General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

In Like Flint

In Like Flint is a 1967 American spy-comedy film and the sequel to Our Man Flint (1966), starring James Coburn as super-agent Derek Flint, who is recalled from retirement to stop an all-female organization plotting to take over the world. It was directed by Gordon Douglas, written by Hal Fimberg, and produced by Saul David for Twentieth Century Fox.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	Premiered 3 March 1967 in Puerto Rico; opened in New York City theaters 15 March 1967 and in Los Angeles 22 March 1967¹
Running time	114 minutes, color, 2.35:1 widescreen²
Principal cast	James Coburn (Derek Flint), Lee J. Cobb (Lloyd C. Cramden), Jean Hale (Lisa Norton/Nora Benson), Andrew Duggan (President Trent), Anna Lee, Steve Ihnat, Yvonne Craig³
Key crew	Director Gordon Douglas; screenplay Hal Fimberg; music Jerry Goldsmith; cinematography William H. Daniels²
Box office	About $11,000,000, against $16,000,000 for Our Man Flint⁴
Critical scores	72% Tomatometer (18 reviews) and 51% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁵
Franchise status	A third Flint film was considered in 1967 but abandoned when Coburn proved reluctant to continue¹

Spoilers

Plot

Former Z.O.W.I.E. spy Derek Flint is called back from retirement after two events: his former chief, Lloyd C. Cramden (Lee J. Cobb), is framed in compromising photographs suggesting prurient behavior with a prostitute, and U.S. President Trent (Andrew Duggan) experiences an incident of "lost time." Flint discovers irregularities in a recently launched space-station mission and realizes an international conspiracy is underway.⁵

The conspirators are a secret organization of women who use a Virgin Islands beauty spa called Fabulous Face as their front. They brainwash female recruits with altered hair dryers, place two female cosmonauts aboard America's newly launched space platform, and replace the President with an identical impostor.⁶ A trio of fashionable feminists is helping a group of Army conspirators overthrow the government, unaware that their male comrades intend to betray them.²

Flint breaks into Z.O.W.I.E. headquarters, travels to Russia and the Virgin Islands, and eventually sneaks aboard the space capsule piloted by the turncoat General Carter (Steve Ihnat). After a slow-motion struggle in orbit, Flint overcomes Carter and moves to the space platform, while the rescued President's forces destroy the capsule with missiles from Earth.⁶ Along the way Flint talks with dolphins, performs ballet with ballerina-informer Natasha (Yvonne Craig) at the Bolshoi Theatre, and evades KGB agents in a rooftop chase across Moscow.³

Franchise aftermath

By 21 April 1967, trade reports said the film was performing well enough for Fox to consider a third installment, but Coburn, who had founded his own production company in 1967, was reluctant to continue with a franchise, and production did not move ahead.¹^•³ The film nonetheless put Coburn "over the top as a proper movie star," in the Turner Classic Movies account, giving him recognition that stretched "from Beverly Hills to the alleys of Marrakesh."³ The Flint series later gained a third, made-for-television entry, Dead on Target (1976), listed by The Movie Database as the final film of the trilogy.¹³

Production

Fox moved quickly. Just months after Our Man Flint opened, an April 1966 trade item reported that a sequel was already in preparation under the tentative title F As in Flint; the title was changed by late April 1966. The film became the first project under producer Saul David's new Fox contract, which guaranteed him twenty percent of any profits once rentals exceeded 2.4 times the film's negative cost.¹

Shooting and consultants. Principal photography began on 27 June 1966 near Montego Bay, Jamaica, where water had to be trucked to a location about ten miles outside the city; the unit returned to the Fox lot in Los Angeles in mid-July. Chris Kraft, Jr., of NASA served as a consultant for the space-center scenes, and UCLA football coach Tommy Prothro ran a "practice session" with supporting actresses who made up a team of "Flint's All-Americans." The film also marked the acting debut of Bill Lear, founder of the Lear Jet Corporation, in a cameo as a mechanic.¹

Format and design. In Like Flint was the last 20th Century Fox production filmed in CinemaScope. Matte paintings by Emil Kosa, Jr., L. B. Abbott, and Art Cruickshank, all of whom moved on to Planet of the Apes the following year, gave the film its sense of scale, supported by Jerry Goldsmith's score.³ A scholarly analysis of the film's design notes that it divides into two gendered realms: Flint's masculine spaces (his apartment, a golf course, the Z.O.W.I.E. compound) are naturalistic and subdued, while the women's spaces are highly stylized realms of color, texture, and movement.⁷

Title

The title plays on the 1940s catchphrase "In like Flynn," a reference to the reputed romantic conquests of the movie idol Errol Flynn.³

Reception

Contemporary and later critics generally ranked the film below its predecessor. Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote in April 1967 that the film "lingers over every tired joke and every special effect," faulted Gordon Douglas's pacing against the quick tempo of the Bond films, and singled out the hair-dryer brainwashing plot and a scene in which Cobb appears in drag for particular criticism.⁸ Pauline Kael, writing in McCall's, called the first film a "wheezing, appallingly ugly comic-strip imitation" of the Bond strips that wasted Coburn's talents.⁹ Later assessments have been mixed in the same direction: the retrospective review in Slant Magazine called the film "suffocatingly listless" while crediting Coburn's performance and Goldsmith's "justly celebrated" score,¹⁰ and the Classic Film and TV Café described it as light, frothy fun if its 1960s view of conflict between men and women can be set aside.¹¹ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 72% among critics (13 fresh, 5 rotten of 18 reviews) and 51% among audiences.⁵

The film's treatment of gender has drawn sustained comment. Ebert noted that Flint converts the conspirators' leader "with a kiss and a lot of arch dialog";⁸ the DVD Savant review called the premise, in which women are subverted by brainwashing housewives with hair dryers, "perhaps the most wrong-headed and clumsiest 'satirical' film message of the 1960s," and noted that Kael had seen two versions of the film, in the second of which lines in which Flint gently castigated the ladies were cut.² The film-authority review observed that the feminist rebels are portrayed as well attired, forward thinking, and possessed of considerable agency, while the men seem stuffy and complacent.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released 1960s and 1970s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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