I was watching the 1960’s Bulldog Drummond revivals over the weekend and found myself heartily enjoying them which, as I thought while reflecting afterwards, is a bit surprising really as there are a few reasons why I shouldn’t like them whatsoever. First off, they are clearly James Bond rip-offs. Not that I have anything against rip-offs (quite the contrary really) but I’ve never been a fan of James Bond. Secondly, I am a Bulldog Drummond fan – both the books and the early films starring various suave actors in the role like Ray Milland and John Howard – and this version, made flesh by Richard Johnson, is nothing like the famous jut-jawed adventurer and is Hugh Drummond in name only (The word ‘Bulldog’ is not even mentioned) and I tend to dislike anything that travesties anything that I hold dear . Also both films (especially the second, Some Girls Do) are frequently silly, along the making you cringe lines. Silliness can be great, but it’s a fine line that you tread and the silliness on offer in these two flicks should have obvious to everybody involved as being the wrong type of silliness. In effect, these are pretty bad films.
But………….
Films are all about entertainment and these two deliver on that point. I’m not even going to explain the plots, because I probably couldn’t, suffice to say they’re about scientists, secret weapons, world domination etc and so on and so forth.
The music is as what you expect or hope for. A suitably sixties soundtrack with a theme song belted out at the beginning and end.
The films up the girl-ante of the James Bond series with the sheer amount of beautiful ladies that get paraded by the camera lens and in this type of film this must be considered a decided bonus, especially when one of them is Yutte Stensgaard (hooray!!). I will rather shame-facedly admit that both films score rather high on the ‘Exploitation of Women Scale’ and it’s not too difficult to discern some rather callous streaks of misogyny here and there that makes
one raise an eyebrow, Roger Moore-style. But, c’mon, it’s the sixties!
Anyway, the locations are great, direction is adequate and production costs seem to be better than most similar romps. At the end of the day they are just two mindless, fun, tongue-in-cheek capers that aren’t meant to be taken seriously whatsoever, so don’t and you might just enjoy them. The first one, Deadlier Than The Male, is easily the better of the two with a particularly notable Carl Peterson as played by Nigel Greene. In the second, Peterson is played by James Villiers and he plays it more camp, which makes the character less effective. Bizarrely the second is not just content to rip-off James Bond, it also seems to be taking the mickey out of DTTM! God knows what third one would have looked like. But I bet it would have been fun.
But………….
Films are all about entertainment and these two deliver on that point. I’m not even going to explain the plots, because I probably couldn’t, suffice to say they’re about scientists, secret weapons, world domination etc and so on and so forth.
The music is as what you expect or hope for. A suitably sixties soundtrack with a theme song belted out at the beginning and end.
The films up the girl-ante of the James Bond series with the sheer amount of beautiful ladies that get paraded by the camera lens and in this type of film this must be considered a decided bonus, especially when one of them is Yutte Stensgaard (hooray!!). I will rather shame-facedly admit that both films score rather high on the ‘Exploitation of Women Scale’ and it’s not too difficult to discern some rather callous streaks of misogyny here and there that makes
one raise an eyebrow, Roger Moore-style. But, c’mon, it’s the sixties!Anyway, the locations are great, direction is adequate and production costs seem to be better than most similar romps. At the end of the day they are just two mindless, fun, tongue-in-cheek capers that aren’t meant to be taken seriously whatsoever, so don’t and you might just enjoy them. The first one, Deadlier Than The Male, is easily the better of the two with a particularly notable Carl Peterson as played by Nigel Greene. In the second, Peterson is played by James Villiers and he plays it more camp, which makes the character less effective. Bizarrely the second is not just content to rip-off James Bond, it also seems to be taking the mickey out of DTTM! God knows what third one would have looked like. But I bet it would have been fun.
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