I have the #1 DVD release of the 60s M:I, and am going through it now to see why it was the classic that it was, and so far I’m agreeing. I have a question about it, though:
At the top when The Voice (Bob Johnson) is outlining what the mission will be like, “should you decide to accept it,” what was the meaning of the disclaimer, “As always, should any member of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions”?
The IM Force is a secret group which officially doesn’t exist. The U.S. will not admit they were sanctioned to do what they were caught doing.
That’s kind of what I thought! That explains it very well.
IM Force? What IM Force? Nobody by that name around here.
At the time the series came out, the government spent a lot of time disavowing any knowledge of CIA dirty tricks, so that opening rang very true.
BTW, I always got the impression that the IMF was a private organization working for the government. Phelps had way too nice an apartment for a government employee. That’s something that really annoyed me about the movie. It is much easier to disavow the actions of a private group than of government employees, after all.
The first rule of IM force is that you DON’T talk about IM force!
And isn’t it just a little suspicious that the original leader, Dan Briggs, disappeared without a trace?
Dan was caught or killed. Unfortunately, the secretary is disavowing any knowledge of his actions. On the other hand, the guy in the mail room might talk if you slip him a twenty.
Dan Briggs? I don’t know anyone by that name.
On a side note, if you’re a fan of Mission Impossible type stories, you should check out the movie 36 Hours. It’s basically a reverse Mission Impossible. The hero is an American officer (James Garner) who was involved in the D-Day planning. He’s captured by the Germans and they want him to reveal the D-Day plans. They don’t want to torture him because they worry he’ll give them a plausible cover story. So they try to trick him by setting up a fake American occupation camp and telling him it’s 1950 and that he’s been suffering amnesia attacks for five years. The war’s over, America won, and to help his recovery he should talk about his wartime memories. A good movie with some interesting twists in it.
In this vein, what would have happened if they didn’t accept the mission? Was the episode done for that week?
Of course, they also did this in The Prisoner, where a team of sneaky operatives would do their level best to convince a kidnapped Patrick McGoohan that he’s now safely back in London – able to hear the chimes of Big Ben, even! – among friends dutifully working On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, such that he should naturally start in with a full debriefing; another episode had the bad guys make up a master of disguise for an impersonation con, in hopes of tricking our pumped-full-of-drugs protagonist into slipping up and revealing information.
IMHO, the stories play out pretty much the same if you imagine the IMF crew working identical ploys…
That’s on the bonus DVD. 
Rumor has it he changed his identity and became the District Attorney for Manhattan.
Thanks for this post!! I’ve seen this movie, but had forgotten about it–fantastic film.
Agh, you beat me to it!
Well, Rollin had a daughter who became a vampire … an insane vampire!
When I watched the first few seasons of MI a while back I was struck by how often the same sets, redressed from show to show, turned up. There is one octagonal room set that, I swear, is in every episode. When those shows originally aired with a week in between each one, I doubt anyone noticed. But watched back-to-back, the repeated sets are very obvious.
To tell you the truth, I got kind of tired of M:I after a couple of seasons. Every week the tape would promise to self-destruct. And every week, it just hissed a little and gave off a bit of smoke.
I was twelve years old, fercryinoutloud! I wanted Jim Phelps scootin’ out of that room as fast as his stubby little legs would carry him, followed by an earth-shattering KABLOOIE!!! as the message self-destructed but GOOD!
That’s true of a lot of shows from that period. When we were watching Danger Man/Secret Agent, we’d often say “we’ve seen that hotel lobby before!”
I especially liked it when MI used some Star Trek sound effects - they were both done at Desilu before it got bought.
I seem to remember an episode of Get Smart opening with a parody of the MI tape recorder, adding “and if you choose not to take this mission, you’re fired.”