Danger Route

Richard Johnson is a hit man for British intelligence. Literally. He offs them with a karate chop to the neck. He's getting weary of the job and is thinking of leaving the profession when he gets another job. Whitehall wants a Soviet defector, but the Americans have him, so he needs killing. Johnson is assigned to the task. However things go awry. There's more at work than Whitehall setting policy.

There's a lot of Bondian elements here: the beautiful women, and so forth -- Carol Lynley, Barbara Bouchet and Sylvia Sims, and Diana Dors gets the cherished final spot on the credits. It's not just a Bondian romp at the peak of the 1960s spy craze. The darkness and betrayal lend a tinge of John Lecarre to the proceedings as Johnson slowly untangles the tangled web of the plot of the plot -- and finds himself snarled in its slubby mass at the end.

It a good performance and you can see why Johnson had been Terrence Young's first pick for playing Bond in DOCTOR NO. Although the movie works, his depressed character is, in the end, not terribly attractive; however, no one is.

To compare this film to 007 Bond films would to be lead readers astray.

Bond films don't have tight plots - this film is far closer to the films and series based on John Le Carré's works. The film is never boring and seems to finish too soon - one would have liked more time for the denouement.

And that is a sign of a good tight plot - when the viewer feels that the film has ended too soon.

The film shows how without any gadgets and spectacular action a good plot can still hold the viewers' attention.

There is action - fights and murders - but they are not spectacular - nor are they intended to be. They are cold, quick and quiet.

It is an enjoyable secret service film from the 1960's - a predecessor for the excellent Le Carré films and series.

Enjoy it!

Given Danger Route's lackluster 5.7 IMDb rating, I really wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. In the movie, Jonas Wilde (Richard Johnson) is a successful government operative who handles more sensitive cases (he's an assassin). Recently returned from a mission, he's immediately sent on another. This time, his handlers really don't care if he's successful or not. Either way, they want him dead. Coincidentally, Wilde wants out of the game altogether and has taken steps in that direction. His steps, however, do not include his own death.

Most of the spy movie I watch tend to feature comedy or some other craziness. They may not be out and out spoofs or something like that, but they do include their share of humor. These spy movies generally feature crazy gadgets, over-the-top villains, exotic locations, and scads of beautiful women. Not here. Danger Route is deadly serious stuff. And while it does feature enough beautiful women for a Bond movie, there are none of the other trappings normally found in a spy film. I wasn't sure how this would play with me, but worked almost flawlessly. I appreciated the serious tone and the real tension it created. There's still plenty of action, but it's more subdued and realistic. I also thought the film had a nice flow to it. Never was I bored. I'll give credit to the brilliant Seth Holt who directed Danger Route. It's really too bad he died so young and after directing less than a dozen films. I'd like to have seen what a longer career might have produced. Finally, the writing is strong as well. The plot is filled with twists and turns. Most of these twists, including the final one, worked as intended on me. Overall, Danger Route is fine filmmaking.

The acting in Danger Route warrants a mention. Richard Johnson never gets enough credit as a rock solid actor. Whether it's a more comedic film like Some Girls Do or he's running form zombies in Zombi, I always seem to enjoy his work. He's joined by a very capable cast that includes Carol Lynley, Gordon Jackson, Diana Dors, and Harry Andrews. My only complaint with the cast is Barbara Bouchet. It's not that she's bad or anything, just terribly underutilized.

I really have nothing negative to say about the movie. It's a solid film with nice direction, writing, and acting. And, as is always key for me, I was thoroughly entertained. Danger Route gets an 8/10 from me.

Some years back, I had recorded this (on VHS) off the MGM cable channel but the reception had been so poor I did not make it through the film; eventually, I upgraded to a decent copy – albeit also sourced from MGM and, thus, panned-and-scanned! Anyway, I decided to check this out now (and the two remaining unwatched films from this promising but short-lived director) as a follow-up to star Richard Johnson's recently-viewed appearances – in the same mould – as Bulldog Drummond but also in anticipation of two upcoming Holt revisits in my ongoing tribute to the late Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster. Still, unlike those two lightweight spy films, this is anything but campy or glossy; in fact, typical of most Cold War espionage yarns of its era (equating realism with glumness), the plot is fairly obscure, so that the result proves oddly unmemorable despite careful work all around!

It is therefore up to an impressive cast (in uniformly fine form) to deliver the goods and keep one watching: Johnson, Carol Lynley (as his two-timing girlfriend who tries to poison him at the end – but her fish get it instead! – and whom he fells with a karate chop!), Barbara Bouchet (as an initially suspicious addition to the spy ring but who ultimately emerges a heroic trooper and even loses her life to the 'cause'), Harry Andrews (as Johnson's suave superior), Gordon Jackson (as the hero's seemingly laid-back skipper-partner but who turns out to be opportunistic, duplicitous and sadistic), Sylvia Syms (as Andrews' nagging wife who gets abducted on a train by Johnson), Diana Dors (as a housekeeper to a defecting scientist seduced by Johnson in the guise of a salesman), Sam Wanamaker (as the C.I.A.'s top man dubbed "Lucinda" and Bouchet's boss) and Maurice Denham (as Johnson's elderly team-mate whose murder starts the ball rolling).

The film opens in a movie theater where one is given to understand that Johnson will himself be eliminated by his own side once he completes his next mission, but this does not happen (having discovered the mole in their organization) but is nonetheless kept on a leash by the umbrella-carrying Andrews in the freeze-frame finale (incidentally, Holt's start as an editor at Ealing Studios is much in evidence here as the film's pacing is very tight, with scenes hardly being allowed to finish off or permitted to start gradually)! Apparently, Johnson was Terence Young's first choice to play James Bond but, as I said earlier, his world-weary 'eliminator' (the title of the original source novel) here is closer to the austerity of Harry Palmer. Johnson and Bouchet were once a romantic item and, as it happens, they probably both owe their popularity in cult movie circles today to Italian film-maker Lucio Fulci via, respectively, ZOMBIE (1979) and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1972)!

Interestingly enough, Holt (who worked for Hammer 3 times) is here employed by their main rivals, Amicus; for the record, he had already dabbled in the spy world by directing episodes of TV's DANGER MAN (1960-61) and ESPIONAGE (1964). The film under review – which the director apparently dismissed as "dreadful" and claimed he only made it because he "needed the bread"! – is Holt's final completed work (in the U.S. it was unceremoniously released as a double-feature, incongruously paired with Paul Wendkos' second-rate war movie ATTACK ON THE IRON COAST {1968}!), since alcoholism got the better of him…dying at the young age of 47 two-thirds of the way through shooting Hammer's superior BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1971)!; even so, Johnson later named him one of the best taskmasters he ever worked for.

. 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.