Very light spoilers ahead: I was very surprised that this film was so good. I expected an over-the-top Bond spoof in the style of the Matt Helm films but instead got a solid story with good action scenes, dangerous female villains and a suave performance by Richard Johnson as the hero. By the way, Johnson plays Bulldog Drummond, a character from the pulp novels of the 1920s. They have changed the character quite a bit and made him a suave, sophisticated investigator who knows judo and is good with a quip or two. Johnson was apparently one of the actors considered for the first James Bond film and I can see why. He is confident without being cocky and quite smooth. The main villain is revealed about halfway through the film and turns out to be Nigel Green, playing a similar character to the one he played in the Matt Helm film The Wrecking Crew. Smooth, non-pulsed and very droll. Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina are the two female villains and they are quite nasty. We even get Drummond's nephew helping out the proceedings.There is a terrific sequence with a giant mechanized chess set that must be seen to be believed. Well done. The story is a tad slow and we only get to see London and the Italian coast as locations but the film works well without becoming ridiculous. Give it a chance I'm sure you will enjoy it. I give this 7 giant chess pieces out of 10.

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?

Perhaps the best of the escapist superspy movies spawned by the James Bond phenomenon,"Deadlier than the male" benefits by taking itself more seriously than the leering and campy approach found in,for example,the "Matt Helm" series and the 2 "Derek Flint" films.Richard Johnson-who could well have played James Bond,and would have brought more humanity to the role than any of the actors who played 007 managed,is excellent as Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond(a character featured in a series of books in the 20s and 30s and a number of "b" movies,reborn here as a secret agent for the swinging 60s).Nigel Green is also perfect,as a suave and very dangerous master criminal.The female assassins,played by 60s stunners Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina,are allowed to be despicably evil,and without any redeeming features(they are as keen to sadistically torture people as they are to kill them),and the sight of the murderous pair in bikinis emerging from the ocean with harpoon guns,should be as iconic as the "Ursula Andress hits the beach" moment in "Dr No".Unfortunately the sequel to this movie,"Some girls do"(1969),though not without interest,adopted the over the top camp "Deadlier than the male" avoided,and ended the franchise.

I never cared for the title of this film, although it's a fitting description of the circumstances that bring Richard Johnson, as accident insurance investigator Drummond, onto the case. Elke Sommer and Sylvia Koscina provide ample "eye candy" as villian Nigel Green's "hit girls" (no "hit persons", thank you - this is before political correctness) and Richard Johnson is perfect as the suave Bond-inspired update of the 1930's character, Bulldog Drummond. The finale on a giant mechanical chess board is a highlight!