This is a sex comedy without the sex and without the comedy.It is suspiciously like the big success of the early sixties,Boeing Boeing.It is a failed attempt by Richard Todd to reignite his career as a light comedian.He was 42 at the time and tries to romance girls half his age.A big surprise is seeing Judith Anderson in rubbish such as this.No wonder Todd made no further attempt at comedy. Incidentally in response to another reviewer Boeing Boeing was first performed on stage,3years before this film

Like another reviewer here, I immediately thought of Boeing Boeing, whilst watching Don't Bother to Knock. To be fair to the latter, Boeing Boeing was made 4 years later and is therefore more likely to have borrowed from DBTK than visa versa. BB also had a couple of significant advantages; Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, both experienced in playing comedic roles.

Don't Bother to Knock relies heavily on the shoulders of lead actor Richard Todd and he is hopelessly miscast as a philandering middle-aged travel agent, who supposedly wants to settle down with his naive fiancee Stella. However his character's behaviour and actions just aren't convincing. Instead he comes across as an unfunny 40+ Lothario, whose constant attempts to seduce women far younger than him, are more in keeping with an over-sexed teenage male. Todd, well - known for his more dramatic roles, didn't have the light touch and the timing for comedy, let alone farce.

He's not helped by the script here, which doesn't exactly crackle with humour. Ironically one of the funniest things about this movie, which is mainly set in Edinburgh (to suit the storyline in the second half),is that I only remember one character who actually spoke with a Scottish accent ... a taxi driver. So yes, a distinct failure all around.

While Richard Todd and a bevy of beauties are the stars of this frenetic British sex farce, the real triumph comes from the newly knighted Dame Judith Anderson playing a modern day Mame Dennis with a touch of Tallulah Bankhead attached. You will not see any evidence of her classic tragedy roles as it is obvious that with TV versions of "Medea" and "MacBeth" recently on her plate, she wanted to play something a bit lighter and along the lines of what Rosalind Russell or Claudette Colbert might be cast as. She is cast as a wealthy Scottish matron who appears to be Richard Todd's boss and fairy godmother, swiping the key to his flat, pressing it in soap, and making copies which are then handed out to the bevy of beauties that she wants to set him up with. He appears to be handing them out as well, and like many a stage farce, Todd finds he is overloaded with too many women at the same time and struggles to juggle them all. Of course, they will be running into each other, so there are a lot of catty confrontations and foot stamping and temper losing as these ladies realize that they aren't his number one girl.

Nicole Maurie, Elke Sommer and June Thornburn are the three main squeezes in his life whom he meets in different circumstances. Older married women seem to be drawn to him, one of them ogling him while he's on vacation in Italy, and Elke Sommer coming across him and spending a romantic evening in the mountains with him when she rescues him from a high cliff while hiking. The film as a whole is basically a repeat of the same situation with different circumstances, and the confrontations become all too similar after a while. When Dame Judith is on screen, this becomes something special because, well, she IS Dame Judith Anderson, and fans of her Mrs. Danvers from "Rebecca" and her Minx Lockridge from "Santa Barbara" will delight in seeing her being a Scottish version of Billie Burke's similar characters. The film is also very beautiful to look at with great location sequences, lush sets and gorgeous outfits, especially the ladies hats. It's just too bad that it is like oh so many other sex farces of a more permissive era, but Dame Judith shoots this up several notches for me.