Danger Route

Dors, Sims, Lynley. Sitar soundtrack. What's not to like?

A Richard Johnson flick is never a bad thing, especially in this mid to late 1960s era. Daft plots of charming British Bondish agents risking it all for Queen and Country, up against ne'er-do-well foreigners bent on global hoo-har, at all times charming the Kings Road Popsies.

John Mayer provides a cool as you know what soundtrack, niiiiice.

Watch this film and look back at the good times back in the day or have your suspicion that you were born to late confirmed.

An Amicus Masterpiece.

The director had come down considerably in the world by the time he made this potboiler in colour for Amicus, but it does reflect the fatalism of his directorial debut 'Nowhere to Go' and is far from the dog's dinner Betty Box & Ralph Thomas made of their two films featuring Richard Johnson as Bulldog Drummond.

By this time the more squalid side of espionage was already becoming a commonplace - even if Johnson drives a car with personalised number plates and it boast a title song sung by Anita Harris and rather exotic sitar score by John Mayer - so in Holt's hands the violence is both far messier and more intimate than usual.

. But worth noting for its star Richard Johnson and director Seth Holt. A former Royal Shakespeare Company actor, Johnson was Bond director Terence Young's original choice to play 007 and might have proved much closer to author Ian Fleming's concept of him. Indeed, Johnson was briefly groomed by the Rank Organisation in the late Sixties as their answer to Sean Connery, hoping to ride the Bond slipstream (but the two films Deadlier Than the Male and Some Girls Do were too cynically packaged to work as either imitation or spoof).

Johnson's brand of worried suavity found a better vehicle here. A minor addition to the murkier side of the genre, it remains most notable for Holt. A former editor, Holt's deft cutting room skills had made two suspense films he directed for Hammer (Taste of Fear and The Nanny) unusually seamless and subtle.

Alas, in Danger Route, even his assured touch failed to enliven an intractable plot about Cross-Channel espionage. But an exceptionally strong support cast - Harry Andrews, Diana Dors and Gordon Jackson - and a certain casual ruthlessness, lift this film above the totally routine. And Carol Lynley and Barbara Bouchet are truly gorgeous.

Trite cynicisms and a trashy title-song date Danger Route unsympathetically. But Holt's admirers will discern enough in its minor virtues to compensate.

The title song for this movie reminds one of the middle James

Bond films--a catchy title woven into an incomprehensible song. Happily, things improve quickly. Jonas Wilde, the licensed killer, is dour and taciturn, but I was empathizing with him before too long. Jonas uses no outrageous stunts, no silly gadgets, and the movie was almost over when I was struck by the realization that there was not a single chase scene. Jonas does not even use a weapon, killing rather with a sharp blow to the neck (I would call it a Judo Chop, except I know nothing of Judo) This film was written so as to leave the way open for sequels; it is a loss none were made.

Danger Route has usually been dismissed (if not ignored) as an unexciting, confused and run-of-the mill spy thriller, not to say another unsuccessful attempt from the second half of the 1960s to cash in on the success of the James Bond series. Yet, while it is imperfect in several ways, Danger Route deserves credit for its original and intelligent plot, dark realism and fine performances. Despite its misleading promotional poster, the film does not actually try to entice the viewer with Bond-style suspense and action sequences, but rather with its complex intrigue and character study of a disillusioned secret agent operating in a world where no-one may be quite what they seem to be. Indeed, the film's style is closer to the genre more successfully represented by the likes of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the Harry Palmer films starring Michael Caine. Perhaps the plot lingers a little bit at the beginning and appears unnecessarily convoluted, but if one is willing to struggle through some confusion, it is quite interesting to follow and remains consistently unpredictable. It is somewhat difficult to get emotionally engaged into the story, partly because the main character, played by Richard Johnson, is rather enigmatic and distant - he is after all a cold-blooded assassin (albeit one working on "our side"). But this is arguably part of the film's originality. While there had already been a few similarly dark and cynical espionage dramas by 1967 (notably those aforementioned), it was not yet common to have such a morally ambiguous and cynical hero. This would, however, become much more the norm for this film genre in the 1970s. Richard Johnson does a fine job of conveying the detachment and weariness of this character, even subtly managing to attract some sympathy for his predicament. Johnson is surrounded by a strong cast that includes Carol Lynley, Barbara Bouchet, Gordon Jackson, Sylvia Syms, Harry Andrews, and Diana Dors, who all give very good performances. Where the film slightly fails in my view is in its uneven direction (it is known that director Seth Holm became ill during the shooting of the film) and average production values, which sometimes make it seem like a B-feature, although it is not. Ultimately, I don't consider Danger Route to quite be a good film, but it is certainly better than your routine spy romp, and has some interesting elements going for it.