1981 - CONDORMAN, another mediocre live action Disney film

My survey of live action Disney films continues with this "thing."  Condorman was an attempt by the Disney Studio to up their game with a bigger budget and better behind the camera talent.  In this case stunt arranger Remy Julian was responsible for the chase scenes and Henry Mancini did the music and it looks like a lot of the film was actually shot in Europe instead of Disney's back lot.

The cast is certainly a bizarre one.  British actor and singer Michael Crawford plays an American (?) comic book artist called Woody Wilkins. Wilkins helps the CIA  smuggle a Russian defector played by Nicaraguan actor Barbara Carrera out of the Soviet Union.  Apparently there were no Eastern European performers available to play the femme fatale so the production cast someone from South America.  James Hampton is Crawford's friend he's about the most relaxed person in the film.  But talk about really weird, I never thought I would see British actor Oliver Reed as the chief bad guy in a Disney film.

 

Condorman is James Bond lite for most part.  Crawford has a series of Bondian gadgets to use against the bad guys and Barbara Carrera was supposed to supply the sexy "Bond girl" stuff for this film.  However this is a Disney film and be assured that Carrera did not trot out her sensual girl spy persona, in fact she's actually kind of a nothing character

 

In spite of the presence of Remy Julian smashing cars up and down a mountain and even with the larger than usual budget, this is still a very lame film.  You know you're in trouble when the best part of the film is the credit sequence.  A constant theme that runs throughout these live action Disney films are the very poor scripts that got approved.  Condorman is no exception to the substandard screenplay rule of these films.

The film was written by Marc Stirdivant and not very well.  The running time is 90 minutes.  I suppose indiscriminate children might enjoy this film with all of the silly comedy and stunts although I kind of doubt it.