This is the twenty-fourth Bulldog Drummond film, and the last purporting to be even remotely serious, as the final Drummond film, 'Bullshot', was to be a complete spoof. But of course this one is not serious. It is cornier than an ethanol refinery, and raises inanity to the height of the ionosphere (like the SST-1 in the film perhaps), or should I say I-wanna- sphere, as in 'I wanna be sick'. Everyone's tongue is so far into his or her cheek in this film that they all have holes in their faces. Betty Box, this time without her brother Syndey Box with whom she co-produced the predecessor to this bit of fluff, 'Deadlier than the Male' (slightly less fluffy, but equally inane), here returns with her final offering of a pseudo-James Bond film using the name, and no more, of Hugh Drummond, and the name, and no more, of Drummond's villain nemesis Carl Peterson. Peterson is played here by James Villiers, trying as hard as he can to be deeply villainous but unable to convince. For those of us who knew James, who was so witty and fun-loving, the idea of his being a villain was ludicrous. Wrong choice! Daliah Lavi is the lead villainess. She was in so many films in the sixties, and had been in the Bond film 'Casino Royale', but I never understood her appeal. She must have put a spell of producers or directors somehow, but she never managed to be truly sexy, despite all the absurd hype about her and her feline movements as 'one desired'. The fact that she couldn't act is irrelevant, as she was not required to. Joanna Lumley got her first film part in this picture, but was uncredited. She has made up for that later! This film has an absurd plot, which goes so far beyond pastiche that - well, I did say how high the inanity went, didn't I? James has got all these girls in short skirts who are robots, you see, 'under my complete control' as he boasts, who kill on command, and when they are not needed, he or Daliah Lavi presses a button in the neck of the girl and she goes to sleep. They also have libidinous capacities, so we are led to believe. How Betty Box, a woman, could produce a film pandering in such extreme measure to the most ridiculous male fantasies of the pliant woman (one you can turn on or off, every hectored man's dream??) is beyond my comprehension. As for Ralph Thomas, the director, there are no words. Once again, as in the earlier film two years before, we have babes in bikinis toting machine guns, killing people while saying 'poor little man' and smirking and simpering and wiggling their busts. The sixties eye makeup, the bouffant hairdos, the wigs, the eyelashes, my God. I'm a Bulldog Drummond viewer, get me out of here!
Review of Some Girls Do
