Nice effects though.

Best movie ever!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Kind of fun. An episodic, jet-propelled satire of just about everything in the contemporary newspapers. The President of the US (Lyndon B. Johnson at the time, briefly glimpsed walking his hound dogs on the White House lawn) is a troubled man. He recruits a psychoanalyst (James Coburn). Johnson was REALLY troubled. Troubled enough to summon Coburn at all hours of the day or night by means of hidden, blinking red lights. The red lights and buzzers interrupt Coburn while he's in sessions with other patients, while he's entering elevators, while he's making love, while he's headed towards the urinal. It drives him nuts, and he finally takes off on his own to escape the burdens.Alas, the word gets out that the president's analyst is free. He knows so much that every secret agency in the world -- from China and Russia to Canada -- are out to find and kidnap him and send him to what he calls "a brain laundry." Worse, the "CEA" and the "FBR" know this, and they set out to kill him before the others can get him.The chase takes everyone from Washington, through New York and New Jersey, to the Midwest. Nice to see Greenwich Village again, as it was then, watching Coburn run in and out of the Cafe Wha?, which was on, what, West Fourth? The Cafe Wha? was a phenomenon of the psychedelic age and a lot of the targets here are -- blissed-out hippies and so on.Nobody -- no social position, no attitudinal set, no object, no entity of any kind -- is spared. William Daniels and his family live in a disgustingly neat and revoltingly decorated middle-class tract home in Seaside Heights. They're liberals. We know they're liberals because Daniels makes a point of telling us. The only thing is, his home and car have .44 magnums stashed in them because they are surrounded by gun-crazy right-wing fascists who might attack them.The chief of the "FBR" is named Lux, a brand of vacuum cleaner, just like Hoover. Hoover had what amounted to a fetish for tall, impressive agents, so Lux is about five and a half feet tall, and all of his agents are even shorter than he is.That height business is typical of the jokes. You have to (1) notice it, then (2) interpret it. With some of the other jokes, you might not get past (1). For instance, there is a scene in which Coburn is boffing a hippie chick in the middle of a field and he is stalked by a killer. The killer is killed by an agent of some other government. He in turn is killed by still a different agent, and so on. And as the serial assassinations go on, the weapons used become more and more ridiculous -- from shooting, to strangling, to a blowgun, to poison gas, to a fish net, and finally a pitchfork. It's more ludicrous than funny, I guess, but someone went to some trouble to think of that sequence of weapons.Competent performances by about all concerned, especially Severn Darden as a Russian agent. Joan Delaney, Coburn's girl friend, looks and acts like a model. She has a whispery, pre-teen voice, and she walks with that half-flailing slink that models have developed for the runway.It's not a zany laff riot but it's quietly amusing and it is nicely paced, with few pratfalls and a lot of gags that are almost subliminal, especially now that their targets have been almost lost in the mists of antiquity. You might enjoy it more if you'd been around and aware in 1968.

There are those who will call this a cult classic, and those who will be a bit bored. The truth is probably somewhere in between. This is a cult movie, to be sure, with very dry humor, about the president'ts psychologist, and all the powerful groups who try to kidnap him, use him, or, in most cases, kill him. Coburn plays the title character, and he is along for the ride. The big scene involves the most entertaining stereotypes of the time, the peace loving hippies in a field, practicing love, unaware that an assassination or two or three or maybe more is about to take place. The laughs are well earned, but pretty sparse. It is more of a satire than a bust out laughing comedy. It's hard to know what frame of mind a person should be in to sit down and watch this movie. Possibly at a small party where the movie plays while people talk and give an occasional glance. Still, the movie deserves more than that. Like most cult classics, it has a surreal quality about, but unlike more successful ones, it doesn't develop the stereotypical characters all that much. However, there are a few instances, such as the government man being analyzed by Coburn and telling of his childhood experience. But there aren't a lot of these revealing scenes. Most of the characters are clownish (in a dark way.) The movie has a lot of appeal to it. It would be better with more hysterical scenes, but it works as dry wit. Maybe not for the more impatient viewer.

This just may be the best movie ever made about "The Phone Company", and now, in 2006, it is perhaps more important than ever. Back in 1967 it was a fantasy and a comedy, but today in the real news (and more importantly, in people's billing statements) it's more of a tragedy.Okay, fine - so that's really a topical 2006 joking interpretation, but I always felt this was a comedy classic, and I really do think it might do 2006 society a little good to have a laugh, and then give a thought about what, it seems, might be happening all over again. The prophetic view of everyone, everywhere, being connected wirelessly has now almost happened. Can we really be sure the evil parts aren't happening too?It's silly, it's imaginative to the point of fantastical (for 1967 anyway) and now it's practically topical all over again.

A very important and excellent scene was cut from the many TV and VHS versions of the film. That is where just after Sidney does his walk through NY, he goes to a experimental film and meets Nan, apparently at random. The vignette is a wonderful send up of Greenwich village types and without this scene we don't know that Nan is not an established lover, but a sudden free love intimate. At least apparently. Can anyone tell me if this is restored in the DVD version? One of the finest scripts of sardonic comedy, certainly on a par with 'Dr Strangelove' and 'the assassination bureau'. The anamatronic and unkillable CEO of the phone company is a deeply frightening perception of the bland, machinelike, self-righteous and perhaps unstoppable movement to box in the human being. Of course with today's technology we won't see a wire coming out of our president's shoe.