4 JUNE 2023
JBC rating: ***
James Bond Connections (2):
- Featuring actor David Bauer (Morton Slumber in Diamonds Are Forever) as US official Bennett.
- Theme song composed by Lionel Bart (composer of the song From Russia with Love).
The British B-movie Danger Route is by far the grittiest of three late 1960s spy films starring Shakespearean actor Richard Johnson, the darkly handsome English leading man who famously turned down the chance to star as the first James Bond in Dr No (1962). Johnson’s brutal turn as a jaded, cold-blooded government assassin adds an edge of danger largely absent from his portrayals of Bulldog Drummond in the campy and fantastical Deadlier than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969). Indeed, Danger Route suggests his portrayal of 007 could have been both exciting and faithful to Ian Fleming’s conception of his hero as a “blunt instrument of the state” and the film is well worth watching for any James Bond fan.
Continue reading “Danger Route (1967): nearly-Bond Richard Johnson as a blunt instrument of the state”