Editor's Note
Dear Reader:
Mere pages into LADY KILLER LTD. and we’ve already been put through the wringer with killings, funerals and mysterious envelopes! Perhaps recognizing the need to lighten our spirits, Joëlle invited the editors over for a “movie night.”
We plumped into our seats with little tins of popcorn. On a nearby table a sketchbook was open; the facing page was covered in what appeared to be a series of logo designs.
“Oh, that,” said Joëlle. “I’m progressing an identity system through the decades. You’ll see why later. It’s relaxing.”
“How curious! What else do you do to relax?”
“Well, at the moment I’ve been reading up on Belle Gunness.”
Pressed to explain, she smiled politely and started the movie.
Ask Josie Anything!
Dear Josie: Between three whole channels of television and the weekly offerings at our local movie theater, we’re simply overwhelmed with information these days! I’m trying to sort through it all to find female role models for my impressionable young daughter! Any suggestions?
— Proper Roles In Movies?
Thanks for writing, PRIM! There’s really only one correct answer to this question:
Elke Sommer as lethal corporate assassin Irma Eckman in the 1967 espionage comedy DEADLIER THAN THE MALE.
That’s Irma on the left. On the right is Sylva Koscina as Irma’s partner in professional murder, Penelope. In this scene they've been inflicting cigarette burns on the hero's nephew!
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE came out in 1967, and it’s one of dozens of copycats of the popular James Bond films so beloved by my husband Gene.
But Irma — and Sommer as Irma — give this particular knockoff an extra kick.
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE attempts to cash in on the spy-movie craze by taking an existing character — the 1920s British pulp hero Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond — and reinventing him as a globe-trotting Sean Connery manqué. The producers cast Richard Johnson (but mostly his eyebrows) in the role of the suave Connery lookalike investigating a series of killings of wealthy oil executives:
You might expect this to be another globe-trotting boys-own adventure set in a man’s world. But here’s where the film plays a neat and possibly accidental trick: You find yourself rooting for Irma at every turn. Well, I do, anyway.
The movie begins with a bravura sequence in which Irma, disguised as a stewardess, kills an oil executive on his private jet using a bullet-firing mechanism hidden inside a cigar. She then changes into sporty swimwear, sets an explosive charge, parachutes out of the jet before it explodes, is picked up by Penelope in a boat, and immediately swims over to an island where the duo take out another member of the oil industry using matching spearguns. The opening credits play over all this in a manner suggesting it’s Irma, not Drummond, who is the true star of the show.
Sound too good to be true? See for yourself:
Over the course of the film, Irma and Penelope emerge as icons of the global Jet Age workforce — clearing the way for their mysterious employer’s corporate maneuvers by creatively eliminating any male shareholder who stands in their way. And Irma, like James Bond, always has a terrible pun at the ready after her latest act of calculated violence: After throwing one drugged and paralyzed man (Leonard Rossiter) off the patio of his own high-rise apartment, she deadpans, “Well, I have had men fall for me before, but never like this.”
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE was successful enough to warrant a 1969 sequel, SOME GIRLS DO. It’s painfully unfunny and not even slightly worth your while, but someone with the improbable name of “jrrylpz” made a wonderful musical short out of the sequel's opening sequence, in which a team of lady assassins cause endlessly creative mayhem around the globe. I'm particularly fond of the bit where an assassin flight attendant buckles herself into a seat, opens an airliner door and enjoys a hearty laugh as her victim flies out of the cabin:
Oh, and upon reflection, your daughter might also enjoy Hayley Mills. My own daughters found her very entertaining in THAT DARN CAT!
And now, yet another word from our sponsor...
That's right — Lady Killer's Home Journal is once again brought to you by Zestworld!
Paid subscribers get to read LADY KILLER LTD. on their electric appliance of choice in glorious black and white — well before its eventual print release — with monthly scenes leading to a complete story told over the course of the next year.
In addition, all subscribers (free and paid) will continue to dodge the speargun points of this very newsletter.
