FATHOM if you can the way Raquel Welch could mangle saying something as difficult as “Hello” and make it sound like she was unfamiliar with the word. Or any words. As one of the villains puts it in this 1967 groaner—“The impudence of this creature!”  Indeed. Yet the awesome Welchian bod commands sit-up-and-plead attention enough to fast-forward thru the 99 minutes—otherwise almost immediately interminable—for the pure red-blooded sake of gazing at one of the era’s semi-natural wonders. Oops, then she speaks…*

Girl skydiver/pilot/vowel & consonant assassin ‘Fathom Hargill’ is amusing herself in Spain when she’s dragooned by representatives of ‘HADES’ (Headquarters Allied Defenses Espionage and Security) into insinuating her form-fit form into the lair of Red Chinese (remember those days?) agents who include the smarmy ‘Meriwether’ (Tony Franciosa, don’t ask). A missing nuke device is the object of the daring operation, which, if you don’t fall asleep during the cheesy opening credits, includes awful jokes, lame action scenes and the aforesaid thespian learning curves of VaVa Welch.

After the success of their smash hit spy spoof Our Man Flint, and salivating over the popularity of the ‘Modesty Blaise’ comics, the honchos at 20th Century Fox jumped into—make that onto—the secret agent craze with not just two left feet but three in the same year: raw recruit Raquel was flanked by game if flailing veteran Doris Day in Caprice and quick discard Andrea Dromm in Come Spy With Me: they all tanked.

This dead flounder was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. (“a semple-minded production”), directed by Leslie H. Martinson, best known for sinking PT-109. The cost to make it happen was $2,225,000 (add like lucre for advertising) but then it scraped just $2,500,000 in the States (84th), with perhaps as much elsewhere, registering a flop.

Lioness-maned for fame, glory & attitude, Welch immediately clashed with Martinson, resulting in their not speaking for the entirety of the shoot; she quickly won a rep for being difficult, something the reptilian lounge smooth was Franciosa already well known for. Miraculously, The New York Times gave this a decent review and even praised the leading lady: a good thing they never did any cheerleading for needless, unwinnable wars.

Risk dental work from gritting your teeth over Raquel’s ability to deliver a line with the straight-faced insincerity of a Fox News bubblehead and you will be treated to the sunny locations in Spain including Nerja, Cártama, Mijas, Málaga and Torremolinos, the last immortalized by James A. Michener’s novel “The Drifters” (which somehow was never filmed) and—much more vitally—to thoughtful copious vistas of the star in a bikini. There was a reason why fast-forward buttons were invented and, lest we forget, the all-important freeze-frame.

With Clive Revill, Ronald Fraser, Greta Chi (toneless), Tom Adams (stiff), Élisabeth Ercy and Tutte Lemkow.

* 1967 offered a slate of great movies, a number of good ones and a ton of turkeys. The year’s monetarily successful spy spoofs (Casino Royale, In Like Flint and The Ambushers) are all lousy, but are leagues ahead of the self-drowning Fathom. Raquel, 27, smiled & wiled her way thru 14 more productions before she finally showed some comedy chops in 1973’s grand The Three Musketeers. I wonder what happened to my pinup poster from One Million Years B.C.?  The only one who had a poster of Tony Franciosa was…Tony Franciosa.