Maxwell Smart, Agent 86...Don Adams
Chief........................Dana Elcar
Larrabee....................Robert Karvelas
Carruthers..................Norman LLoyd
Agent 13....................Joey Forman
San Sauvage/Sebastiani...Vittorio Gassman
Agent 34....................Sylvia Kristel
Agent 22....................Andrea Howard
Agent 35....................Pamela Hensley
Directed by Clive Donner, produced by Jennings Lang, written by Leonard Stern, Arne Sultan and Bill Dana. Dana also appears as Jonathan Levinson Siegel. Music by Lalo Schifrin. Rated "PG" for some language, violence and adult situations. Running time - 94 minutes. Even though the DVD lists the run time as ten minutes longer.
KAOS, the international organization of evil, wants a ransom of 10 million dollars a day from the U.N., or they'll launch "The Nude Bomb,", capable of evaporating all clothing, and leaving humanity naked. It's up to Max and his crew to stop them.
This film has little to do with the TV series, other than Max and Larrabee, who are carryovers from it. Even though all three of the film's writers wrote for the TV show. Max works not for CONTROL, but for P.I.T.S., the Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service. (Whew!) No sign of Siegfried, Shtarker, the Craw, the Groovy Guru or any of Smart's other nemeses, even though KAOS is the main villain. Or of Agent 99, for that matter. The great Get Smart site, WouldYouBelieve.com, states that Barbara Feldon did not want to do a reunion. Which may be the reason this film went off in a different direction. (Feldon did return for the 1989 TV movie Get Smart Again. Which did keep continuity with the series.)
Phil Tucker was one of two lead editors on this film (the other was Walter Hannemann.) Mr. Tucker is probably best known as the director of the legendary bad movie Robot Monster.
This movie was recently released on DVD, with the tag line, "The Original Get Smart movie." It's the barest-bones DVD I've ever seen, with no special features. No commentary from the surviving principals, no deleted scenes. Not even the film's trailer. Just English and French subtitles. In my opinion, the only reason this film is out on DVD at all is to capitalize on Warner's big-budget 2008 film version of the series.
The title song, "You're Always There" was sung by Merry Clayton. Ms. Clayton was also the background vocalist on what (IMHO) is the greatest song ever recorded, "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones.
The phrase "Would You Believe" pops up occasionally during the titles. One funny title card reads "Would You Believe that a film titled The Nude Bomb could get a 'PG' rating?"
One big nitpick - In the scene where a taxi is driven into a truck and the paint is washed off, the washing is stopped before the old paint is gone. Yet, the car emerges from the truck a completely different color. And, shiny too.
Some of the clothing is late-70's style. And horrible beyond words, particularly for the men. Max wears awful gray flare bottom slacks. It's hard to believe that clothing like that was ever stylish. (Yes, I did wear stuff like that as well at that time. With clothing like that, maybe we would be better off if the Nude Bomb was detonated...
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