The James Bond Film Festival. Part 5: You Only Live Twice

I did not have…sexual relations…with that woman…Miss Pussy Galore.

I do remember Fred and Barney in some episode (It may very well have been the movie ‘A Man Called Flintstone’, which I saw many times in my youth) saying something along the lines ‘A Judo-Chop-Chop’.

As to You Only Live Twice, I must admit I really liked the monorail system they used in the volcano rocket launching pad (the lake on top of the volcano was really badly done, however).
Last year, when I saw it again (after many, many years) on TNN (Spy Thanksgiving or whatever), I kep thinking those open slab stairs to the monorail station looked really “60s cool”, but no handrails? (BTW, those stairs were faithfully copied in ‘The Spy Who Shagged Me’)

According to the good folks of Williams University Trivia, the utterance “A-Judo, A-chop-chop-chop” comes from an episode of the series involving a “Dr. Yes.” But of course, that is entirely different from the “JUDO CHOP!” of Austin Powers.

Well, what can I say? I liked this one. The ridiculous parts all add to the charm for me. Plus, Little Nelly, the magnet on the henchmen’s car, the poison sliding down the thread, all memorable Bond scenes.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve looked at one of my friends and said “If you’re Tiger, how do you feel about me?” To which they would reply “I…love you.”

Other great lines:
“Keel Bond!!! NOW!!!” “Yes! Right away sir!!” ::And then he scurries up the stairs::

“I am taking you to a place of safety.” (Another often quoted line, using the accent of course)

“My lifeline! It’s cu—”

“Well I won’t be needing these.” (Upon finding out he’s not sleeping in the same bed with Kissy and dumping the oysters he’d ordered).

Classic goofs:

Bond misses a few henchmen when he’s running off the Ling Po by about five feet with his punches and they go down.

An obvious stuntman for Aki climbing down the rope just before the above scene starts.

Watch the sword master’s sword when he starts fighting in the volcano.

Aside from the aforementioned “cameras in space” part, I also liked how Tiger was showing Bond the helicopter being dropped in the water while saying “How’s THAT for Japanese efficiency!” And I’m thinking “not very good, since it required another chopper to film the whole damn thing!”)

I would love to know if the announcer during the sumo wrestling scene was really speaking Japanese. It sounded more to me like total gibberish.

The scene I remember most from the film is the first time the SPECTRE spacecraft attacks. One of the American astronauts’ is left stranded in orbit with what was presumably his air hose severed. Creepy, especially with John Barry’s wonderful incidental music.

Such a memorable scene in fact, that it made me misuse an apostrophe! Grr…

My thought during that scene was always, a little too efficient perhaps, as wouldn’t it be smarter to interrogate the evil henchmen and then go ahead and kill them?

And perhaps Bond could have interrogated the assassin that killed Aki, rather than wake up and shoot him immediately. :slight_smile:

Bond was making up for the efficiency that that assassin lacked. I mean, dribbling poison down a 10-foot string isn’t the most accurate way to deliver it. It didn’t even work for Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank!

An entry on the “What the Hell Were They Thinking?” side of the ledger.

“I took a first in Oriental Languages at Cambridge.” James Bond a University man? Sorry, me no buy it.
The Bond producers could have done OHMSS after Thunderball, like Ian Fleming did (see my comments in the thread for that much better movie) and saved us the experience of this heavy-on-the-gadgets, light-on-the-thrills turkey.
First, they gave Roald Dahl a chance to show the world that screenwriting was not his forte, then they hired a script doctor (Harold Jack Bloom) from, of all places, the Batman tv show. The result is story and dialogue that make the Ian Fleming novel look like Shakespeare by comparison.
Next, they…oh, the hell with it. I’ll just say in conclusion that YOLT is neither good enough to love nor bad enough to hate. It’s just the second-best Bond movie released in 1967.

Why not? He was a Royal Navy man first, and then became an agent. I can certainly see him at the U, getting picked up by the navy, and then being snapped up by MI6 a little after age 30.

Just saw this film again and wanted to point out another eye-rolling detail.

In the big gun battle at the end, lots of “ninjas” get machine gunned by the bad guys. You can tell 'cause when they die, they’ve got several big bloody holes in their shirts. However, if you pay attention, you’ll see that several ninjas already have pre-painted hole in their shirts while they’re gently sliding down their ropes all the way to the floor.

Wow, I never noticed that. ONe thing I did see though, was that the ninjas were using lengths of rubber tubing to slide down the ropes. (Apparently to prevent burns.)