Good idea lost in the noise

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Having watched - and enjoyed - DEADLIER THAN THE MALE, I was keen to see the sequel, SOME GIRLS DO. Big mistake. In the first film, I thought Richard Johnson was pretty colourless ... but here he is even worse. No charisma, awful hair which looks like a dirty toupee, gappy teeth, and zero personality. Whereas MALE had the joyous coupling of Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina as the prime murderesses, here we have Daliah Lavi, who looks good but simply doesn't work, and the dire Beba Loncar (how did she ever get a job?). And nobody in the supporting cast is any good either, even talented and usually reliable stars such as Adrienne Posta, Robert Morley and James Villiers - a pale version of villain Peterson compared to Nigel Green in MALE. Other than the title song, NOTHING in this film is any good. One wonders why the producers and director didn't look at the dailies and realise something was very wrong. One final whinge/query ... why was Virginia North brought back from the original film, but playing a different role? She must have had someone boosting her, as her small and indifferently played role in MALE warranted her special billing, and her minor role in SOME GIRLS likewise got her a good credit in the trailer, and several unnecessary (and badly edited-in) closeups. Unsurprisingly her career soon fizzled, but it would be interesting to know who decided she should be launched in the first place.

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'!

It took an idea that's pretty popular in these kinds of stories (female armies, female robots), and made it pretty entertaining. It was also clever that it had the traditional version of a "femme fatale", and also a sort of "dumb blonde" version of one, both working for the villain. If I've understood the movie, the two main "villainesses" weren't robots themselves, which makes the last scene just a little surprising. In the last scene, Drummond sabotages the "destructor", which then sabotages their whole headquarters, then escapes, after more or less making sure that they DON'T escape. This is a little surprising for the hero of a light, "escapist" kind of adventure film. Or maybe it's LESS surprising for the same reason, I'm not sure. Anyway, it's one more ' 60s spy movie that I think ISN'T a "Bond rip-off" (it's an unpopular opinion, but I think that MOST of them aren't). Of course it is a Bond "send-up" in some ways, but that's a whole other thing. And in one area (in a "friendly" way), it tries to out-Bond Bond - it has Drummond bedding the Helga character, then escaping her "black widow" attempt to kill him, not once but twice! (Pretty bold, in other words.) Seeing her in this and a few other adventure films, it's a little hard to believe that Daliah Lavi never ended up in an ACTUAL Bond movie (apart from Casino Royale, which both is and isn't one).

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.