The Ambushers (1967), is the third of four Matt Helm spy films starring the preternaturally-loose, turtle-neck-clad Dean Martin. While Martin was capable of excellent dramatic work (more on this later), this movie is best seen while in a state of relaxation just short of coma. Don’t expect its 101 minutes to make much sense, for the location footage to match the sound stage shots or for anyone involved to try particularly hard.

Apparently this is one control room that guides rockets and saucers using a finely calibrated system of levers and pulleys. Maybe they forgot to grease something.

The saucer sets down beside the armored truck built, I’m guessing, out of coconuts and bamboo. Inside, the pilot removes her (of course) helmet. The saucer’s door opens and, there, leering away, is a dude with a white, collarless jacket and rose-tinted glasses. The scene closes with a guitar-chord <pit-tang!!> that really wants to be the one used in the Bond films.

"Everybody loves Somebody" coming out of an open window heralds our hero, who is discovered necking with a blonde on a couch as a turntable spins nearby. Dean looks pretty good, wearing the first of a medley of turtle-necks. They go at it until we hear a shot. The girl was wearing a loaded bra in more ways than one; there’s a gun barrel sewn into the bra stays. You reach the moment of glorious unlatching and blammo! you’re done. Thankfully, the cartridges were blanks (falsies?). After some off-color jokes, we gather that Dean is there for training in the opposition’s newest gadgets.

All that’s set-up, though. The first major plot point comes when a white-faced woman in a straitjacket runs into Martin’s arms as he walks across the grounds leaving his coursework. It’s Sheila Summers (Janice Rule), we learn, one of Martin’s former partners. A doctor-type says that she stumbled out of the jungle recently and can’t remember anything. Sharp eyes will recognize the pilot of the flying saucer.

A girl in a scooter drives up to tell Martin he’s got a long-distance phone call. And after some more off-color jokes – during which Dean coyly glances our way with a raised eyebrow – he rides off seated behind her. On the phone is MacDonald (James Gregory), Martin’s chief. Gregory also played the bad guy in the John Wayne/Dean Martin western The Sons of Katie Elder and was, I think, a regular on I Dream of Jeanie. [Editor's note: And don't forget Barney Miller.] He tells Dino that the case involves Summers (startling revelation, huh? I do like the way the movie explains itself for those of us who have used alcohol to get through it...) and that his private secretary would fill him in on the details.

Incidentally, there’s a scene just like it in The Silencers, except he asks for his shampoo and is handed a tiny airline bottle of liquor, which he drinks, saying "Ah, I feel clean all over!" or something like it.

Summers is ICE’s best pilot, man or woman. Unfortunately, she can’t remember anything. Because of Dean’s history working with Summers – during a case where they posed as newlyweds – MacDonald thinks Dino can help her remember. ("Me?" Dean says, pointing nonchalantly at his chest with a .38 caliber revolver.) Interestingly, this seems a bit like a homage of From Russia with Love, where there’s a tussle in a railcar where Bond and his Chickie de Jour posed as newlyweds. Though, on further reflection, I think perhaps homage is stretching it. Lazy, half-assed tip of the snap brim pork-pie is more like it.

Following the logic inherent in these foleyed fistfights, you could stand across the room from somebody, swing your arm through the air and across the room he’d fall down.

Mac tells Dean the leader of the organization is a cat called Casselius and that the beer company, owned by a man named Quintana believed to be mixed up in it, is based in Acapulco. (What did we expect? A real beer town like Milwaukee, Wisc.? The girls would have to wear clothes.) Now, Dean is to take pictures of the organization leaders, and Summers is supposed to come too and hopefully remember details about her abduction.

There’s the obligatory stock footage of that south-of-the-border paradise, and an absolutely paralyzing scene with Summers and Dino drinking and smoking in enormous-seeming airline seats. (It was a different world, baby, back when flight attendants were called stewardesses and were hired for their looks.) Just behind the Helms is a guy in a fez and sunglasses. He also shows up at their groovy Mexican hotel, where Dean grabs a drink from a tray on a passing pink Jeep. (He does his own stunts! Later we’ll see him drink his own liquor! Take that McQueen!)

The exoskeletons, by the way, look like something made out of cardboard for Halloween. You and your 12-year-old big brother could do better. I’m sure of it. And I don’t even know your big brother.

There’s some intrigue with the bad guys whispering about Helm and Summers and more booze and sex jokes and then Helm meets Francesca Maderus (Senta Berger), who looks pretty good. (Everybody looks pretty good in the movie, but they all look they were out too late the night before.) Dino takes Ortega’s picture, holding the camera all wrong, pinched between his fingers with his crooked pinkie sticking out. A nearby thug demands the film, telling Dino that Ortega is sensitive about "the scar," which I hadn’t even noticed. The thug, who was standing like 5 feet away when the photo was snapped, should have prevented the photo, because it was instantly sent via wireless fax to ICE headquarters. Later, Dino dons a pair of Mr. Magoo glasses to read ICE’s reply which becomes visible on a piece of film: "Ortega is Leopold Casselius."

Wireless fax cameras and talking bras. Haven’t these people ever heard of a radio?

Basically, we’ve got some intrigue and shit in this section which doesn’t make a lick of sense. I don’t see any reason to waste your time with it. What it comes down to is that Ortega recognizes Summers and begins steps to eliminate her and Dino. Maderus saves the pretend newlyweds from a musician in the band who holds a pair of maracas with gun barrels that poke out the ends like nipples. Chased by bad guys, Summers and Dino run into the parking lot, which Summers leaves behind in a huge, black Lincoln. Meanwhile Dino hides behind the fins of an equally huge 1961 Cadillac while he extends a pistol barrel from his Swiss Army camera (does everything but actually expose film). Meanwhile, several of the girls from the ICE training camp appear to run interference. Spotting a motorcycle, he runs for it, shooting and using a buckle disintegrating ray on a group of bad guys, who push their pants down as they run while they act like they’re trying to hold them up. It’s an embarrassingly stupid scene just as pitiful as a guy wrestling with a limp rubber octopus.

But it only gets worse, for some enormously convenient reason the marching theme -- from "Songs Men Have Died For" -- plays, halting the bad guys, pants around their ankles. Dino just weaves between them on his motorcycle as they stand at attention. (He weaves beautifully. Practice, baby, practice.) Meanwhile, in the Lincoln, a bad guy has come out of the back seat to menace Summers. They park off the road and are both in the back seat when there’s a gun shot. Summers comes out alone, safe and sound. The henchman is slumped over in the back seat, another victim of the bra gun.

In the new scene Dino is visiting Maderus’ hotel room, where he discovers two album covers, S.M.H.D.F. and "Sinatra Sings." She wants to know the identity of Casselius and the location of his headquarters. Dino refuses a drink, saying, "I’m not too fond of that chlorohydrate," but doesn’t refuse a kiss. Pretty soon he’s lying on the bed, dazed and mumbling. The antidote to the knock-out drug was in the drink, as it turns out. Summers arrives and demands that he be gotten out of it. Once more or less sober (about as good as you’re going to get), Dino asks Maderus why she’s after Casselius. It turns out she’s more or less a good guy, charged with putting down Casselius in order to calm the unrest in Mexico. They decide to work together. Driving with Dino back to the brewery, Summers also says her memory came back when Dino and Mac saved her from the syringe-wielding bad guy at the beginning. She played crazy so that she could come back and kill her captors.

As darkness falls, Summers and Dino pull off a real road and magically onto the Gillian’s Island set, where they plan to spend the night. They look for blankets in the Lincoln’s trunk, find a lever there and pull it, releasing an inflatable "outdoor Hilton." A camouflaged inflatable tent unrolls from the trunk. As Dino and Summers stand before the tent, the sped up film quickly inflates the tent. (You can see Dino and Summers jittering back and forth on their feet, obviously having to wait an actual half hour to get the footage.) Inside, their an inflated round bed, lamp and refrigerator -- probably stocked with inflated gin and inflated tonic.

Dino saves him in return for information. Quintana admits he told Maderus where Casselius’ hideout is and gives Dino the same piece of information. When they escape the vat, Quintana is shot but Dino escapes with the help of Summers, who’s wearing the exoskeleton, rolling beer barrels at the bad guy. The tables soon turn, with Dino chasing the henchman – hampered, as Dino was most of his life, by his compulsion to snag a drink here and there. The chase comes to blows (and I have to say that Dean can throw a convincing looking punch when he wants to). Finally the bad guy falls into a huge open trough of beer which runs into a transparent pipe ascending to the ceiling. The pipe feeds a sign or sorts – with a raised hand eternally pouring beer into a mug. Poured from the giant bottle, the goon overshoots the rim of the mug and another sawdust-filled dummy falls to its death. Dean looks over a ledge following the fall of the dummy, then raises one of his beat-up, crooked hands in a farewell. The camera pulls back the instant he says "Ole!", revealing Dino to be standing surrounded by the word "ole!" in lights.

This fight scene in the brewery and its dénouement is probably the strongest sequence in the movie. It moves nicely and is well choreographed. Dino, it has to be said, is far more convincing as an action hero than his little runt of a buddy Francis Albert Sinatra. Anyhoo, the next scene finds Dino and Summers in a Ford Bronco heading to Casselius’ jungle hide-out. They come upon Maderus, whose car couldn’t take the desert road. Dino, knowing she knew where the hide-out was and that she had papers to get safely inside, had told her the road was good. (I don’t remember the part about the papers, but damned if I’m going to watch this turkey again.) The three of them cook up a plan. Maderus is to go inside saying that she is being followed by Dino. After Dino allows himself to be captured, he’ll use a dart-gun camouflaged to look like a packet of cigarettes (Smoking’ll kill you, kids.) to free himself. He gives the smokes to Maderus so that he won’t have the pack when searched. Meanwhile Summers is to find the saucer and fly away.

Maderus leaves in the Bronco, and Dino, Summers and two body doubles climb through a combination of real jungle, sound stage jungle and Southern California desert to reach a ridge overlooking Casselius’ compound. They use a 50-year-old Speed Graphic camera loaded with "heat picture" film to locate the saucer through the foliage. After dark, Dino takes off carrying another pack of cigarettes, this time Mexican cigarettes loaded with "happy gas." (Uh huh, sure. Yeah, I went to a liberal arts college, too. I know all about that.) Dino gets himself captured, but so does Summers. Brought into Casselius’ palatial underground hide-out (is there any other kind?), Dino tries to get the dart gun cigarettes from Maderus, but she turned them over to Casselius (Albert Salmi). Bringing down Casseius was only a small part of her mission. Maderus, an operative of the Bureau of International Government and Order (BIG-O), also wants the saucer.

Quintana finally arrives with his arm in a sling to warn everybody that Dino is on his way. Casselus – obeying the evil madman’s prime credo (always make sure your assassins are incompetent) -- tells Quintana to kill Dino. As they leave, Maderus gives Summers (oh yeah, she’s there, too) a little make-up and a drink -- the knock-out drug and its antidote. It’s meant for Casselius, but more about that later. The fez guy and Maderus escape. While they travel to the saucer separately, they arrive together. Maderus is strangled unconscious by the fez guy before she can initiate the saucer’s take-off process. The fez guy gets that far but dies horribly – horribly for him and horribly for us. It’s a long death. He turns bright red, screams and stumbles out of the saucer, his arms stiff and straight down his sides, and finally out of the scene.

Casselius uses the spark gun to unzip Summers’ dress. Summers gets sexy and plants a big drugged smackero on Casselius, who starts to go down for the count. He shouts, but naturally the guard just smirks bigger. Summers runs away, leaving through the door guarded by the smirking henchman. This time he shakes his head a little. (Boy that Casselius! He be having a good time.)

Outside, Dino is running rampant. Disarmed, he takes off his belt and runs it under a stream. It gradually straightens and gets hard (Hey, the same thing happens to me in the shower). He runs off, using it as a sort of blade. About this time Casselius revives and tells Quintana to intercept the girl (Summers) at the saucer before leaving himself. Dino also runs right through Casselius’ bedroom and grabs the spark gun he had used to unzip her clothes. This time, the guard looks faintly confused. Summers arrives at the saucer and gets ready to start it. Casselius appears in its doorway holding a gun. Dino arrives at the ship and the armored truck sitting nearby, taking out two guards with the spark guns. He also plays chicken with Quintana, who also holds a spark gun. Dino wins and disables the satellite dish. Quintana is knocked unconscious.

Cut to the epilog: Dino, wearing a jacket with his turtleneck now, is back with Mac at ICE. Mac says he’s supposed to teach the new agents some tricks. He’s shown into a room where a hot blonde is seated on a couch (This is a movie that begins and ends with blondes on couches). Dino explains how she should be soft and yielding when it comes to seducing an enemy agent. Music is important, he continues, putting on "Everybody Loves Somebody." It doesn’t move her. Dino plays "Strangers in the Night" by his buddy Sinatra and she gets turned on.

To Martin’s credit, The Ambushers was shot while he was performing regularly in Vegas, recording music and starring in his own TV show. (If a guy who showed up 30 minutes before taping and read off cue cards can really be said to be the start.) Considering that and considering that he’s the best thing in the picture, you’ve got to give him credit. Janice Rule, who plays Sheila Summers, also gives a nice, crookedly-smiling performance. In fact all of the principals do a good job.

Now I have four Sinatra CDs -- all reissues of classic Capitol platters of the 50s -- and only two Martin CDs, a stellar "best of" and a very good Christmas album. (And naturally I’ve got piles of LPs by each of them, most of the Martin disks hijacked from my father. Thanks, Dad!) The fact is, Sinatra produced better work over the course of his career. Martin recorded a lot of clinkers along with the gems. He was like the slacker in the back of the class who could think rings around the birds in the front of the room but didn’t care.

The things Martin did well were the things that were effortless for him – crooning and comedy. Acting took effort, though, which is why there are only a few dramatic performances where Martin shines. Check out The Young Lions, Some Came Running, Rio Bravo and even Ocean’s Eleven, where Martin tries to dissuade his cohorts from the Vegas caper. (Also see that movie for a collection of the sharpest cut suits ever to be immortalized in celluloid.) He’s as good as anybody in the speech that ends "The percentage is always with the house. With the house!"