The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Series) The Drublegratz Affair (1967) User Reviews

April Dancer dances her way through another THRUSH plot.

[ashmored · 9/10 · 12 June 2020]

When THRUSH decide they want to take over the throne of Drublegratz, they decide to get rid of the last of the countries rulers by using musical resonance to cause an avalanche to kill Prince Efram. April Dancer goes undercover as a go-go dancer (a bonus for male viewers as she wears a micro mini-skirt for long parts of the episode), while Mark wonders round with a French horn and chatting up a girl called Sherilee. The main THRUSH agent's in this are Princess Rapunzel (Patricia Barry) and Igor Gork (Vito Scotti in an amazing wig), who seem to be trying to win an overacting competition! April's cover is blown almost instantly when Rapunzel makes a simple phone call and finding out she is one of U.N.C.L.E's top agents, she vows to have April removed. So, when she spies April spying on them from a mountain side, Rapunzel orders two thugs to deal with the demure Miss Dancer. I know this is parody, but the ease with which they creep up on April (supposedly a highly trained agent), overpower her and then throw the Girl from U.N.C.L.E off the mountain without even a struggle takes some believing. April screams and there are some close ups of her looking suitably terrified as she plunges to her impending death. Luckily, April lands in water and so survives! Meanwhile, Gork has worked out a way to make the mountain next to the palace collapse using sound resonance, which will be triggered when the Daily Flash play 'My Bulgarian Baby'. Mark leaps into action and breaks into the palace but is captured along with Sherilee and put in a wardrobe. April, meanwhile, gets in touch with Waverly and proves she has a good voice by singing 'My Bulgarian Baby' to him as she believes it has something to do with an attempt on Efram's life. She then goes back to her dancing but the lights go out and April is kidnapped by a pair of THRUSH agents, who then use knock-out gas on her, causing April Dancer to faint. When she regains consciousness, April finds herself tied and gagged and in the same wardrobe as Mark and Sherilee. The manage to free themselves using one of Aprils gadgets and then get involved in a brawl with THRUSH agents in the control room, where April manages to turn the resonance control into reverse and the mountain collapses on Rapunzel and Gork. The show ends with The Daily Flash singing 'My Bulgarian Baby' once more for April, Mark, Sherilee, Efram and Waverly, who calls them the Flashing Dailies! If the episode is taken as it is presumably meant to be (almost a spin-off from 'Get Smart' not 'Man from U.N.C.L.E'), then it is quite entertaining, while April Dancer shows she is a more than capable singer and dancer, as well as having great legs! The band playing the song 'My Bulgarian Baby' to which the mini-skirted April make some very 'groovy' dance moves (Stefanie Powers was a trained dancer) are the Daily Flash, a folk/psychedelic group from Seattle who were regarded highly enough to have supported Jefferson Airplane at around the same time, while one of their number, guitarist Doug Hastings, played for Buffalo Springfield for a while after Neil Young's departure. They obviously didn't use their full potential on this episode of the Girl from Uncle!