Saturday, February 2, 2013

1967 - DEADLIER THAN THE MALE, 1960's James Bond clone

One of the many, many, many James Bond spy movie clones from the 1960's.  Deadlier Than the Male stars Richard Johnson who was actually considered for the role of James Bond as Hugh "Bulldog"  Drummond.  Drummond is an insurance investigator up against your typical Goldfinger type criminal mastermind played by Nigel Green who specialized in these kind of roles. 

As is expected for this kind of spy film, Green has employed only beautiful women in his organization who he trains as deadly assassins.  Two of these killers are 60's babes Elke Sommer and Sylvia Koscina.  They play a couple of campy but hot looking bikini clad killers.  Green also has a fortress where he has a large scale chess set that he and his opponents move around by remote control this is actually pretty cool.


The first time I saw this film, I thought it was a pretty lame ripoff of a Bond film.  Well it's still a pretty lame ripoff of a Bond film, but it is an entertaining ripoff of a Bond film.  The film has some good fight sequences and you can see why someone thought Richard Johnson would make a good James Bond. 

Frankly all the cheesecake girl stuff is a little silly but now there is a certain charm to it.  The whole idea that evil criminal masterminds could even find a small army of beautiful female assassins is kind of ridiculous in itself.  But that was what was expected in these spy spoof films.

I had to post a picture of them.

Directed by competent British hack Ralph Thomas who apparently would shoot any kind of film.  The guy had no shame.

98 minutes written by Jimmy Sangster, David D. Osborn and Liz Charles-Williams.

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