Love Is a Woman

DEATH IS A WOMAN is a fun British thriller with a decent story line complete with drug smuggling, blackmail, and murder.

A man named Parbury (Mark Burns) is wrongfully suspected in a pair of homicides, and must track down the real killer(s) before the cops pin it all on him.

SPECIAL MENTION FOR: Trisha Noble as Francesca. Ms. Noble is one of the most stunningly beautiful women on Earth, and makes it quite difficult to concentrate on the rest of the movie...

Jazzy, beatnik themed 1965 time capsule from British Pathé with secret agent Mark Burns attempting to solve a murder in which he finds himself implicated. Joined by fellow agent Wanda Ventham posing as his fiancée, the pair must outsmart the seductive yet sinister Trisha Noble and her brawny bed partner Shaun Curry, before they pull-off a daring crime and disappear into the sunset. The frantic pace set to a frenetic bongo arrangement and colourful Mediterranean scenery, almost compensate for a relatively thin plot, in which enchantress Noble's bronzed and bikini-clad rig saunters from scotch on the rocks, to scuba-diving into underwater caves leaving a trail of destruction in her voluptuous wake. It's a visually attractive postcard light on sense, but somehow entertaining in spite of its plot weaknesses. Noble is better than you might think, and the set design and location work is all first-rate at depicting the mid-sixties Maltese tourist culture, its buzzing basement nightclubs, and azure blue sun-drenched coastline. A highly stylised cultural artefact worth preserving.

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.

Just a 1960's movie, with plenty of colour, action, cars, fashions (love the shirts guys), a soundtrack with bongos, killings, drug smuggling, secret agents, cheesy lines and girls in bikinis. What's not to like?

The 1960's was when they could now make cheap movies in colour, and the censorship laws were slowly being eroded, and this unashamedly cashes in on it, but not overdone.

Filmed in Malta (I understand) with much water involved. Patsy Ann Noble is looking good here as well as Wanda Ventham, who reveals all (the hussy). She also happens to be Benedict Cumberbatch's (born 10 years later) mother.

Other reviewers explain the plot adequately, and called it a second rate spy drama, and maybe that is why I like it. Frivolous fun, and if that's what you like, then watch it and enjoy. If you want a deep convoluted plot with tip top direction and acting then stay away. It's down to personal choice here.

A lot of money must have been spent on this film, which was filmed on location in Malta in full glorious colour. The result, however, is an utter disaster. For a start, one wonders why the film makers hired Anita Harris to sing the film's one song, when they had an excellent girl singer playing the villain.

The acting is not good. Only one character, who plays a drifter, stands out. The rest of the cast are not good actors, and they struggle with an unexciting script.

Some of the underwater scenes look good, and are probably the best parts of the film. Patsy Ann (Trisha) Noble, who comes from Australia, looks as though she swam her underwater scenes herself, and did not use a double. Great frogwoman she may be; as a singer she is flawless, (whether she sings in English or in French) and has perfect vocal technique. But I don't think she is a good actress at all, and I am surprised that her acting career lasted so long - and in America, too. The only significant features of her character, Francesca, is that she is a dead shot with an harpoon gun, and that she sleeps in a bed with black bedsheets.

The plot is forgettable. So, if you have something better to do, you would be better doing that instead.