Why not? She’s the Chicken Manchurian Candidate.
mmm…Chicken Manchurian! Better than General Tso’s.
The silliness didn’t bother me, but the fact that the plan never got off the ground did a little. The girls were presented with Chekhov’s makeup kit, including explicit instructions to never touch the atomizer until told. But then, nothing ever came of it.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Connery is back! For now. Sir Sean’s final “official” Bond film takes 007 to Las Vegas in search of diamond smugglers. Of course, it turns out there’s a lot more going on.
I’m honestly still not entirely sure what I think of this film. Most of it was kind of rambling and seemingly aimless, yet it somehow all comes together in the end. Glaring plot holes abound. For instance, Bond did not know ahead of time that Franks would be coming after him in Amsterdam; having a dead body to hide the diamonds in was a fortunate accident. Yet, his destination is a crematorium. So what was the plan if he didn’t have that body? Later, Bond is buried in a pipeline that is assembled, buried, and apparently operational in a single day! The fake moon landing set and Bond’s escape in the lunar rover was just dumb. Yeah, I know you can’t think too hard about Bond movies, but there’s always a limit to suspension of disbelief, and some parts of this one stretched that limit a bit.
Not that there wasn’t good stuff here. I did quite enjoy the climactic oil-rig sequence, with a furious Blofeld getting bashed around in his little escape boat. Jill St. John was a formidable Bond girl, and the hit-man team of Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint was effectively creepy and menacing.
And yet, something about this chapter seemed somehow… thinner than some of the previous films, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Bond in Vegas was fun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it should have been even more so.
Funnily enough, I couldn’t help fixating on the fact that two of the funeral home employees were dressed exactly like the Blues Brothers. And then came the chase scene with multiple cop cars smashing into one another, very reminiscent of (or more accurately foreshadowing) that film!
Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. I’ll probably revisit the thread tomorrow and perhaps express my thought a bit more coherently.
Next up: Live and Let Die
This always bothered me. The pipe isn’t operational that day, but a.) why didn’t the workmen notice a body in the pipe when putting it down? b.) what kind of a “death trap” leaves the victim alive and easily able to escape?
Therre’s a much more serious problem with the film, which probably contributes to its unfinished feeling – Plenty O’Toole’s character (Lana Wood0 was supposed to have eavesdropped on Blofeld’s minions, followed them, and got mistaken for Tiffany Case, which is why her dead body is in her pool. The scenes all got cut, and as the film now exists there’s no explanation of how or why the body got there.
There was another cut scene with Sammy Davis, Jr. The reason you see his face in the Las Vegas program Bond is leafing through is to set you up for his appearance, but they cut his scene, too.
It’s always bothered me how easily Bond takes out Bambi and Thumper. Until they get in the pool, they’re clearly kicking his ass.
I remember the scene where Tiffany asks Bond if he prefers blondes or brunettes, and he replies, “As long as the collars and cuffs match” . I was in my forties before I realized that he was talking about “the carpet and the curtains”. I am surprised that the censors let them get away with that.
I think Charles Gray is one of the less interesting Blofelds, but Wint and Kidd are my favorite henchmen.
In the scene where Blofeld’s henchman is being prepped for plastic surgery, he is soaking in a volcanic mud-bath. Was that ever a thing in real-life surgeries?
I don’t know about that, but being killed in a mud bath is one of the few elements that screenwriter Richard Maibaum took from Fleming’s original novel.
After sleeping on it, I think I have a better handle on what came up short for me here. And don’t get me wrong; I didn’t hate DAF. It is a perfectly adequate entry in the franchise. But thinking back, it didn’t have that one scene. The catch-your-breath sequence with spectacular stunts, or the crazy extended chase scene. You know, the one set piece that sets a Bond film apart from the others.
For me, it was the bobsled chase in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the gyrocopter dogfight in You Only Live Twice; you get the idea. Nothing in Diamonds Are Forever quite got to that level as far as I’m concerned. The moon buggy escape? Too comical, IMO. The Blues-Brothers-esque chase through downtown Vegas? Fun, not spectacular. Bond scaling his way to the hotel penthouse? Well-done and nail-bitingly tense, but not over-the-top enough to qualify. Several good scenes here, but for my money, no great ones.
And oh yeah, Plenty O’Toole. What a waste. Three minutes of screen time and then she’s a dead body in a pool. Bond did say something like, “She must have come to see you and they thought she was you.” So I wasn’t confused. But I do wish we’d gotten to see what happened.
I also didn’t mention yet another iteration of Felix Leiter. Norman Burton was fine, but I have little to comment on beyond that. He didn’t add or detract much at all.
I did actually kind of like Charles Gray’s Blofeld, though. While it’s true that he, Savalas, and Pleasence essentially played three different characters with the same name, that’s not his fault. Gray was at his best just as Blofeld’s façade of sophistication fell and he started getting angry. Wanting to always appear cool and in control, but a dangerous man just beneath the surface.
I always hate how Hollywood refused to treat women as actual adversaries. And I mean not that they kicked Bond’s ass, but that Bond treats them like…well, women. He can beat trained killers bigger than him in hand to hand combat, but he has trouble with these two? He should be able to best them handily, if only Hollywood’s “code” would let men actually hit women. They’re henchpeople, hired killers. It’s OK to kill them! Holding them underwater is both lame and actually disrespectful to women.
But then it is Bond after all. He snaps at Tiffany for messing up the tape swap, even though there’s no way anyone could know what he wanted her to do. I would have done what she did, Just more misogyny from the franchise.
DaF has several iconic moments for me, none more than when Blofeld picks up the phone and says: “Prepare my bathysphere.” This has become known to me (and certain others) as “the bathysphere moment”: that point in the narrative in which the bad guy knows his plans are kaput and must plot his escape, whether through bathysphere or some other (preferably exotic) means.
In some trivial way, I very much like the sequence where Bond meets Klaus Hergershimer (played by Ed Bishop, late of SHADO) - G-section, checking radiation shields - and the subsequent comment made by Dr. Metz about Bond (impersonating Hergershimer): “Go away, you irritating man!” I have often experienced this very same phenomena when I have tried to impersonate Mr. Hergershimer.
Sealing Bond in the sewer line is just as lame as locking him in the closet in OHMSS, and numerous other examples by-now beyond parody. It bothers me less than the failed attempt to simulate a car rolling on its opposite side wheels in the alley during the Vegas strip car chase sequence.
The film also features Jill St. John - firing a machine gun in her own inimitable style – Bruce Cabot (from King Kong), Connie Mason (from Blood Feast) and cult actor Sig Haig as a morgue attendant. The rat in the sewer line gives an excellent performance as well. I have always thought highly of the film relative to the Bond series; it’s probably my second or third favorite after Casino Royale (1967) and Dr. No (1962).
Respectfully, I doubt you would have looked as good in a bikini.
He doesn’t say “Prepare my bathosphere”. Bathospheres are Big Dumb Diving Balls that have no controls, so all it would do would be to deposit him on the sea floor.
What he says is “Prepare my bath-o-sub”, which is apparently the name he gives to that wedge-shaped undersea craft he gets into
http://www.jamesbondwiki.com/page/Ernst_Stavro_Blofeld
That’s always bothered me, too. It seems an awfully lame, inconclusive way of dispatching the Main Villain. It’s got not satisfying BOOM! and you’re not really sure that you got him.
And, indeed, Blofeld apparently survived, because that appears to be him in the wheelchair trying to remotely kill Bond by taking over the helicopter in the opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only. We can’t be sure, because Eon Productions lost the rights to use the name “Blofeld” in that whole “Thunderball” lawsuit. But he’s got the white cat, and his condition is consistent with what happened at the end of DaF. And he’s bald again, like two out of three Eon Blofeld appearances.
Since that thread disappeared, how did you like it?
It’s my favourite because he doesn’t rely on ‘gadgets’. And it has a charm about it, being the first and coming out in 1962. I liked the Quarrel character, though I thought the belief in a dragon was a bit much.
The plan was to bacteriological warfare weapons around the world like a bunch of plague rats. It doesn’t actually sound very silly nowadays.
Not disappeared, just a broken vBulletin link. Here it is: Dr. No (1962)
How did you get that link?
Here’s the original: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=854580
Here’s yours: \https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dr-no-1962/813943\
They don’t look similar.
ETA: And I don’t have to comment on Dr. No. I see that I did in the original thread. 
Yeah, there’s no way to derive the new link from the old. I searched for “Dr. No” in threads started by Wheelz.
You can see from TroutMan’s link, but the short answer is: I enjoyed it quite a bit on its own merits, and viewed it as sort of an early prototype of what the Bond films eventually evolved into.
And I see that I already covered what I would have said. 
I think I heard Trump mention a fake nobleman who was hypnotizing a beautiful girl who was allergic to chickens.
You made some very good points in that thread. And I’ll take this opportunity to point out that I claim no special expertise on film in general or James Bond in particular. My opinions in the past and going forward are bound to prove inconsistent at times, or mundane, or even stupid. I make no apologies. I’m doing this for fun. 