This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Instant Favorite.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Two things are noteworthy about The Venetian Affair. One was that Robert Vaughn tried to break out into the big screen like such television contemporaries as James Garner and Steve McQueen without the success that they had. The second was that this was the last film Boris Karloff did that was not related to the horror genre.The film begins with a bang. An American diplomat is given a bomb and it detonates in a disarmament conference in Venice. No one can figure out why, but you can bet the USA does not want to be held responsible when forensics prove it was our guy who was the suicide bomber.Our man in Venice for the CIA Edward Asner sends for former agent Robert Vaughn who is now an alcoholic newspaperman working for a wire service. They suspect his ex-wife Elke Sommer has something to do with it and he's the best at finding her. She's also the reason that he's no longer with the CIA.Boris Karloff plays an elderly man of geopolitical mystery. He knows what's going on, but some sinister folks are controlling him.The Venetian Affair is a pedestrian affair moving at a paint drying pace and Vaughn after being television's urbane Napoleon Solo in The Man From UNCLE never quite got his teeth in this part. Karl Boehm is a good villain and only at the very end do we find out who he is working for. As for the reason why the diplomat did the foul deed, that you watch The Venetian Affair for.

"The Venetian affair",in spite of the suicide bombing , starts very slowly and it's a muddled affair,in which Robert Vaugn seems lost and not that much interested .The female star,Elke Sommer,makes herself wait ,and it's finally a disappointing part.Ditto for Luciana Paluzzi,one of the best villain James Bond girls .The movie becomes more interesting in its third part ,partially thanks to Karl Boehm who succeeds in being disturbing:the scene of the cat and the mouse is certainly the best in the whole flick;incidentally the final segment of the last "Sissi" in which Boehm was the nice emperor was also filmed in Venice.But he was also "peeping tom" and it shows in this poor spy thriller,probably made to capitalize on the success of Bond.

NOT a compilation of MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. episodes, THE VENETIAN AFFAIR is an exciting spy film starring Robert Vaughn and Karl Böhm. Vaughn is an ex-CIA agent lured back into work by cranky former superior Ed Asner. Trying to figure out why a US diplomat set off a bomb, blowing himself up along with 13 others, Vaughn runs into the likes of Elke Sommmer (as a shifty triple agent), Boris Karloff and Böhm, who plays a certifiable madman. The plot involves cold war espionage and mind-control and it's handled well by Jerry Thorpe, an episodic television director making a rare foray into features. The location work in Venice helps a lot. Vaughn is very Napoleon Solo-like (minus even a hint of humor) and he's well teamed with Roger C. Carmel as a paranoid co-worker. Lalo Schifrin provided the fun music score.

A rather mild spy tale, kept painless by a good cast, the uniquely atmospheric - and 100% authentic - Venice locations, and Lalo Schifrin's appropriate music score. However, the "good cast" needs some clarification: most of them are very good indeed, but Robert Vaughn, sporting a perpetually drowsy unshaven look, does not make for a very inspiring lead in this case; also, if you are drawn to the prospect of seeing two of the most beautiful AND experienced in the spy genre European actresses (Elke "Deadlier Than The Male" Sommer & Luciana "Thunderball" Paluzzi) together in the same movie, you're outta luck: Paluzzi has little more than a cameo, appearing for a total of no more than 3 minutes.The film tries to combine a serious tone with an over-the-top mind-control premise; it mostly works, except for the silly scene where Vaughn has to pretend that he is mortally afraid of a rat! ** out of 4.