Death Is a Woman (1966)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Sorry, this movie sucks

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Dennis (Mark Burns), a British agent of some sort, is on "the island" (Malta but it's not named) to carry out an undercover investigation of two crooked casino owners. The suspicion is that they get guests who run up gambling debts to become the sort of smuggler Customs won't suspect. Dennis runs up a debt in the hope he'll be induced into the racket. The film opens with the murder of one of owners by Francesca (Patsy Ann Noble), a femme very fatale indeed, and her lover Joe (Shaun Curry ), who want all the ill-gotten gains for themselves. The other owner, Malo, is found dead just after he'd given Dennis an advance in return for his passport. The local police naturally suspect Dennis. The thing is Malo was found in a locked room, seven floors up with no sign of the murder weapon. The solution to this locked-room mystery is about as good as this film gets. Priscilla (Wanda Ventham) is sent out from the UK to help Dennis while posing as his fiancé. So far, so good. But that's as good as it gets. We get to see sunny skies and sparkling seas, we get to see another of Joe's girls topless in a scene that seems to be included because they'd an actress who'd go topless back in 1966 or maybe to get a 1960's X rating, we get to see the good girl and the bad girl in their bikinis, and - not much else. The film is padded out to barely feature length with Anita Harris singing a song, multiple sequences of our hero darting down side streets trying to dodge the most visible police tail in history and of our villainess swimming underwater. Cut out the padding and the topless scene and you'd have had a good hour-long episode of a Sixties TV series.

DEATH IS A WOMAN is a second-rate British spy drama filmed in Malta to give it an exotic Mediterranean flavour. The story sees espionage taking place when an agent is shipped in to uncover a drug smuggling ring involving the transport of heroin shipments, and our man's job is to find out who's doing it and stop them in their tracks.What sounds like it should be a light and breezy affair is in fact plodding and unworkable, suffering from wooden male leads and a leaden pacing. There's a dearth of action to boot that makes this tough to watch at times, and it's only the Swinging Sixties trappings that saw me through it. That, and an exemplary female cast, all of whom parade around in their bikinis and look exquisite. Actresses featured include Wanda Ventham, Patsy Ann Noble, and the arresting Caron Gardner. Watch out for typecast heavyweight Michael Brennan's cameo as a murderous butcher.

So what do you expect from a movie with a title like this? A deadly femme fatale who kills repeatedly and without remorse? You'll get that....but only twice, at the start and at the end of the film. Patsy Ann Noble is perfectly cast, and she is equaled, if not surpassed, in the hotness department by the two other female cast members, Wanda Ventham as the good girl and Caron Gardner as a ditzy conquest for the bad guy; this film comes from the era where the thick, strong, curvy, healthy look was the "in" look for women. But the story, after setting up an intriguing locked-room mystery, meanders, the underwater scenes are - as usual - boring, and there is FAR too much screen time given to an old drunk character, who turns out to be of no consequence to boot - was this actor a friend of the producers or something? This film would have been better without him. ** out of 4.

Striking title… stunningly exotic Mediterranean backdrop… beautiful women led by the voluptuous, but venomous Trisha Noble. Other than that, this unusual 60s British spy drama while seductive is methodically languid and openly predictable in its murder mystery layout. Blackmail, murder, drugs, money and women. It's a shame the plot isn't as entertaining like its scenery and intrusively bombastic musical score, as it's quite a stiltedly talkative stop and go affair with much narrative distractions and suspicions, but very little in the way of sustained suspense and thrills. An undercover English agent is sent to the Mediterranean islands to investigate dope smuggling, but instead finds himself the main suspect in a murder case when that man he is investigating ends up dead. So he goes about trying to clear his name, by finding the killer/s. The suspects are there, but it's just trying to connect the dots to how they did it. Director Frederic Goode executes some stylish camera shots getting plenty of local flavour, but outside of those strokes it's safely mechanical all round. The cast give able performances with Mark Burns, William Dexter, Shaun Curry and Wanda Ventham. But it is indeed Noble who steals the limelight ("You must admit. She's quite a dish"). A hypnotic, if too laid-back psychedelic 60s spy fare."It doesn't matter who he is or who's he working for. He's trouble. "