Deadlier Than The Male is one of the many James Bond rip-offs that have been
produced since the 1960s, when the Bond craze was at its height. Taking Bulldog
Drummond, a popular British literary detective, and updating him to the swinging
sixties, Hammer Films writer Jimmy Sangster (who wrote the story and the original script,
but shares writing credit with David D. Osborn and Liz Charles-Williams) has
turned Drummond into a suave, well-tailored insurance company investigator who’s
on the case when an oil tycoon dies.
It’s
revealed that he was the victim of a female assassin named Irma Eckman (played
by the alluring Elke Sommer), who killed him with a cigar gun and then blowing up the plane
after parachuting out. It turns out that Irma, along with her equally beautiful (and deadly) partner
Penelope (Sylva Koscina) work for a criminal mastermind (Nigel Green) who likes
to play chess on a room-sized, mechanical board with humongous metal pieces. And
he can't wait to match wits with Drummond.
I originally watched this film
with the intent of including it in my annual Turkey reviews because it just
looked like a turkey to me, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how good it
turned out to be. Richard Johnson is superb at playing the urbane, cool-headed
Drummond, who shares James Bond’s love of excitement and danger. The action is
very well handled by director Ralph Thomas, especially a parking garage fight
between Drummond and some thugs, which gets pretty vicious.
Overall, the film’s pacing drags in some spots, but the chemistry between Sommer
and Koscina is so good, it makes them fun to watch. While
Deadlier Than The Male apes the Bond films in every aspect (its theme song by
The Walker Brothers sounds like a poor imitation of Tom Jones’ theme for
Thunderball), it’s still an enjoyable adventure that provides a good jolt
of the 1960’s jazzy vibe. It spawned a sequel, Some Girls Do, which is presently
not available on video. The only thing that would make this DVD better is if it
had closed captions or subtitles for those of us who are hearing impaired.
--SF
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