Diadem and The Mini-Killers

Perhaps even more so than the South African radio shows, these two Diana Rigg projects are shrouded in mystery.  Seemingly distributed only as 8mm home movies (the form in which they survive these days), they were made available to a wider public in recent years through a tape distributed by the French Avengers fan-club, Friends of Steed.  Diana Rigg has, apparently, never acknowledged their existence, and they do not feature in any official filmographies of the actress.

The first of the two, Diadem, is the one which gets closest to the spirit of The Avengers.   Seemingly distributed in two versions (a 12-minute 'sound' version which features on the Friends of Steed VHS, and a 19-minute silent version (see box at right), this is a one-part story. A very knowledgeable contact tells me that the 20-minute silent print may be a work print, which would have been edited down prior to the dubbing of the sound effects and music.  Regarding the extra scenes on the silent copy, he tells me: "..the extra scenes on it are the sort of scenes which would be removed.  At one point, while chasing the baddie at the pool there is a close-up of Rigg's face showing various expressions that seems to go on forever.  Also, the scene where she is swimming with the dolphins is painfully long!"

To describe the action would be tedious; suffice to say that the fashions depicted are as swinging and liberated as one would expect from the circa 1966 date of the film.   Incidentally, if anybody from Germany is reading this and the age of cars can be learnt from their licence plates, the car Diana Rigg drives has the number: D-LT 688.   Any help?  (Help came from Stephen Brookes, who told me, "the D- prefix on the car in that 8mm flick would coincide with the AccentFilms address in Mulheim.  D would be for the Dusseldorf region (not D for Deutschland).  Dusseldorf/Mulheim/Wuppertal are all in the same 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet' area.  Could have been filmed there then.  Though there is nothing to say they didn't drive off somewhere else and do it").
The music, and apart from a few sound effects that is all there is, has a definite 'hint' of The Avengers about it.  Made by the illusive Gerard M, many of the facts about this film have been lost to the years.  For now.  Personally, I  imagine  it may have been sold as a 'stag' movie through the pages of 'gentleman's magazines' and from under the counter in dubious outlets.  There's just enough titillation; from the micro-skirt Ms. Rigg wears in the early scenes through to the obligatory bikini scene, to fit in with this explanation.  Why Diana Rigg was involved in something so amateurish that sound was not an option and a coherent plot was seen as a hindrance is a mystery.  Diana Rigg aside, there is a connection between the two projects in that they were both copyrighted to Accentfilm, whose address was: Accentfilm GmbH International 433 Mulheim / Ruhr Wallstr. 14, Germany.  Once again, I turn to German readers to hopefully expand on this.

Slightly more coherent, The Mini-Killers appears to have been made some time just after Diana Rigg had left the show - somewhere around the time of The Assassination Bureau.  A press piece from 1969 (from an unknown magazine, which could possibly be Photoplay) has a shot of Diana Rigg from part three of The Mini-Killers and, after explaining that she has just been seen in The Assassination Bureau and is about to be seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, says "Obviously, the "quiet" life was not to her taste, for she went to Spain to star in The Mini-Killers, another all-action, fast-moving thriller.   Our picture comes from this film.  And Diana looks to be in plenty of trouble again!"  (I'm sorry I can't bring you a scan of the picture at the moment, but will as soon as I can).  There are some interesting implications from this piece - The Mini-Killers was obviously seen as a 'proper' film by the magazine; the existence of a promotional photo implies that it was being marketed as such; something must have gone very wrong.

The Mini-Killers as it exists now is a mish-mash.  Like Diadem, it has no dialogue, instead relying on music and sound effects to embellish the 'plot'.  There appear to be no obvious moments when people mouth silent words (which would imply that the sound recordist had muffed it so much the sound footage was unusable and would therefore have to be post-synced or a Plan Nine From Outer Space-style narrator would have to be used).  Instead, it looks like the project was always envisaged as being a silent one.

The plot, such as it is, is not really worth recounting; some dolls, some drugs, a swimming pool and a few baddies.  It even makes The Avengers' previous best attempt at turning a pigs ear into a pigs ear, Homicide and Old Lace, look coherent.  It was apparently filmed in Spain and made by Accentfilm International.

The four parts were as follows:

1.  Operation Costa Brava               2.  Heroin

3.  Macabre                                    4.  Flamenco

The cast and crew, as far as the credits on the Friends of Steed video go, are:

at the beginning of each episode:

ACCENTFILM International Presents

MINI-KILLERS

starring
DIANA RIGG

with
JOSE NIETO
JACK ROCHA
H. COSCOLLIN
MME. MILLION
EL SALI

produced by
H.G. LÜCKEL
D. NETTEMANN

written by
W.v. CHMIELEWSKI
M.v. CHMIELEWSKI

directed by
W.v. CHMIELEWSKI

There are no on-screen title names.

At the end of episode Four (and this may have been on all the tapes, but the Friends of Steed only runs this set of credits once, and also runs together episodes two and three):

photography
JOSEF KAUFMANN

camera assistant
GERD WEISS

score
JOHNNY TEUPEN
H. RETTENBACHER

production assistant
H.G. TIENEMANN

script girl
ULRIKE KERCHER

unit manager
VIRGILIO VALLE

film editor
ERIKA WINTER

make-up
INGRID HARTKOPF
WALTRAND WINKLER

technical assistant
LOTHAR BÜSCHER

title mirrors
VITTORIO BONATO

AN ACCENTFILM INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION

A couple of the members of the cast, Jose Nieto and Jack Rocha, are featured on the Internet Movie Database, the rest have, Blair Witch-style, vanished without a trace.

If you have any more information on these two projects, please get in touch!!