Code Name: Diamond Head (1977 TV Movie) User Reviews

Code Name: Failed Pilot

[editguy · 3/10 · 13 February 2006]

Another turgid action/adventure flick from the Quinn Martin Productions factory. Roy Thinnes plays undercover agent Diamond Head (Mr. Head, to you), working for his G-Man handler "Aunt Mary", looking for "Tree", who's on a mission to...well, just watch the movie.

This one deserved and got the full MST3K sendup. As the boys and various reviewers have pointed out, the movie "Fargo" had more Hawaiian locations than this film. Apparently shot on a puny budget, this movie highlights Hawaii's broken-down dive shops, gas stations, and cheapo hotels. Zulu -- later to star as Kono in Hawaii-Five-O -- appears as Thinnes' lumpy, inept sidekick, while France Nguyen models the Jenny Craig diet gone horribly wrong. Others sharing the flickering screen include a drunken Richard Harris knockoff, a George Takai imitator, a not-so-smart hit-man with sprayed-on Sansabelt slacks, and the villain "Tree", sporting a veddy British accent. You can pretty much figure out the plot halfway through the opening credits, but relax--just enjoy the giddy mediocrity of this 70's movie-of-the-week.

Whenever I think of this movie (and I think of this movie often), I catch myself humming the theme, written for flute and tuba...no one knows why.

Trivia note--Diamond Head was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, one of three contract directors at Universal who would go on to make much bigger films, in his case Jaws 2. The others were John Badham (War Games), and a young fellow named Steven Spielberg...

Code Name: Awesome MST3K episode!

[Aaron1375 · 4/10 · 8 February 2016]

I saw this television pilot on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not the worst thing they have ever riffed, but then again, I find that the stuff that is not completely horrible oftentimes makes for the better episodes. Someone commented that they should not have riffed this because it has good stars in it, but I say anything can be riffed. It does not have to be completely horrid and nearly impossible to watch for the gang to bring in the zingers at a torrid pace. That being said, I can see why this never became a hit series that instead of being riffed for its pilot episode, was in syndication. It was not that good. Sure it had some rather credible actors in it, Ian McShane being the main one; however, for the most part this was kind of dull at times if not for the riffs. There were a lot of shows going on at this time that put this one to shame as it seemed to be trying to do a bit of Hawaii Five-O with more of a spy slant to it, but like a lot of television shows during this time, all it managed to do was make it on television as a pilot episode. Not sure if it went beyond that. There were a number of television shows that I really enjoyed as a kid that never really got many episodes such as the live action Spider-man show. Heck, that one had good ratings, but the president of CBS yanked it because he did not want his station to cater to kids. These days that demographic is all they cater too. This show simply did not hook the audience and it would have faded into obscurity if not for the gang of the Satellite of Love.

The story centers around an agent who is undercover in Hawaii. A man who is like some sort of criminal and really bad guy comes to town to steal some sort of chemical explosive or something. The agent must try to out think this man known as Tree...he really should've gave himself a cooler nickname. At the agent's disposal, this big dude, an Asian lady who does some stuff and a cranky old pirate looking dude who wants his 50 dollars! It has its moments here and there mainly due to Ian as Tree, but it has a lot of stupid stuff too, like the music. At one point the music suddenly sounded like it was from the science fiction ant film, Phase IV.

As an episode of Mystery Science Theater it is becoming a favorite of mine. I was not as wild about it at first, but it continually grows on me and I laugh at the jokes which by today's wimp standards would probably offend some people. One of the reasons I fear the reincarnation of the show is going to be weak is the fact people are so easily offended so I just think the show is going to lack the edge it had back in the day.

So, another show that failed to become a regular on the prime time schedule. Who knows? If things were different it may have survived as for reasons unknown a good deal of people seem to have enjoyed this show and do not like the fact that it was done by Mystery Science Theater, but realistically, most of them would have completely forgotten this thing if not for them. It's still always kind of cool to reenter the 70's though and watch a blast from the past!

Code Name: Boredom!

[Dextrousleftie · 2/10 · 10 October 2006]

Ahh, the dull t.v. shows and pilots that were slammed together in the 70's to make equally dull t.v. movies! Some examples would be Riding With Death(the most hysterically cheesy of the lot), Stranded in Space(confusing and uninteresting), San Francisco International(horribly dull and unbelievably confusing), and this turgid bit of Quinn Martin glamor.

Shot in Hawaii(although you wouldn't know it from the outside shots), it's apparently a failed pilot for a lame spy show. The real problem is that you don;'t like most of the characters, including the drab main character Diamond Head, who seemed half asleep for the entire movie; his boss 'Aunt Mary', who had a really weird delivery of his lines and shellacked white hair as well as the a tan that looked like it had been stuccoed on; Diamnd Head's girlfriend/fellow agent(hell, I can't even remember her name) a skinny, wooden woman with a flat way of speaking that is just not sexy or interesting; and the singing sidekick Zulu(again, i can't remember his character's name)who wasn't bad in small doses. The most interesting person in the whole production was Ian McShane, who sucked as a bad guy but still proved his acting chops. Alothugh the make-up jobs this so-called 'chameleon' used to disguise himself were just laughable. I have absolutely no idea what he was doing or what he was trying to steal from the lab that caused him to dress as a South American Dictator cum American General. Nor do I care. The plot simply wasn't interesting enough to hold your attention for even ten minutes at a time, let alone the hour and a half or so it goes on. Just call this one - Hawaii Five No!

A James Bond for the stupid .... MST 3K couldn't save it.

[robertmurray-70637 · 1/10 · 17 September 2019]

To appreciate just how bad "Code Name Diamond Head" is, you have to compare it to one of the early Bond Films, with Sean Connery, such as my favorite "From Russia with Love."

Bond: suave and sophisticated, droll sense of humor, dressed in an elegant dinner jacket.

The secret agent in this film? Bland and dull, dressed in too-tight pastel polyester, and about as funny as a roll of wet toilet paper.

And this is NOT one of my favorite MST 3K episodes. To get into that category, the movie has to be bad but fun to watch. This movie is BORING.

Another Gawd awful TV pilot

[bensonmum2 · 3/10 · 2 November 2007]

It doesn't take long to see why Code Name: Diamond Head didn't make it onto the network schedules. The TV pilot movie doesn't get past the credits before it's obvious just how bad it's going to be. Maybe I missed something, because the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense. Based on what I got out of the muddled mess, a terrorist or thief or something named "Tree" (Ian McShane) goes to Hawaii to steal something to do with a secret weapon. The world's dullest secret agent, Johnny Paul (Roy Thinnes), is out to stop him. There might have been more, but trust me – it really doesn't matter anyway.

Action movies should have action. Suspenseful moments should have suspense. And dramatic moments should have drama. There's none of that in Code Name: Diamond Head. I've seen others use the word "turgid" to describe this made for TV snoozer – and it's better than any one word description I can come up with. None of the characters is in the least bit exciting or worth caring about. And Roy Thinnes makes for the worst leads imaginable. His charisma is just slightly north of a slug. Ian McShane is easily the best thing the movie has going for it, but unfortunately for everyone else involved, it doesn't appear he was going to be back as a regular cast member. Now if McShane had been cast in the series lead, well then you might have had something.

I'm quickly discovering that these Gawd awful 70s made-for-TV movies make great Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. And that goes double if Quinn Martin was involved. Very funny stuff from Mike and the Bots. So while I may only give the movie a 3/10, I rate Episode #608 a 4/5 on my MST3K rating scale.

Code Name: Generic Quinn Martin Product

[lemon_magic · 4/10 · 11 December 2005]

Think of this pilot as "Hawaii Five-O Lite". It's set in Hawaii, it's an action/adventure crime drama, lots of scenes feature boats and palm trees and polyester fabrics and garish shirts...it even stars the character actor "Zulu" in a supporting role. Oh, there are some minor differences - Roy Thinnes is supposed to be some front-line undercover agent, and the supporting cast is much smaller (and less interesting), but basically the atmosphere is still the same. Problem is, "Hawaii Five-O" (another QM product) already existed at the time and had run for years. It filled the market demand for Hawaii-based crime dramas quite adequately. Code Name: Diamond Head may have been intended as the heir to H50 as the older series eventually dwindled away...but it comes across as a superfluous, 2nd rate copy. It doesn't suck, but it's completely derivative and doesn't do anything as well as the original.

There is some decent acting talent involved here. Thinnes is an old pro, and he gives the role his best shot, and he isn't bad. But Thinnes is only as good as his material and his director. Ian McShane is in here as an evil spy master named "Tree", and McShane tends to be the most interesting actor in any scene he appears in. But he's phoning his part in here. Frances Ngyuen is reasonably exotic looking, but her astounding skinniness, opaque features, thick accent and wooden delivery aren't the stuff of which dreams are made. Relying on her to supply the 'romantic interest' for Thinnes was probably the series' biggest mistake. At least for for a series aimed at white audiences brought up with Marsha Brady and Peggy Lee as our love goddesses. Give her another 30 lbs and a year with a dialog/voice coach, and she might cut it. Zulu is, well, his usual self - enjoyable in bit parts, but he isn't a person who can carry a feature by himself.

In addition, the plot and dialog are strictly by-the-numbers, with nothing to distinguish them from any other Quinn Martin production. And by this point, the American TV audience had seen a whoooole lot of QM productions....I think "CN: DH" was one too many, and it sank without a trace. It wasn't the really the actors' fault, and I hope they walked away from this with a decent paycheck and one more entry on their C.V.s.

MST3000 revived this for their treatment in their sixth season, and they had a lot of good natured fun with it. Worth seeking out in that version if you enjoy the MST approach to movie japery and lampoon, but I can't imagine anyone caring about this pilot for any other reason.

Qadafi in Hawaii

[lee_eisenberg · 1/10 · 24 May 2017]

Quinn Martin was a noted TV producer who created shows such as "The Untouchables" and "Barnaby Jones". But in 1977, he aired a major stinker: "Code Name: Diamond Head". The plot (or whatever you call it) is a convoluted mess about someone trying to stop the theft of a deadly gas. No surprise that this failed pilot provided fodder for "Mystery Science Theater 3000", with Mike, Servo and Crow having lots of fun at the movie's expense. That's the only way to watch the movie and enjoy it. The only cast member whom I recognized was Ian McShane, who's probably spent the years since trying to forget that he participated in this.

Is it the worst movie ever made? Dunno. I just know that you'll enjoy the movie if you watch MST3K's presentation. Either that or you could go to Hawaii to experience what the Aloha State really has to offer.

Fargo ND or Honolulu Hawaii? You decide

[ticklemetorgo · 1/10 · 27 March 2005]

TV pilots, don't you love them? Quinn Martin tried this one out after being successful in a bunch of other TV detective movies, but this one goes nowhere except in the realm of MST where it belongs. Roy Thinnes is Diamond Head who takes orders from Aunt Mary to find super spy Lovejoy, I mean Tree. Zulu and Tso-Tsing are there for ethnic comic relief and not much else. Tree sucks as a bad guy despite all his disguises that makes him look exactly the same as he normally does. There's more unnatural clothing fiber here than you can ever imagine (required in the 1970's)and the show itself is so anti-climatic. Why did it not go to series? You figure it out, it's quite blatant. Again it's fun for MST, but not a lot else!!

Code Name: Miscasting. *A SPOILER OR TWO*

[quamp · 2/10 · 8 May 2002]

This series would have been a lot better if they had just done one simple thing: Made Ian McShane Code Name: Diamond Head instead of Code Name: Tree. Diamond Head the character needs someone who could handle the role of the lovable rogue, which McShane proved he could do with the Lovejoy series. Roy Thinnes, the actual Diamond Head, is really only so-so in the role. McShane is not really that good as the bad guy Tree. France Nuyen's character, Tso-Tsing, can't seem to make up her mind as to whether she's the hapless victim or the tough-and-ready-to-fight woman. She really earned her pay at the end when she had to play the role of Diamond Head's lover. After viewing an episode or two, I ended up not caring what happened to anyone. Tree gives us a lot to hate him, but Diamond Head gives us nothing to like him. Unfortunately, the spy genre in the 1970s was not quite as it was in the 1960's.

Quinn Martin

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 19 April 2020]

Quinn Martin (The Fugitive, The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones) produced this failed pilot, which stars Roy Thinnes (The Invaders, The Norliss Tapes) as Diamond Head, a secret agent who must stop double agent from stealing a chemical weapon.

He also goes by Johnny Paul, with his cover of being a gambler and ladies' man living in Hawaii. The double agent, known only as Tree, ends up being Ian McShane.

France Nuyen (Alma from Battle for the Planet of the Apes) is in this, which is ironic, as she was also in the 1963 Charlton Heston movie Diamond Head. She's joined by Zulu (Kono Kalakaua from Hawaii Five-O), Ward Costello (Bloody Birthday), Eric Braden (Victor from The Young and the Restless) and Eric Christmas (The Changeling).

It was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, whose strange resume saw him making all manner of movies from The Devil's Daughter, Bug and Jaws 2 to Somewhere In Time, Supergirl and Santa Claus The Movie.

MST3K Lovejoy vs Victor Newman

[onelonedolphin-38389 · 10/10 · 17 July 2020]

My favorite MST3K movie EVER!! Ian McShane our beloved Lovejoy as a preacher & Eric Braeden as a bad guy, the fierce Victor Newman from CBS The Young and the Restless are incredible in this movie (-; Definitely a movie to keep in your library! Get your movie snacks & be ready to laugh guys! #DrDi

Not Really Bad Enough For Good MST3K

[verbusen · 6/10 · 15 June 2014]

I'm guessing that all the other reviewers (7) watched this as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 like I have. I also see that most people voting hate that the (7) reviewers disliked the film so all the reviews have negative votes. So I'm going to go middle of the road and give this a 6. I actually could have enjoyed this enough in a non riffed straight viewing (which will never happen now that I've seen it already). Folks tend to go very low with the voting on anything that has been riffed by MST3K and 95% of the time they are right, the films are terrible. However there are SOME exceptions. "This Island Earth" was a GOOD sci fi film that MST3K riffed as their only theater film, it was edited down heavily (about 1/3 cut) to aid in the riffing which is not being very fair to the 1950's film, another GOOD sci film was Marooned, which the cast of MST3K got a lot of heat over using. Both of these films are in the 5's now on IMDb probably because a lot of votes are coming from people who only watched the MST3K version first. Their loss because both were good films to see in their original content and if were never riffed would probably be high 6.5 to 7.5 range on IMDb.

So back to Code Name: Diamond Head. I watched this (MST3K version) a few years ago and was not impressed, it seemed slow to me, I think I stopped watching it without being 1/3 way through. I just watched it again today and I was entertained. I also noted all the actors who were actually in a lot of films. The first one was the Asian woman France Nuyen. I Immediately recognized her as the ultra hot Asian goddess in Star Trek in 1968, a strong reason why I'm infatuated with Asian women today because I watched that episode so many times as a kid in reruns after school. She was smoking hot in 1968. I even looked up her bio and she was in a film called just Diamond Head with Charlton Heston and played his lover, pretty impressive and I'm surprised the MST3K crew didn't give her any props for those two pop culture references. Here she is 38 and definitely not a hottie. Maybe thats why this series was never picked up, it's too close to reality. I know a lot of the film is far fetched but the locations they picked ARE actually in Honululu, I know because that's were I would be when on shore leave. They are the gritty parts of Hawaii though and there are not many glamor shots as say a Hawaii Five O would show. Perhaps thats why they chose France Nuyen, she is a middle aged Asian woman and plausible as a large night club owner? But lets face it, if you are watching spy in Hawaii shows on TV you don't really want that kind of reality do you?

The other actors I recognized immediately were Ian Mcshane, Eric Braeden, and Don Knight (and of course Zulu, who got too big for his britches and was dropped from H5O after the first four seasons, and in 99 Hawaii Five O epsiodes). Don Knight was in SIX Hawaii Five O episodes and usually plays a great bad guy, here he is a scruffy charter boat owner in a bit part. Eric Braedon has a running joke in the MST3K version with them saying who is that guy, but I knew him right away because he was in the great sci fi thriller "Colossus: The Forbin Project" as the lead, and also as the German Officer constantly after The Rat Patrol. MST3K eventually grants him the Rat Patrol credit and THREE Hawaii Five O episodes, but the guy is a very successful actor (also years as a lead in the Soap Opera The Yound and the Restless) and that joke was stale over and over. Ian Mcshane is also pretty well know and they keep using his Lovejoy role as a joke, since I never watched that show it wasn't that funny to me. Another flop in the riffing to me was they tried really really hard to equate this as a really cheesy 70's TV show from QM complete with the soundtrack, but the times they keep doing the soundtrack noises the actual film is not using it, they used that joke going on through a third of the show, lame. The lead actor I did not recognize but he's been in a lot of shows, I only recognized him when I went to his bio page and saw a 1963 pic of him from General Hospital and realized immediately that he was in an episode MST3K had riffed early in it's existence with Joel. He was also in The Invaders as the lead actor, I'm surprised that wasn't referenced at all since it's a cult favorite sci fi TV show.

Bottom line, I don't think this was a great choice to get riffed by MST3K. There are too many decent actors in this and it was not nearly cheesy enough with 70's references to make the riffs all that funny. Why didn't it get picked up for a series? It was too serious and in gritty reality based on a concept that requires over the top fantasy (Hawaii Spy Show in the 1970's). I give the straight film version a 6 of 10 for a TV pilot, and I give it a 5 of 10 as an MST3K episode.

BTW, there is a Coast Guard joke in this toward the very end that would have made me spit out my drink because it was so radical and funny, so watch out for that if you are drinking in front of your laptop!

Barely Cubic.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 18 November 2021]

This could have been campy but unfortunately, for most of the film, it's really boring. A rare gas is found out of some ugly looking sea creature and now anime agents wanted, or at least double agents willing to sell it to enemy agents or the highest bidder. You've got Roy Thinnes on the good guys side, Ian McShane, Ward Costello and Eric Braeden on the bad guys side (with an actor simply named Zulu also among them) and self titled dragon lady Frances Nguyen ("South Pacific", "Diamond Head") somewhere in the middle.

It's a shame to see Francis made to look up so severe because she, even into her eighties, is such a beautiful lady, but with her severe hairdo and makeup, she looks like something the Gale Sondergaard would have played in the 1940's, thus an unfortunate Asian stereotype and not even mildly amusing. There's plenty of action going on, and it does become mildly amusing here and there, but there's no way I could see this as a TV series because how many anime Asians are there around the world who make Hawaii their stop? Between Hawaii Five-O and this TV movie, Quinn Martin who produced both never had time to figure it out.

WELL WORTH WAITING FOR

[larryanderson · 7/10 · 15 March 2020]

This movie was on TV on May 1, 1977. I did not watch it at that time. I tore out the TV guide page and filed it. Recently I was going through those pages and decided to look on Y?T and there it was. I watched and enjoyed it regardless of the obvious plot and limited action scenes and locales. It was just a fun lively TV movie. Enjoyable.