007 Movie Rewatch – Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

My introductory post  

Diamonds Are Forever on IMDB

(Spoilers)

The movie starts with Bond beating people up around the world looking for Blofeld.  He finally discovers a base where someone was going to be surgically altered to be Blofeld’s double.  Bond kills him as well as Blofeld who shows up.

Bond returns to London and M puts Bond on a new case.  It appears that someone is smuggling diamonds out of South Africa, but instead of selling them now, they seem to be stockpiling them so that they could possibly flood the market with them later.  So Bond is to impersonate a captured diamond smuggler to infiltrate the scheme.

Meanwhile, Mr. Wint – who often spritzes himself with cologne – and Mr. Kidd are killing off the people in the chain of smugglers.

Bond makes contact with Tiffany Case who has a lot of diamonds that need to be smuggled into the US.  The real smuggler escapes and tries to make contact with Tiffany, but Bond kills him and switches IDs.  They then use the body to smuggle the diamonds into LA where Felix from the CIA is waiting to help.

The body is picked up and taken to a funeral home in Las Vegas.  The body is cremated, and Bond gets an urn of diamonds.  He drops them off, and is attacked by Wint and Kidd.  They set him to be cremated, but then it’s discovered that the diamonds aren’t real.  Bond will hand them over when he gets the real money.

Bond goes to a casino owned by Willard Whyte, a Howard Hughes type guy who hasn’t been seen for years.  Tiffany is waiting for him in his room, wanting to get the diamonds and split them with Bond.

The next day, Bond sends Tiffany to a circus to retrieve the diamonds.  She gets the diamonds, slips Felix and his men, and passes on the diamonds.  But then she discovers that she’s next on the list of people for Wint and Kidd to kill, so she decides to start working with Bond and Felix.

Bond follows the diamonds to a Whyte research base out in the desert.  He slips in and discovers that the diamonds are being used on a satellite.  When his cover is blown, he steals a “moon buggy” and there’s a chase across the desert.  Tiffany is waiting for him outside the base, and they go back to Las Vegas, where there’s another chase with the local cops.

Bond breaks into Whyte’s penthouse, only to discover that Blofeld – and another double – use a voice thing to impersonate Whyte.  They are using Whyte’s various businesses to cover what they’re doing.  Bond kills the double, and Blofeld lets him leave.  But Bond is gases in the elevator.

Wint and Kidd pick up Bond and throw him in the trunk.  Wint’s cologne falls out and breaks, covering Bond.  They drive him out to the desert where there’s a pipeline being built.  They put him in one of the pipes, and the next day it’s buried.  Bond wakes up before this welding thing comes through, and manages to get out of the pipe.

Bond then calls Blofeld using Q’s voice changer thing to get Blofeld to slip where the real Whyte is being kept.  They go and pick up Whyte, but Blofeld – disguised as a woman – slips out of the casino.  Tiffany sees him, follows, and is captured.

The satellite is launched and starts shooting missile silos and submarines.  Blofeld’s plan is to hold the world hostage for an auction for nuclear supremacy.

Bond discovers that Blofeld is operating from an oil rig, and parachutes in.  Bond has a plan to switch the control tape for the satellite, but it doesn’t go as planned.  So in the end he – and Felix with some helicopters – end up blowing up the rig.  Blofeld tries to escape in a little sub, but Bond crashes it into the side of the control room.

Bond and Tiffany go on a cruise, where Wint and Kidd try to kill them.  But Bond recognizes the cologne, and manages to kill the two.

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After the – in my opinion – rather bland Blofeld plot from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it was nice to see what you think of as a classic Bond villain plan.  But overall, I’d say the movie was just okay.  Nothing really stands out.

I don’t remember in what order I saw the older Bond movies, but it was nice to see how this one kind of takes up after the last with Bond going out of his way to hunt down Blofeld.  Yet, there was one scene that was a little cringy.  At one point Bond asks Moneypenny if he could bring her anything, and she says, “A diamond, in a ring.” Now this is, maybe a few months after his wife was killed.  Too soon.

And I just wondered something.  I don’t know if this is covered in any of the novels, but does Moneypenny flirt with all the Double 0s, or is it just Bond?  That might make for some interesting fan fiction at the very least.

I had never planned on ranking the Bond movies, but I think I’ll rank the movies of each Bond actor. So, in my opinion, the Connery Bond movies from best to worst are, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and Dr. No.

007 Movie Rewatch – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

(This is a revised version of a Persona Paper post.)

My introductory post  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on IMDB

(Spoilers)

Bond is driving along the coast when he sees a woman walking into the ocean, apparently trying to drown herself. He saves her and is attacked by a couple of guys. He fights them off, and the woman gets in her car and drives off.

Bond shows up at a hotel and sees her car, and learns it belongs to Tracy. He runs into her at the casino and pays her tab. They spend the night together, but she is gone the next morning. Bond is picked up by some goons, and meets Draco, a mob head and Tracy’s father. Draco tells Bond of Tracy’s unhappy life and offers Bond a million pounds to marry her, but Bond agrees to only date her for information Draco has on Blofeld.

During all of this, MI6 has been looking for Bond. He goes back to London where M wants him off the Blofeld case. Bond writes a letter of resignation, but Moneypenny changes it to a request for vacation, which M agrees to.

So Bond has a whirlwind romance with Tracy, and Draco lets Bond know about a lawyer Blofeld is in contact with. Bond breaks into the lawyer’s office and finds out Blofeld is talking to an English genealogist trying to claim the title of “Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp.”

Bond poses as the genealogist and visits Blofeld at this research station in the Alps. The station studies allergies and Blofeld has cured several women of their various food allergies. Bond starts visiting the women’s bedrooms, and discovers that Blofeld is talking to them in their sleep. His plan is to send these women out with these plagues that would destroy the world’s food sources. But he’ll stop if the world pardons him and gives him his title.

Blofeld recognizes Bond (they met in the last movie, although they were played by different actors) and Bond has to ski down the mountain chased by goons. He runs into Tracy, who came looking for him, and they escape. There’s a blizzard, and the two hide in a barn where Bond proposes. More goons show up the next morning, and Blofeld sets off an avalanche. They capture Tracy and think Bond is dead and buried.

Bond makes it back to England, but M tells him that Blofeld’s ransom will be paid because the situation is too dicey. Fortunately, Draco has his own goons and they fly in to take out Blofeld and rescue Tracy. Blofeld tries to seduce Tracy, and she plays along to distract him a bit.

The women with the plagues have already left, but Bond manages to photograph their locations and Blofeld’s communication equipment is destroyed. The station is blown up, Tracy flies off with her father, and Bond goes after Blofeld. There’s a bobsled chase where Blofeld gets hung up in a tree.

Bond and Tracy get married, but as they drive off Blofeld – in a neck brace – drives by and a goon shoots at them. Bond is unharmed, but Tracy is killed.

#

When I originally started this James Bond movie rewatch, my thinking was that if I reviewed a Bond movie a week, I would be reviewing Skyfall when Spectre came out. But that didn’t happen, in part because of this movie. I rewatched it, had issues with it (which I’ll get to) but then stuff came up and I never got around to writing up my thoughts. Weeks, then months passed and I realized that I had forgotten some of the story. I didn’t feel like rewatching it again so soon, and so things just sort of ended. When I tried to get back in the reviews again, I ended up re-rewatching this movie, but I just had it on in the background as I typed up my thoughts.

So what issues did I have with this? In You Only Live Twice, Blofeld has thousands of technicians in a hidden volcano base and is working on starting a war between the US and Russia. In this movie he has a couple goons in a little house in the Alps and he wants to unleash some plague, but he’ll stop if they give him a pardon and his title. How the mighty have fallen, I guess. But it does seem a rather bland plot.

A bigger problem I have, is that at the end all Bond has to do is walk a few hundred yards up the bobsled trail to put a bullet in Blofeld to make sure he’s dead. But he apparently doesn’t do even that. If he had, Blofeld would be dead and Tracy alive. Speaking of which, the movie ends with Bond holding his dead wife, and then goes into the upbeat Bond theme music. It’s a bit of a jolt.

Overall, I found the movie rather … bland. I don’t have anything against George Lazenby, this was his only Bond movie, and I think he could have been an interesting Bond. Perhaps with a better script.

007 Movie Rewatch – You Only Live Twice (1967)

(This is a revised version of a Persona Paper post.)

My introductory post  

You Only Live Twice on IMDB

(Spoilers)

An American spacecraft is in orbit and one of the astronauts goes out on a spacewalk. But then some bigger, unidentified spacecraft flies up. The front of it opens up and it swallows the smaller spacecraft, with the guy on the spacewalk getting cut off and drifting off to die. The Americans blame the Russians, but the British point out the craft landed somewhere near Japan.

Meanwhile, Bond is in Hong Kong where he is shot and “killed.” He is then buried at sea, but his body is picked up by divers and taken to a submarine where we find out that Bond had just faked his death to confuse his enemies. M is on the submarine and gives him his orders to go to Tokyo and make contact with their local agent Henderson. Bond is picked up by Aki and taken to Henderson. Henderson starts to tell Bond about who he thinks is behind this, when he’s killed.

Bond follows the killer and kills him. He then sees the getaway driver. Fortunately, the killer was wearing a mask, so Bond changes clothes, puts on the mask, and pretends to be injured.

The getaway driver takes him to the office of Mr. Osato of Osato Chemicals. He kills the driver and breaks into a safe and takes some documents.

Bond leaves the building and is picked up by Aki who takes him to Tanaka, the head of the Japanese secret service. They discover a photo of a ship in the documents, along with the message that the tourist who took the photo was killed for security.

Bond poses as a chemical buyer, and goes to meet Mr. Osato and his assistant/pilot/assassin Helga. Mr. Osato isn’t fooled, and orders Helga to kill Bond. Some guys try to shoot him down on the street, but Aki saves him.

Aki takes Bond to the dock where the ship is – discovering it is shipping rocket fuel – and they are attacked by the dockworkers. Aki gets away, but Bond is captured. He wakes up tied to a chair and being questioned by Helga. He tries to bribe her, and she seems okay with it, even sleeping with him. But the next day, she locks him into a small plane, bails out, and hopes he’ll die in the crash. But he manages to save himself.

Q shows up with a small, autogyro and Bond flies it around the island where the ship unloaded its cargo under cover of dark. There are some volcanoes, but Bond doesn’t see anything. Still, he’s attacked by some helicopters and shoots them all down.

At some point in all this, a Russian spacecraft is captured, and the Russians blame the Americans. The Americans deny everything, and state that if anything happens to their next space mission, they will consider it an act of war by Russia and launch nukes.

Osato and Helga meet with Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. He is disappointed in their failure to kill Bond, and dumps Helga into his piranha pool.

Tanaka has a small ninja army, and Bond wants to go to the island and find the base. But first, Tanaka has to train Bond as a ninja, and then make him look Japanese. Aki is there, but an assassination attempt on Bond misses and she dies.

The reason they need to make Bond look Japanese is that while the other ninjas will go to the island and hide, Bond will have to go to the fishing village there as the new husband of one of Tanaka’s agents on the island, Kissy. They go exploring and find that the lake inside the volcano isn’t real, but a metal roof hiding an underground base. Kissy goes back to lead Tanaka and the ninja’s there, while Bond goes in.

Bond finds the captured astronaut and cosmonauts and frees them. They then help him into a spacesuit and he tries to sneak onboard their rocket. But he doesn’t act like an astronaut, and Blofeld notices him and has him brought in. The rocket launches with SPECTRE astronauts instead heading for the American spacecraft. Apparently, the plan was for Blofeld to start a war between America and Russia for some other country.

Tanaka attacks and they are being killed but Bond opens the roof and there’s a big gun/ninja battle. Blofeld kills Osato and later goes to kill Bond but is stopped when Tanaka hits his hand with a star. Bond fights through the confusion to the control room and activates the SPECTRE spacecraft’s self-destruct before it can get to the American one. Blofeld activates the base’s self-destruct, and everyone else escapes the base and is rescued by submarine.

#

This movie was confusing to watch because I’ve seen other Bond movies. For example, when the divers picked up Bond’s body after his funeral, I thought they’d take him to some sunken ship that was a secret base, but instead they just took him to a submarine. The sunken ship hidden base is from The Man with the Golden Gun. When we meet Henderson, I recognized him as a Bond villain. So I was confused when he was killed. Turns out the actor, Charles Grey, would play Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever. Also, when Bond is training to be a ninja, I remembered a scene of Bond being surrounded by girls and having to fight at some martial arts camp. He bows to his opponent, then kicks him in the balls and returns to the girls. I was waiting for that to happened, but I believe that is also from The Man with the Golden Gun. I’m sure if you really dug into things, you’d find more similarities.

Anyway, this movie has a few problems. For example, the bad guys have about fourteen opportunities to kill Bond, but they never take them. For example, Helga has him tied to a chair and is threatening him with a knife. Instead of just slicing his throat, she cuts him loose, lets him cut off her dress, have sex, and then decides to trap him into a crashing airplane while she bails out. You know, a standard way to kill someone.  And then Blofeld captures Bond and instead of just killing him, lets him hang around in the control center. Bond kills a guard so he could open the roof, but they still don’t shoot him. Blofeld then takes Bond and Osato to “escape.” They stop at one point, and Blofeld kills Osato. He takes Bond through a door, and then decides that’s the place to kill Bond, instead of the six other chances he had.

But probably the bigger issue – when watching it from today – is making Sean Connery look Japanese. Which, looking at it from the story, makes no sense. For some reason Bond couldn’t just get on the island with the ninja army, and he would stand out in this small, fishing village. But I didn’t catch any mention of the people from the secret volcano base going to the village and maybe getting tipped off by a stranger. Another point that doesn’t really fit anywhere, but nobody in this little village noticed these giant rockets launching and landing only a few miles inland? But why did Bond have to go to the village? Oh, that’s right. He needed to hook up with Kissy.