One of my all time favorites.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The 1960s, of course, was a time of unprecedented social change. Within a few short years, homosexuality was legalised, capital punishment was abolished and the contraceptive pill became available. More important than any of that, there was The Beatles and James Bond. Two uniquely British cultural phenomena which changed world culture forever. Tentatively, I should explain myself and point out that the first three historic advancements I mentioned were just plain old common sense and would have happened sooner or later anyway. You Only Live Twice and 'I Am the Walrus', on the other hand, could only have happened in 1967.Which also goes for Deadlier Than the Male.By that point, Europe and America – and even old Mr Norrington at Number 27 – were cashing in on the wildly successful Bond films and seeing if they could make their own without breaking the international copyright laws. This splurge of spy movies gave us everything from Modesty Blaise to that one with Morcambe & Wise. So it was only expected that some bright spark would dust off the old Bulldog Drummond adventure novels by 1920s writer 'Sapper' which were partly responsible for Bond in the first place. The original character is considered to be a racist bigot now, but he was more or less Bertie Wooster with a penchant for brutal justice and initially went up against criminal mastermind Carl Peterson. This film, however,strips Drummond of his nick-name, military rank, character, backstory,supporting cast and story lines and makes him a smooth, wryly-amusing insurance investigator with a Rolls Royce and a passion for karate. Richard Johnson was a respected actor of many decades' standing and is perfectly likable as Drummond, but he was clearly cast because he bears a passing resemblance to Sean Connery. That's no bad thing, of course. I would've cast someone who looked like Connery too (I wouldn't, however, have cast Connery's brother, as Italian director Alberto De Martino did that same year). I had big hopes for this film, not least because it managed to spawn a sequel, but mainly because I had seen so much love for it on the internet. Tanner, from Double O Section, for example, adores this movie. I've seen it three times now and was progressively more and more desperate to enjoy it. I like to like things and hate hating things. Unfortunately, however, I couldn't bring myself to enjoy this. First, the good: there's the two glamorous female assassins, Irma and Penelope, played by Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina. There's an outrageously Avengers-like scene near the beginning in which they emerge from the ocean, clad in bikinis and armed with spear-guns, and kill a sunbather. There's a cigar which fires bullets into whoever smokes it. There is the excellent Nigel Green. Also, Leonard Rossiter (whose body of work, of course, there isn't a superlative strong enough to describe) who dies in another Avengers-like scene in which our pair of saucy slaughterers paralyses him with a mysterious spy-fi drug and send him tumbling off the balcony of his fifteen-storey apartment building. There's also a great little scene where Drummond meets his old army friend, the crime boss Boxer, who is lying low in a tropically-themed flat after faking his own death. It's the kind of scene where the character seems to live beyond the confines of the scene he's in. Finally, there's the climax, where Drummond and his nemesis creep around a life-size chess board in a duel to the death. Again, very Avengers. So, how come I don't like the film as a whole?Well, the plot is dull and unimaginative. It's all about a company named Phoenecian Oil and a merger which one man on the board of directors, Henry Keller, opposes. A third party has offered to resolve the issue, via an undisclosed method, within six months and asks to receive a million pounds in return. Subsequently, Keller dies in a plane explosion, the merger can go ahead and this mysterious problem-solver demands payment. It is, of course, Carl Peterson and he wants to take his murderous solution to every corporation in the world.Drummond is tasked with finding out what is going on. His only lead is an inch of audio tape which Keller had recorded a message, but only half of one sentence remains. It could well reveal the answer to the mystery, if Drummond can only make sense of the jumble of words. Unfortunately for Drummond and indeed the viewer, his American nephew Robert has come to stay with him. Now, in order to secure distribution in the states, many British films cast an American actor in a role. This one is such a role. As the '60s was a decade obsessed with youth, perhaps it seemed like a good idea to cast one in the film. Arguably, the result isn't a good one, as the Robert character brings next to nothing to the film and distracts from the story it is trying to tell. The whole film can be halved between the first half, set in London – the end of which the pacing begins to lag – and the second half, which moves to Northern Italy. Here, the film seems to come to a crashing halt. Drummond meets Peterson, yes, and we get to see his castle lair, but nothing really happens. It's this half which I have always struggled with during my three efforts to appreciate the film. I must reiterate, however, that the film seems popular enough with certain other people, and is certainly better than a couple of other Bond-pastiches of the era, such as Death Is a Woman (1966) and Hot Enough for June (1964), both of which I found to be utterly unwatchable.Despite this, I'll check out the sequel, and I'm always in the mood to watch the older Bulldog Drummond films, and indeed the books.

Greedy big business tycoons fighting each other for oil wealth propels a plot that is formulaic, more or less, to those James Bond spy flicks of the 1960s. Here, the most conspicuous villains are females: young, shapely, and sexually alluring.The fantasy script is comic bookish, with absurd action segments, shallow characters that lack a back-story and have no depth; contrived coincidences in timing; witty but too clever dialogue. All of which contribute to entertainment value for viewers who don't mind an almost total absence of realism. But I do mind, and I find the film boring. The clichéd plot elements render a lack of tension, suspense, and mystery. Mostly what the filmmakers seem to want is for male viewers to fixate on the lovely, curvaceous females.Visuals are quite dated. I did like the life-size chess players toward the end. But even the dialogue comes across as dated, like when one character challenges another to a game of chess, the first character announces in a proud voice: " ... the age of computers, Drummond", and up pops the life-size chess props controlled by remote control. The implication is clear; viewers are supposed to be impressed.Casting consists of mostly beautiful people. Richard Johnson, as hero Hugh Drummond, is as boring as the plot. Elke Sommer plays her usual stiff, cold performance, but is less robotic than in other films of hers that I have seen. Mediterranean settings are attractive and nicely filmed. Sound effects are adequate; the opening song and some of the scenes appear to have an interesting echo chamber effect. Film editing is quite good, though the plot seems too long and drawn out; a one-hour run-time would have covered the two or three essentials."Deadlier Than The Male" is typical of spy films made during the 1960s, especially in tone, costumes, and script gimmicks. It's a film that will be nostalgic and entertaining to male baby boomers. I regard it as kind of a cinematic relic.

Before her time bomb blows a personal airliner to pieces, Elke Sommer bails out over the ocean. Before she bails out, Sommer sheds her long slacks and deplanes wearing only tight white plastic bottoms. This struck me as a very tasteful and artistic scene. She's picked up by her co-conspirator, Sylva Koscina, and together they swim to a beach and puncture a man with a spear gun. This was also handled very elegantly. Both of the young ladies are wearing only the most perfunctory of swim clothes. Sommer, in particular, is bulging out of her top. I didn't care a hoot about the murdered guy, whom we don't know anyway, but I kept wondering about who exactly fitted those exact swimsuits to those exact figures, and how did they do it? A chef d'oeuvre by some artist in the wardrobe department. How do you apply for a job like that?Before these magnificent events unfold, we have to sit through the credits while somebody warbles the theme song -- "Deadlier Than The Mail" -- before the musical score switches to speedy thriller noise with a lot of bongo drums.Hugh Drummond, Richard Johnson, is some kind of insurance investigator, not that it matters. He's James Bond in all but name. Well, not quite so fussy about his dress and his wine, but he speaks Japanese and is a martial arts expert like all high-echelon insurance men. He's going to get to the bottom of this business, which involves a merger of two giant oil companies. Those who object to the merger, one by one, are picked off by the two girls in colorful ways -- spear guns, rolling off a fifteen-story balcony, and the like. These vixens are viciously matter of fact about their misdeeds but this is no place to talk about my five ex wives.I always enjoy Richard Johnson. Never a bravura performer, he was always reliably proper in his deportment. He doesn't crack jokes with the facility of James Bond. He was the anthropologist in "The Haunting", studying ghosts. I like him for that too, because that's my profession and I even studied ghosts in a culture where ghosts are not just superstitions but something to contend with. The chief villain -- or, in this case, we might call him the head honcho, surrounded as he is by porcelain-doll Japanese women -- is Nigel Green. He's a fine actor, unforgettable really. That suave tonality, that politely superior demeanor.There isn't that much action in this flick, despite the atmosphere of mock menace and several acts of violence. Johnson doesn't dance off the walls, held up by wires. There are no highly ritualized sword fights, as in "Kill Bill." Nobody's head gets wrenched off, as in so many action movies.So, it's a shameless ripoff of James Bond, but it's pleasant enough. If you can stand another James Bond movie, you can sit through this simulacrum.

Perhaps the best of the escapist superspy movies spawned by the James Bond phenomenon,"Deadlier than the male" benefits by taking itself more seriously than the leering and campy approach found in,for example,the "Matt Helm" series and the 2 "Derek Flint" films.Richard Johnson-who could well have played James Bond,and would have brought more humanity to the role than any of the actors who played 007 managed,is excellent as Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond(a character featured in a series of books in the 20s and 30s and a number of "b" movies,reborn here as a secret agent for the swinging 60s).Nigel Green is also perfect,as a suave and very dangerous master criminal.The female assassins,played by 60s stunners Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina,are allowed to be despicably evil,and without any redeeming features(they are as keen to sadistically torture people as they are to kill them),and the sight of the murderous pair in bikinis emerging from the ocean with harpoon guns,should be as iconic as the "Ursula Andress hits the beach" moment in "Dr No".Unfortunately the sequel to this movie,"Some girls do"(1969),though not without interest,adopted the over the top camp "Deadlier than the male" avoided,and ended the franchise.