Absolutely fascinating in a car-wreck sort-of way, the clumsily titled Licensed to Love and Kill is the United Kingdom’s parody of its own James Bond.
Not 007, No. 1 is Britain’s top secret agent (Gareth Hunt, Bloodbath at the House of Death). In the opening scene, he says via narration, “I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’” One wonders if this line was scripted or merely Hunt’s personal assessment of his role in this stinker, and either director Lindsay Shonteff (Devil Doll) didn’t have the budget to edit it out or just didn’t care.
The plot has No. 1 assigned to retrieve lost American diplomat Lord Dangerfield (Noel Johnson, Frenzy). Before jetting off to the U.S., he visits this flick’s version of Q for the requisite cool gadgets and supplies. This Q has little more to offer than the knock-your-socks-off technology of magnetic ball bearings.
Dangerfield is being blackmailed by the evil Sen. Lucifer Orchid (Gary Hope, Romeo Is Bleeding), who has commissioned a No. 1 doppelgänger to further his devious plan, exactly whatever that may be. Apparently, Orchid is trying to compensate for being saddled with such a girlie last name, because here’s how flat-out mean he is:
• He shoots skeet out on the beach using real, live human beings.
• He flame-broils his whip-slinging midget sidekick (who looks like an Indian Roger Ebert) for no apparent reason, leaving only his Kenney shoes.
• He knowingly allows one of his mansion whores to take a swim in a pool of acid.
• He even keeps a cageful of hussies out back, whom he fancies poking with sticks.
• He is aided by Jensen Fury (Nick Tate, TV’s Space: 1999), a throaty henchman with pointy metal fingernails.
When Orchid sends an all-purpose, leather-masked bad guy out to chase No. 1 on a motorcycle, our secret-agent man calmly reacts by using his car’s giant retractable saw blade to cut the fellow’s chopper in half. It is here where I call Shonteff’s morals into question: He’ll allow an innocent girl to have all the flesh stripped off her in a chemical plunge, but he shies away from dissecting an unlikable thick-necked tuffie?
No. 1 seems more interesting in bedding the various oft-topless women waltzing in and out of this picture (it doesn’t bear the alternate title of The Man from S.E.X. for nothing!), like the car rental clerk who wears (to use the term lightly) a short, tight T-shirt reading “RENT ME.”
And all the above is just the first 45 minutes. No. 1 is a steaming, must-see lump of No. 2. —Rod Lott
I’ve seen another one of Shonteff’s spy films (he did a bunch and they’re all basically re-makes of successful spy spoof he did in the 60s) and they’re all really lousy. What I found amazing is that the actors were usually top notch UK journeymen and character actors, what with Gareth Hunt being in real TV shows like the New Avengers and I even spotted Jon Pertwee in the one I saw. Those Brit, RADA-trained actors are goddamn pros even when they’re starring in something one step above porn.