Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31638 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-05-13
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

From the Back Cover
Deadlier Than the Male is perhaps the best of the James Bond take-offs produced during the swinging 60s. Richard Johnson stars as Hugh Drummond, a suave insurance investigator trailing a pair of sexy assassins (Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina) who kill for fun and profit.

When a top oil executive dies mysteriously aboard his private jet, the company's board suspects foul play and hires Drummond to investigate. Attempts on his own life lead him to believe the two lovely females are "hit men" for an international crime syndicate. Drummond pursues them from foggy London to the sunny Mediterranean, but finds himself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the most diabolical mastermind since Dr. No.

This handsome British production deftly mixes action and suspense with dry wit, gently spoofing the Bond formula. The success of this film prompted a sequel, Some Girls Do, the following year.

Customer Reviews

A Pass
This is supposed to be the complete movie. But there's a scene missing. The sound isn't great. If this is a movie you're buying because you once saw it and want to revisit the experience. Pass. Leave it as a memory.

Carbon copy Bond
The James Bond craze of the 1960s sent studios scurrying to secure the rights to other literary secret agents and detectives, and alter them to fit the successful 007 formula. Novelist H. C. McNeile's creation "Bulldog Drummond" was showcased in numerous mystery films in the '20s and '30s; for this 1966 spy movie, however, the urbane sleuth was reconfigured into a carbon copy of Bond.

Like the Bond films, there's a strong (and welcome) emphasis on female villainy, represented here in the shape-make that shapes-of blonde Elke Sommer and brunette Sylvia Koscina. They're stunning and, as such, the primary reasons to sit through this run-of-the-mill rehash of the kind of spy movie clichés that Mike Myers has made a cottage industry out of satirizing.

Bond copy
This is one of several movies that cashed in on the Bond craze. This particular one is the worst of the copies. The low budget limits the exotic location shots and make the story very slow and dragging. There are none of the artistic photographic angles and effects common in the Bond films. It is about an insurance investigator who is looking into organized crime. The plot is totally devoid of any imagination or surprises. The one unusual feature is that some of the gratuitous violence is done by women who appear to be bored with their violent work. The women and their clothes were very flashy by standards of 40 years ago, but will have no romantic effects on healthy men of today. Notice how the women piled their hair on top of their head and then wrapped a turban around it.