Category Archives: Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast

With Sean Connery increasingly restless as James Bond, Eon Productions traded him out for George Lazenby for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969). For some, Lazenby’s one shot at the role represents a sad waste, a road not taken. I’m with those who say we were better off with Roger Moore. There are flashes where Lazenby connects with the role — when he’s confronting Diana Rigg in an early scene, when he’s fleeing from SPECTRE and it looks like his time has run out — but most of the time he’s as bland as can be. It’s a shame because most of the movie is good. But a good movie with a bad Bond is not going to be a good Bond movie.

In the teaser, Bond saves Tracy (Diana Rigg) from suicide—drowning herself—only to get attacked (by her father’s goons, apparently). He beats them but Teresa’s gone, leaving Bond quipping “this never happened to the other guy.” Cue the theme, which affirms series continuity by showing clips from the previous films between the silhouetted girls.

It’s been two years since You Only Live Twice and two years in the series too. At the start of the film, M pulls Bond off the hunt for Blofeld (“A license to kill is useless if you can’t set up a target.”). Bond dictates a resignation letter to Moneypenny but to the relief of both Bond and M, she switches it to a request for vacation.

In Europe, Bond encounters Tracy at the baccarat table, pays off her debts and suggests she be more careful. Tracy: “People who want to live play it safe.” She invites Bond up to her room, where a goon jumps him again, then she meets him in his own room where a now-suspicious Bond slaps her around before they make love.

Tracy leaves the next morning but her father Draco, a crimelord, meets with 007 and suggests marrying Tracy could cure her self-destructive urges (the assumption sex with Bond is a cure for suicidal tendencies is the film’s weakest point). Bond values his single-guy freedom and says no.

With Draco’s help, Bond locates Blofeld hiding in a fortress in the alps, and infiltrates it posing as a herald from Britain’s college of arms (we learn during this film that the Bond family motto is “the world is not enough.”). Blofeld is obsessed with proving himself a nobleman by blood and wants to show the college his documentation. Despite the two having met in the previous film, Number One doesn’t recognize him (Dahl ignored film continuity in adapting the book, which was Blofeld’s first meeting with his nemesis). The clinic has a cadre of beautiful patients, who despite thinking Bond isn’t interested in girls (I don’t know what 1960s subtext I’m missing that gives them that idea) hit on him and soon discover otherwise. It turns out Blofeld has brainwashed the women to unleash sterility-inducing into crops and food animals all over the world, getting amnesty and the title in return for the cure. He locks Bond up but 007 escapes (it’s a very good sequence) and with Draco and Tracy’s help, thwarts Blofeld. James and Tracy admit they love each other and marry. Bond retires from MI6 but as he and Tracy drive off on their honeymoon, Blofeld pulls a driveby. Tracy dies. As one of my Bond books says, if Connery had played the scene (“There’s no hurry you see—we have all the time in the world.”) there wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house. Lazenby not so much.

Like the later For Your Eyes Only and Living Daylights, this comes across as a back-to-basic film after the previous two Conneries. 007 has no gadgets (other than a kind of portable photocopier he uses to copy information from a safe at one point), the chase sequences are free of gimmicked vehicles and the fights look relatively realistic (though much longer than the previous films). Diana Rigg is irresistibly charming. On the downside, Bond’s visit to the clinic is very draggy and Telly Savalas’ Blofeld seems more the level of a Big Apple crimelord than an international threat.

The movie had potential, but between casting and plot-holes, most of it goes unrealized.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) was the first Bond film I saw. I don’t remember being very impressed. At nine the sexual innuendo was over my head, and the action was mostly confusing (I remember thinking the opening was some sort of commercial as it didn’t seem related to what Bond did afterwards). Watching as an adult, it makes more sense but it’s still not impressive.

The teaser gives us what appears to be a US space mission (even more than Dr. No, this milks the era’s fascination with the space race), perfectly routine until a space vessel shows up and swallows the US craft (in one chilling detail, leaving a spacewalking astronaut floating helplessly). In a subsequent conference, the US accuses Russia, who denies it; the British representative at the conference (much as I hated the book The Man Who Saved Britain, it has a point—why exactly is Britain sitting in?) came from somewhere in the Far East, but the US foolishly doesn’t agree. Cut to James Bond in bed with a woman when a squad of killers busts in and guns him down. It’s startling but after the credits we learn this is M’s plan—with the US ready to go nuclear if the same thing happens to its next launch, Bond’s death will enable him to work more freely. This makes no sense (at no point does Bond gain any advantage from being supposedly dead), but it justifies the title, and the opening so apparently that was good enough.

After a Russian space capsule disappears too, British tracking indicates the rogue spacecraft’s destination is Japan (again, nobody else in the world picks this up). Instead of Felix Leiter, Bond works with Tanaka (Testuro Tamba), head of the Japanese secret service, along with agents Aki (Akiko Makabayashi) and Kissy (Mie Hama). Screenwriter Roald Dahl claimed he wrote the women according to producer Albert Broccoli’s supposedly inflexible formula: a good girl who sleeps with Bond and dies; a Bad Girl Bond seduces who then dies; and a good girl who falls for Bond but doesn’t get laid until the finish. Of course this resembles none of the previous films—was Dahl misremembering, bullshitting or did Broccoli think this was how the previous films went?

The two agents are generic other than being Japanese; possibly Dahl thought that was all the characterization they needed. The only difference is that Aki jumps 007’s bones, Kissy holds out until the end of the film (after spending the climactic fight scene in her underwear, crouching behind Tanaka). They embody Dahl’s Japan, a male fantasy world where women are completely subordinate, as in the scene on the poster where Tanaka’s agents bathe him and Bond both. The bad girl Helga, SPECTRE’s Number 11 (Karin Dor) is more interesting. When Bond tries to seduce her, she beds him but she’s only in it for sex and tries to kill him the next day. It’s a nice twist.

The script generally has lots of chasing and little narrative spine. A vehicle chase involving Bond in a minicopter ducking SPECTRE fliers, falls flat because the copter packs such overwhelming firepower there’s never a real threat. Having Blofeld’s beefy henchman prove Oddjob-tough near the end doesn’t work either: unlike Oddjob, whom we knew going in was a deadly threat, this guy has no buildup—he’s just standing by his boss until the climax.

The climax is interesting, as it involved a ninja army assaulting the enemy base, long before ninjas were a thing in the west (unlike the usual version, these ninjas have no qualms using guns alongside shurikens). The enemy, it turns out, is SPECTRE, plotting to provoke a nuclear war between the US and USSR, after which Communist China will take over. This was made after Mao’s Cultural Revolution had turned China upside down, leaving the West convinced he was more batshit-insane and dangerous than the Russians could ever be.

The best thing in the film is Donald Pleasance’ turn as Blofeld, a creepy cold portrayal of the crime cartel’s Number One. Connery, by contrast, seems uninterested in playing Bond any more (which was the case) so Eon turned to George Lazenby for the next installment.

Few movies have wasted as much talent as the first film adaptation of CASINO ROYALE. Let’s see, we have David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Deborah Kerr and William Holden and behind the scenes Wolf Mankewicz scriptwriting and Val Guest and John Huston directing (rights to poster image reside with current holder).

Fleming had sold the film rights to Casino Royale back in 1955; nothing came of that until producer Charles Feldman bought them. Feldman didn’t have Connery so rather than try to compete with a straight film, he turned it into a send-up (well, he tried). The premise is that after the real James Bond (David Niven) retired, British intelligence kept the super-spy legend alive by handing his name and 007 number to Connery. Or as Niven calls him, ]”that sexual acrobat who leaves a trail  of beautiful women like dead roses behind him.” Now SMERSH (a Russian counterspy agency, but here it’s an international crime cartel like SPECTRE), under the leadership of Dr. Noah, has launched attacks on spies of all nations; with Bond’s replacement missing, will Niven return to the field?

After M (John Huston) dies, Niven-Bond does indeed return and takes over MI6. He escapes several SMERSH attempts on his life, including a long plodding sequence where a SMERSH agent (Kerr) tries to seduce or kill him. After that, plot goes out the window — or alternately, there are just too many plots lying around undeveloped.

•Bond’s nephew Jimmy (Woody Allen) narrowly escapes a firing squad (probably the funniest bit in the film) then vanishes until the film’s finish.

•As SMERSH uses women to trap spies, Bond trains a man to resist the charms of any woman, then the film forgets he exists.

•Bond recruits his daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) to spy on Le Chiffre, but that plot goes nowhere too. And how can Bond have had an affair with Mata Hari, a WW I spy, when neither he nor Mata Bond are old enough?

The main plot, to the extent there is one, involves Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) recruiting baccarat expert Evelyn (Peter Sellers) to beat Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) who’s been embezzling SMERSH funds (unlike the book, it’s hard to see how this block’s SMERSH’s plans). But this plotline plods along too, with long stretches of Andress/Sellers flirtation, lengthy bits where Welles performs some stage magic, then a psychedelic, surreal sequence in which Le Chiffre tries to break Evelyn’s mind and get the money back.

None of which has any connection with the climax. First it turns out that Jimmy is Dr. Noah; his evil master plan is to replace the world’s leaders with robots and to unleash a bioweapon that makes all women beautiful and kills any man taller than he is. However one of his uncle’s agents (Daliah Lavi) slips a super-bomb in pill form into Allen’s glass … and before it blows up we get a madcap climax which includes George Raft, Frankenstein’s monster, cowboys, Native Americans (it’s like the climax of Blazing Saddles but it isn’t funny), then everyone dies and goes to Heaven except for Jimmy (he goes to The Other Place).

It’s bad on every level with almost every scene a clunker (Allen manages to be funny in his brief bits, which are pure Allen). The most interesting idea is that Niven despises womanizing spies and spies who use gadgets, but like everything else, there’s no payoff. We still get the Q-and-gadgets scene that’s now part of the Bond formula, and as Niven gets squeezed out by all the extraneous goings on, there’s no way for him to really show how different his Bond is. Of course they did try having Niven fend off a bevy of sexy SMERSHers during his run-in with Kerr, and that fell flat, so I doubt it makes a difference.

There are films so bad you have to see them. This one is so bad you should avoid it like the plague.

Rewatching THUNDERBALL (1965) it’s easy to see that it’s the original SPECTRE film (it’s based on an unsuccessful film script Fleming wrote with Kevin McClory that Fleming then novelized). All rights to image remain with current holder.

In Dr. No, SPECTRE only figures late in the game, when No reveals who he’s working for. In this film, early on, Largo (Adolfo Celi), SPECTRE’s Number Two, reports to a SPECTRE board meeting. Here we listen to members report on their various projects including blackmail, murder and drug-dealing; in a nice touch, there’s a reference to assassinating a French scientist who defected to the USSR, showing SPECTRE really doesn’t take sides in the Cold War. We also learn Largo’s project involves stealing a nuclear-armed fighter from NATO then blackmailing the US and UK into a $100 million payoff. All of this is observed by an effectively creepy half-hidden Number One (edited because I said he was creepier than Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice, and on rewatching that realized I was wrong) who demonstrates how little patience he has with failure.

Another distinctive SPECTRE element is that agents wear rings with a distinctive octopus symbol (the octopus was a popular symbol for years for sinister, grasping organizations). I presume it was part of the original concept for the group, but it wasn’t seen in the previous films, or IIRC in any of the later ones until Daniel Craig’s Spectre.

The treatment of the Bond girls of the film is interesting. Well not so much Domino (Claudine Auger), Largo’s mistress, who’s a standard Bond Girl except for killing Largo at the climax (revenge for him killing her brother). But then there’s Patricia (Molly Peters), a masseuse at the health spa where Bond is recuperating at the start of the film (it’s where he stumbles over SPECTRE’s scheme). Like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, she physically pushes Bond away when he tries groping her. After a SPECTRE agent sets one of the spa machines to kill Bond, however, Patricia is horrified she’ll be blamed. Rather than tell her who’s at fault, Bond uses her fear to pressure her into putting out. It’s an unpleasant, ugly scene even though (of course) she really enjoys it (the film emphasizes her dismay when Bond abruptly dumps her afterwards).

Martine Beswick is Paula, a British agent assisting Bond (her second role in the series following From Russia With Love). The relationship is surprisingly professional—he doesn’t try to bed her, she’s not asking—but perhaps unsurprisingly she winds up dead. Finally we have Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), a SPECTRE agent who kills without a qualm, seduces Bond to trap him—he describes her as so wild in bed, she should be caged in a zoo—and sneers at the very idea Bond’s sexual prowess can turn her. Unsurprisingly she dies too.

The sneering scene surprised me when I last watched this because the only Bad Girl Bond had really turned was Pussy Galore (Tatiana in From Russia With Love is more neutral than bad). I think it’s a sign of how quickly the Bond formula had become accepted in pop culture. Similarly, he gets away in the teaser by use of a gimmick car without any explanation for why his car has bulletproof shields and water cannons. No explanation is needed.

Unlike Goldfinger, Bond is once again respectful of M, and there’s no boinking Domino at the end. The CIA picks up Bond and Domino and carries them to safety, though sex is clearly in the offing for later.

As far as quality goes, this is a big drop from Goldfinger. The guest cast isn’t as strong (Largo’s killers are a bland lot, unlike Oddjob), and the movie is slower and more episodic than its predecessors. The fight scenes are getting bigger, but not better and the climax is flat: Bond’s not fighting alone but part of a full NATO assault on the bad guys, and the final showdown with Largo comes after the nuclear threat is canceled out.

It’s not an unwatchable film, but the Connery years have now passed their peak.

Where From Russia With Love, in hindsight, departed from the Bond formula, GOLDFINGER (1964) is, of course, the film that crystallized it, including the bad parts.

Unlike the first two films, this opens with the now-standard teaser (as in many later films, it’s unrelated to the main plot) Bond snorkels into a harbor somewhere in Latin America, his breathing apparatus disguised by fake seagull on his head. He blows up a heroin-processing plant some would-be revolutionary is counting on for finance, sheds his diving suit to reveal a white tuxedo underneath, then dodges a couple of killers before the credits (which include Shirley Bassey singing the classic theme song).

M sends Bond on vacation to Miami, which Bond correctly guesses is setting him up for something: CIA agent Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) tells Bond M is interested in Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), a British gold dealer (unusually for the Connery films, not a SPECTRE agent). Bond discovers Goldfinger’s escort, Jill (Shirley Eaton) is helping him cheat at gin rummy. Bond sees to it Goldfinger loses; Goldfinger’s henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) knocks Bond out and kills Jill.When Bond subsequently plays Goldfinger at golf, the businessman cheats again (showing how far he falls below Bond, the Gentleman Spy) but Bond tricks him and wins. 007 pursues  Goldfinger to Europe, gets captured, then taken to Kentucky, where Goldfinger plans to detonate a dirty bomb inside Ft. Knox. His backer, mainland China, will see the US economy crippled; Goldfinger’s own gold reserves will go up in value. Fortunately Bond seduces Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Goldfinger’s pilot (a lesbian in the novel), who tips off Felix in time for the U.S. army to move in.

The film is great fun, and Oddjob, Pussy and Goldfinger make for great villains. The plot is a cool one, changed from the book in which Goldfinger just wanted to rob Ft. Knox (criticism of the book becomes Bond’s explanation of how impossible a robbery would be). Rewatching, however, makes me appreciate it’s far from perfect. Bond’s seduction of Pussy is sexual assault—unlike the Bond girls in the previous films, Pussy tries to fight Bond off before she melts. Goldfinger has really no reason not to kill Bond when he’s captured, and none at all to shackle him to the nuke rather than just shooting him — it’s the cliche Austin Powers and Kingsmen both mock, of the villain who loses because he insists on killing Bond in some clever way (Dr. No and Grant in the previous films had at least a slight rationale). And the only reason Bond knows Goldfinger’s plan is because he spies on Goldfinger revealing it to the mob bosses assisting him. But as Goldfinger then kills the mobsters he had no reason to reveal his agenda, other than plot requirements.

Bond is also surprisingly ineffective here. He can’t save Jill from Goldfinger, nor does he save her sister, Tilly (Tania Mallett) who tries to kill Goldfinger. The gimmicked Austin Martin he drives doesn’t help him escape Goldfinger’s henchmen. Oddjob kicks Bond’s butt repeatedly and Bond can’t disarm the nuke alone. He spends a large part of the movie locked up and can’t escape. If not for his sexual prowess, he’d have failed.

The new formula elements include Q kvetching about how hard Bond is to work with; background gadget testing in Q’s lab; the Bond Girl with the suggestive name; the gadget-laden car; Bond snarking some at M. An old formula element is Bond once again outranking Felix, even though much of the operation takes place on American soil and targets the American gold economy.

The movie was the blockbuster that established the Bond series and kicked off “Bondmania” or “Bondage,” the Bond fervor of the 1960s. Spies had never been so cool before, and never would be again (not even in the Bond series, I think).