Leofwine_draca
I found this to be a disappointing follow-up to the excellent DEADLIER THAN THE MALE, released two years before. The problem with SOME GIRLS DO is that it goes too far out of its way to be tongue-in-cheek, meaning that the comedy is forced and laboured rather than natural-feeling, as in the original movie. The good news is that Richard Johnson returns as the Sapper's dapper Bulldog Drummond, battling bad guys and bedding babes left, right, and centre, and the production values feel just as good as in the first film, resulting in a colourful, bright, action-packed little tale. But something's missing.It may be the story, which lacks that spark of originality we saw in Johnson's first outing as the pulp fiction hero. Once again, Carl Petersen is the bad guy, once again he's bumping off officials by utilising killer women, except this time the women are all robots. This latter theme, a science fiction staple, is played entirely for laughs, but then perhaps that's apt considering the acting ability of some of the women who have obviously been cast for their looks rather than their acting ability. While we had the excellent likes of Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina in DEADLIER THAN THE MALE, here we have the absolutely awful Sydne Rome and yummy-but-bland Yutte Stensgaard, who took away a lot of the enjoyment factor for me.In any case, there are a lot of laughs on offer here, some successful, some not. Robert Morley hams it up something rotten as 'Miss Mary', the head of a chef school, while James Villiers is equally hammy as the chief bad guy; he's no Nigel Green. There's some poor back projection in the action scenes aboard plane and boat which is typical of the decade, and an extended climax in the villain's lair which is fairly good. However, Johnson seems to be having less fun in the role and his lines are less suave this time around; perhaps he was already tiring of the character on his second film in. Maybe that's why there was no third Bulldog Drummond film – and if we look at the law of diminishing returns, perhaps we can be thankful for that!
MARIO GAUCI
Campier, less successful sequel to DEADLIER THAN THE MALE (1967) – basically the only department where this surpasses the original is in the title track! Incidentally, it makes no attempt to be a direct continuation of the earlier film – with, for instance, the figures of the boss and his secretary nowhere to be seen: in fact, here Bulldog Drummond (a returning but not-as-effective Richard Johnson) seems to have gone up in the world as he now has a female assistant of his own and, when we first see him, he is sun-bathing (and ditching a host of Hungarian girls!?) in the company of a debuting Sydne Rome.The latter's amiably klutzy character recalls those played by Stella Stevens and Sharon Tate in the first and fourth entries in the comparable and contemporaneous "Matt Helm" series with Dean Martin. Indeed, the whole film seems to be closer to the spoofy spirit of that franchise (attributable perhaps to the fact that Hammer's Jimmy Sangster did not collaborate to the script this time around) – which, unlike the Drummond duo, had copied the gadget-craze that were a fixture of the prototypical James Bond extravaganzas.More illogically, not only does the supposedly-dead arch-criminal Carl Peterson turn up again here (albeit played by a different, younger actor i.e. James Villiers) but the two do not even recognize one another immediately (besides, Peterson had merely dual identities in the first film whereas he has three here and is a master of disguise besides!). That said, it does attempt to duplicate elements that had worked first time out, namely Peterson's two principal hench-girls working as a team, except that Daliah Lavi (who had appeared in the first and best Matt Helm adventure THE SILENCERS {1966}) and Beba Loncar are not nearly as intriguing as Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina and, what is more, there is little chemistry between them! Perhaps realizing this, the script singled out not one but two other girls to share the spotlight with them (by the way, most of Peterson's girls are actually robots – which raises uncomfortable parallels to Mario Bava's dispiriting DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMB {1966]): one is Yutte Stensgard (soon to take the leading role in Hammer's maligned – and Sangster-directed – LUST FOR A VAMPIRE {1971}) and Vanessa Howard (who more or less duplicates the Suzanna Leigh role from the first film, in that she improbably hitches up with the hero at the finale)
with Rome (who proves no nitwit but rather a triple agent!) going all of a sudden for Drummond's comic-relief partner (describing his car as "positively psychedelic" and eliciting a "Cool, baby!" response from Drummond at a party!). By the way, Robert Morley also puts in an irrelevant cameo as a flamboyant cooking instructing named "Miss Mary" (complete with golden earring)! The 'McGuffin' in this case is a supersonic plane, whose infra-sound is capable of killing but also accelerates the movement of, say, a speed-boat during a race – big deal! Drummond, in fact, is made to fly one but subsequently has to bail out (after an attack by another aircraft!) – only to find the rip-cord of his parachute had also been pulled beforehand! As for the climax, in spite of all the ongoing action at the villain's fortress (which again includes a couple of non-entities for male underlings), Peterson's come-uppance is down to that infallible – and completely baffling – in-built self-destructing switch in his unwieldy controlling device!
Skragg
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).
Clarence Abernathy
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.