The Assassination Bureau – 1969 | 110 mins | Comedy | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Smart period black-comedy thriller set in the Victorian era about a secret international club that eliminates those they deem unworthy. The scene is set for a cat-and-mouse chase across Europe. Post-Avengers Diana Rigg stars as the prim and proper aspiring reporter whilst Oliver Reed wonderfully portrays the bureau’s insidiously witty and debonair leader. Loosely based on a madcap unfinished novel by Jack London later completed by Robert L Fish, with additional material by producer Michael Relph and Wolf Mankowitz, the mildly funny game of cat-and-mouse across Europe is performed by an excellent cast with tongue firmly in cheek. Director Basil Dearden infuses the silly tale with lively glee and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s photography perfectly captures the period scenery.

Tenacious feminist journalist Miss Winter (Diana Rigg) sets out to track down a society of hired killers dubbed The Assassination Bureau operating at the beginning of the 20th century. However, she’s taken aback by the smooth sophistication of the organisation’s leader Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed). She comes up with a singularly appropriate challenge for the bureau – to assassinate him. Dragomiloff, in an attempt to rejuvenate the group, challenges his assassins to target him, while he in turn will attempt to assassinate them. But events are complicated by a conniving aristocratic newspaper publisher Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas).