The Silencers is a 1966 film directed by Phil Karlson and starring Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Daliah Lavi, Victor Buono, Arthur O'Connell, Robert Webber, James Gregory, Beverly Adams, and Cyd Charisse. It is the first entry in a series of American comedic Spy Fiction films featuring Martin as secret agent Matt Helm, a spoof of James Bond.
The Silencers is loosely based upon and takes its title from the 1962 Helm novel The Silencers by Donald Hamilton, and also adapts elements of Hamilton's first Helm novel, 1960's Death of a Citizen. In the books Helm is a retired World War II spy and assassin, now working as a professional wildlife photographer, who is suddenly called back into service to work for the US government. Much of this backstory is dropped in the movies, although it's not completely forgotten. Instead Helm is a photographer of scantly-dressed women for a fictional "Slay Mate Magazine" (a parody of Playboy) when he's called back to the ICE ((Intelligence and Counter Espionage) agency.
The movie is a strange mixture or genres and switches between parody and brutal espionage thriller in which characters are killed. There are also musical numbers and Martin semi-narrates the movie through song fragments. The movie is also a cutting-edge 1960s Sex Comedy featuring scantily-clad women with double entendre names. The movie opens with a strip tease that fades before showing any taboo bits. It's also historically noteworthy for being the first film to feature a post-credits scene, which would become a staple in films beginning in the 1980s.
Followed by three other Matt Helm films: Murderers' Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967), and The Wrecking Crew (1968).
Tropes in The Silencers include:
- Backwards-Firing Gun: One of Matt's gadgets is the Reversible Gun, which fires behind itself. Gail makes much use out of it as she escapes her imprisonment; one time she hands a guard the gun so he handily offs himself while trying to shoot her, and another time she points the gun at herself in a suicide bluff, only to kill the guard she's talking to instead.
- Bloodless Carnage: The In the Back deaths of Barbara and Sarita produce no blood from their fatal wounds; the audience sees only the two neat, black bullet holes in the back of Barbara's shirt, and we're not even shown Sarita's wound at all, much less any blood.
- Deadly Hug:
- Barbara hugs and kisses Matt, ready to stab him, but Tina shoots her.
- Tina hugs Matt in the bedroom of the bomb shelter, and rips off one of his exploding buttons. Matt throws her aside, she throws the button away, and it goes off, mortally wounding her.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: Each of the bad girls in this film, but Barbara most memorably.
- In the Back:
- Barbara is shot by Tina in the back while the former is making out with Matt.
- Sarita is shot in the back in the middle of performing a dance show.
- In Vino Veritas: Matt gets Gail drunk in hopes that she'll spill what (he thinks) she knows about the nuclear conspiracy. He gets nothing since she is just a clueless civilian caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- The Klutz: Much like her spiritual successor Freya Carlson, Gail always causes little amusing accidents that happen to have Matt in the unfortunate end of them; her introduction alone results in Matt getting pool water and a spilled drink on him, for instance.
- Lighter and Softer: Like the literary Bond, Matt Helm in the novels was a cold-blooded killer, but
Executive Meddling turned the character into a movie Bond spoof. - Malaproper: While drunk, Gail tells Matt "I'll table you under the drink!"
- Mistaken for Spies: Gail is handed an important tape by the dying Sarita and listens to her last words, causing Matt and Tina to think she's an enemy agent, not helped by the fact that her boyfriend is known to actually be one.
- Sexy Shirt Switch: Invoked by Barbara when she borrows one of Matt's tuxedos shirts, and stands in his bathroom, wearing it, her shoes and pantyhose, and nothing else.
- The Stinger: The film ends with a post-credits scene featuring a shirtless Matt Helm on a spinning sofa being kissed by various women, with text popping up teasing the film's sequel Murderers' Row (1966), leading Matt to put his hands into his face and mutter "Oh my god" in response. The scene is notable for being the first post-credits scene in a movie.
- Take That!: Dean Martin as Matt praises himself as "Everybody Loves Somebody" plays on the radio while deriding fellow Rat Pack member Frank Sinatra singing "Come Fly With Me" as terrible.
- Yellowface: American Victor Buono plays Tung-Tze with plenty of eye-shadow to help him look the part.
- You Can Leave Your Hat On: The credits play over a show of various women dancing and stripping. One takes her top off and the movie's title covers her breasts.
