This not very entertaining BOMB turns up occasionally on cable channel B-Mania. I caught it today and forced myself to watch it, just to see "Tippi" Hedren and Troy Donahue, both of whom must wish this project had never gotten off the shelf. Everything about it is comically dreadful: script, acting, production values. Truly, it plays like a bad porno moviewithout the sex. And that makes it all the more intolerably unwatchable. Tons of footage appear to be lifted from armed forces stock footage, and matches poorly with the lamentable melodrama featuring a pudgy, bottle-blond "hero" played by director/actor/auteur Jack M. Sell. A film-within-film device takes up lots of time, is pointless and tedious, and is clearly little more than padding: footage taken from some already-and-poorly-made Christmas-themed slasher film (no doubt a previous Jack M. Sell production). It has nothing to do with espionage, so it feels utterly unrelated, and when we get past all that junk the primary storyline simply stops. Roll credits. Ugh!!! Winking one-liners and slo-mo action scenes would be marginally laughable if it all weren't so poorly done by rank amateurs. Seeing "Tippi" Hedren and Troy Donahue, even if their performances were embarrassing (which they were), warrants a generous score of 1 star--everything else about this wretched mess deserves a nothing more than Zero stars.
5 Reviews
Vanity film that makes a feeble attempt at the spy genre
mahesh10 September 1998
Possibly one of the worst films ever made. Never mind that the performances, direction, editing, props, locations (usually a backyard) and plot are uniformally appalling. What sets this atrocity apart from other dud vanity films is that at least a good third of it appears to have been culled from an entirely different movie. However, this crudely assembled mish-mash of cutting room leavings is often hilarious - the pathetic kung-fu fight in a room of cardboard computers is a high (or low) point. Watch out also for the soppy flashback sequence, composed entirely of holiday photographs that seem to have little connection with the movie.
A Total Piece of Trash
mbrahms263 September 2020
There is bad, very bad, truly awful, horrific....and this film, which is in a class of its own for hideousness. Troy Donohue and Tippi Hedren must have been destitute and starving when they agreed to appear in this disaster. Either that, or their kids were abducted and held for ransom by the director.
The most ridiculous peace of trash ever made.
bguerriere31 March 2000
When your film requires submarines, planes, kung fu fights, tanks, high tech spy equipment, beautiful women and you have none of that, you probably shouldn't make the film. Watching this was just a pure waste of my time and I feel stupider because of it. Warning: PLEASE DON"T WATCH!
Tongue-in-cheek spy spoof
lor_5 May 2023
My review was written in November 1989 after watching the film on Sell Pictures video cassette.
"Deadly Spygames" is an entertaining spoof of the James Bond pics, with good video prospects domestically and some foreign potential as a theatrical title.
Beginning with the Maurice Binder-esque credits sequence, filmmakers Jack M. Sell and Adrianne Richmond have fun with the familiar format of the Ian Fleming films, but the twist is having the twosome also toplining as ordinary folks in the superspy roles. Sell plays Banner, government spy assigned by CIA agent Troy Donahue to knock out a Cuban radar installation, while Richmond is his assistant and one-time romantic partner.
Plot escalates toward a possible World War III as a Soviet general (Bob McDonald) sends agent Karlov (Kathryn Miles) to steal a secret film incriminating his grandson as a mass murderer. She succeeds and Banne has to steal it back from the Soviet computer room at the UN.
Pic is fun due to its extreme tongue-in-cheek approach, especially noticeable in the frequent, functional use of stock footage whenever the large-scale military operations occur. Only drawback is extensive reliance on a sequence from Sell's previous film "Outtakes", in which that pic's satire on Santa Claus slasher films is recycled unconvincingly into a supposed documentary film about the general's son being a killer.
Guest star Tippi Hedren makes wisecracks as she screens the film for the CIA, but its inappropriateness sticks out.
Acting and tech credits are okay.
"Deadly Spygames" is an entertaining spoof of the James Bond pics, with good video prospects domestically and some foreign potential as a theatrical title.
Beginning with the Maurice Binder-esque credits sequence, filmmakers Jack M. Sell and Adrianne Richmond have fun with the familiar format of the Ian Fleming films, but the twist is having the twosome also toplining as ordinary folks in the superspy roles. Sell plays Banner, government spy assigned by CIA agent Troy Donahue to knock out a Cuban radar installation, while Richmond is his assistant and one-time romantic partner.
Plot escalates toward a possible World War III as a Soviet general (Bob McDonald) sends agent Karlov (Kathryn Miles) to steal a secret film incriminating his grandson as a mass murderer. She succeeds and Banne has to steal it back from the Soviet computer room at the UN.
Pic is fun due to its extreme tongue-in-cheek approach, especially noticeable in the frequent, functional use of stock footage whenever the large-scale military operations occur. Only drawback is extensive reliance on a sequence from Sell's previous film "Outtakes", in which that pic's satire on Santa Claus slasher films is recycled unconvincingly into a supposed documentary film about the general's son being a killer.
Guest star Tippi Hedren makes wisecracks as she screens the film for the CIA, but its inappropriateness sticks out.
Acting and tech credits are okay.
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