Woodyanders Spunky and enticing dental hygienist turned expert skydiver Fathom Harvill (the one and only Raquel Welch at her most gorgeous, radiant, and appealing) is assigned by a top secret government agency to parachute into Spain in order to find elusive war defector Peter Mertiwether (a smooth and engaging portrayal by Anthony Franciosa) and a missing H-bomb detonator he might have in his possession. Director Leslie H. Martinson, working from a witty script by Lorenzo Semple Jr., relates the fun premise at a snappy pace and maintains a likable easy'n'breezy lightweight tone throughout. Of course, this picture makes for a great showcase of the delectable Mrs. Welch's charming personality and jaw-dropping spectacular figure (the latter in particular looks absolutely smashing in a lime-green bikini!). Moreover, the cute and funny dialogue contains a nice running gag about Fathom's unusual first name. Clive Revill contributes a sharp comic performance as Sergi Serapkin, an eccentric villainous millionaire with an extreme aversion to the cold. Douglas Slocombe's vibrant cinematography provides an attractive bright look. John Dankworth's bouncy score hits the jaunty'n'jazzy spot. Hugely enjoyable.

garyldibert Fathom open in Finland on December 1, 1967 and open 12 days later in New York City on December 13th 1967. Fathom is a 1967 British spy comedy film directed by Leslie H. Martinson, starring Anthony Franciosa and Raquel Welch. Fathom Harvill (Raquel Welch) is a dental assistant and an American skydiver touring Europe with a U.S. parachute team. A Scottish agent to recover an atomic triggering mechanism approaches her. The film was based on Larry Forrester's second Fathom novel Fathom Heavensent then in the draft stage but never published. His first Fathom novel was 1967's A Girl Called Fathom. The film was one of three 1967 20th Century Fox films about female spies; the others being Doris Day's Caprice and Andrea Dromm's Come Spy with Me.Summary: The movie opens with a body shot of Fathom pounding in a post. Then Fathom starts to unroll her parachute. She then repacks the parachute. Fathom then heads for the sky to parachute in competition. After winning the skydiving championship in Spain, Fathom Harvill is abducted by a man named Timothy and taken to Douglas Campbell, a Scotsman who claims to be working for NATO intelligence. He enlists her aid in outwitting two teams of foreign agents who are after the "Fire Dragon," a nuclear trigger device that was lost in the Mediterranean following the crash of a bomber plane. Representing Communist China is Serapkin, an eccentric Armenian millionaire. Peter Merriweather is acting for the United States, aided by a glamorous Asian, Jo-May Soon. Fathom parachutes into Merriweather's villa and learns that the "Fire Dragon" is a priceless jeweled figurine stolen from a Peking museum by a Korean War deserter who is being pursued by a private detective. Although she now realizes that Merriweather and Campbell are the deserter and the private eye, she cannot determine which is which.Questions. Who was behind the bull being in an empty arena? Who was behind the harpoon attack on the hotel owner? Who was behind the two knife attacks? What did Fathom find in her makeup case? Why did two men try to grab Fathom? Why was Fathom forced in an airplane? My thoughts: Fantastic movie right from the start. Anthony Franciosa was good in his role as Peter Merriweather. Now for the star of the movie Raquel Welch who was just Fantastic. Her role as Fathom Harvill was great. The outfits she wore in this movie were out of this world. It started with the tight parachute outfit. From there the green bikini never fit a body better than it did Raquel Welch. I'm use to seeing Raquel in stupid comedy that wastes her talents. However, in this one her talents were used to perfection including that gorgeous body. Because of Raquel Welch and her talent, I give this movie 10 weasel stars. You can buy this movie at Amazon.com

sharpe04 I'd never seen or even heard of this offering in the 60's comedy spy genre until Film 4 padded out their evening schedule with it. How dated it all looked, understandably. But it was a jolly romp, great locations and with pretty good enthusiastically staged stunts. Ms Welch was very decorative as usual and the Britsh character actors excellent in support. Good to see Tom Adams in a solid supporting role, Clive Revill was always good value in this sort of movie too. Amazingly the two aircraft flown in this movie, a Cessna 172 and a Piper Cherokee 180, are still active and licenced in the UK, wearing their original registrations, forty years after the film was made.

oshram-3 Probably the only place most of you have seen this film is in the discount DVD rack at Target, where it sells, depending on your timing, for anywhere from $9.44 to $14.99. Whether or not it's worth even those paltry sums is another story.Fathom was spawned during the spy craze in the mid-60s, when making films and TV shows with inappropriate casting for spies was okay (Bill Cosby as a spy? Barbara Bain, who won the Emmy over Diana Rigg???). So Fathom was likely born of twin desires; first, to cash in on the spy genre wave, and secondly, to build a showcase for Raquel Welch. I'm not arguing that either was a particularly bad idea, though it sort of turned out that way. The problem with building a showcase around a pretty woman (or devastatingly beautiful, in Welch's case) is that few people ever put any thought into the framework. They get caught up in staring at the girl, and everything else pretty much goes to hell.Fathom doesn't try to take itself seriously, which is good, because it couldn't if it wanted to. Welch gives it a decent try to play a hapless adventurer who gets pushed in over her head, but it's obvious she's there to model the outfits as opposed to really act. Tony Franciosa plays Merriwether, her chief rival/love interest, and frankly, he's awful. Most of the rest of the cast is forgettable too, with the exception of a very eccentric performance by Clive Revill as the oddball Russian ex-pat Serapkin.But mostly as expected the movie centers on Welch – which again isn't a bad idea, and it's certainly giving viewers what they want. In a scene where she parades down a street in France in a green bikini, the film almost literally stops while everyone catches their breath. Raquel, as they would say in modern parlance, really had it goin' on (though I was more than a little disturbed by a vague resemblance here to Carmen Electra, and hoping like hell no one in Hollywood thought that, because this is NOT a movie that needs to be updated. Even with Ben Stiller playing the Franciosa part).Fathom is a stupid but harmless movie. Welch always seemed to me to be her generation's Sharon Stone; someone more famous for being famous than for any discernible talent (other than the patently obvious). But Welch did make at least a few good films (the Musketeer movies, in which she was very good) and a few ‘interesting' ones (the ill-fated Myra Breckenridge). She's not particularly good here, but then, she's not asked to be. Fathom never tries to pass itself off as anything more than a cheeky B film, and it's certainly more watchable than comparable drek like Our Man Flynt (which I turned off after about seven minutes). Fathom's obvious falseness – shots of Welch skydiving are ludricrously naïve – is partially a product of its time, but I suspect it would actually appeal to people who enjoy that sort of camp (you know, Batman fans and the like). And, frankly, it's worth sitting through to have the rather obvious talents of Welch displayed, even though her hair is picture-perfect a second after removing her skydiving helmet (and she wears makeup in bed, too. Always prepared, that girl). I can't really recommend this film for anyone other than Welch fans, or extremely obsessive fans of 60s spy films, but I would bet that to a generation of men only a few years older than I am, this is a film they remember extremely fondly. And I guess there's nothing wrong with that.