to forgive than this lack of "wow" factor is the old guy hitting on the young chicks, but I know men who make movies like to think that they are completely irresistible to younger women and will be until they are 80. However, once I did the research into the actors, it seems that Adam is played by a (at filming) 38 year old man. Yeah, I know, he looks like total crap already, but that's what imdb tells me! The girls were 21 and 23. So it's not as creepy as it looks. He definitely looks 55 and they do indeed look to be in their early 20s. So he couldn't really be their grandfather--barely the younger one's father. The poor girls are often in unflattering clothes and awful 1966 hairstyles that relied on hairspray in a big way. One looked considerably better as Animal in Beach Blanket Bingo.

There's a plot. An Eastern Bloc scientist has escaped to continue his researches into bacterial sporulation (which is actually a thing, google tells me. Who knew?) Despite that he's developing a biological weapon, he's doing it in a rental house in Marina del Rey. (I once located the precise house on Google Maps, and that house had not changed in 40 years!) Seems like an odd place to have the super-secret bioweapon facility, but hey, if I knew what I was doing in this field, the CIA or USAMRIID would hire me, am I right? More things happen once spy and scientist and femme fatale meet. There are bad guys, but they don't do much until near the end. There's a showdown. The film ends.

Yea, it's pretty awful. But the one scene where the bad guy grabs the girl at the beach is worth the aggravation. It's one of those.."Did you see that?" scenes. I thought it was hilarious how the bad guy drove his car into the ocean to escape. Like wow!! A car that can drive on land and in water!!! I saw that movie when I was a young lad and that scene blew me away. I had to see it twice just to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. I bought that pellet gun and thought it was a big deal since they used the same one in the movie.

Mark Richmond also had a TV show in the late 50's or very early 60's. I'm pretty sure it was a western but I can't remember the name.

Since when does a comment have to be 10 lines in length??

I actually saw this in '66 in the theater and I have to disagree, it's a comedy. At least judging from all the laughter coming from the audience.

As with many cinematic stinkers, I never would have encountered this one if it hadn't been for MST3K. Perhaps in editing the movie for the show the producers had to cut out the part of the flick that explained what H.A.R.M. stood for, if such an explanation was ever given at all.

One could tell this was going to blow chunks from the tone set by the opening scene, with the elderly dude and his assistant fleeing through a culvert, being chased by a lone Soviet soldier armed with an American battle rifle (seeing as how the credits so kindly thanked Colt Firearms for the weapons used in the film, I guess I'll have to overlook that faux pas, seeing as how the mini pistol carried by the 'Agent for H.A.R.M. was so non-descript as to leave me guessing who might have manufactured it).

The rest of the movie was quite unintentionally funny, from the drunk sounding spymaster to the evil henchman who resembled Prince, to the much maligned cardigan worn by our hero Adam Chance. Although at his age, bones chill more easily, so I can understand his choice of such a sensible garment, although he could have picked a better color than that gawdawful yellow. The one shining spot in this whole mess was Eva, who, despite being a dirty commie spy, was pretty hot. I sure miss the Cold War, don't you?

Paying homage to spy movies such as (the much better) James Bond movies, this late 60s spy snoozer is a real chore to watch. Oh boy, Roger Moore's most slapsticky 007 stinkburger towers over Agent for HARM. Give me Richard Kiel any day over some bad guy name Malko. MALKO???? Sounds like a recalled candy bar brand.

Peter Mark Richman plays our main spy Adam Chance. He's been in a lot of films and shows and this one is not one of his better ones. Adam mostly runs around, drives, rides a bike, fires shots (mostly misses), transmits communication and calls the Vienna Archery Association. Excited yet?? To be frank, I think Peter was more than glad to be in any scene along with Ava who's played by the bikini wrapped Barbara Bouchet. RAWRRRR, she's the only reason HARM gets a few extra points as her film presence is quite pleasing to the corneas. Watch where he cops a feel or two on Ava as well.

And there's a surprise twist ending too: they didn't make a sequel.

There's quite a number of James Bond spoofs out there that are pretty bad, and this one is no exception. Meandering aimlessly with no plot, this movie deserved its MST3K treatment. About the only good thing was the opening tune.

Avoid this one unless you're watching MST3K.

"Agent for H. A. R. M." is not a great movie...I'll admit that. But I also think that this is yet another example of an okay film that was roasted by "MSTK3000" and its legions of admirers automatically assume it is a crap film because they made fun of it so much. Just look at the summary for this film on IMDB...a summary which really doesn't represent the movie but DOES represent the "MSTK3000" version of the film.

"Agent for H. A. R. M." is a movie that was a pilot for a proposed television series that never was approved. Considering the success of the Bond movies and TV shows like "The Man from U. N. C. L. E.", it's not surprising they made this film. What IS surprising is he cheesiness of portions of the film as well as the character played by Peter Mark Richmond.

Richmond was a VERY popular villain on TV at this time, with countless appearances on shows like "Mission: Impossible", "Hawaii Five-O", "The F. B. I.", and it's not like he was a bad actor...he certainly wasn't. But here he seems out of his element and the filmmakers seemed to do their best to destroy his Bond-like character. First, they put a gray streak in his hair (which is odd as he was only 39). Second, they often had him wearing a Mr. Rogers cardigan and firing the tiniest of pistols! A macho secret agent he certainly isn't!

The plot is a strange thing involving a gun that causes flesh to eat itself, crop dusters filled with virulent spores and the H. A. R. M. agency trying to protect a professor who is trying to come up with an antidote for the crop dust. For the most part, the action is rather muted and a bit dull, but at least the lady you see much of the story is quite lovely to look at and is a Bond girl....of sorts (she is from the worst Bond film ever, the original "Casino Royale" movie).

Overall, it's not especially good...I freely admit that. But it's NOT terrible and NOT a film I could see having an overall rating of 2.3....and you can thank "MSTK3000" for this.