Some Girls Do

This sequel for the 1966 trash classic "Deadlier than the male" is quite a disappointment compared with the original spy movie. There are good bad movies and there are bad bad movies. This one's medium bad. The film has a great storyline (in exploitation terms), but suffers from being quite unfunny and kind of lustless in acting and directing. If you expect something like an "Austin Powers" flick back from the original sixties, you will be disappointed. The production design and the costumes are uninspired and look as if they'd belong to a cheap british early-seventies TV series. Even those female robots have a boring look and could have been designed much, much spicier. The movie lacks highlights like the great Robert Morley's hammy appearances, provided only in the first half of the movie. And this first half is a bore, anyway, especially due to the unfunny comic relief of Drummond's sidekick. The second half runs better, with more action and more funny scenes in it. The best scenes belong to Daliah Lavi as the bad girl, while pretty Sydne Rome (as the good girl) is absolutely colorless. Poor production, poor fun -at least in this case. Watching this movie is not a complete waste of time, but it comes close to that. So you are recommended to watch "deadlier than the male" for a third time instead.

Three years after 'Deadlier Than The Male', Richard Johnson was back as Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond, this time investigating mysterious sabotage incidents involving the S.S.T.-1, Britain's newest supersonic airliner. The 'Matt Helm' and 'Derek Flint' sequels disappointed, but nobody who enjoyed 'Deadlier' can fail to appreciate this. The same ingredients ( beautiful girls, gadgets, nice location filming, fast-moving action ) are here, but with a dash more humour. Its all so over the top its practically orbiting Saturn. Charles Blackwell's score catches the right mood of '60's kitsch, the opening theme song is a knockout! Tightly edited, the film moves so fast you don't have time to dwell on its absurdities. Daliah Lavi and Beba Loncar head a long line of luscious babes, including a young Joanna Lumley, and the delectable Adrienne Posta! Nigel Green isn't around to reprise baddie Carl Petersen, alas, but James Villiers is not too bad. Robert Morley is delightful as the eccentric cookery teacher 'Miss Mary'!

If you are tired of all the Politically Correct "no fun" offerings that Hollywood dishes out these days and yearn for some good clean fun from a bygone era when "Womyn" were just happy to be "Chicks" and men were having fun like no tomorrow (their grins say it all, lucky bastards!;-), and would like to indulge in an escapist fantasy with some naughtiness to it on a guys' night in, then you may find this film quite enjoyable. Besides which guy doesn't like watching "hot chicks" in short minis being seduced with kisses that turn their heads, even if they are robot "chicks"? This is obviously from the era when Jim Kirk was doing the same to exotically dressed "Hot Chicks" on TV in the original Star Trek series, and this film doesn't do such a bad job with the same naughtiness factor to it.

And if you like this one then try its predecessor film. The "Chicks" in these two films put todays' sour looking super-models and centerfolds to shame. The Movie industry just doesn't have the same level of beauty in their female actors anymore as they try to relate too much to a female audience to the great disappointment of the male audience.

If like me you fall asleep during chick flicks and would love to watch a movie made just for guys then enjoy this one.

This movie should not be mistaken as a budget imitation of a James Bond film, as it possesses it's own distinctive characteristics. Yet, for it's time (1969) it is just as adventurous and entertaining with Richard Johnson performing the role of (Bulldog) Hugh Drummond, similar to your James Bond Secret agent, but with a touch of humour and to some extent, a bit of sarcasm. Like Bond, Drummond is well skilled, serious and intelligent and is out to investigate what is behind a series of murders disguised as accidents, that are carried out by what appears to be beautiful young women (hence it's title Some Girls Do). Robert Morley performs the part of Miss Mary and is later found dead after having given classes to potential chef students in perfecting the art of cracking eggs open into a bowl.

Drummond is also targeted when flying a glider and is meant to crash down when his parachute has been tampered with by the beautiful robotic women who watch from below, but manages to skillfully and successfully release open the parachute, landing down safely as if nothing had happened.. A fine performance by Sydney Rome as the typical James Bond type girl, but Drummond is not at all fooled by her pampering and charming behaviour, as he is very intelligent in sensing her motives.. She does play the bimbo but is very cunning, as most Bond style girls are.

In a nutshell I did enjoy this movie and am not surprised that any criticisms are really more to do with it's comparisons to modern released movies. However, I am very surprised that the character of Bulldog Drummond was not pursued in later years like with remakes of `A Thomas Crown Affair', `The Avengers', `The Saint' etc. I believe that the character of `Bulldog' Drummond could have been further modernized and made into a big hit in the late 1970's upto the 1990's with newer adventures, as it had all the charm and character of serving action/adventure style movies, but on a larger scale. I would have kept one foot in the 1960's and another one in the 1990's keeping that style in an evergreen sense.

Campier, less successful sequel to DEADLIER THAN THE MALE (1967) – basically the only department where this surpasses the original is in the title track! Incidentally, it makes no attempt to be a direct continuation of the earlier film – with, for instance, the figures of the boss and his secretary nowhere to be seen: in fact, here Bulldog Drummond (a returning but not-as-effective Richard Johnson) seems to have gone up in the world as he now has a female assistant of his own and, when we first see him, he is sun-bathing (and ditching a host of Hungarian girls!?) in the company of a debuting Sydne Rome.

The latter's amiably klutzy character recalls those played by Stella Stevens and Sharon Tate in the first and fourth entries in the comparable and contemporaneous "Matt Helm" series with Dean Martin. Indeed, the whole film seems to be closer to the spoofy spirit of that franchise (attributable perhaps to the fact that Hammer's Jimmy Sangster did not collaborate to the script this time around) – which, unlike the Drummond duo, had copied the gadget-craze that were a fixture of the prototypical James Bond extravaganzas.

More illogically, not only does the supposedly-dead arch-criminal Carl Peterson turn up again here (albeit played by a different, younger actor i.e. James Villiers) but the two do not even recognize one another immediately (besides, Peterson had merely dual identities in the first film whereas he has three here and is a master of disguise besides!). That said, it does attempt to duplicate elements that had worked first time out, namely Peterson's two principal hench-girls working as a team, except that Daliah Lavi (who had appeared in the first and best Matt Helm adventure THE SILENCERS {1966}) and Beba Loncar are not nearly as intriguing as Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina and, what is more, there is little chemistry between them!

Perhaps realizing this, the script singled out not one but two other girls to share the spotlight with them (by the way, most of Peterson's girls are actually robots – which raises uncomfortable parallels to Mario Bava's dispiriting DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMB {1966]): one is Yutte Stensgard (soon to take the leading role in Hammer's maligned – and Sangster-directed – LUST FOR A VAMPIRE {1971}) and Vanessa Howard (who more or less duplicates the Suzanna Leigh role from the first film, in that she improbably hitches up with the hero at the finale)…with Rome (who proves no nitwit but rather a triple agent!) going all of a sudden for Drummond's comic-relief partner (describing his car as "positively psychedelic" and eliciting a "Cool, baby!" response from Drummond at a party!). By the way, Robert Morley also puts in an irrelevant cameo as a flamboyant cooking instructing named "Miss Mary" (complete with golden earring)!

The 'McGuffin' in this case is a supersonic plane, whose infra-sound is capable of killing but also accelerates the movement of, say, a speed-boat during a race – big deal! Drummond, in fact, is made to fly one but subsequently has to bail out (after an attack by another aircraft!) – only to find the rip-cord of his parachute had also been pulled beforehand! As for the climax, in spite of all the ongoing action at the villain's fortress (which again includes a couple of non-entities for male underlings), Peterson's come-uppance is down to that infallible – and completely baffling – in-built self-destructing switch in his unwieldy controlling device!