Showing posts with label Richard Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Johnson. Show all posts
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| Elke Sommer and Richard Johnson |
"You are -- unnatural!"
Trying to tap into the spy craze of the sixties, Deadlier Than the Male took the old character of "Bulldog" Drummond and resuscitated him as insurance agent Hugh Drummond (Richard Johnson), who investigates a number of murders connected to a large and controversial policy. We see in the very first scene that the murderers are two beautiful and sociopathic hit women named Irma (Elke Sommer) and Penelope (Sylva Koscina), who go about their deadly business with earnest professionalism and not the slightest trace of pity. Drummond has a girl-happy nephew named Robert (Steve Carlson), who in one of the more interesting scenes is put in naked bondage by the sexy ladies and then left alone with a ticking time bomb! Despite all the grimness, the movie is light-hearted and quite entertaining. Johnson is fine as the hero, Carlson is handsome and efficient, and the two ladies are delightfully sinister. Nigel Green [Let's Kill Uncle] plays Carl Petersen, who is also involved in the case. A giant mechanical chess set figures in the finale, and the ending is very satisfying. Drummond returned in Some Girls Do.
Verdict: Not exactly a Bond movie but fun. ***.
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| James Villiers co-stars along with Daliah Lavi's cleavage |
In this sequel to Deadlier Than the Male, insurance man Hugh Drummond (Richard Johnson) is up against more female assassins, this time a bevy of sociopathic beauties whose brains have been programmed to murder. Drummond dallies with a nasty baroness named Helga (Daliah Lavi of The Whip and The Body) and matches wits with a foppish villain named Petersen (James Villiers of The Nanny) who employs a destructive infra-sound device, and whose main goal seems to be to destroy the prototype of a supersonic airliner. Robert Morley is some kind of cooking instructor known as "Miss Mary," Sydne Rome is an annoying would-be agent who follows Drummond around, and Ronnie Stevens is a nerdy agent named Peregrine Carruthers. There's one fairly good scene when Drummond's parachute fails to open, but Some Girls Do is vastly inferior to the first film, hastily slapped together, with a bad script and production values that are far below the James Bond level. Lavi's smoky, sexy voice has been dubbed for inexplicable reasons. When it develops that many of the female killers have been outfitted with robot brains and surely must have been kidnapped and worse, no one registers any dismay, but then that's how mindless this movie is. Camp is one thing, but Some Girls Do is so stupid and ultimately dull that it's pretty much an effort to sit through.
Verdict: Watch a real Bond movie instead. *1/2.