I totally agree. This is Sean Connery’s best Bond movie along with Goldfinger.
Everything works about it, including a great opening song.
Looks like most of the high points have been mentioned. I personally thought the car chase in Vegas was one of the best of the series (my uncle had a silver Mustang Mach I of the same vintage and I imagined myself as Bond the one time I got to drive it, without the two-wheeling, of course).
Also classic, IMO: Bond’s losing encounter with Bambi and Thumper, the funeral home scene, the fight in Tiffany Case’s elevator, and Ms. Case herself. Jill St. John probably gets the award for, er, brassiest Bond Girl, but man, what a butt. Ahem.
I worked on a number of jack-up oil rigs of the type used as Blofeld’s HQ, and couldn’t help thinking sometimes, “wouldn’t it be cool to mount some anti-aircraft guns on top of the legs…”
A bit surprised to see how many people enjoyed Wint and Kidd, but they certqainly were among the oddest villains of the series.
Overall, I rate this one as one of the better outings, and third-best of the Connery efforts, after Russia and Goldfinger.
As Dr. Evil pointed out on The Spy Who Shagged Me DVD, that diamond-plated satellite is probably still out there for the taking.
Blecch. Connery’s worst Bond outing (and I’m counting Never Say Never Again!) or at least a tie with YOLT. Lame script, miscast villains, mediocre cinematography (e.g., observe how the casino scenes are badly lit, like a tv movie), unforgivably weak ending, etc…
IMHO, this film and the next two represent the nadir of the Bond series–I blame it at least partly on the contributions of the supremely undertalented Tom Mankiewicz and the burn-out that Broccoli and Saltzman (and Connery!) were obviously suffering in the early seventies.
Of the first seven Bond films, this and YOLT are the two you can miss without missing anything.
Pointless trivia: The original story idea was for Lazenby’s Bond to encounted Auric Goldfinger’s twin brother.
Slight hijack if I may.
I’m a big fan of actor Ed Bishop, (I run a e-mail list fan club for him, as a matter of fact )who played Straker on UFO and Klaus in this Bond movie (and the Hawaii radar operator in YOLT)
Here’s what he had to say about his Diamonds role as Klaus Hergersheimer. :
Ed: "I had a tiny tiny part as a character whose name was Klaus Hergersheimer. And there is a sequence when Bond sneaks into this dome, out in the middle of the desert. You know he wants to find out what these bad guys are doing there. And the first guy he sees inside the dome is me, Klaus, and I am walking down the aisle. And I see that he does not have a radiation shield. So I say ‘Excuse me where is your radiation shield?’. He says, ‘well I am waiting for you guys to send me one’ quick as a flash. No flies on Bond. (Laughter) So I have my nameplate on and he gets my name from my nameplate. So I say, well you are lucky I happen to have a spare, so I give him a spare. So he goes down the corridor and gets a white coat and goes into this lab where all the bad guys are and says, ‘I am Klaus Hergersheimer, and I am checking radiation shields.’ So he does this 360-degree pan with the camera and gets all the input that he wants. Then he goes out the door and I immediately come in the next door and say, ‘I am Klaus Hergersheimer and I am checking radiation shields’ so then they start to move in on me thinking that I am a phoney. Now Klaus Hergersheimer is not the easiest word to say in show business so now after they have set up this scene which goes on for around a minute and a half, they do this pan and he says I am Klaus Hergersheimer and goes out the door. I come in and say, “Hi I am Klaus Hergerschmeyer”.
Much laughter.
Ed: " You can imagine the embarrassment in front of this whole Bond crew. Actually I must throw in something here. I blew two takes on that, I don’t know why. But after every take that I blew, Sean Connery he could sense my embarrassment, he would say in a very loud voice ‘Oh I am sorry Peter’ (that’s Peter the director) ‘I was way off my mark there, we would have to go again anyway’. He made the blame look like it was on him. Which I thought was very creditworthy. It was very terrifying you know. I would be standing behind the door with my clipboard waiting. I would hear Derek Cracknell the first assistant say, ‘turn over, sound running’ and then we hear a guy say ‘mark it’ and then the clapper board comes in and the director says ‘action’. So after the first two takes, we goes through all this 'turn over, sound running, mark it, clapper board, scene whatever it was take four and then the director said, ‘Klaus Hergersheimer, Action!’ Oh talk about trauma! What a way to make a living"
FF: “In, 1993 I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Connery. Now you were on location with him, is he really such a nice fella?”
Ed: "Yes he really is, he is together, he is secure, he is kind, very generous and very conscientious. We had a little scene to make and we ended up behind some closed doors and he turned to me and he really meant it, ‘well how did you feel about that scene, did it go, did it seem to work to you?’ Here is a guy with a million pounds in the bank, an international star and he is worrying about a little tiny scene and he was actually genuine which is a very rare quality. Because most people of that stature they sometimes have a tendency not to care. He is a guy who really cares about his craft.
Hijack ends.
FWIW, I have all the episodes of UFO* on DVD.
So late coming to this thread that just about everything has been said. However, I’ll say that I’ve always liked this one, despite its campiness. Connery really seems to be phoning in his performance this time.
I never understood Tiffany’s transformation… she starts out as a tough, independent operator and ends the movie as a typical ditzy damsel in distress.
Great line: Felix Leiter is checking Peter Frank’s dead body for the diamonds, and says to Bond, “I know the diamonds are hidden somewhere, but where?”
Bond whispers, “Alimentary, my dear Mr. Leiter.”
It’s okay, av8rmike. You can be the first to reply to Live and Let Die. 
It was nice to see Bond driving an American muscle car.
Wasn’t James Gray The Man With No Neck?
I also seem to recall Jill St. John asking Bond if he prefers blondes or brunettes; he sort of shrugs and says: “As long as collar and cuffs match…”
TBS here in the states ran Diamonds are Forever in their Dinner & a Movie show, and had Bruce Glover/ Mr. Wint (the non-bald guy – can’t remember who was who) on as a guest host. Bruce talked about filming the movie, and he remarked that Sean Connery thought that he and Putter Smith really were gay (they aren’t), and was a little creeped out by them. Bruce knew this, and decided to have some fun with Connery. In the scene where he and Putter are placing Connery in the car trunk, in one of the takes, Bruce mutters, “I think I’m getting emotionally involved,” loud enough for him to hear, and Connery develoepd a wide-eyed “oh, shit” look.
Connery found out later what was going on, but I can’t remember what he said to Bruce about it. I do remember he took it well.
–Patch