The Intelligence Men 1965

In a busy London coffee bar, Eric Morecambe as Eric serves black coffee to a sinister-looking man who presses him to remember a tune, a request that proves futile for his famously tone-deaf ear. The moment is interrupted when Ernie Wise as Ernie Sage enters, and Eric tries to recruit him to identify the elusive melody, though the effort yields little at first.

The scene widens as Sage suspects the tune might be connected to an imminent visit by a Russian trade delegation and an assassination plot orchestrated by a shadowy group called SCHLECHT, a wry parody of SPECTRE. He reports the odd encounter to Military Intelligence, where he is treated as little more than an office-boy, yet his intuition nudges the agency toward taking the threat seriously.

Reluctantly, they decide that only Eric, the man who heard the tune, can lead them to the heart of the conspiracy. Eric is persuaded to pose as a British agent—the recently deceased Major Cavendish—who had managed to infiltrate SCHLECHT, setting the stage for a high-stakes blend of espionage and farce.

After a string of comic set-pieces, the tune is finally identified and the action pivots to a Swan Lake performance at the planned venue, where the star Russian ballerina Madame Petrovna, played by April Olrich, finds herself in grave danger. Some of the film’s best moments come from Eric, masquerading as a Russian, adopting a broad Scottish highland accent, while [Ernie Wise] remains at his side in a humorous double-act, both of them wearing Egyptian costumes during the ballet and tangling with the playful chaos of the Dance of the Little Swans.

As the ballet unfolds, the deception unravels, the villain is unmasked, and the story resolves with a lighthearted sense of closure—Eric and Ernie’s caper ending in triumph and everyone walking away with a smile.