The Nude Bomb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nude Bomb
Directed by	Clive Donner
Produced by	Jennings Lang
Written by	Bill Dana Arne Sultan based on characters created by Mel Brooks Buck Henry Leonard Stern
Starring	Don Adams Sylvia Kristel Dana Elcar Andrea Howard Vittorio Gassman Earl Maynard
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date(s)	May 9, 1980
Running time	94 minutes
Language	English
Budget	Unknown
IMDb profile

The Nude Bomb (also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart or Maxwell Smart and the Nude Bomb) was a 1980 comedy film based on the television series Get Smart. It starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, and was directed by Clive Donner. It was retitled The Return of Maxwell Smart for television so as to avoid any trouble with the censors. In the film, Smart is called back into service in order to stop a terrorist from exploding a bomb that destroys only clothing and thus KAOS would be the world's only supplier of clothing.

Adams' cousin, Robert Karvelas (Larrabee) is the only other cast member from the television series to return for this film. Dana Elcar plays the Chief in this film (as Edward Platt had died a few years earlier), and Barbara Feldon's character from the TV series, Agent 99, is not mentioned. No reference is made to Smart being married to 99. Sylvia Kristel, at the time a cause celebre for her appearances in the Emmanuelle film series, makes a brief appearance as Agent 34, with actress Andrea Howard playing the Agent 99-type role (as Agent 22) and Vittorio Gassman playing the Blofeld-like villain.

Smart's agency, called CONTROL in the TV series, was called PITS in this film, an acronym standing for Pentagon Intelligence Taskforce Service.

The film was a box office disappointment. Nearly a decade later another revival film was produced, this time for TV, on ABC. Get Smart, Again! would feature most of the surviving original cast members and ignored the existence of The Nude Bomb for continuity purposes.