ada
the leading man is my tpye
Cathardincu
Surprisingly incoherent and boring
Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
StuOz
The men from UNCLE are at it again.I am okay with the spy genre but I don't actually call myself a fan of spy movies/TV shows. I am indeed a fan of 1960s adventure shows (Batman, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, QM's The Invaders, etc) and this is why I am drawn to the UNCLE movies. I also like Robert Vaughn as Solo.The film is a very busy affair. The Karate Killers requires repeat viewings before it grows on you. I hated it the first couple of times I saw it but it grew on me the third time. I would not call it the best of the eight UNCLE movies but it is not he worst (the worst is One Of Our Spies Is Missing).He gets no credit, but 1966 Batman composer - Nelson Riddle - did some of the music in this film.
gerard-21
The only problem some reviewers seem to have is that this Uncle movie came from the dreaded season 3. But, if they put aside their bias, they would see it's actually a pretty entertaining, star-studded affair. Two guest stars (Telly Savalas and Curt Jurgens) would later go on to be featured villains in James Bond films. The femme fatale, Kim Darby would star with John Wayne in True Grit and the Pink Panther's Herbert Lom is perfect as the main protagonist. And with a special appearance by none other than Joan Crawford, what else is there to say? I don't see the episodes this movie was culled from as overly campy. Everyone seems to treat the plot seriously enough and there are plenty of moments of sex and violence (death of Crawford, for example) that would never make it into a Adam West Batman episode. The problem is, these days everyone wants spies to be like Jason Bourne or for the action to be as melodramatic and serious as an episode of 24. This is what is ruining the Bond franchise, imo; nobody has an appreciation for tongue-in-cheek espionage anymore.If you are willing to suspend reality and revisit the good old days of escapism, you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. It's an engaging fun affair that has our heroes trotting around the globe chasing after Hitchcockian MacGuffin ("the formula"), what else could one ask for?
Michael_Elliott
The Karate Killers (1967) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A secret formula is stolen and broke off into four different parts so Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) must travel around the world and try to catch the evil man trying to get it. THE KARATE KILLERS is a feature-length version of a two-episode entry in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series. I should probably admit right from the start that I had never seen an episode of this show so I really can't say how well this movie is or how good the two episodes are and how they compare to other episodes in the series. For the most part I found myself having a pretty good time. I will admit that I found a lot of this to be rather campy and I'm not sure if this is just how it's aged or perhaps the series was always meant to be campy. Either way, there were a lot of fun moments scattered throughout the picture with some of the highlights including the opening sequence and another very good one where McCallum finds himself heading towards an ice breaker, which will certainly kill him. There are several sequences here that manage to capture that cliffhanger feeling that people saw in serials back in the day. Another thing that kept this film moving were the countless celebrity appearances including Joan Crawford, Herbert Lom, Leo G. Carroll, Telly Savalas and Kim Darby. Seeing all these stars pop up in small roles was nice. The two leads were also extremely good and fun. THE KARATE KILLERS, I don't think, was meant to be taken too serious so as long as you turn your brain off there's some fun to be had.
jamesraeburn2003
THE KARATE KILLERS was the sixth big-screen enlargement of the hugely popular Man From UNCLE series. It was compiled from a two-part episode called THE FIVE DAUGHTERS AFFAIR (part one: 31 March 1967) and (part two: 7 April 1967). However, in common with it's predecessors, the TV version wasn't aired in the countries where the theatrical version was released for example Great Britain where the films were steady earners at the box office.Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuriyakin are assigned to prevent evil THRUSH agent Randolph (HERBERT LOM) and his seemingly unstoppable karate chopping henchmen from stealing a secret formula for extracting gold from seawater. The formula has been divided up into four parts and hidden amongst the possessions of four of the five murdered inventor's daughters. Solo and Kuriyakin find themselves traveling around various parts of the globe in a race to stop THRUSH from gaining control of the world.THE KARATE KILLERS is probably one of the weakest of the Man From UNCLE pictures because despite the caliber of the guest stars such as Terry Thomas, Curt Jurgens and Telly Savalas (who would be far more effective as Blofeld in the Bond movie ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE two years later) are not given enough to do in order to make the film live up to their talents. Having said that, Herbert Lom is good as the villain and there is an amusing send up of the MGM melodramas of the forties between him and Joan Crawford (who plays the inventor's wife) early on where Crawford throws a tantrum in front of him because she has just discovered that he has murdered her husband for his formula and Lom replies "There's no need to be melodramatic is there my dear." Another disappointing aspect of the film is that our heroes Solo and Kuriyakin get knocked out by the enemy far to many times in this one. All this doesn't mean that the movie is unwatchable, far from it, because it moves at a fast pace and there are some amusing moments here and there and don't forget - this is the sixties man so it's all good clean fun!Followed by THE HELICOPTER SPIES (also 1967).