Kiss Me Dangerous (1972)

D. Henry Levin
Colour
 

So here’s a question: why isn’t a series of film starring the one and only Tom Jones as an ultra-cool private detective in The City of Angels an almighty camp-fest? Those Matt Helm films made in the 1960s are far camper. Batman the TV series was off the scale campness compared to this, and that didn’t even have the added value of a singer smugly strutting his way through the lead part. Here we have Tom Jones as private detective, Wayne Wales – but really just playing Tom Jones as a private detective – tackling crime in downtown Los Angeles, punching bad guys, showing off nifty gadgets, and even in this film sporting a brand new catchphrase (“Not bad for a lad from Ponty”) and yet it isn’t total over the top camp of the campest fashion.


Why, oh why, is this?


Partly I think the answer is because it’s made in the 1970s. Matt Helm, ‘The (Mis)Adventures of Kitty Spectacular’ and all those other Bond knock-offs were shot in the bright shades of the 1960s, which was very much the in-palate back then; while these films have more 1970s hues which don’t lend themselves to sheer campness. (Try and imagine a camp comedy that looks like ‘The Conversation’. Not easy is it.) But more than that, we have as the star the ultimate macho-man; the muscled, hairy Welsh love god. A lad from Ponty made very good. Yes, Tom itself keeps it from being camp. In fact, if you were to tell this good boyo from the valleys – now apparently a private detective in LA – that he was camp, he’d probably punch you in the nose.
 

In much the same vein as ‘Vengeance Man’, Tom tours around LA, sorts out bad guys, foils an evil plot and gets it on with lots of nubile young nymphettes who are waiting like moist peaches for him to pluck. When Italian nuclear physicist, Claudia Cardinale, (not the most likely of nuclear physicists, I agree, but still doing a much better job than Denise Richards in ‘The World is not Enough’) is kidnapped on an LA stopover it’s up to Tom to spring into action and save the day before the knowledge inside her head is harnessed to create a new super weapon. His best source of information is bored party girl, Pamela Tiffin (still best known for dancing in a bikini in ‘Harper’), who Tom has the predictable frosty relationship with right until he seduces her. Along the way there are fistfights, gunfight, car-chases, more than one helicopter explosion and smooch after smooch after smooch. Until at the end when the gorgeous Claudia (in what is really a cameo) is so grateful for being rescued she makes her way to Tom’s bed. Of course she does.
 

The bad guy’s representative on Earth is played by Barry Nelson (himself a one-time James Bond), but what’s really interesting is who he seems to work for. We see this Mr Big in Las Vegas, in a distinctive rhinestone jumpsuit and barking orders in an unmistakable drawl. There’s big rings, the glimpsed side of an enormous pair of sunglasses and a medallion with the legend ‘TBC’. We never see his face and that’s led to some writers believing it isn’t really him – but no, this is Elvis, in his very last acting role, playing the supervillain against Tom Jones’s superhero.
 

So the ultimate boy’s adventure, getting it on with Claudia Cardinale, amongst many other gorgeous ladies, and to top it all, having Elvis fucking Presley in a guest appearance – not bad for a lad from Ponty indeed.