This is the twenty-third Bulldog Drummond film, but it has nothing in common with Bulldog Drummond but the name. The producers, Sydney and Betty Box, evidently acquired the rights to use the name of Drummond (duly credited to Sapper and his stage dramatist Fairlie) as an excuse for a character to compete with, and try to steal some business from, the James Bond films. In other words, this is a pure Bond film without James Bond. There are the bikini-clad babes wielding machine guns, the evil man in the castle, the snarling dogs, the yacht about to blow up, the jet that does blow up, exploding cigars, the whole works. 'Hugh Drummond' has a black belt in judo, a way with the ladies, can solve a case if he chooses to between babes and cocktails, and is played by Richard Johnson. He is up against Elke Sommer, who kills men with a poison ring, time bombs, and even before the opening credits has blown up a plane and parachuted to safety where she was greeted by her bikini-clad friend Silvia Koscina in a motorboat. The villain is that smoothie with the wicked glinting eyes and droll manner of a gentleman, Nigel Green, who did so much of that sort of thing then. This film is pure sixties kitsch. Elke Sommer's false eyelashes are as long as the film itself, and she had perfected pouting lips before botox was invented. The one highlight of this film is the truly ingenious use of a life-sized chess set as part of a duel to the death, and it is really original (or at least I think it is, perhaps I am naive to imagine it could be). The chessmen are ugly, - bad art direction! - but the idea is fabulous. That could be used again. Or is there anyone left who plays chess instead of computer games?
Review of Deadlier Than the Male
