Forget From Russia With Love - this is probably the greatest Spy movie ever made (and it's Italian, too) - the 1967 screen debut of the great and tragically neglected Neil Connery, playing the brother of the world's most famous secret agent, the lip-reading hypno-plastic surgeon Dr Neil Connery, along with Adolfo Celi, Daniela Bianchi, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Anthony Dawson and, of course, Gina Lollobrigida's brother, Guido. But it's Neil who's the real star: Sean, Roger, Pierce, Timmy, George - none of them can do the standing still bit as well as Neil. One critic at the time said that if the producers had bought a two-headed pygmy, put him in a glass case and charged admission it would have been less cruel than what they did to Neil Connery, but don't you believe it.<br /><br />True, the first half hour or so is a bit on the slow side, but once it gets going, it just keeps on getting better and better. There's a glamorous Bond girl called Mildred ("I've ordered Mildred to flirt with Dr Connery"); an obviously soused Bernard Lee in an ill-fitting suit he could well have slept in; baddies who can't afford the natty boiler suits that SPECTRE employees get so have to make do with berets and Burgundy C&A jumpers; blind Arabs being forced to make radioactive rugs ("You're working with radioactive materials. They will kill you!" "What is it that you are trying to say?" Pause: "You're working with radioactive materials. They will kill you!"); Neil Connery imitating one of the aforementioned blind Arabs while Adolfo Celi fights a losing battle to keep a straight face; Dr Connery, on seeing a man with a bloody great dagger sticking out of his heart noting "This man is dead. There's nothing more I can do for him."; teen ravers playing their crazy happening sounds on the runway of Malaga airport for no particular reason; a Lesbian torturer who makes Lotte Lenya look like Cameron Diaz telling a Japanese girl that if she tells her what she wants to know, "I'll reward you with pleasures beyond your imagination. You can live with me in a palace!"; the villains' henchwomen hijacking an 'atomic nucleus' by dressing up as can-can girls stranded in the desert; a 120-second countdown that is long enough for someone to run away, escape the villains' lair, fly a helicopter along the longest road in Europe, land, get out, go to a café and phone Londonn (in the days before direct international dialling) before it gets to 35 seconds on the clock; and a climax that sees a group of Scottish championship archers riding to the rescue through the snow to the villain's underground lair, the entrance to which is cunningly disguised as a small hut opposite a castle a few miles outside Munich.<br /><br />Oh, did I forget the Ennio Morricone title song, 'OK Connery' ("You're the one for me!")? And the fact that the finale includes the line "Twin vibrators inserted"? Or that the villain's plot to render all mechanical devices useless via a magnetic pulse is the same as GoldenEye? I tell you, Casino Royale has a lot to live up to...<br /><br />Forget Antonioni, Fellini and Visconti: this is Italian cinema at its finest.