The Charles Vine character made quite an impression on me at 12 (maybe 13) years of age. The "other guy" 007 we are lead to believe, has some sort of distraction keeping him from the important task of protecting a defecting Soviet scientist with the secret of anti gravity or perpetual motion or somesuch breakthrough. Charles Vine will have to do. As Sammy Davis JR sings, He's The Second, Not the First, but The Second Best Secret Agent in The Whole Wide Worrrrld.

An "M" stand in looks Vine over and heartily disapproves of his hand cannon, a broomhandle mauser, in a special holster that covers his entire lower back. He has several scenes where he is blasting away with this great weapon. One car chase where he leans out the window with a long silencer on the ww1 vintage pistol "Thwipp, Thwipp, Thwipping" at the enemies car in the middle of busy daytime London traffic. Later, stoppped at an enemy roadblock, he does a trickey behind his back shot, shooting through his coat, then rolls into the middle of the road and from his back shoots the other enemies, shell casing flying. All of this action barely ruffles his hair.

His final battle places him against a master assassin with holey socks and his own silenced mauser. Charles Vine has to keep his cool and load the trickey top loading magazine of his mauser out of earshot of the close by Red assassin. The Gun was the co star. I have the very popular facsimile of the broomhandle mauser that is commonly used by fans of Star Wars to recreate the Han Solo blaster. What a horror to discover that this whole great memory of a blood thirsty intense spy drama is actually played as a super silly spoof. Completely tongue in cheek at all times. Catch it if you can. I have it on video tape and have no memory of how I came by it.