Deadlier That The Male
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: B-
In 1965, the Spy Craze in pop culture was huge, with
Terence Young’s 1965 James Bond epic Thunderball becoming the biggest
ticket-seller in the history of the series to this day. Rank in England was also celebrating with
Sidney J. Furie’s The Ipcress File, a more serious spy thriller with
Michael Caine as Harry Palmer; the character the Austin Power’s franchise is
specifically aimed at. That is why, in
the following year, Rank decided to try a go at a more commercial Spy genre
film.
The result is Ralph Thomas’ Deadlier That the Male,
which offers the twist of trying to revive one of the characters that inspired
Bond, Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond. Known
simply as Hugh here, Richard Johnson plays him, looking like he borrowed Sean
Connery’s hair stylist from Dr. No, the first Bond from 1962.
Executives are finding themselves the subject of a series
of unfortunate deaths, but one too many begins to arouse suspicion. It turns out that these men are being
seduced and knocked off by two female assassins, played by Elke Sommer and
Sylvia Koscina. At first, the film is
played more seriously and it has fun moments throughout, but the screenplay by
Hammer Studio’s legend Jimmy Sangster, David Osborn, and Liz Charles-Williams
eventually goes for unnecessary humor in the latter half. Thomas’ directing is not bad, though, and
one in-joke here is about Sommer’s past film work.
Both Daniella By Night (reviewed elsewhere on this
site) and A Shot in the Dark (the first Pink Panther sequel in 1964) has
Sommer played a woman suspected of being a murderer, but is obviously innocent
in both films. Here, she gets to go on
a kill, and she is one of the best reasons to see this film. Malcolm Lockyer’s music is not bad, but that
title song is an unintentional hoot.
Johnson’s Drummond is passable, but not written with any gusto as he
would have been in the Bulldog books and films before. Underplaying him to be “cool” is fine, but
too much backfires a bit. Add his
visiting nephew and you can see where the slide into comedy occurred.
The letterboxed 2.35 X 1 image is not bad, but would have
benefited from an anamorphic transfer to enhance the decent print Hen’s Tooth
got of the film from Carlton. The film
was shot in the inexpensive Techniscope process, with tiny wide frames at only
two sprocket holes a piece on either side.
Many such releases have had awful EastmanColor prints going bad, but
this one looks more like the original three-strip Technicolor these productions
needed in order to avoid the large amounts of grain that would be present in
non-dye-transfer prints. M-G-M’s
Eastwood/Leone Westerns suffer this in their first DVD version. Another reason this looks good is the
camerawork of ace cinematographer Ernest Stewart, B.S.C., who shot this film in
between his brilliant work in other feature films and on TV’s original Avengers
(reviewed on this site). He makes
this look lusher than its budget allows, handling colors and locations better
than most cameramen could. Only the
video red in certain shots is a problem, plus a lack of depth by default in a
non-anamorphic DVD and some slight definition troubles that can be attributed
to the film frame as well as the DVD.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo essentially offers the film
in a clean monophonic presentation with stereo music and some sound
effects. Though not perfect, I liked
this presentation, which is better than many of the monophonic Bond DVDs, which
could have simply dropped the stereo scores into the monophonic film
sound. Some of those mono Bonds are
being remixed for 5.1, but they are not here yet. The DVD is also without any extras whatsoever.
Running 95 minutes, this is not an epic Spy thriller, but
still has many good moments in the hands of some of the best filmmakers in
England at the time, so Deadlier That the Male is worth checking
out. Let’s hope Hen’s Tooth issues that
one sequel Rank and Santor Film Productions did afterwards, Some Girls Do.
- Nicholas Sheffo
