The Avengers International Fan Forum

Discuss, review and rate The Interrogators.

Written by Richard Harris & Brian Clemens
Directed by Charles Crichton

Christopher Lee and the torture/tea scenes. Classic moments.

Love Christopher Lee as Mannering, and the initial set-up is nice and mysterious. But there seems to be an awful lot of Tara phoning up Mother to tell him what's going on (which the viewer already knows), while Steed sits around drinking brandy. The pacing seems off, with little action involving our heroes until the very end, and even then it's quite perfunctory. Steed and Tara are barely onscreen together, and when they are they barely speak. I don't think Steed cracks a smile in the whole thing, although I do like his verbal defense of Tara nearing the end.

I honestly can't get into Season 6. It's such a scattered, confused season, but it feels like it should be very good - which this episode points out. All the elements are there, but it doesn't come together to form a coherent whole.

Lhbizness wrote:Love Christopher Lee as Mannering, and the initial set-up is nice and mysterious. But there seems to be an awful lot of Tara phoning up Mother to tell him what's going on (which the viewer already knows), while Steed sits around drinking brandy. The pacing seems off, with little action involving our heroes until the very end, and even then it's quite perfunctory. Steed and Tara are barely onscreen together, and when they are they barely speak. I don't think Steed cracks a smile in the whole thing, although I do like his verbal defense of Tara nearing the end.

I honestly can't get into Season 6. It's such a scattered, confused season, but it feels like it should be very good - which this episode points out. All the elements are there, but it doesn't come together to form a coherent whole.

true. script problems, problem with the U.S. influence. help taint the 6th season.

6 from me. Like the finale.

Just watching it now on Blu Ray and noticed that the occupants of the flats along with Minnow who is lifted by Christopher Lee are listed as Clemens & Fennell when Tara is ringing the bell around 14 mins in. There is also an intrusive boom mic in the scene where Steed allows Casper to go home. Linda Thorson has one of her v short skirts on too and looks fab!

There are a lot of boom mics throughout the Blu-ray releases. The reason is that modern television sets lack an overscan (which was the sort of frame around the edge on old analog televisions). This overscan hid a large number of sins, and the production would shoot with the expectation that they had some breathing room. When you scan the film entirely out to its edges and then present the results on a television without overscan, you're going to see a lot of boom mics that would have been invisible in the 1960s through 1990s. There's also a prominent boom mic in "Castle De'ath" and several others that I can't think of at the moment.

I should also note that you can clearly see that the person cutting up Emma Peel's photo in "The Joker" is not Peter Jeffrey or anyone else credited in the production. The lack of overscan reveals the face of a slightly pudgy woman doing the honors. She was probably a production assistant or someone like that. I make a note of it in my new book.

Michael

This is the IMDB guidance on boom mics:

"Boom mics are filmed most of the time, but outside the area of the shot that the director intends us to see. When the film is masked for projection, the microphone should be hidden, so 99% of all "boom in shot" goofs are the fault of your projectionist and should not be listed. When the movie is prepared for full-frame (4:3) DVD release it is sometimes impossible to conceal the mic. Again this is not an error.

Only submit the best examples here, the genuinely funny or interesting occasions when a boom is so far in shot that it's a real mistake."

The first time I saw this one, it kind of left me cold. When I revisited it recently, I loved it because the writing is so sophisticated, especially character-wise. Colonel Mannering is not just well-acted by Christopher Lee, he is written exceedingly well as a sociopathic con man, suckering Tara into the scam quite convincingly in such a way that we can totally see it happening even with an experienced agent. And this level of believability is a rare thing for The Avengers, which tends to be more about fun than realism in the filmed era.

I also love the fact that the pretitle is a triple twist of expectations. Firstly, we see someone that appears to be a dentist, so that we assume Philip Bond is going in for a drilling. Secondly, he starts to interrogate Bond with a couple of Chinese men as enforcers, so we suddenly realize that it's actually a case of a captured agent. Thirdly, Colonel Mannering, another Western man looking like someone of considerable authority, steps in, and we realize that it's also about a traitor and/or an inside job. Rarely does a pretitle get that convoluted in such an effortless way. It sets up the story perfectly.

Michael

After a couple of duds a great relief to encounter this one. A great story well produced.

9/10