This villain will have to go... ESCAPE IN TIME

No common or garden deaths for actor Richard Montez.  Bumped off more times than he cares to remember in his career as a villain, his motto seems to be: "If you've got to go, go gorily."
    He has been eaten alive by pirranha (sic) fish, shot by poisoned arrow, used as a human torpedo and thrown into quicksand - to name but a few.
    Sometimes I have to remind myself I really am still alive," jokes Montez, 38, and born in Gibraltar.  "I have died more than 300 times and in many spectacular ways.  I think it's only fair that when I really do go it'll be nice and peaceful."
    In The Avengers (Saturday, 9.10) Montez plays a South American dictator who ends his days with a broken neck, in a Tudor chest.  The episode is called "Escape In Time" and in it Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg as Steed and Emma Peel (pictured opposite) take a trip into the past.

Death in a box

   Montez takes the same trip - and that's where the Tudor box comes in.  "Dying in a box I've never sampled before," admits Montez.  "Now there's only hanging left for me."
    Rubber-stamped as the villain - "What else can you expect with my face?" - Montez has one big complaint about always being the toughie: "I never get the girls.
    "I'd love a part where I could play a gigolo with lots of beautiful girls.  Then I'd show 'em I could make love as well as die."
    Montez is used to trouble and so are Emma and Steed.  With fighting suit and gun, Emma looks fully in command of the situation.  But she's none too happy in Tudor dress (right) as Peter Bowles prepares her for torture.
   Trust Steed to be not too far away.   Here (above, right) he makes sure Judy Parfitt keeps out of mischief.

From TV World, England, January 26th 1967, pages unknown.

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