"Ah, Angelique . . ." Janine Gray's performance is mannered; she has the crookedest smile and oddest diction I've ever witnessed; but somehow the whole package works. I love the scene where she plays Chuck, telling him she's an "agent for a worldwide organization" of law and order, then asks innocently, "Have you ever heard of U.N.C.L.E.?" Note that she doesn't say she's with U.N.C.L.E.; she merely allows him to infer it. (I find it unlikely, though, that somebody who handles deadly spiders so coolly would scream so loudly when the semi-corpse begins to move under the sheet in Amadeus's lab.)
Her Sting Ray, if anyone cares, is probably a '64; look at the gas cap and louver vents. (The first year, the '63, had a split rear window, which Angelique's does not.) My fellow car-guys tell me a '64 'Vette cost about $4100 new, which would equate to about $27K today. Since a new 2008 Corvette would have gobbled about $47K out of your retirement fund, I'd say Angelique ("Actually Thrush paid for it, darling") got a bargain.
Solo is more educated than he often lets on. Here he quotes Shakespeare, and not one of the more familiar lines, either. I looked it up; it's from "The Merchant of Venice" (I suppose, about Shylock):
"An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"
Brooke Bundy went on to play a mildly retarded girl on the only episode of "Judd for the Defense" that I can remember (directed, it turns out, by Boris Sagal). Many years later, for one episode she was the Enterprise-D's Chief Engineer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Alexander Scourby's Prof. Amadeus strikes me as more believable and methodical than your average neighborhood mad scientist. He doesn't babble, he doesn't foam at the mouth, and he has a solid job teaching
chemistry at a local NY college. And he's clearly been careful with his money since 1945: a small cottage, a beat-up pickup, a treasured Luger, and the rest has gone into home renovations -- and preservation fluid for Adolf's cold-sleep tank. (I wonder how much Target or Wal-Mart charges for that stuff. . . .)
Nice detail, that Solo is sweating while on the gurney and even later, after he gets free. Tension, we can suppose, and also that the underground lab was sort of warm with that burning gasoline dripping down. Also nice is the reason Amadeus gives for explaining his plan to Solo -- that the details will induce fear, and adrenaline will flow to help the process.
What was that room where Solo and Illya interviewed Terry and later set up the phone system to answer Chuck's line? I'd call it a visitors' lounge. Nice touch, that their visitor badges are sequential, 30 and 31.
I don't believe Terry -- or any woman, anywhere in history -- would have turned down the stamp collection. Chuck, maybe, on principle, but Terry would be much more practical.
Verdict: Exciting stuff.
Great Lines:Illya (stonily, about Angelique): "She seems happy. Who is dead?"
Solo: "Ah, Angelique . . . if Thrush had another dozen like you, they
could rule the world."
Angelique (amused): "Darling! Another dozen like me, and there'd be no need for Thrush."
