I feel like Dr. No and From Russia With Love were both almost there, in different ways.
When they combined the over-the-top elements of the former with the cool Spy Movie of the latter and added a bigger budget, they got Goldfinger, which turned out to be the winning formula.
Okay, this is a little embarrassing; It’s been 15 months since my last Bond movie. I blame the pandemic.
“But wait,” I hear you asking, “shouldn’t the pandemic have given you LOTS OF TIME to watch all the movies you wanted?” Well, yes and no. You see, I started this Bond project to help fill the evenings when my wife was traveling for work. And she hasn’t traveled for work since March 2020. For the last year and a half Mrs. Wheelz and I have been watching lots of movies and TV shows together. But Mrs. Wheelz has no interest whatsoever in watching Bond films. And on the days she’s working and I’m not, she is 12 feet and a thin door from the living room TV making customer calls and doing video conferences. So no, I’m not going to watch big loud spy thrillers while she’s trying to do her job in the next room.
Having said all that, Mrs. Wheelz’s trvels have resumed! And I currently have You Only Live Twice cued up and ready to go. I’m about to grab a couple slices of pizza and a few fingers of Irish whiskey, and I’ll be back in a couple hours to tell you what I thought!
You Only Live Twice (1967)
To a more casual fan like myself, You Only Live Twice probably isn’t among the first five or even ten titles that come to mind when you think of Bond films. I’d never seen this one before; not even a minute of it. Nevertheless, I found it a pretty solid entry in the franchise, even if there are some issues.
Maybe I’d best start with the negatives. From Connery’s very first line – “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?” – I began to suspect there may be some Breakfast At Tiffany’s levels of cultural insensitivity going on here. For a while it seemed those concerns would be unfounded. But then… Bond must be made up to “become a Japanese” in order to train as a ninja? Yikes. And he has to take a wife with a “face like a pig” (even though she doesn’t, of course) because, reasons, I guess. But there’s no real reason why any of this is necessary. I expected John Belushi to jump out at any second during the “ninja training school” sequence. And from there, what had been a fairly tightly plotted film devolved into a chaotic mess.
But there’s a lot of good here too. Donald Pleasence is fantastic as Ernst Blofeld, showing his face for the first time. Understated yet exceptionally menacing, it’s just a great performance. The sci-fi space-race elements were pretty cool, and quite relevant in 1967, and the special effects were not terrible for the time. Gotta love the secret SPECTRE lair under a volcano, and the pool of piranhas. Great stuff there. Some neat stunts, including some great hand-to-hand combat scenes and the small plane crash-landing.
I was surprised to see Roald Dahl credited with the screenplay. This is no Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to be sure. But a few elements – the slide into Tanaka’s office, the helicopter carrying a car away with a giant magnet, M’s office in a submarine – had just that whimsical, surreal touch of Dahl’s hand.
Another catchy lesser-known theme song, this one from Nancy Sinatra. Q not taking any crap from 007. A gyrocopter taking down a half-dozen fully armed helicopters. It may not be the most classic Bond film, but it’s truly a Bond film.
Next up: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
I don’t really like You Only Live Twice. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it but my lasting memory was Connery put in a bit of a half-hearted performance. If I recall correctly he and the producers had a big falling out over salary and weren’t on speaking terms.
I think the Mafia thing in Goldfinger was about the perchance for Bond movies to try and be topical to the time, remember “the Mafia” as a force in movies wasn’t really a thing at the time, yet was in the news via hearings in the few years the early Bond movies were getting made. Also the space race was making a big impact, and let’s not forget the highly dated Moonraker space shuttles when they started appearing. Also the rise in popularity of Skiing too.
Pierce Brosnan was my favorite, and “Golden Eye” my favorite movie. He was so darn handsome back then! 
You Only Live Twice has a special place for me – it’s the first Bond film I ever saw (it was on a double bill with Thunderball, but YOLT was up first). If I had seen any other Bond film first I wouldn’t have been as impressed, but, as this was my first exposure to the series, I was blown away. The title sequence by Maurice Binder blew me away, and even the title song (by Nancy Sinatra, fresh off her one-hit-wonder These Boots are Made for Walkin’) wasn’t bad.
Don’t forget: in Japan, men come first, women come second. (Or sometimes not at all, according to Austin Powers.)
So glad this thread has been revived…I think it was last active before I became a SDMB member. I’ve been a Bond nerd since high school, and I do a rewatch of the entire franchise in order every few years, particularly when there’s a new one coming out. Not sure if I can share photos here, but I’ve got two levels of one of my bookshelves filled with books and discs. I’m not an apologist, though: I fully concede that some (many?) of the movies are utter garbage, and it’s always a slog to get through those (why don’t you skip those in the rewatch then? what, I’m not a maniac.)
So what are we up to…You Only Live Twice? I love the first half, and hands down, Donald Pleasance is the best Blofeld ever. I really love him as an actor generally, particularly in his work with John Carpenter. There was a real joy and charm to his performances. The back nine of the movie is pretty dopey, and the “Bond as a Japanese fisherman” scenes are as wince-inducing as “Say goodbye Dink. Man talk.” in Goldfinger.
My fave Connery flick is From Russia With Love. The cinematography in the scene underneath Istanbul is just gorgeous and dreamlike, Daniela Bianchi set a high bar for a Bond companion’s beauty, and most of all, Bond’s mission is (rare for him) something that it seems a real-life spy would actually be involved in. As we haven’t hit my other favorites (or my least favorite ones) yet, I’ll hold off on commenting.
Welcome to the thread, veryfrank!
As you can tell, I’m not getting through the films as quickly as I’d hoped, so please be patient with me. Sounds like we have a very similar opinion of YOLT. I’m anxious to hear your views as we move forward.
I’ve always ranked (an apt adjective for this film) this film near the bottom, mostly for its cultural offensiveness. This is the most racist Bond film, and that’s counting Live and Let Die.
Not to mention the science is comic book laughable. From the Nev-R-Fail SPECTRE rocket tech, that can launch AND land in a closed room, to the stupid magnet that somehow avoids power lines, to the guided missiles that can hit a target behind the launching aircraft…it’s a total mess. And it doesn’t even have a good story to make you forget the absurdities.
I think Matt Helm movies, or Our Man Flint, are more realistic spy movies than YOLT.
But one good thing to come out of it - You Only Move Twice. Without the volcano lair and this film’s Blofeld, we’d never get Mr Scorpio (“that’s Scorpion. And call me Hank.”) and his plan for world (or at least, East Coast) domination.
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969)
George Lazenby’s sole turn as 007 is, well, a mixed bag.
Let’s talk about Lazenby himself first. I think he was a fine Bond. He managed to capture much of the essence of the character as established by Sean Connery, without playing it as simply an imitation of Connery. He seemed to be trying to bring a little more gravitas to the role and, in my opinion, mostly succeeded. Lazenby was the youngest of all the Bonds, and a rather inexperienced actor at the time. Had he continued in the role, I think he could have become truly great. Of course, about that we can only speculate. (I’ve been reading some about the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and frankly, it’s a wonder any of these films ever got made.)
Then there’s the supporting cast. Telly Savalas plays a very different Blofeld from Donald Pleasence, and it works in this film. Instead of a quietly menacing villain, he’s a cocky bully of a bad guy. I’m really only familiar with Savalas from Kojak and The Dirty Dozen. This was quite a different side of him; a pleasant surprise to me.
Diana Rigg as Tracy was simply enchanting. To imagine James freaking Bond actually wanting to settle down and get married, you have to imagine a pretty special woman, and Rigg nails it. She’s gorgeous of course, but also spirited, stubborn, mischievous… someone you can actually see as a match for Bond. A great performance of a great role.
Ilse Steppat’s Irma Bunt feels a bit like a redux of Lotte Kenya’s Rosa Klebb of From Russia With Love, though it certainly was a fun role. Sadly, Steppat died shortly after this film’s release and plans to reprise the character were scrapped.
The film itself was quite uneven. The beginning was incomprehensible. From Bond saving Tracy at the beach to meeting her again at the casino to being summoned by her father… Why is any of this happening? Where is it leading?
Then, just as the plot finally begins to take shape, the middle third just draaaags. Lots of talking, lots of exposition, a few weirdly edited fight sequences, and very little movement in the story. And I’m a little hazy on the continuity here. Bond is undercover trying to verify that Count Bleauchamp (or whatever) is actually Ernst Blofeld - but the two of them have already met face-to-face in the secret volcano compound in You Only Live Twice. Is this movie a different timeline? A reboot? Who knows? The one bright spot in the plodding middle third was the delightful Angela Scoular as Ruby. She made the most of a small amount of screen time.
But the last third of the movie redeems it all. From Bond’s escape from the cable car wheelhouse, it’s all great from here on out. I really enjoyed the ski chases, the race scene was wonderfully silly, and the climactic bobsled sequence was one of my favorite scenes in any of the films so far.
All in all, definitely worth watching, if only for its unique place in Bond history. It was kind of a false start into a new direction for the franchise that ultimately didn’t happen.
Next up: DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
This is one of the biggest continuity gaffes in the series. The simple explanation is that in the novels, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice are reversed in the running order. OHMSS is one of the most faithful adaptations from the novel in the entire franchise, and they didn’t bother tying up stuff like that.
To me the bigger continuity issue is Blofeld’s continuing evolution. He’s basically the same from his offscreen appearances through to his portrayal by Donald Pleasance in the previous film: Germanic, calm and deadly. All of a sudden he’s Greek American and athletic. And in the next movie he’s an effete snob. That takes me out of the moment more than the lack of recognition does, as at least that’s tempered by the change in 007.
With hair, no less. And he looks just like Henderson in You Only Live Twice. Maybe Pleasance-Blofeld saw pictures of the one-legged British agent and liked it so much that he had himself and his doubles all transformed into that particular face.
When the un-named “Blofeld” showed up in For Your Eyes Only in 1981 he was bald again (and in a wheelchair, presumably from his injuries at the end of Diamonds are Forever). But at least he still had that white cat.
They couldn’t use the name “Blofeld” for legal reasons, but they could for the non-Eon film Never Say Never Again, in which he is red-brown haired and bearded and looks like Max von Sydow. And he still has a cat, but it isn’t white.
And, of course, Christoph Waltz played him in SPECTRE, in which he looks completely different, but at the end, in a nod to the Pleasance version, he gets that same facial scar.
(And Blofeld was supposed to be the bad guy in The Spy who Loved Me, but , again for legal reasons, he couldn’t be. So “Stromberg” is an older guy with a full head of white hair who speaks with an accent.)
While I can understand some of your concern, I always try to leave presentism at the door when I review art (books, films especially). We are undoubtedly doing things today that our grandchildren will cringe at. We can’t predict that and our efforts today shouldn’t be judged by that.
When it comes to characters being portrayed by actors with vastly different appearances, it’s hard to beat Felix Leiter. He’s been played by Steve McGarrett , by a balding white-haired guy, by a short tough guy, but a couple of mop-haired California boys, by Captain Lee Crane of the Seaview (twice), by a British guy, and by two different black guys (Bernie Casey and Jeffrey Wright (soon to be three times). None of them really resemble the character Fleming described (and none of them are missing an arm and part of a leg, although David Hedison did get thrown in that Shark Tank).
I’ve concluded that Leiter is a Master of Disguise, even if he’s never described that way. He can look like damned near anybody, and frequently does.
I see your point, but that movie (and LALD) bothered me the first time I saw them. Though I didn’t see YOLT when it was new in '67, only on TV in the 70s. (I also laugh at LALD for the exciting travelogue exotic local of… Harlem. I got the feeling that, at the time of the movie, Harlem was as exotic to a Londoner as any far eastern country was to an American.)
In the reverse of Blofeld and Felix, I have an example the other way. There were two L&O criminal Intent episodes: one had a character named Joey Frost, and another had a charcter named Josh Snow. They were played by different actors, but they were supposed to be the same character - there are references to the events of the previous episode in the second one. I guess the first writer “owned” the character, like the not-Blofeld in FYEO.
I thought the evil plan in OHMSS was the silliest of all the Bond villain plans. And that’s saying something!
Great music, though.
And, unlike many of the movie villain plots, this one is taken directly from Fleming’s original novel.
I don’t think it’s the silliest – Goldfinger robbing Fort Knox of all its gold is easily sillier (and also one of Fleming’s original plots). They made it more plausible for the movie by simply threatening to set off a dirty bomb there.
And I think I can make the case that hijacking spacecraft (You Only Live Twice) or nuclear subs (The Spy who Loved Me) or threatening to kill everybody on earth (Moonraker) are sillier plots. Threatening to release killer diseases is at least plausible. Og knows, plenty of people believe it right now.
By hypnotizing a sexy woman who’s allergic to chickens. All in a day’s work for a Bond villain.