1956 - CHECKPOINT, British racing film with a ridiculous plot.

To see this is to disbelieve this.  Probably one of the worst stories for a film that I have ever seen.  There are so many plot loopholes and coincidences that I could probably fill up two posts with the insanity of this film. The film has something to do with stealing the blue prints for a racing car smuggling a bad guy across the border during a race and substituting drivers I guess.

The film was directed by hack British director Ralph Thomas and produced by hack film producer Betty E. Box.  How these two had such a long career in the British film industry is a mystery to me.

 For a racing film the cars are kind of cool with featured footage of Lotus Mark 10 Aston Martin.

80 minutes screenplay by Robin Estridge.

1969 - SOME GIRLS DO, sequel to Deadlier Than the Male

For a little bit of context, Some Girls Do was filmed at Pinewood studios at the same time as On Her Majesties Secret Service.

Was the first Bulldog Drummond film, Deadlier Than the Male such a success that audiences demanded a sequel?

The plot is about evil Carl Peterson attempting to destroy the first SST.  Peterson was played by Nigel Green and killed by Drummond in the first film but apparently brought back to life and recast as a goof ball for this film.  The film also brings back the sexy female assassin bit as well with Daliah Lavi and her chest in the Elke Sommer role and Beba Loncar as the ditsy blonde killer previously played by Sylva Koscina.

 

Some Girls Do is basically a film about girls. How many girls can the director Ralph Thomas get into really short skirts or swimsuits or cleavage enhancing costumes?  What actually happened to these young women anyway, do they proudly point to Some Girls Do as a career high point for them when they are babysitting their grandchildren.

88 minutes, written by David D. Osborn and Liz Charles-Williams.

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.

1959 - THE 39 STEPS, remaking the Hitchcock classic...poorly

Remaking the Hitchcock film in color and setting it in contemporary late 1950's England yielded the expected results, the film sucked.

This redo of the seminal Hitchcock classic is a study in what separates a good director from an average director.  In the original version, Hitchcock along with his actors Robert Donet and Madeline Carroll were able to bring a lot of wit and style to the story.   Kenneth More was a decent actor and light comedian but he lacks the charm of Robert Donet and certainly the sex appeal.  The actor Tainia Elg is supposed to be the stand in for Hitchcock's cool blonde personality.  Elg's got the cool part down but not much else.

Even though they kept most of the plot situations and dialog from the original film while adding some on location filming, the director Ralph Thomas was such a plodder that the whole thing has absolutely no suspense or thrills.  Thomas was an odd choice to assign to this film,  he was mostly a director of mediocre British comedies most of which are unwatchable today.

93 minutes, written by Frank Harvey.