Agency (1980) a (ridiculously) belated review

So I was wandering around Costco the other day and, in looking over the depressingly smaller and smaller DVD/BluRay section, I find this…

100 “Awesomely” Cheesy Movies?  I turn the box around and take a closer look at its contents.  I’m somewhat leery -yet fascinated by- these mega movie collections.  True, the quality of the films presented tend to be…less…both in terms of the movie’s actual transfer and, for the most part, the movies themselves.

Still, I give those contents a look and, at $15.99 for the collection, figured even if I did buy it without recognizing any of the films, I was bound to find something interesting.  As it turned out, I recognized several of the films in this grouping, which included for the most part forgotten films from the 1970’s and 80’s.

Foremost on the list was Agency, a 1980 film featuring one of my favorite actors of all time (and in the “bad guy” role, natch!), Robert Mitchum.  Even more curious, the film starred the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors!  (A bit of trivia: Lee Majors and Robert Mitchum would appear in the 1988 Bill Murray film Scrooged, though they did not share any screen time together.  Lee Major’s cameo appearance is a hoot and I present it below, though the sound quality of the clip is quite bad).

I bought the collection, headed home, put the disc featuring Agency into my DVD player and…nothing.  The screen was a blank.  I ejected the DVD and tried again.  Same result.  A third time.  Nothing.

I tried another, different disc from the collection, worried that perhaps the entire collection was unplayable on my DVD system.  It played fine.  And by fine I mean the movie(s) played.  The images were grainy as hell and the sound was borderline abysmal, but I’ve endured worse.

Anyway, I took the Agency DVD to another player in another part of my house and gave it a try there.  For whatever reason, it worked there.

Whew.

Considering I bought this set mainly to see this one film, it would have been a shame that this one particular disc would prove defective!

Anyway, the film starts and, yes, the images remain consistent with what I saw on the other disk, that is to say pretty poor and the sound isn’t all that great.  Yet it was good enough to watch the film, even if it appears that at least in the first half a censor erased the swear words.  Curiously, in the later half of the film we hear Mr. Majors utter a few choice PG lines…perhaps the censor fell asleep after the first half of the film!?

Agency is a curious bird of a film, a thriller whose makers appeared squeamish about giving us too many thrills and a plot that, let’s face it, anyone in the audience would have figured out far ahead of the protagonist.

Lee Majors is Philip Morgan, a creative director at an advertising agency.  He has a girlfriend, Brenda Wilcox (played by the lovely Valerie Perrine, who for the most part is wasted in her role) and a neurotic co-worker and Jewish friend named Sam Goldstein (Saul Rubinek in one of his very early roles…weird to see him so young when you’re accustomed to seeing him in Warehouse 13!).

A new boss, Ted Quinn (Robert Mitchum, natch) has bought out the agency and strange things are afoot.  Goldstein tells his friend Morgan that many employees, many more than should, are quitting the agency.  This doesn’t bother Morgan as much as being told by Goldstein that Quinn has started a “secret” project without informing him.  Given that Morgan is the head of the creative division of this agency, it is understandable he feels like he’s being eased out of his job.

After meeting with Quinn, however, the new owner allays Morgan’s fears by being seemingly very upfront and telling him the only reason Morgan wasn’t given a head’s up is because the project just came into the agency and the company behind them wants to keep it hush-hush.  Morgan is gracefully allowed to oversee this no longer secret -to him anyway- project and all appears well…

…until Morgan is asked to take an overnight trip with Quinn for another company and Goldstein tries to dissuade him from going, telling him he’s “figured it out”.

I know, I know.  Scintillating stuff, right?

When Morgan returns from his trip, he can’t reach him friend and, after breaking into his apartment, finds Goldstein dead in the refrigerator.  It was at this point one would have thought the tension would increase.

One would be wrong.

As I mentioned before, the makers of the film seemed to be squeamish with the whole “tension” idea and when Morgan is subsequently in grave mortal danger viewers are given reason to think things aren’t quite as dangerous as they appear.  For instance, the two thugs meant to either kill him or his girl wind up appearing clownish at times.  Further, Lee Majors has a curiously mellow way of dealing with the danger presented, often lighten tension with farcical statements.  So, instead of ratcheting up the suspense as the movie hurls to its climax ala, say, The Parallax View or Seven Days in May or All The President’s Men (political thrillers all), the film’s climax gets watered down considerably.  Worse, Robert Mitchum, the main reason I wanted to see the film, is given very little in the end to do here.  His big reveal is interesting (if obvious) yet he never comes across as the heavy I expected, at least compared to his wonderful dark turn in the original 1962 version of Cape Fear.

In the end, I can’t recommend Agency to anyone other than a person like me, one who enjoys seeing obscure Robert Mitchum or Lee Majors films.  There is a reason, after all, this film is as obscure as it is…

If you remain curious to see the film, here it is in its entirety, courtesy of YouTube.  The copy presented there looks suspiciously like the one I saw!