I have watched again the three other performances of Sean Connery as James Bond in Thunderball, You only Live Twice and Diamonds are Forever, together with the solitary performance of Gorge Lazenby as Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with all four films continuing to be based on original novels and this writing will be devoted to accounts of each film and the progress of the genre and the Bond character.
It has been a day of mixed fortunes (November 24th 2012) in that I have eaten well, too much and not exercised as I should but I have made good progress in sorting out the papers of in my involvement in various committees and services in relation to the misuse of drugs, HIV infection and the illness of Aids, at National, Regional and Local Level, although I am yet to find all the papers, and I will need to acquire more lever arch files to accommodate. It is a task I have put off for years after I managed to mix up the previously sorted papers in the move from Sunderland to here. I devoted a couple of hours searching on Sunday morning after watching the Andrew Marr Current Affairs Programme which included South Shields Member of Parliament, David Miliband looking as if he has found is old self and a political role on the front line rather than the front bench to quote him. It was good to see him confident and with renew political vigour.
I was not as alarmed as some by a Mail on Sunday allegation that Cameron would not implement any Leveson proposal for any from of legal framework for the new Press Media organisation as part of a campaign support by the print media and appearing to have the support from Marr and his Sunday Paper covering guests. Shame on you Andrew you have gone down significantly in my estimation. It was also good to see David Miliband squarely behind the UK’s involvement in Europe, albeit in a reformed Europe and relationship, two subjects, Leveson and Europe where Labour should be able to drive a great wedge or stake into the Coalition. The media continued to successfully Lobby the General Public over the week building up the pressure and getting 80 Tories to add their weight against statutory underpinning of the proposed new complaint’s system.
I also watched the first half of another Sunderland debacle at home on Sky but the rest of the sport available did not appeal in terms of my other priorities for the day as India had recovered in the second test after a bad start against England although with Kevin Petersen back the situation looked more positive. England went on to win by 10 wickets after some amazing bowling by Panasar and Swann
-I should also record that earlier in the week I somehow managed to rotate the main screen of the desk top 90 degrees and this took about an hour to work out it was nothing to do with the task bar or screen resolution on the monitor. I eventually solved the problem although how I fond the right change screen and frame was not recorded or remembered. Also watched yesterday Strictly come Dancing and Merlin (where the machinations of Morgana who has possessed the Queen continues and Merlin nearly dies and young man who betrayed him does expire in preventing Arthur being murdered and the ruler of one of the five kingdom, in theory against Morgana but who is in league with her), I feel a series climax on the way. Hunted ended but for a season I believe because of so many questions, still? I will write up another time. Now to the Bond.
The battles with Spectre continued in Thunderball, although this time the adversary air Number 2, Emilo Largo, at a meeting of the group boasts that he will increase the coffers by a couple of hundred million. This is after one of those assembled is executed because of pocketing some of the profits. All those involved at the top are men. One is missing, dead and whose funeral is attended by Bond in the opening prequel and who then gets to the chateau of the widow and confronts “her” knowing it is really him so after a fight Bonds kills and leaves the villa wearing a jet pack which led to discussions in the media if this was the future of personal travel.
Bond recuperates at a health clinic where apart from a casual sex interest(a physio played by Molly Peters) he comes across the murder of a member of NATO who was due to observe a UK plane with two nuclear weapon bombs on a training flight. A lookalike takes the place of the dead man and kills the rest of the crew with gas and the plane lands in the sea, is camouflaged in an open sea grotto below sharks with the bombs removed. NATO is asked to pay £100 million in flawless uncut Diamonds (to herald Diamond are Forever?). Failure to meet the demand will lead to the destruction of a major city in the UK or USA.
All the 00 agents attend a meeting with M and again the series appears to place the British intelligence service above those of the US and the Europeans. The agents are allocated sectors of the world to search for evidence of the location of the bombs with Bond given Canada but fortunately he recognises that he has seen the NATO man dead at the clinic and persuades M ( played in all the early films by Bernard Lee) that he should go to Nassau where he has already researched that the man’s sister is located. There he finds that she, Domino, has become the mistress of Emilio Largo who has a villa estate with two swimming pools. In one he keeps killer sharks which he subsequently tells Bond he captures for institutions. Largo also has a fast luxury yacht and his first encounter with Bond is at the Blackjack table and Bond creates an impression by winning and then dancing with Domino who is forced to leave by Largo who invites Bond to come for a meal at their home.
While Bond does not know that Largo is Spectre’s number 2 we the audience recognise him from the Prequel boast of the value of the latest extortion project.
On return to his hotel room Bond senses there is an intruder in his suite and silences Felix Leiter ( played by a different actor than previous with the name of Rip Van Nutter, I kid you not) the CIA agent and friend ( brought out of retirement to assist), before giving the Spectre man a beating and sending him back to Largo who feeds him to the sharks for incompetence.
In this film Q ( also played by Bernard Llewelyn in all the films) arrives with his latest gadgets which have become the trade mark for series and which the audience have come to expect. With amazing foresight Q creates devices which become life savers in the particular venture although his creations are for use by the service in general.
Bond investigates the yacht’s underside with the underwater camera supplied by Q and notes that it has an underneath compartment in which the nuclear weapons could be stored.
Bond has been assisted by local agent Paula who is captured by Largo’s own female assistant who specialises in using surgical knives which she threatens to use unless Paula reveals what she knows. The girl commits suicide with a cyanide capsule before Bond can rescue her. In escaping from the House (Palmyra) Bond falls into the pool fighting with a security man, which Largo covers before releasing the sharks via a connecting tunnel. Bond uses this to escape while the sharks finish off the security man and because the pool is covered Largo does not realise what has happened.
The next action involves a Junkanoo which at the time I thought I had misheard but upon further investigation transpires to be the regional name of a street carnival/parade usually at Christmas and New Year in the Bahamas but also across the water in Florida and Key West which given Fleming’s location in the West Indies may have led him to calling the chief villain Largo after the Humphrey Bogart film Key Largo. The Junkaroo in the film was especially created with the help of the locals as filming occurred in a different part of the year to the actual event and it was a mark of the success of the Bond films at a time when cinema audiences were in rapid decline with the growth of coloured television and the video player that the production company was prepared to arrange for so many extras including the those on the streets and at the Kiss Kiss Club where Bond visits in an attempt to escape from the Spectre pursuers led by Largo’s assistant who is killed by one of her men because of a quick turn around by Bond.
With time running out before the ransom has to be paid Bond and Leiter successfully locate the sunken Vulcan Bomber and he brings back items worn by the brother of Domino worn by the man who had impersonated him and who had been killed and also left in the plane when he had become greedy. although one suspects he would have been killed in any event Bond uses the personal items to tell Domino that he brother is dead and was killed the orders of Leiter after he has encountered her swimming underwater once more and they have had undersea sex (implied).
After narrowly escaping death again Bond persuades Domino to return to the yacht with a Geiger counter disguised as a camera to establish if the bombs are on board. She is discovered by Largo and imprisoned on the boat. Bond has gone to investigate the house via sea steps, advised by Domino beforehand, and waited for Largo and his men to set off underwater to retrieve the weapons and joins them disguised as one of the men who he has killed. Bond is caught as the weapons are retrieved and imprisoned within an Atoll having swallowed a capsule homing device so that when the search helicopter arrives with Leiter he is able to use the miniature flare gun, another of Q’s devices to provide his precise location and they send down a winch to rescue. He has also needed a four minute miniature breathing device.
There is then a prolonged underwater sea battle between Largo and his men and Bond, Leitner and his men with many on both sides being killed or injured by hand harpoons. Largo escapes back to his yacht pursued by Bond and Lieter but makes a further escape after creating a smoke screen in which a smaller faster craft emerges as part of the main vessel. On it is the scientist involved with the nuclear devices who rescue Domino which Bond managing to get on board and there is the final fight between the two men as they also wrestle to control the craft from hitting various rocks and bits of coast before Bond and the girl jump as Largo is blown up with the craft. In the Coda Bond and Domino are in a life raft from which he jettisons what appears to be a weather balloon but which is in fat a winch line so when the balloon is caught by an aircraft, they are winch together into the plan.
There is the standard flirtation scene with Miss Moneypenny, M’s Secretary played by Lois Maxwell while the establish actor Roland Culver plays the foreign Secretary and not the Defence Minister, as one might expect, on Operation Thunderball. Tom Jones sings Thunderball, added after the film was completed because the original song did not include the film title which was originally sung by Shirley Bassey, but then rerecorded and released two decades later by Dionne Warwick. The $9 million budget indicating the ability to send even greater productions costs yields nearly £150 million world wide ad remains the most financially successful of the Bond films in real terms. The visual effects won an Academy award and was even voted best film in Germany. I thought it was boring and outcome predicable and demonstrated that the style and style features together with exotic locations now replace character substances.
In the film we again only hear the voice of Ernst Stavros Blofeld who runs SPECTRE and who hold a white cat with a diamond collar, It was in this ninth book by Fleming that Blofield was in fact first introduced as the head of Spectre and he is go reappear played by different actors in You only Live twice also with Connery and On her Majesty’s Secret Service which I am also reviewing in this piece. The film’s prequel is an extra and Bond is sent to the clinic by M because he has been drinking and smoking excessively and his condition is classed as unfit, an issue to the fore in the latest Bond Skyfall.
However the basic story lines are similar with Domino using a hand harpoon gun to kill Largo although she saves Bond in the under water cave where he has been overpowered by and exhausted from his fight with Largo. There other many differences with Domino’s brother stealing the plane and the bombs, Largo’s female assistant and the street parade. Lietner did not participate in the action sequences because he had already become disabled losing arm, hand and a leg in an earlier book, still to be made into a film.
It is also fair to comment that Fleming had progressed Bond through the use of witty one liners which became film standards and are often tongue in cheek plays on words.
In the previous eight books the Russian SMERSH was the enemy.
According to Wikipedia Fleming used the Commander Crabb death incident when he disappeared in Portsmouth Harbour going to inspect the underside of a Russian vessel for the scene where Bond does the same to Largo’s yacht. Commander Crabbe had made his name in Gibraltar in the Second World War leading a team of underwater frogmen and features in the British film, The Silent Enemy, a DVD acquired because it featured Gibraltar. Significantly the Silent Enemy film has an under sea battle between frogmen on both sides using miniature under water craft. What I found most interesting is that Fleming originally wrote a script for a Bond film with another screen writer but the project was rejected nd then Fleming used parts of the proposed film script to write the book. This led to a civil action in which Fleming settled a time when he had a serious heart attack leading to his subsequent death.
It remains puzzling the studio decided that the next film should in theory be called You only live twice the 12rth Bond and the last published book before his death although two others works were issued afterwards. The film bears little relationship to the book and there were lots of complications because it was written after Her majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds are Forever both of which were to made after this film and both of which contain important events which related to the main content of the book. The studio and their writers were caught between continuity issues in the film series and in the book with the most notable that in the book Bond starts off a demoralised wreck of a human being demoted and outposted to Japan on a diplomatic mission where by accident he find Blofield, the Head of Spectre and kills him. There is a rationale behind the series of evens in the book but not in the film made by Connery after the studio upped his fee and on the understanding it would be the last film because he was bored and the work, especially promoting the film, prevented his involvement in other more serious and professionally rewarding opportunities.
It can be argued that the UK Secret Service had no business getting involved in what was escalating conflict between the USSR and the USA, albeit caused by Spectre on behalf of an unstated Asian power. What happens in the film is that a second USA space vehicle disappears when in orbit around the earth when tracked and then overtaken by an unknown other space craft. We the audience know that this second craft is bigger with jaw like opening at the front which captures the USA space craft rather than destroying it and then returns to an unknown base where the astronauts are imprisoned. Why the USA space craft is not just blown up and why the men are captured is beyond comprehension and is one of a series of ludicrous aspects of this appalling yet successful money making film. One of the spacemen is killed when his lifeline is cut by the capturing craft. The USA is convinced this is a Russian effort as the only other power with space capabilities, but the British say that their evidence is that space craft involved returned to somewhere off the Japanese mainland and propose to send their man Bond,
The film title is explained by the manufactured idea that in order to carry out his inquiries Bond should have a fake death. The cinema goers see Bond having an affair with an Asian girl who pushes a lever which raises the bed into the wall with Bond inside which machine guns riddle with bullets. The bed is lowered to show Bond resting in a pool of blood but the upper body is intact a clue to everyone but the most stupid in the audience that he is not dead and that the burial at sea is intended for watching enemy eyes. He is brought into a submarine where M has an office with Moneypenny where we see that he has a breathing apparatus inside the canvas covering. Bond lives again. In the book Bond is thought to have been killed when the Castle building he has been investigating blows up before which he is has strangled Blofield to death after a fight. When he recovers he has lost his memory and lives with his girlfriend as a fisherman for a long while with demise reported back in the UK. Pregnant she hopes he will marry her and settle down but he continues to wonder about his origins and comes to the conclusion that he must travel to Russia and Vladivostok to find out. The main story has ended when his second life begins while in the film it is a device for his involvement in the main story.
Given that the USA was the main occupying power in Japan the only reason for the UK secret service getting involved was to recover from the shame of its main spies Burgess McClean and Blake being traitors and double agents for the Russians and understandably the American had closed their information channels to the UK as a consequence.
In the film on arrival in Japan in his new persona he is met by Aki the assistant to the young dynamic head of their intelligence service known as Tiger Kanaka. She takes him to see the local MI agent played by the actor who becomes Blofield in the next film. This agent is living the Japanese traditional culture already abandoned by most urban Japanese and he is assassinated before he can reveals all his thoughts and info to Bond. Bond chases and kills the assassin before being taken by Aki to the HQ of Osato chemicals revealed by the MI6 local man to be connected and where he manages to open the safe before escaping from the security guards. After this Aki appears to abandon Bond and rushes off into the underground and along a platform then into a side area and where Bond following suddenly finds the floor opening and in a metal slide down into the secret underground office of the head of the Japanese Secret Service. This is a ludicrous device. The head of the Japanese service is called in both film and book Tiger because Fleming had travelled around Australia with a journalist called Tiger (Saito) who becomes Tenaka and a Richard Hughes who becomes Dikko (Richard) Henderson in the film, the local MI6 agent and was also the character on whom Le Carré based Old Craw in the Honourable Schoolboy.
Tenaka invites Bond to his home where he introduces Bond to being bathed naked by beautiful young women followed by a massage which is undertaken by Aki. Tenaka arranges for Bond to see the head of the chemical firm Dr Osato who knows this is Bond and orders him killed. Bond escapes from the building and in the subsequent car chase, Tenaka has a helicopter lower a large magnet clamp onto the car which is then dropped out of sight into the ocean.
Before this Bond had travelled with Tenaka in his underground office train where the photograph of as cargo ship taken from the safe is analysed. They are able to trace the vessel to where it is docked and reloading in Japan but the location to where the photograph was taken is unknown except that the tourist who took the photo was killed. Why the photo and negative was kept and not destroyed is another ludicrous aspect.
Bond investigates the ship and is captured after a series of fights to wake up in the cabin of a Spectre member, another young woman who begins by torturing Bond for information but ends up his lover and accomplice flying back to the capital on her way to betray the company for more money. She has second thoughts, bails out of the plane which she sets on fire leaving Bond to narrowly escape before it crashes.
It is as this point we are introduced to Blofield who is meeting with representatives of the Government who is paying for Spectre to create a war between the USA and Russia. Blofield want X millions up front and to make the point he gives a demonstration of the power of piranha fish in a pool who strip a large joint meat to the bone in seconds. He then interviews Osato and Helga, feeding Helga to the piranha and ordering Osato to kill Bond or else.
Tenaka finds where the photo of the island was taken but aerial recognisance reveals nothing so Q arrives with Little Nellie a small transportable gyro helicopter with lethal extras including rockets and mini bombs and apparently unlimited fuel as it is able to fly over to the island and engage in a prolonged aerial battle with four helicopters which are destroyed. This is a great and unnecessary blunder by Spectre because it alerts Bond and the two secret services that the island or close to it is important and requires closer examination.
Instead of sending in appropriate forces Bond spend time training in martial arts as part of a Ninja school organised by Tenaka and prepared to land on the island with the 100 men as local fisherman and peasants with again for some unexplained reason Bond has to look like a local as well as dress up as one. This reminds of the make up of Marlon Brando in Tea House of the August Moon( setting up a traditional Geisha establishment).
Before he commences on this part of the mission a further attempt on his life leads to the death of Aki. It is not explained that while the Ninja off to the island on their own Bond needs a local wife other than to show a local marriage ceremony a collective Madam Butterfly style event to the cinema audience. It is rubbish.
A Russian spacecraft has now been taken which inflames tensions between the two superpowers and the USA government brings forward plans for the next launching placing its forces on high alert and warning the Russians to expect retaliation if anything happens to the craft or its men. Bond and his new wife make a visit to the island exploring what appears to be a tunnel access into something underground via the sea but they have to withdraw because of gas. They then climb to the rim of volcano and witness a helicopter disappearing below the lake which they find is made of metal, The girl is sent back to warn the others while Bond waits for the opportunity to enter whatever is underground, There girl is shot at when in the water and disappears under the sea although we are confident she will survive somehow. Bond gets his opportunity, releases the USA astronauts and attempts to replace one of the astronauts setting off to capture the USA spacecraft. He is spotted and revealed to be Bond and typical of the series instead of immediately executing him Blofield wants him to witness his triumph, a failing of every villain in every film and which is irrational action on the part of the baddies. It does not make sense.
The Ninja’s arrive but find there are machine guns in the rim of the volcano and they have to retreat or be lost. Then Bond gets the opportunity to open the roof and they commence to descend but a fierce battle emerges. Blofield seals the unit but prepares to exist and other members of the team begin to exit by a second entrance down a flight of stairs which taken people into the tunnel and out to sea. Bond manages to break into the control centre and abort the rocket just before it captures the USA craft and starts World War 3. Before Blofield leaves he sets of a self destruct explosion so every leave in a panic via the tunnel which involves swimming out to the open sea before the island explodes.
Support planes then drop life craft and Bond the girl get into one and drift into the open sea on their own. Just when Bond thinks he is to consummate their relationship they find that a submarine surfaces with their raft sitting on its hull.
As I have advised all this has nothing to do with the book where the story is very very different. Bond is a broken man after the events in the previous book, drinking and smoking heavily so he is downgraded to 7777 and joins the diplomatic section where he is sent to Japan to negotiate an exchange of information. However his information is of no use so Tiger makes a proposition that he investigate the activities of a Dr Shatterhand and his wife where guests commit suicide at his castle and presumably donate their funds to their host before doing so. Bond is trained as part of the Tanaka team with an attractive assistant Kissy Susuki(!!!) and becomes a mute coal miner despite learning in the film that he obtained a First in oriental languages at Oxford. Dr Shatterhand is in fact Blofield who dresses up as Samurai warrior.
The two fight and Bond strangles Blofeld in a act of personal revenge before blowing up the castle. However Bond is knocked out in the explosion and loses his memory. The girl Kissy takes him off to live as a fisherman on a small island without communications where after getting pregnant she hopes he will marry her and settle down. Bond is said to remain restless until a newspaper articled triggers an interest in going to Russia and the city of Vladivostok because it occurs that he was a former Russian agent! The book was also something of a disaster with the critics and public
Connery was wise to want to leave what had become a travesty of the work of Ian Fleming for naked greed, although if the public had not bought the tickets, then the studio would have soon directed their attention elsewhere as we shall soon see, when the studio attempted to provide a more serious film, it was not the success planned
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with George Lazenby as 007, Diana Rigg as not only his Bond Woman but his legal wife by the end of the film, and Telly Savalas as Blofield, and costing less than previous films at $7 still made of $80 and all things considered was a more serious, less humorous and better film than the last two made with Connery.
Even after four decades my reaction towards Lazenby is the same. It was a noble effort but there was something missing. This was more than the obvious fact that he was not Connery and different. The issue was one of credibility and he did not communicate as the kind of man who would be content with his licence to kill however much the target were justified on behalf of the state and he certainly was not the kind of personality who was able to engage in general killing, albeit usually in self defence, of the enemy in which Bond was required to engage in the film productions and in the books. He was closer to the kind of person who could be a real spy as a man of conscience and integrity, as well as daring and courage I felt he would not survive the selection process for either role and certainly he lacked the sexual charisma to have women want to drop their knickers the moment they came into direct contact
The film begins with Bond in Portugal where he prevents a woman committing suicide on a beach that he happens to be passing noting the sports car and her attractiveness. For some unexplained reason the men supposed to be her security fight with him. Later he sees the same woman at the Casino and she gives the impression of inviting him to her room after he has paid her debts and where he provides caviar and champagne, but she is not there, only the henchmen of her father who kidnap Bond and take him to meet Marc-Angel Draco, the head of a European crime Syndicate Unione Corse. Although he does not appear have a title his daughter does Contessa di Venenzo, presumably she was previously married but why she wanted to take her own life is also not disclosed. The father admits she is a headstrong young woman independent of him but because Bond saved her life and she appears interested in him he suggests marriage with the payment of one million as a dowry. Bond expresses interest but only if he provides a lead to the whereabouts of Blofield. Back in London M does not support Bond’s obsession with Blofield who he has been trying to track down for two years so he resigns although Moneypenny changes his letter to a request for two weeks paid holiday, to save face on both sides. It has to be said that in the films the relationship between Bond and M is a prickly one but while M appears to respect and depend on the work undertaken by Bond, Bond does not appear to have any liking or respect for his boss.
Bond uses the leave to accept an invitation from Draco to attend his birthday party at which his daughter is expected to attend. She is incensed that Bond has been invited and bullies her father to revealing his information about Blofield as a test to see if Bond is really interested in her. They have a genuine romance but then part, although it was not clear to me why there was no continuity except that Bond needs to follow up the lead about Blofeld which involves an unconventional breaking of the safe of the lawyer said to know the whereabouts and created as a visual for the audience. The breakin establishes that Blofield is the head of a clinical research institute at the top of a mountain in Switzerland and is seeking via the lawyer to establish himself as the legitimate Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp, although why he wants to do this is also not explained.
Bond arranges to replace the Sir Hilary Bray, a Scotsman, from the College of Arms and arranges to travel to the Institute to interview the would be Count, inspect the evidence he has assembled and persuade him to journey away from the fortress to the location of the family residence and burials centre for the final verification so he can kill him. At the institute Bond finds that all the patients are attractive sex starved young woman and he finds it difficult to keep up satisfying those who show particular interest. The young women are bossed by a Klebbs type villainous assistant Irma Bunt who rules the girls and keeps the guest under virtual lock and key, although this does not stop Bond getting out of his room and into the beds of some of the young women. During one such encounter Bond discovers that Blofield is using a form of hypnotic mind control to cure the psychological aspects of the allergies but also to take subconscious control for a purpose yet to be disclosed but which they will have no knowledge of, except that the young women come from all parts of the globe as have other patients in the past. Bond has one local contact who attempts to reach him but is captured and tortured before being killed and who reveals that Sir Hilary is Bond. I also have to record that while Isle Steppat is convincing as Bunt Telly Savalas is Telly Savalas and unconvincing as Blofeld.
The course of treatment ends as Christmas approaches and the girls are given a vanity case as a present but told not to touch one item of make up. That none of them or the other women previous trained attempt to do so is another credulity challenge, These item contain bacterial material by which Blofeld on behalf of Spectre intends to hold the world to ransom. Bond manages to escape after being captured but not killed, again begging the question why not and tries to avoid the search being made for him led by Bunt joining the crowds attending a large Christmas fair which includes ice skating, stock car racing and various stalls for food, drink and souvenirs. Fortunately he meets up with the Countess who had been told by her father where he is. He fails to make direct contact with London to warn of what is to happen and the couple get involved in the Stock car race, escape and then have to hold out in a barn because of a snow storm.
In the morning Blofeld and his men all super excellent skiers are making a search of the outlying premises but when they reach the Barn, Bond and the Countess are on skies making their next attempted get away. Blofield sets off an avalanche which traps the couple. Because Bond is not visible it is assumed he had been buried and killed while the Countess is visible and alive and captured, The only justification why she is not killed is that Blofield fancies her and seeks a formal alliance through marriage with her father.
Bond survives and makes his way to London where he finds that the world’s powers are prepared to pay up and M refuses Bond permission to go for Blofeld at the Institute where the tapes are kept which will trigger the women to undertake their assignment if the ransom is not paid. Bond contacts the father of the Countess and they make successful aerial assault on the fortress which they then destroy.
Blofeld escapes using a bobsled on an official run with Bond in close pursuit and Blofeld is shot out of the course and appears to be killed ensnared in a tree branch with Bond making the quip about branching out. For some unbelievable reason he does not check out that the man is dead or ensure that Irma Bunt is rounded up. He has only himself to blame for what happens next. Bond and the Countess are married in a great celebration at which M Moneypenny and Q all attend the wedding and reception provided at great cost and many flourishes by the European head criminal. although in fairness he and his men at the cost of many lives did save humanity from potential extinction.
As the couple set off on their honeymoon and stop to take off the decorations on the car, Blofeld drives past with Bunt firing at them as they pass. The Countess is killed in what is a moving last scene and which makes good much of the rubbish before.
It is as a consequence of this event that You only Live twice , the book, has meaning, explaining the state that Bond is in and why he has been demoted and the good fortune of meeting up with Blofeld and this time ensuring that he is dead by killing him by hand. I should also mention that among the Angels of Death as the young women at the Institute are known and with whom Bond has a relationship are Joanna Lumley and would appear in the New Avengers after Diana Rigg concluded her role in the original series and as did Honour Blackman (Goldfinger). Another Angel was Julie Ege, the former Miss Norway who came to England to improve her knowledge of the language, starred in Up Pompeii with Frankie Howard and a number of Hammar films, and was something of a socialite, if I remember correctly.
The book is the second of the Blofeld trilogy commencing with Thunderball and ending with You only Live twice and not Diamonds are Forever which was the next film and the final Connery although as I have shown the studio altered the storyline in earlier Fleming books to make Smersh Spectre and have Blofeld appear without showing his face.
Whereas in the film it is Bond who searches for Blofeld in the book it is M while Bond believes Spectre has ended and Blofeld with it and he is about to resigns because M refuses to reassign him.
As in film he does save her honour at the gambling table when she cannot pay the accumulating debt. It is after this incident that she attempts to commit suicide and both are taken by her father’s men to see him against their respective wills where the marriage proposition is presented. Bond then agrees to romance the woman but only from wanting her to stop the suicides attempts and while Draco does advise Bond that Blofeld is in Switzerland it is the College of Arms which contacts to advise of the approach of Blofeld to become the Comte. The book explains that Blofeld has had plastic surgery which enable the use of a different actor in the film. Blofield plan is only directed at the UK and Ireland and against the agriculture rather than the civilian population. Apart from the introduction of the Christmas setting and the capture of the countess the rest of the book including the avalanche appears to be faithfully reproduced in the film. Fleming had stayed at a sports club in the Alps which the Nazi’s converted into a research establishment on Asiatic races.
I also learned from Wikipedia that Draco is the nickname given to Sir Francis Drake and which was also the basis for Draco Malfoy in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series where by coincidence I am also viewing again with the first films completed and will form the subject of the next writing after Hunted and other updates on my main work project.
I also discovered in the book Bond does not attempt to present a different personality when playing the role of the representative of the college of Arms and which grates in the film as his performance as a boring upper class English noble did not work at the time, and even more so now.
I also suggest that Lazenby and Rigg do not make a likely couple although I must confess I have always found women like Rigg, Diana Doors, Honour Blackman, Margaret Lockward, Joan Collins and even Elizabeth Taylor as she matured intimidating. Now Jean Simmons, Julie Christie and Jenny Agutter are a different order of class and interest although top of the list of crushes has always been the Europeans Ingrid Bergman and of course Bardot.
And so I come to the last James Bond film made by Connery Diamonds are Forever which became a hit for Shirley Bassey. And in which Charles Gray plays all three version of Blofeld who has not only had extensive plastic surgery but has two other men created in his new likeness,
Ian Fleming wrote the book his fourth in Bond series back in 1956 and was a huge success with several immediate print runs and where he investigated diamond smuggling for a non fiction work published a year later. In the oak Bond is assigned to infiltrate a Diamond smuggling enterprise based in Sierra Leone to Los Vegas in the USA and uses the identity of Peter Franks a country house burglar turned Diamond Smuggler.
Bond meets up with Tiffany Chase, ( Tiffany’s being the well known Jewellers and which reminds that I forgot to add Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn to my list. Tiffany was gang raped as a teenager and understandably is hostile to men. The investigation takes him to the USA where he encounters his friend and now former CIA man Felix Leiter working for the Pinkertons investigating horse racing rigging.
The investigation then takes him to a former Wild West Town, now converted to a tourist resort where after various adventures he escapes with Tiffany using the much used in USA films the railway push cart and with Leiter’s help they get from California to New York and then journey to London on the Queen Elizabeth. During these adventures the couple are tracked by two the Diamond smuggling gang’s killers and fixer’s called Wint and Kidd who kidnap Tiffany before intending to kill her but Bond turns the tables and kills them. Chase reveals the extent of the smuggling as a consequence of her life being saved. Miners are paid by a dentist to smuggle Diamonds out via their mouths and then getting to them to London Paris and on to New York. Bond closes in and kills the man at the top of the enterprise but only after the man has terminated the rest of the diamond line although I assume this exclude Tiffany.
The film bears little relationship to the book although it does also cover a lot of ground and involves Bond with Jill St John now as much for marriages and relationships with a well known number of A listers and other powerful and wealthy men as well as the films Whose been Sleeping in my Bed? The Honeymoon Hotel and the Calling. At sixteen she ran off with and married the heir to a linen fortune and at nineteen she married a racing driver who was the son of Barbara Hutton. She then married the singer Jack Jones and then the actor Robert Wagner having been a couple for the previous eight years. Divorced she is reported to have admitted relationships were Connery, Peter Lawford, Robert Vaughn, Jack Nicholson and Frank Sinatra.
Now to the film where Bond pursing Blofeld thinks he has killed him, but it later transpires to be a look alike. He is then posted to South Africa by M to investigate a Diamond Smuggling ring and where several known operatives have been recently killed. We the audience know that the killers are Wint and Kidd played tongue in cheek and as a comic due who use very creative methods.
Posing as a smuggler Peter Franks, a real fictional character imprisoned in England to enable Bond’s cover, he travels to Amsterdam to meet the link Tiffany Chase. Unfortunately the real Franks escapes and gets to Amsterdam and Bond has to kill him. Bond then take this body to be buried in the USA as his brother followed by Wint and Kidd who are continuing their inventive murderous trail. Bond uses the corpse to smuggle the diamonds.
In the USA Leiter meets Bond and they take the body to a mob run Funeral Home for cremation where the Diamonds are recovered and placed in an urn as the ashes of the deceased. His next task is to take the Diamonds to the next person in the chain who is called Shady Tree who captures Bond and Wint and Kidd place Bond in a coffin and into the crematoria. Fortunately the process is stopped as Shady Tree discovers the Diamonds in the urn are fakes.
Tree is a stand up Comedian performing at the Casino owned by the multi millionaire recluse Willard Whyte one of the most powerful men in the USA who had become a recluse controlling his empire from the top floor of the Hotel. Given that the film was made in 1971 it is interesting that this was still five years before the death of multi millionaire Howard Hughes who had retired to the Days Inn Hotel Las Vegas which he then acquired and ran his empire for the its eighth floor. Hughes was also extremely influential arising from aviation Industries productions, his Film and TV interests and involvement in a wide range of other businesses.
Bond then discovers that Shady Tree has been murdered and enjoying a night at the Casino he meets up with an adventuress called Plenty O’Toole and takes her to his room where gang members are waiting for him and they throw Plenty out of window fortunately into a swimming pool although the intention was to kill her expecting her to be Tiffany Chase.
Because of her near death experience Tiffany decides against stealing the Diamonds for her use and they are passed to the next link in the chain who is followed to Whyte research facility in the desert where Bond discovers they are being used to create a powerful destructive laser refraction device to be sent into space and then controlled from a base elsewhere. Bond is discovered but escapes using a Moon landing buggy and is picked up by Tiffany waiting in a car.
Bond then makes a dramatic entry into the quarters of Whyte It is at this point Bond makes the starling discovery that Whyte has been replaced by Blofeld and a Blofeld lookalike using a voice box machine which makes him sound like Whyte and realise that Blofeld and Spectre are behind the creation of the death and destruction ray. He manages to kill one of the Blofeld’s but this is the lookalike and is rendered unconscious by gas and taken by Wint and Kidd into the desert and placed in one the new water/sewerage pipes with one machine laying the pipes together and another piling the earth back on top. When Bond regains consciousness he finds himself sealed into the system and a terrified mouse reveals the oncoming of a machine which he tries to out run before working out he can squeeze on top and stop it by fusing its electrical circuit and then making his way to the surface via one of the escape maintenance hatches.
Bond is now able to try and rescue Whyte who is locked away below an isolated desert Home guarded by two energetic martial arts fanatics, Bumper and Thumper, and he just about gets the better of them before the cavalry arrive. With he help of Whyte he identifies the likely location of Blofeld’s latest control centre where the senior scientist believes they will bring peace to the world, demonstrating the power of the Laser by eliminating war heads and other old war weaponry held by the USA, Russia and China. Blofeld has escaped from the Hotel called the Whyte House disguised as an elderly woman but is recognised by Tiffany who tries to give chase but is captured.
Blofield makes his extortion demands threatening to destroy a city while Bond makes his way and boards the sea base oil rig HQ armed with a tape which he hopes to switch for the one controlling the Satellite laser which White’s company has placed into orbit believing they were doing so under instruction from Whyte. Bond also finds Tiffany on the rig in a swimsuit and who appears to have out in her lot in with Blofeld. When Bond manages to swish the tapes he puts the real one inside Tiffany’s Bikini but she misunderstands what he has done and later proudly boasts she has switched the tapes again. Leiter and a force arrive in numbers and commence to attack the base while Blofeld attempts to escape in a mini sub to be launched into the sea by a crane, but Bond takes control of the crane and uses the mini sub to smash into the control room which explodes and prevents the laser from working, Bond and Tiffany falls into the sea from which they are rescued. The fate of Blofeld is left open.
In the film’s Coda the couple are making their way back to Europe in a cruise liner when unexpectedly they are presented by a banquet in their cabin on behalf of the captain but delivered by Wint and Kidd who have a Bombe Surprise to end the meal. Fortunately they are detected with one setting himself ablaze and the other blown up by the device he planned for the couple.
Connery had to be offered over one million to agree to play Bond again after Lazenby said to have made it clear he only wanted to play the role once after falling out with the film people because they controlled his performance along with the story. While Lazenby performed and participated in the creation of other film and TV productions he has not achieved the kind of lasting work which led to his decision. He was married twice, the most recent to Pam Shriver and the couple have three children before divorcing.
Jill St John was originally cast for the brief part of Plenty O‘Toole with Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway considered for the role among others.
In my judgement this is the worst of the Bond films to that time as none of the characters engaged or produced any sympathy.
The new Bond was Roger Moore who developed the role into a Tongue in Cheek character exploiting all the worst but popular money making aspects of the role created by Hollywood. The contrast with the creative genius and integrity of the Harry Potter series could not be greater as I plan to soon demonstrate.
It has been a day of mixed fortunes (November 24th 2012) in that I have eaten well, too much and not exercised as I should but I have made good progress in sorting out the papers of in my involvement in various committees and services in relation to the misuse of drugs, HIV infection and the illness of Aids, at National, Regional and Local Level, although I am yet to find all the papers, and I will need to acquire more lever arch files to accommodate. It is a task I have put off for years after I managed to mix up the previously sorted papers in the move from Sunderland to here. I devoted a couple of hours searching on Sunday morning after watching the Andrew Marr Current Affairs Programme which included South Shields Member of Parliament, David Miliband looking as if he has found is old self and a political role on the front line rather than the front bench to quote him. It was good to see him confident and with renew political vigour.
I was not as alarmed as some by a Mail on Sunday allegation that Cameron would not implement any Leveson proposal for any from of legal framework for the new Press Media organisation as part of a campaign support by the print media and appearing to have the support from Marr and his Sunday Paper covering guests. Shame on you Andrew you have gone down significantly in my estimation. It was also good to see David Miliband squarely behind the UK’s involvement in Europe, albeit in a reformed Europe and relationship, two subjects, Leveson and Europe where Labour should be able to drive a great wedge or stake into the Coalition. The media continued to successfully Lobby the General Public over the week building up the pressure and getting 80 Tories to add their weight against statutory underpinning of the proposed new complaint’s system.
I also watched the first half of another Sunderland debacle at home on Sky but the rest of the sport available did not appeal in terms of my other priorities for the day as India had recovered in the second test after a bad start against England although with Kevin Petersen back the situation looked more positive. England went on to win by 10 wickets after some amazing bowling by Panasar and Swann
-I should also record that earlier in the week I somehow managed to rotate the main screen of the desk top 90 degrees and this took about an hour to work out it was nothing to do with the task bar or screen resolution on the monitor. I eventually solved the problem although how I fond the right change screen and frame was not recorded or remembered. Also watched yesterday Strictly come Dancing and Merlin (where the machinations of Morgana who has possessed the Queen continues and Merlin nearly dies and young man who betrayed him does expire in preventing Arthur being murdered and the ruler of one of the five kingdom, in theory against Morgana but who is in league with her), I feel a series climax on the way. Hunted ended but for a season I believe because of so many questions, still? I will write up another time. Now to the Bond.
The battles with Spectre continued in Thunderball, although this time the adversary air Number 2, Emilo Largo, at a meeting of the group boasts that he will increase the coffers by a couple of hundred million. This is after one of those assembled is executed because of pocketing some of the profits. All those involved at the top are men. One is missing, dead and whose funeral is attended by Bond in the opening prequel and who then gets to the chateau of the widow and confronts “her” knowing it is really him so after a fight Bonds kills and leaves the villa wearing a jet pack which led to discussions in the media if this was the future of personal travel.
Bond recuperates at a health clinic where apart from a casual sex interest(a physio played by Molly Peters) he comes across the murder of a member of NATO who was due to observe a UK plane with two nuclear weapon bombs on a training flight. A lookalike takes the place of the dead man and kills the rest of the crew with gas and the plane lands in the sea, is camouflaged in an open sea grotto below sharks with the bombs removed. NATO is asked to pay £100 million in flawless uncut Diamonds (to herald Diamond are Forever?). Failure to meet the demand will lead to the destruction of a major city in the UK or USA.
All the 00 agents attend a meeting with M and again the series appears to place the British intelligence service above those of the US and the Europeans. The agents are allocated sectors of the world to search for evidence of the location of the bombs with Bond given Canada but fortunately he recognises that he has seen the NATO man dead at the clinic and persuades M ( played in all the early films by Bernard Lee) that he should go to Nassau where he has already researched that the man’s sister is located. There he finds that she, Domino, has become the mistress of Emilio Largo who has a villa estate with two swimming pools. In one he keeps killer sharks which he subsequently tells Bond he captures for institutions. Largo also has a fast luxury yacht and his first encounter with Bond is at the Blackjack table and Bond creates an impression by winning and then dancing with Domino who is forced to leave by Largo who invites Bond to come for a meal at their home.
While Bond does not know that Largo is Spectre’s number 2 we the audience recognise him from the Prequel boast of the value of the latest extortion project.
On return to his hotel room Bond senses there is an intruder in his suite and silences Felix Leiter ( played by a different actor than previous with the name of Rip Van Nutter, I kid you not) the CIA agent and friend ( brought out of retirement to assist), before giving the Spectre man a beating and sending him back to Largo who feeds him to the sharks for incompetence.
In this film Q ( also played by Bernard Llewelyn in all the films) arrives with his latest gadgets which have become the trade mark for series and which the audience have come to expect. With amazing foresight Q creates devices which become life savers in the particular venture although his creations are for use by the service in general.
Bond investigates the yacht’s underside with the underwater camera supplied by Q and notes that it has an underneath compartment in which the nuclear weapons could be stored.
Bond has been assisted by local agent Paula who is captured by Largo’s own female assistant who specialises in using surgical knives which she threatens to use unless Paula reveals what she knows. The girl commits suicide with a cyanide capsule before Bond can rescue her. In escaping from the House (Palmyra) Bond falls into the pool fighting with a security man, which Largo covers before releasing the sharks via a connecting tunnel. Bond uses this to escape while the sharks finish off the security man and because the pool is covered Largo does not realise what has happened.
The next action involves a Junkanoo which at the time I thought I had misheard but upon further investigation transpires to be the regional name of a street carnival/parade usually at Christmas and New Year in the Bahamas but also across the water in Florida and Key West which given Fleming’s location in the West Indies may have led him to calling the chief villain Largo after the Humphrey Bogart film Key Largo. The Junkaroo in the film was especially created with the help of the locals as filming occurred in a different part of the year to the actual event and it was a mark of the success of the Bond films at a time when cinema audiences were in rapid decline with the growth of coloured television and the video player that the production company was prepared to arrange for so many extras including the those on the streets and at the Kiss Kiss Club where Bond visits in an attempt to escape from the Spectre pursuers led by Largo’s assistant who is killed by one of her men because of a quick turn around by Bond.
With time running out before the ransom has to be paid Bond and Leiter successfully locate the sunken Vulcan Bomber and he brings back items worn by the brother of Domino worn by the man who had impersonated him and who had been killed and also left in the plane when he had become greedy. although one suspects he would have been killed in any event Bond uses the personal items to tell Domino that he brother is dead and was killed the orders of Leiter after he has encountered her swimming underwater once more and they have had undersea sex (implied).
After narrowly escaping death again Bond persuades Domino to return to the yacht with a Geiger counter disguised as a camera to establish if the bombs are on board. She is discovered by Largo and imprisoned on the boat. Bond has gone to investigate the house via sea steps, advised by Domino beforehand, and waited for Largo and his men to set off underwater to retrieve the weapons and joins them disguised as one of the men who he has killed. Bond is caught as the weapons are retrieved and imprisoned within an Atoll having swallowed a capsule homing device so that when the search helicopter arrives with Leiter he is able to use the miniature flare gun, another of Q’s devices to provide his precise location and they send down a winch to rescue. He has also needed a four minute miniature breathing device.
There is then a prolonged underwater sea battle between Largo and his men and Bond, Leitner and his men with many on both sides being killed or injured by hand harpoons. Largo escapes back to his yacht pursued by Bond and Lieter but makes a further escape after creating a smoke screen in which a smaller faster craft emerges as part of the main vessel. On it is the scientist involved with the nuclear devices who rescue Domino which Bond managing to get on board and there is the final fight between the two men as they also wrestle to control the craft from hitting various rocks and bits of coast before Bond and the girl jump as Largo is blown up with the craft. In the Coda Bond and Domino are in a life raft from which he jettisons what appears to be a weather balloon but which is in fat a winch line so when the balloon is caught by an aircraft, they are winch together into the plan.
There is the standard flirtation scene with Miss Moneypenny, M’s Secretary played by Lois Maxwell while the establish actor Roland Culver plays the foreign Secretary and not the Defence Minister, as one might expect, on Operation Thunderball. Tom Jones sings Thunderball, added after the film was completed because the original song did not include the film title which was originally sung by Shirley Bassey, but then rerecorded and released two decades later by Dionne Warwick. The $9 million budget indicating the ability to send even greater productions costs yields nearly £150 million world wide ad remains the most financially successful of the Bond films in real terms. The visual effects won an Academy award and was even voted best film in Germany. I thought it was boring and outcome predicable and demonstrated that the style and style features together with exotic locations now replace character substances.
In the film we again only hear the voice of Ernst Stavros Blofeld who runs SPECTRE and who hold a white cat with a diamond collar, It was in this ninth book by Fleming that Blofield was in fact first introduced as the head of Spectre and he is go reappear played by different actors in You only Live twice also with Connery and On her Majesty’s Secret Service which I am also reviewing in this piece. The film’s prequel is an extra and Bond is sent to the clinic by M because he has been drinking and smoking excessively and his condition is classed as unfit, an issue to the fore in the latest Bond Skyfall.
However the basic story lines are similar with Domino using a hand harpoon gun to kill Largo although she saves Bond in the under water cave where he has been overpowered by and exhausted from his fight with Largo. There other many differences with Domino’s brother stealing the plane and the bombs, Largo’s female assistant and the street parade. Lietner did not participate in the action sequences because he had already become disabled losing arm, hand and a leg in an earlier book, still to be made into a film.
It is also fair to comment that Fleming had progressed Bond through the use of witty one liners which became film standards and are often tongue in cheek plays on words.
In the previous eight books the Russian SMERSH was the enemy.
According to Wikipedia Fleming used the Commander Crabb death incident when he disappeared in Portsmouth Harbour going to inspect the underside of a Russian vessel for the scene where Bond does the same to Largo’s yacht. Commander Crabbe had made his name in Gibraltar in the Second World War leading a team of underwater frogmen and features in the British film, The Silent Enemy, a DVD acquired because it featured Gibraltar. Significantly the Silent Enemy film has an under sea battle between frogmen on both sides using miniature under water craft. What I found most interesting is that Fleming originally wrote a script for a Bond film with another screen writer but the project was rejected nd then Fleming used parts of the proposed film script to write the book. This led to a civil action in which Fleming settled a time when he had a serious heart attack leading to his subsequent death.
It remains puzzling the studio decided that the next film should in theory be called You only live twice the 12rth Bond and the last published book before his death although two others works were issued afterwards. The film bears little relationship to the book and there were lots of complications because it was written after Her majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds are Forever both of which were to made after this film and both of which contain important events which related to the main content of the book. The studio and their writers were caught between continuity issues in the film series and in the book with the most notable that in the book Bond starts off a demoralised wreck of a human being demoted and outposted to Japan on a diplomatic mission where by accident he find Blofield, the Head of Spectre and kills him. There is a rationale behind the series of evens in the book but not in the film made by Connery after the studio upped his fee and on the understanding it would be the last film because he was bored and the work, especially promoting the film, prevented his involvement in other more serious and professionally rewarding opportunities.
It can be argued that the UK Secret Service had no business getting involved in what was escalating conflict between the USSR and the USA, albeit caused by Spectre on behalf of an unstated Asian power. What happens in the film is that a second USA space vehicle disappears when in orbit around the earth when tracked and then overtaken by an unknown other space craft. We the audience know that this second craft is bigger with jaw like opening at the front which captures the USA space craft rather than destroying it and then returns to an unknown base where the astronauts are imprisoned. Why the USA space craft is not just blown up and why the men are captured is beyond comprehension and is one of a series of ludicrous aspects of this appalling yet successful money making film. One of the spacemen is killed when his lifeline is cut by the capturing craft. The USA is convinced this is a Russian effort as the only other power with space capabilities, but the British say that their evidence is that space craft involved returned to somewhere off the Japanese mainland and propose to send their man Bond,
The film title is explained by the manufactured idea that in order to carry out his inquiries Bond should have a fake death. The cinema goers see Bond having an affair with an Asian girl who pushes a lever which raises the bed into the wall with Bond inside which machine guns riddle with bullets. The bed is lowered to show Bond resting in a pool of blood but the upper body is intact a clue to everyone but the most stupid in the audience that he is not dead and that the burial at sea is intended for watching enemy eyes. He is brought into a submarine where M has an office with Moneypenny where we see that he has a breathing apparatus inside the canvas covering. Bond lives again. In the book Bond is thought to have been killed when the Castle building he has been investigating blows up before which he is has strangled Blofield to death after a fight. When he recovers he has lost his memory and lives with his girlfriend as a fisherman for a long while with demise reported back in the UK. Pregnant she hopes he will marry her and settle down but he continues to wonder about his origins and comes to the conclusion that he must travel to Russia and Vladivostok to find out. The main story has ended when his second life begins while in the film it is a device for his involvement in the main story.
Given that the USA was the main occupying power in Japan the only reason for the UK secret service getting involved was to recover from the shame of its main spies Burgess McClean and Blake being traitors and double agents for the Russians and understandably the American had closed their information channels to the UK as a consequence.
In the film on arrival in Japan in his new persona he is met by Aki the assistant to the young dynamic head of their intelligence service known as Tiger Kanaka. She takes him to see the local MI agent played by the actor who becomes Blofield in the next film. This agent is living the Japanese traditional culture already abandoned by most urban Japanese and he is assassinated before he can reveals all his thoughts and info to Bond. Bond chases and kills the assassin before being taken by Aki to the HQ of Osato chemicals revealed by the MI6 local man to be connected and where he manages to open the safe before escaping from the security guards. After this Aki appears to abandon Bond and rushes off into the underground and along a platform then into a side area and where Bond following suddenly finds the floor opening and in a metal slide down into the secret underground office of the head of the Japanese Secret Service. This is a ludicrous device. The head of the Japanese service is called in both film and book Tiger because Fleming had travelled around Australia with a journalist called Tiger (Saito) who becomes Tenaka and a Richard Hughes who becomes Dikko (Richard) Henderson in the film, the local MI6 agent and was also the character on whom Le Carré based Old Craw in the Honourable Schoolboy.
Tenaka invites Bond to his home where he introduces Bond to being bathed naked by beautiful young women followed by a massage which is undertaken by Aki. Tenaka arranges for Bond to see the head of the chemical firm Dr Osato who knows this is Bond and orders him killed. Bond escapes from the building and in the subsequent car chase, Tenaka has a helicopter lower a large magnet clamp onto the car which is then dropped out of sight into the ocean.
Before this Bond had travelled with Tenaka in his underground office train where the photograph of as cargo ship taken from the safe is analysed. They are able to trace the vessel to where it is docked and reloading in Japan but the location to where the photograph was taken is unknown except that the tourist who took the photo was killed. Why the photo and negative was kept and not destroyed is another ludicrous aspect.
Bond investigates the ship and is captured after a series of fights to wake up in the cabin of a Spectre member, another young woman who begins by torturing Bond for information but ends up his lover and accomplice flying back to the capital on her way to betray the company for more money. She has second thoughts, bails out of the plane which she sets on fire leaving Bond to narrowly escape before it crashes.
It is as this point we are introduced to Blofield who is meeting with representatives of the Government who is paying for Spectre to create a war between the USA and Russia. Blofield want X millions up front and to make the point he gives a demonstration of the power of piranha fish in a pool who strip a large joint meat to the bone in seconds. He then interviews Osato and Helga, feeding Helga to the piranha and ordering Osato to kill Bond or else.
Tenaka finds where the photo of the island was taken but aerial recognisance reveals nothing so Q arrives with Little Nellie a small transportable gyro helicopter with lethal extras including rockets and mini bombs and apparently unlimited fuel as it is able to fly over to the island and engage in a prolonged aerial battle with four helicopters which are destroyed. This is a great and unnecessary blunder by Spectre because it alerts Bond and the two secret services that the island or close to it is important and requires closer examination.
Instead of sending in appropriate forces Bond spend time training in martial arts as part of a Ninja school organised by Tenaka and prepared to land on the island with the 100 men as local fisherman and peasants with again for some unexplained reason Bond has to look like a local as well as dress up as one. This reminds of the make up of Marlon Brando in Tea House of the August Moon( setting up a traditional Geisha establishment).
Before he commences on this part of the mission a further attempt on his life leads to the death of Aki. It is not explained that while the Ninja off to the island on their own Bond needs a local wife other than to show a local marriage ceremony a collective Madam Butterfly style event to the cinema audience. It is rubbish.
A Russian spacecraft has now been taken which inflames tensions between the two superpowers and the USA government brings forward plans for the next launching placing its forces on high alert and warning the Russians to expect retaliation if anything happens to the craft or its men. Bond and his new wife make a visit to the island exploring what appears to be a tunnel access into something underground via the sea but they have to withdraw because of gas. They then climb to the rim of volcano and witness a helicopter disappearing below the lake which they find is made of metal, The girl is sent back to warn the others while Bond waits for the opportunity to enter whatever is underground, There girl is shot at when in the water and disappears under the sea although we are confident she will survive somehow. Bond gets his opportunity, releases the USA astronauts and attempts to replace one of the astronauts setting off to capture the USA spacecraft. He is spotted and revealed to be Bond and typical of the series instead of immediately executing him Blofield wants him to witness his triumph, a failing of every villain in every film and which is irrational action on the part of the baddies. It does not make sense.
The Ninja’s arrive but find there are machine guns in the rim of the volcano and they have to retreat or be lost. Then Bond gets the opportunity to open the roof and they commence to descend but a fierce battle emerges. Blofield seals the unit but prepares to exist and other members of the team begin to exit by a second entrance down a flight of stairs which taken people into the tunnel and out to sea. Bond manages to break into the control centre and abort the rocket just before it captures the USA craft and starts World War 3. Before Blofield leaves he sets of a self destruct explosion so every leave in a panic via the tunnel which involves swimming out to the open sea before the island explodes.
Support planes then drop life craft and Bond the girl get into one and drift into the open sea on their own. Just when Bond thinks he is to consummate their relationship they find that a submarine surfaces with their raft sitting on its hull.
As I have advised all this has nothing to do with the book where the story is very very different. Bond is a broken man after the events in the previous book, drinking and smoking heavily so he is downgraded to 7777 and joins the diplomatic section where he is sent to Japan to negotiate an exchange of information. However his information is of no use so Tiger makes a proposition that he investigate the activities of a Dr Shatterhand and his wife where guests commit suicide at his castle and presumably donate their funds to their host before doing so. Bond is trained as part of the Tanaka team with an attractive assistant Kissy Susuki(!!!) and becomes a mute coal miner despite learning in the film that he obtained a First in oriental languages at Oxford. Dr Shatterhand is in fact Blofield who dresses up as Samurai warrior.
The two fight and Bond strangles Blofeld in a act of personal revenge before blowing up the castle. However Bond is knocked out in the explosion and loses his memory. The girl Kissy takes him off to live as a fisherman on a small island without communications where after getting pregnant she hopes he will marry her and settle down. Bond is said to remain restless until a newspaper articled triggers an interest in going to Russia and the city of Vladivostok because it occurs that he was a former Russian agent! The book was also something of a disaster with the critics and public
Connery was wise to want to leave what had become a travesty of the work of Ian Fleming for naked greed, although if the public had not bought the tickets, then the studio would have soon directed their attention elsewhere as we shall soon see, when the studio attempted to provide a more serious film, it was not the success planned
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with George Lazenby as 007, Diana Rigg as not only his Bond Woman but his legal wife by the end of the film, and Telly Savalas as Blofield, and costing less than previous films at $7 still made of $80 and all things considered was a more serious, less humorous and better film than the last two made with Connery.
Even after four decades my reaction towards Lazenby is the same. It was a noble effort but there was something missing. This was more than the obvious fact that he was not Connery and different. The issue was one of credibility and he did not communicate as the kind of man who would be content with his licence to kill however much the target were justified on behalf of the state and he certainly was not the kind of personality who was able to engage in general killing, albeit usually in self defence, of the enemy in which Bond was required to engage in the film productions and in the books. He was closer to the kind of person who could be a real spy as a man of conscience and integrity, as well as daring and courage I felt he would not survive the selection process for either role and certainly he lacked the sexual charisma to have women want to drop their knickers the moment they came into direct contact
The film begins with Bond in Portugal where he prevents a woman committing suicide on a beach that he happens to be passing noting the sports car and her attractiveness. For some unexplained reason the men supposed to be her security fight with him. Later he sees the same woman at the Casino and she gives the impression of inviting him to her room after he has paid her debts and where he provides caviar and champagne, but she is not there, only the henchmen of her father who kidnap Bond and take him to meet Marc-Angel Draco, the head of a European crime Syndicate Unione Corse. Although he does not appear have a title his daughter does Contessa di Venenzo, presumably she was previously married but why she wanted to take her own life is also not disclosed. The father admits she is a headstrong young woman independent of him but because Bond saved her life and she appears interested in him he suggests marriage with the payment of one million as a dowry. Bond expresses interest but only if he provides a lead to the whereabouts of Blofield. Back in London M does not support Bond’s obsession with Blofield who he has been trying to track down for two years so he resigns although Moneypenny changes his letter to a request for two weeks paid holiday, to save face on both sides. It has to be said that in the films the relationship between Bond and M is a prickly one but while M appears to respect and depend on the work undertaken by Bond, Bond does not appear to have any liking or respect for his boss.
Bond uses the leave to accept an invitation from Draco to attend his birthday party at which his daughter is expected to attend. She is incensed that Bond has been invited and bullies her father to revealing his information about Blofield as a test to see if Bond is really interested in her. They have a genuine romance but then part, although it was not clear to me why there was no continuity except that Bond needs to follow up the lead about Blofeld which involves an unconventional breaking of the safe of the lawyer said to know the whereabouts and created as a visual for the audience. The breakin establishes that Blofield is the head of a clinical research institute at the top of a mountain in Switzerland and is seeking via the lawyer to establish himself as the legitimate Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp, although why he wants to do this is also not explained.
Bond arranges to replace the Sir Hilary Bray, a Scotsman, from the College of Arms and arranges to travel to the Institute to interview the would be Count, inspect the evidence he has assembled and persuade him to journey away from the fortress to the location of the family residence and burials centre for the final verification so he can kill him. At the institute Bond finds that all the patients are attractive sex starved young woman and he finds it difficult to keep up satisfying those who show particular interest. The young women are bossed by a Klebbs type villainous assistant Irma Bunt who rules the girls and keeps the guest under virtual lock and key, although this does not stop Bond getting out of his room and into the beds of some of the young women. During one such encounter Bond discovers that Blofield is using a form of hypnotic mind control to cure the psychological aspects of the allergies but also to take subconscious control for a purpose yet to be disclosed but which they will have no knowledge of, except that the young women come from all parts of the globe as have other patients in the past. Bond has one local contact who attempts to reach him but is captured and tortured before being killed and who reveals that Sir Hilary is Bond. I also have to record that while Isle Steppat is convincing as Bunt Telly Savalas is Telly Savalas and unconvincing as Blofeld.
The course of treatment ends as Christmas approaches and the girls are given a vanity case as a present but told not to touch one item of make up. That none of them or the other women previous trained attempt to do so is another credulity challenge, These item contain bacterial material by which Blofeld on behalf of Spectre intends to hold the world to ransom. Bond manages to escape after being captured but not killed, again begging the question why not and tries to avoid the search being made for him led by Bunt joining the crowds attending a large Christmas fair which includes ice skating, stock car racing and various stalls for food, drink and souvenirs. Fortunately he meets up with the Countess who had been told by her father where he is. He fails to make direct contact with London to warn of what is to happen and the couple get involved in the Stock car race, escape and then have to hold out in a barn because of a snow storm.
In the morning Blofeld and his men all super excellent skiers are making a search of the outlying premises but when they reach the Barn, Bond and the Countess are on skies making their next attempted get away. Blofield sets off an avalanche which traps the couple. Because Bond is not visible it is assumed he had been buried and killed while the Countess is visible and alive and captured, The only justification why she is not killed is that Blofield fancies her and seeks a formal alliance through marriage with her father.
Bond survives and makes his way to London where he finds that the world’s powers are prepared to pay up and M refuses Bond permission to go for Blofeld at the Institute where the tapes are kept which will trigger the women to undertake their assignment if the ransom is not paid. Bond contacts the father of the Countess and they make successful aerial assault on the fortress which they then destroy.
Blofeld escapes using a bobsled on an official run with Bond in close pursuit and Blofeld is shot out of the course and appears to be killed ensnared in a tree branch with Bond making the quip about branching out. For some unbelievable reason he does not check out that the man is dead or ensure that Irma Bunt is rounded up. He has only himself to blame for what happens next. Bond and the Countess are married in a great celebration at which M Moneypenny and Q all attend the wedding and reception provided at great cost and many flourishes by the European head criminal. although in fairness he and his men at the cost of many lives did save humanity from potential extinction.
As the couple set off on their honeymoon and stop to take off the decorations on the car, Blofeld drives past with Bunt firing at them as they pass. The Countess is killed in what is a moving last scene and which makes good much of the rubbish before.
It is as a consequence of this event that You only Live twice , the book, has meaning, explaining the state that Bond is in and why he has been demoted and the good fortune of meeting up with Blofeld and this time ensuring that he is dead by killing him by hand. I should also mention that among the Angels of Death as the young women at the Institute are known and with whom Bond has a relationship are Joanna Lumley and would appear in the New Avengers after Diana Rigg concluded her role in the original series and as did Honour Blackman (Goldfinger). Another Angel was Julie Ege, the former Miss Norway who came to England to improve her knowledge of the language, starred in Up Pompeii with Frankie Howard and a number of Hammar films, and was something of a socialite, if I remember correctly.
The book is the second of the Blofeld trilogy commencing with Thunderball and ending with You only Live twice and not Diamonds are Forever which was the next film and the final Connery although as I have shown the studio altered the storyline in earlier Fleming books to make Smersh Spectre and have Blofeld appear without showing his face.
Whereas in the film it is Bond who searches for Blofeld in the book it is M while Bond believes Spectre has ended and Blofeld with it and he is about to resigns because M refuses to reassign him.
As in film he does save her honour at the gambling table when she cannot pay the accumulating debt. It is after this incident that she attempts to commit suicide and both are taken by her father’s men to see him against their respective wills where the marriage proposition is presented. Bond then agrees to romance the woman but only from wanting her to stop the suicides attempts and while Draco does advise Bond that Blofeld is in Switzerland it is the College of Arms which contacts to advise of the approach of Blofeld to become the Comte. The book explains that Blofeld has had plastic surgery which enable the use of a different actor in the film. Blofield plan is only directed at the UK and Ireland and against the agriculture rather than the civilian population. Apart from the introduction of the Christmas setting and the capture of the countess the rest of the book including the avalanche appears to be faithfully reproduced in the film. Fleming had stayed at a sports club in the Alps which the Nazi’s converted into a research establishment on Asiatic races.
I also learned from Wikipedia that Draco is the nickname given to Sir Francis Drake and which was also the basis for Draco Malfoy in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series where by coincidence I am also viewing again with the first films completed and will form the subject of the next writing after Hunted and other updates on my main work project.
I also discovered in the book Bond does not attempt to present a different personality when playing the role of the representative of the college of Arms and which grates in the film as his performance as a boring upper class English noble did not work at the time, and even more so now.
I also suggest that Lazenby and Rigg do not make a likely couple although I must confess I have always found women like Rigg, Diana Doors, Honour Blackman, Margaret Lockward, Joan Collins and even Elizabeth Taylor as she matured intimidating. Now Jean Simmons, Julie Christie and Jenny Agutter are a different order of class and interest although top of the list of crushes has always been the Europeans Ingrid Bergman and of course Bardot.
And so I come to the last James Bond film made by Connery Diamonds are Forever which became a hit for Shirley Bassey. And in which Charles Gray plays all three version of Blofeld who has not only had extensive plastic surgery but has two other men created in his new likeness,
Ian Fleming wrote the book his fourth in Bond series back in 1956 and was a huge success with several immediate print runs and where he investigated diamond smuggling for a non fiction work published a year later. In the oak Bond is assigned to infiltrate a Diamond smuggling enterprise based in Sierra Leone to Los Vegas in the USA and uses the identity of Peter Franks a country house burglar turned Diamond Smuggler.
Bond meets up with Tiffany Chase, ( Tiffany’s being the well known Jewellers and which reminds that I forgot to add Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn to my list. Tiffany was gang raped as a teenager and understandably is hostile to men. The investigation takes him to the USA where he encounters his friend and now former CIA man Felix Leiter working for the Pinkertons investigating horse racing rigging.
The investigation then takes him to a former Wild West Town, now converted to a tourist resort where after various adventures he escapes with Tiffany using the much used in USA films the railway push cart and with Leiter’s help they get from California to New York and then journey to London on the Queen Elizabeth. During these adventures the couple are tracked by two the Diamond smuggling gang’s killers and fixer’s called Wint and Kidd who kidnap Tiffany before intending to kill her but Bond turns the tables and kills them. Chase reveals the extent of the smuggling as a consequence of her life being saved. Miners are paid by a dentist to smuggle Diamonds out via their mouths and then getting to them to London Paris and on to New York. Bond closes in and kills the man at the top of the enterprise but only after the man has terminated the rest of the diamond line although I assume this exclude Tiffany.
The film bears little relationship to the book although it does also cover a lot of ground and involves Bond with Jill St John now as much for marriages and relationships with a well known number of A listers and other powerful and wealthy men as well as the films Whose been Sleeping in my Bed? The Honeymoon Hotel and the Calling. At sixteen she ran off with and married the heir to a linen fortune and at nineteen she married a racing driver who was the son of Barbara Hutton. She then married the singer Jack Jones and then the actor Robert Wagner having been a couple for the previous eight years. Divorced she is reported to have admitted relationships were Connery, Peter Lawford, Robert Vaughn, Jack Nicholson and Frank Sinatra.
Now to the film where Bond pursing Blofeld thinks he has killed him, but it later transpires to be a look alike. He is then posted to South Africa by M to investigate a Diamond Smuggling ring and where several known operatives have been recently killed. We the audience know that the killers are Wint and Kidd played tongue in cheek and as a comic due who use very creative methods.
Posing as a smuggler Peter Franks, a real fictional character imprisoned in England to enable Bond’s cover, he travels to Amsterdam to meet the link Tiffany Chase. Unfortunately the real Franks escapes and gets to Amsterdam and Bond has to kill him. Bond then take this body to be buried in the USA as his brother followed by Wint and Kidd who are continuing their inventive murderous trail. Bond uses the corpse to smuggle the diamonds.
In the USA Leiter meets Bond and they take the body to a mob run Funeral Home for cremation where the Diamonds are recovered and placed in an urn as the ashes of the deceased. His next task is to take the Diamonds to the next person in the chain who is called Shady Tree who captures Bond and Wint and Kidd place Bond in a coffin and into the crematoria. Fortunately the process is stopped as Shady Tree discovers the Diamonds in the urn are fakes.
Tree is a stand up Comedian performing at the Casino owned by the multi millionaire recluse Willard Whyte one of the most powerful men in the USA who had become a recluse controlling his empire from the top floor of the Hotel. Given that the film was made in 1971 it is interesting that this was still five years before the death of multi millionaire Howard Hughes who had retired to the Days Inn Hotel Las Vegas which he then acquired and ran his empire for the its eighth floor. Hughes was also extremely influential arising from aviation Industries productions, his Film and TV interests and involvement in a wide range of other businesses.
Bond then discovers that Shady Tree has been murdered and enjoying a night at the Casino he meets up with an adventuress called Plenty O’Toole and takes her to his room where gang members are waiting for him and they throw Plenty out of window fortunately into a swimming pool although the intention was to kill her expecting her to be Tiffany Chase.
Because of her near death experience Tiffany decides against stealing the Diamonds for her use and they are passed to the next link in the chain who is followed to Whyte research facility in the desert where Bond discovers they are being used to create a powerful destructive laser refraction device to be sent into space and then controlled from a base elsewhere. Bond is discovered but escapes using a Moon landing buggy and is picked up by Tiffany waiting in a car.
Bond then makes a dramatic entry into the quarters of Whyte It is at this point Bond makes the starling discovery that Whyte has been replaced by Blofeld and a Blofeld lookalike using a voice box machine which makes him sound like Whyte and realise that Blofeld and Spectre are behind the creation of the death and destruction ray. He manages to kill one of the Blofeld’s but this is the lookalike and is rendered unconscious by gas and taken by Wint and Kidd into the desert and placed in one the new water/sewerage pipes with one machine laying the pipes together and another piling the earth back on top. When Bond regains consciousness he finds himself sealed into the system and a terrified mouse reveals the oncoming of a machine which he tries to out run before working out he can squeeze on top and stop it by fusing its electrical circuit and then making his way to the surface via one of the escape maintenance hatches.
Bond is now able to try and rescue Whyte who is locked away below an isolated desert Home guarded by two energetic martial arts fanatics, Bumper and Thumper, and he just about gets the better of them before the cavalry arrive. With he help of Whyte he identifies the likely location of Blofeld’s latest control centre where the senior scientist believes they will bring peace to the world, demonstrating the power of the Laser by eliminating war heads and other old war weaponry held by the USA, Russia and China. Blofeld has escaped from the Hotel called the Whyte House disguised as an elderly woman but is recognised by Tiffany who tries to give chase but is captured.
Blofield makes his extortion demands threatening to destroy a city while Bond makes his way and boards the sea base oil rig HQ armed with a tape which he hopes to switch for the one controlling the Satellite laser which White’s company has placed into orbit believing they were doing so under instruction from Whyte. Bond also finds Tiffany on the rig in a swimsuit and who appears to have out in her lot in with Blofeld. When Bond manages to swish the tapes he puts the real one inside Tiffany’s Bikini but she misunderstands what he has done and later proudly boasts she has switched the tapes again. Leiter and a force arrive in numbers and commence to attack the base while Blofeld attempts to escape in a mini sub to be launched into the sea by a crane, but Bond takes control of the crane and uses the mini sub to smash into the control room which explodes and prevents the laser from working, Bond and Tiffany falls into the sea from which they are rescued. The fate of Blofeld is left open.
In the film’s Coda the couple are making their way back to Europe in a cruise liner when unexpectedly they are presented by a banquet in their cabin on behalf of the captain but delivered by Wint and Kidd who have a Bombe Surprise to end the meal. Fortunately they are detected with one setting himself ablaze and the other blown up by the device he planned for the couple.
Connery had to be offered over one million to agree to play Bond again after Lazenby said to have made it clear he only wanted to play the role once after falling out with the film people because they controlled his performance along with the story. While Lazenby performed and participated in the creation of other film and TV productions he has not achieved the kind of lasting work which led to his decision. He was married twice, the most recent to Pam Shriver and the couple have three children before divorcing.
Jill St John was originally cast for the brief part of Plenty O‘Toole with Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway considered for the role among others.
In my judgement this is the worst of the Bond films to that time as none of the characters engaged or produced any sympathy.
The new Bond was Roger Moore who developed the role into a Tongue in Cheek character exploiting all the worst but popular money making aspects of the role created by Hollywood. The contrast with the creative genius and integrity of the Harry Potter series could not be greater as I plan to soon demonstrate.
