Bulldog Drummond Double Bill : Deadlier Than The Male / Some Girls Do [1966] [DVD]

1967's Deadlier Than the Male is the kind of film that Mike Meyers must have loved growing up, reinventing Sapper's Bulldog Drummond for the swinging Sixties as a James Bond-style insurance investigator-cum-superspy in a plot filled with killer cigars, giant chessmen, female assassins and delightfully fey villainy from Nigel Green and casting one-time Bond candidate Richard Johnson in the lead. Unfortunately he's saddled with an American nephew in a futile attempt to catch a slice of the US market, while Suzanna Leigh, badly dubbed and moving with all the grace of a docker, scowl permanently in place, is hardly anybody's idea of a Bond girl. But against that there's Elke Sommer's enthusiastic sadist and light fingered nympho Sylvia Koscina offing various oil executives, the film makes swinging 60s London look great and it's as stylish as a vintage Avengers episode, offering lots of fun without ever outstaying its welcome.

Sadly, the sequel, Some Girls Do, does just that, and surprisingly quickly. More a rehash than a sequel, simply swapping oil for planes in what desperately wants to be a British version of an Our Man Flint film but doesn't even come close to being a British In Like Flint. This time Drummond's ditched the nephew but is saddled with Ronnie Stevens' awfully nice embassy official-cum-bodyguard ("Call me Butch") and Sydne Rome's kooky ditz following him around like a lovesick puppydog. As if that weren't enough, the film constantly undermines him at every turn, be it a bad knee that makes him seem a bit of a codger or a wardrobe that makes him look too much like a knockoff of Connery's Bond without any of the ability. Nigel Green has been replaced by James Villiers as the would-be supervillain with Napoleonic delusions but who dresses like Wellington ("Never back a loser"), but despite a couple of bits of effective makeup there's not much he can bring to what's a surprisingly dull party. Even the visuals are uninspired, the decision not to shoot in the same 2.35:1 widescreen ratio as its predecessor making it feel at times like a busted TV pilot.

Network DVD's DVD set is a winner, though, boasting fine 2.35:1 transfer of Deadlier Than the Male with plentiful extras - vintage location reports, cast and crew interviews (with Nigel Green spending more time talking about Zulu and Tobruk than the film he's promoting), stills gallery and trailer - while Some Girls Do features stills gallery and trailer. Worth buying for the first film alone.

Jumping on the Bond wagon, producer Sydney Box decided to take on one of 007's antecedents and update him to the swinging sixties. Thus Sapper's square jawed, colonial defender of the Empire, Bulldog Drummond, became international insurance investigator Hugh Drummond, played with suave charm by one time Bond candidate Richard Johnson. The other shrewd move by the producers was to avoid the over spoofing of Bond's world that the other rivals had laden themselves with and instead devise a film that balanced the right amount of tongue in cheek thrill with a neatly structured script, above average production values, a cool theme song by Scott Walker, and a cracking finale worthy of a Bond caper itself.

Elke Sommer breezes across like a force ten hurricane as the film's titular assassin, working for the world class villain Carl Peterson, portrayed with the right blend of light and dark by Nigel Greene. The film's climatic showdown between hero and nemesis, in which Drummond traps Peterson on his own giant chess set and crushes him with the robotic pieces, is a memorable piece of imagery that helped lift the film above the bigger budgeted hackwork of Matt Helm or Derek Flint.

A hit in its time, Johnson returned as Drummond three years later in an uninspired follow up, Some Girls Do. With its use of "fembots" and a younger Peterson back from the dead without explanation,the film strayed too much into the territory of the other Bond spoofs and was deservedly buried.

Deadlier Than the Male, after decades of neglect, now appears to be re emerging as a cult film, thanks in part to Quentin Tarentino naming it as one of his favourite movies. This led to a newly restored printed being screened at Cannes and is now on DVD, complete with its sequel.

I've been a fan of Bulldog Drummond for years. He used to be featured in a programme on the radio back in the day. So these DVDs are a very welcome in my nostalgia collection. Besides being great stories - with the baddie always losing - they reveal a world where codes of behaviour were higher than nowadays albeit some of the plots are a bit far fetched, but for a sheer warm bath of nostalgia, or for those of you with a historical bent as regards entertainment, they stand the test of time.