VHS Vednesday: The Deadly Females

THE DEADLY FEMALES (1976). Directed by Donovan Winter. Starring Tracy Reed, Bernard Holley, and Roy Purcell.

British actress Tracy Reed (who may be familiar to some viewers through her small parts in Dr. Strangelove and A Shot in the Dark) stars as the head of a "disposal service" which specializes in using attractive young women as assassins, the better to worm their way into their targets' confidences. The agency is run very efficiently and businesslike, in a stereotypically "proper" British manner. Unfortunately, in this case, "businesslike" means "boring." The assassins spend so much time putting their victims at ease that one wonders whether their m.o. is talking the target to death. The occasional instances of gratuitous nudity are equally uninteresting. The Deadly Females is proof that, in certain hands, sex and violence are deadly dull.

Who's Leaving This Off Their Resume?

In the cast of relative unknowns, one name in particular stands out...and that name is familiar primarily as a joke. Rula Lenska, known to many for her Alberto VO5 commercials of the '70s, makes a cameo as an independent operator (who, in her two scenes, proves herself much more efficient and interesting than Reed's entire operation).