Spy Hard (1996) on Netflix
General Rancor plans to fire a missile and needs a computer circuit built by Professor Ukrinsky. Agent WD-40, Dick Steele, comes out of retirement and teams with Ukrinsky's daughter Veronique.
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- Rotten Tomatoes8%
Trailer
Plot summary
Secret agent Dick Steele, known as WD-40, is retired when his old friend Steven Bishop tries to recruit him back to the agency. A news report Steele is watching then reveals that Bishop has been killed, and Steele returns to the agency, where the Director gives him a new assignment. General Rancor, who lost his arms in an earlier encounter and attaches robotic limbs with weapons, plans to fire a missile and holds hostages, among them Professor Ukrinsky, the designer of a circuit Rancor needs. Rancor has also taken Barbara Dahl captive. Steele's partner is Ukrinsky's daughter Veronique, a KGB agent called 3.14, and the two set out to find Rancor's base.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Spy Hard (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic sang and directed the title sequence, a send-up of Maurice Binder's Thunderball credits and of the legend that Tom Jones passed out holding its last note; Yankovic's head explodes instead, and he found in the studio he could hold the note long enough that no looping was needed.
- Director Rick Friedberg wanted Patrick Stewart or Nigel Hawthorne as the villain and says Disney executives shot back, "What is this, the British Royal Theatre Club? Cast a TV star!" Andy Griffith ended up playing General Rancor.
- Friedberg says Disney wanted the parody pitched at children while he was making it for teenage boys, which forced him to cut or rewrite whole set-pieces the studio judged too sophisticated.
- With the shoot one day behind schedule, Friedberg says Disney removed him as director and hired a replacement for reshoots; he saw the dailies only as an unofficial consultant, called them all terrible, and the final edit was done without him.
- On advice from Naked Gun co-writer Jim Abrahams, Disney insisted on an 84-minute film and cut Friedberg's 96-minute version so hard that continuity errors were left behind; the released film ran 77 minutes before the closing credits.
