Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103458 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-12-29
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Customer Reviews

An excellent unappreciated film
This film failed basically for one reason, Americans couldn't understand what the actors were saying or referring to or appreciate its retro-style. It's as simple as that. The lines are classic, inuendo-laden and witty, the scenography beautiful and the acting tongue-in-cheek. The film is a visual gem and the sight of Sean Connery in a menacing teddy bear is easily worth the price of a DVD. Distilled 1960's London style and a very funny and sometimes violent script make this a future cult film.

Studio Stupidity
I rewatched The Avengers today and it really is a missed opportunity. The reason it failed was not IMO the surreal wackiness, it was that Warners panicked and cut huge chunks out of the film rendering it not only surreal and weird, but missing links in the story that would have tied all the bizarre stuff together better.

If you look on Wikipaedia it details what was in the original script, and on imdb you can discover things cut from the film, such as the attack on the secret base by the evil Emma Peel that was seen in trailers. My favourite has to be Steed spanking Peel with his sword when they spar in the tailor shop.

On reflection there's a lot to like in The Avengers: Uma Thurman in leather: always a plus, Sean Connery hamming it up more than Porky Pig at a bacon factory, and henchmen dressed as multi-coloured teddy bears. Bonkers. Utter bonkers. I like it.

Although edited, still good fun
It's an entertaining movie. I wish there would be a Director's Cut to see if it would be an improvement. But it's certainly better than (and more in the spirit of) the majority of terrible films made from TV shows.