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!
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!