Bringing the sexy back.

James Bond 007 is back, with a savage demeanor, a rocket-shooting car, a KGB plot, an illegal arms deal, a beautiful blonde, an even more beautiful secretary, and a double double-cross. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS takes its title from Ian Fleming’s 14^th book and final collection of Bond short stories published in 1966, Octopussy and The Living Daylights. A new opening gunbarrel sequence; the rifling is now tinted gunmetal blue, and a new Bond dynamically fires on us—

new bond: dalton, timothy dalton

39-year-old Briton Timothy Dalton was approached to be Bond way back ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE in 1969, but felt he was too young at the time (around 23) – and he only came onboard for this movie because Pierce Brosnan was fucked over by the producers of his TV series REMINGTON STEELE who, overjoyed that Pierce was chosen to play Bond, decided to squeeze more STEELE episodes out of him to cash in on his higher profile.

But Bond producer Cubby Broccoli said Fuck You to the STEELE producers and hired Dalton instead.

After Dalton turned down the 1969 offer, he busied himself with TV movies and TV series, and in a way, it’s fortunate that he never hit big with any of them, or this second opportunity may not have arisen.

Dalton signed for three Bond films, but after this film’s sequel, LICENSE TO KILL, legal issues between Cubby Broccoli’s EON Productions and United Artists held up production of the third film for nearly 5 years; by the time the court battles ended, Dalton had lost the taste for Bond, and let his contract expire, never to renew it.

“Wait, Mr. Dalton – I’m not the gunbarrel sequence—I’m your spotlight operat—agh!”

Timothy Dalton was truly the precursor to Daniel Craig. The hawk eyes, the dashing figure, the lean towards cruel action rather than suave quipping (although he does get his fair share of quite humorous quipping in), and he brings a welcome upgrade in energy to Moore’s doddering, e.g. that scene where Dalton guns down a man from an opera balcony and then turns like a striking cobra to shoot at the spotlight suddenly aimed at him, looking like he’s doing the gunbarrel opening sequence for real. Also, Dalton did most of his stunts, really putting his back and blood into Bond.

Cold open. Head of MI6, M (Robert Brown) sends three double-oh agents on a mock parachute mission, all clad in black Archer turtlenecks. After two double-ohs are killed by a guy who looks like young Anthony Hopkins, Bond finds himself smack in a real mission, on the roof of a truck barreling down a cliff-edge road, being shot at through the roof. And we suddenly realize how integral soundtrack is to the Bond series (or, I presume, any branded franchise), because when Connery was infiltrating the castle in the opening for NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, there were no Bond themes allowed in that production, so it felt surreal, “non-Bond”; but here, with Dalton battling Hannibal Lecter with the Bond Theme backing him – well, how could he lose?! Though we’ve never met this Bond before, we immediately identify with him, due to soundtrack alone. We feel more of a kinship with Dalton in his 1^st film than Connery in his 7^th!

Truck goes off cliff with dead Hannibal and live Bond in it – he deploys a parachute, which starts to burn; nonchalantly, Bond lands on a yacht in the bay, pleasantly surprising the bikini babe onboard, who was just on the phone, craving man-meat. What are the odds?! Bond snatches her giant cellphone to call HQ, introduces himself to her offhandedly as “Bond, James Bond,” and tells HQ he’ll be there in an hour [woman holds out a champagne glass]… “Make that two hours.” Ha! I love this Bond!

And with that terse quip, Dalton’s ownership of the character is complete. Throughout this movie, he proves time and again why many hardcore Fleming fans consider him The Best Bond.

The limp disco of A-ha’s The Living Daylights opens the film. It’s of apiece with Duran Duran’s View To A Kill; the 80’s day-glo dance era spawning thin synth-based plop like this. After their gargantua 1985 hit Take On Me, this would probably be the only other time the Western world would hear this Norwegian one-hit wonder. There is an outro song as well, “If There Was A Man,” performed by The Pretenders.

The plot (written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) is intriguing and well-constructed: After a plot by a Russian defector is proven to be a scam to entice the British to assassinate the Russian KGB leader, the KGB teams with Bond to uncover arms and drug deals by the defector and an ex-patriot American general.

Bond aids a Russian defector (Jeroen Krabbe as Koskov) to get a secret list to MI6, that targets British agents for assassination, including Bond. Koskov says the list is sanctioned by KGB Russian leader Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies), but Bond has his doubts about the list, especially when Koskov is snatched back by the KGB hours afterward.

Without warning, the new Miss Moneypenny comes onscreen, and without warning, I come on screen. Glowing, luscious, bespectacled blondette, the absolutely delectable 26-year-old Caroline Bliss (in name and nature), spars coquettishly with the handsome new Bond, rekindling that sensual thrill that sparks so naturally between two young, hot people, rather than us being forced to watch Moore and Maxwell spar like our grandparents. Lois Maxwell, though a classical beauty when young, overstayed her post as Miss Moneypenny, through three Bonds, from DR. NO (1962, when she was 35, still looking like an aunty) to A VIEW TO A KILL (at 58, looking like an uncle).

Unfortunately for Bliss (and the male world populace), she was also an indirect victim of Broccoli’s legal Bond battle; by the time pre-production was ready to start on the next film, she had aged five years – and that’s way too long for a woman in the movies to be a sex object. Just ask Lois Maxwell.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) seems content as a pig in shit designing man-eating couches and ghetto blasters (that really blast ghettoes); his role is expanded past weapons quartermaster, basically doing any task that keeps him onscreen as an agent, the producers realizing his comedic utility at last. The main gadgets are a key-fob explosive that reacts to whistling, and a tricked-out Aston Martin, with so many weapons, I lost count. (A tech who tricked out the Lotus Esprit in SPY WHO LOVED ME once remarked that with the mechanics required to include this many devices in a car, you wouldn’t have space for the engine.)

While helping Koskov escape a sniper, Bond (using a techno sniper rifle bigger than anything Connery or Moore ever used) defies orders to kill the sniper, because a) he can tell she is no professional, so wings her gun instead (“Whoever she was, I must have scared the living daylights out of her!”), and b) she’s the cellist he just noticed playing in the opera house, and c) she’s hot. Bond makes contact with her, and discovers she is Koskov’s girlfriend, Kara (Maryam d’Abo)! Then why was she sniping at Koskov?!

Plots within plots, as Kara relates how Koskov himself set her up to snipe at him, with dummy bullets. Then why did Koskov employ Bond and MI6 to kill his sniper?…

Bond poses as a friend of Koskov’s, empowered to take her to him. A strange dynamic develops, as Bond and Kara roll through a montage usually played to denote a couple growing closer to banging (on the run, visiting a fair, bodies touching innocently, meaningless laughter) – but she believes she’s on the way to her boyfriend, so why is SHE getting so chummy, like a schoolgirl in love?

Bond even gets a little p-whipped by Kara, maintaining they should NOT go back for her cello – CUT TO: the wahp-wahp-wahp moment of waiting outside her apartment while she retrieves her cello. (Maryam does a good job miming the instrument, with a noticeable vibrato. As a violinist once told me, “Try and get a string player NOT to use vibrato.” It’s such an inbuilt mechanism that it’s easy to spot actors who are miming, because they usually can’t or don’t do it, but Maryam pulls it off. There is even a pure Bond-ian use of the cello case in a chase scene, used to escape henchmen by sitting in it and sliding down the snowy hill.)

Bond’s gentlemanly interaction with Kara differentiates Dalton as the guy who did, in fact, read the Fleming source material diligently – and applied it – making his Bond more human than caricature, so whereas Connery and Moore would have already banged Kara, this Bond is sincerely trying to get a lead on Koskov by Friend-Zoning himself, and later cautiously falling for Kara like any Cary Grant or Hugh Grant. If the screenwriters are playing it this way, it can only mean Koskov is gonna end up dead or treacherous, so that these two can bonk in good conscience.

Sure enough, we discover Koskov poolside, kissing and groping many chicks at once – the lame filmic device that informs us he’s a Villain. No decent man would kiss and grope this many chicks – at once… forgetting that the hero of this series is as big a cad as this villain. Also, Koskov arranged for MI6 to kill his “sniper” because he wanted Kara out of the way! So now it’s only a matter of time before Kara applies her tremolo guilt-free to Bond’s skin flute.

Set around Tangier and Eastern bloc countries, the plot unveils Koskov in cahoots with ex-pat American general Whitaker (Joe Don Baker, as repulsive as fried butter), who supports dictators, tyrants and Confederates, neck-deep in arms deals, drug deals and fried butter. Whitaker’s number one hitman is a Nordic chiseled blond named Necros (Andreas Wisniewski), whose oomph-Bond-gimmick is exploding milk bottles, who totally looks like that blond terrorist in DIE HARD… Waitaminute–he IS! Next year, he would be killed by John McClane, who would write on his sweater, “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.”

Bond discovers that Pushkin knows nothing of the double-oh assassination plot – it’s a set up by Whitaker to get Pushkin killed by MI6. Thus the two Cold War enemies – Britain and the KGB – team up to smoke out the Even Badder Villains, the fried butter general, the womanizing perve and the Die Hard milkman.

Virginia Hey appears as Pushkin’s girlfriend – one of the most striking Australian beauties (she was the Warrior Woman in ROAD WARRIOR), unfortunately with no lines – but who needs lines with side-boob like that?!

John Terry plays a new Felix Leiter, Bond’s CIA pal, who is after the same villains. (I’ve totally lost count of Felixes – why couldn’t they ever get an actor to reprise the role?!) And Walter Gotell squeezes in a cameo as Russian General Gogol during the final minutes…

Virginia Hey’s nakedness causes man-battle.

Bond publicly shoots Pushkin as a ploy to smoke out Whitaker’s plot. When Bond is captured by Whitaker, there is actually a compelling reason not to kill him: Whitaker, always the opportunist, wants to score points with the Russian authorities by turning Bond over to them for murdering their leader.

The jail scene is more intense than it needs to be, as the sadist Russian jailer-bear buries himself in the role, looking like he’s really going to beat Timothy Dalton to death and rape Maryam d’Abo. Escaping the jail, Bond and Kara also free another entertaining prisoner – the great Art Malik as Mujahideen freedom fighter, Shah, who is a big man in his village, elbows deep in opium deals with Whitaker.

Shah helps Bond bring down Whitaker, after Bond explains that his opium deals end up funding more weapons for the Soviets. This was back in the day when the Mujahideen were still considered America’s pals (America supplying them with arms to beat back the Soviets; in 1998’s RAMBO III, the Muja rode by Johnny Rambo’s side).

On the opium transport plane, Bond sets a bomb timer for 10 minutes, which takes the whole third act to explode. And later, when Bond finds he and Kara’s only escape is to liftoff in the plane, he doesn’t RUSH back to the bomb like a man who set a 10-minute timer at least 20 minutes ago – he saunters back – only to be accosted by Die Hard out of nowhere after we thought he was dead. (See? It runs in his family!) Why Bond doesn’t scream at him, “I am trying to defuse a bomb, you idiot!” is beyond me.

Plane runs out of fuel, glides into a mountain, as Bond and Kara dive into a Jeep and roll out the back cargo bay. (Should the plane really make such a big Pretty Orange Explosion when it crashes? I mean, the thing IS empty!)

Separating himself from previous Bonds, Dalton’s final prurient encounter is with Kara in a private room, no chance of being discovered by MI6 or Q; a more “romantic” ending, not a stray bang. It’s the second-best debut film of any Bond (ceding first place to Daniel Craig’s perfectly formed arse in CASINO ROYALE).

The same team responsible for the shoddy A VIEW TO A KILL made this exciting film. Maybe it was action man Dalton that inspired Glen, Maibaum and Wilson to bat their A-game – or maybe it was something else… Albert R. Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara, was brought onboard as executive producer (taking this role in every successive Bond production to this day). I believe with this passing of the torch from Cubby to Barbara, her input enabled us to cleanly delineate the “cartoonish” Bond films from the tonally realistic ones, and this movie, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, is that dividing line. Yes, there will always be fan service callbacks to the old Connery and Moore flummery (Brosnan para-sailing a wave, harking back to Moore snowboarding a cowabunga chase scene; or Craig in a plane chopped smaller and smaller, like Moore in a car chopped smaller and smaller; or Halle Berry tied to a table with lasers threatening her, like Connery tied to a table with a laser inching toward his nuts) but the overall tenor of the New Generation Bonds (Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) has been one of hyper-world fiction rather than schoolboy tall tales.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS grossed more than Moore’s last two Bond films – $191 mil worldwide (the 4^th most successful Bond film at time of release), which also means it grossed more than many of Connery’s Bond films! Not bad for a guy who said he didn’t want to take over from Sean Connery way back in ‘69 because “Sean was far too good.”

Seeing those grosses must have scared the living daylights out of Roger and Sean.

END

All the buds together, one last time: Lois Maxwell, Roger Moore, Desmond Llewelyn, and even Patrick Macnee, the Watson to Moore’s Holmes.

A View To A Stuntman.

57-year-old Roger Moore finally ages out of the Bond franchise, in his seventh and final fling as James Bond 007 in A VIEW TO A KILL, a movie that could easily win the prize for The Stuntman Most Looking Not Like The Star.

The title is from the Ian Fleming short story From a View To A Kill (published in the 1960 collection For Your Eyes Only), but does not follow the Fleming plot, rather, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson somehow plagiarize Lex Luthor’s plan in SUPERMAN (1978) to destroy a land mass in California by detonating the San Andreas fault. In this instance, the villain wants to sink Silicon Valley and corner the market on microchips. The plot of GOLDFINGER also comes to mind (cornering the market on gold by making all the gold in Fort Knox un-usable).

With rudimentary computers of the day not yet mass-produced for domestic use, the filmmakers would not realize how childish their plot was: entrepreneur Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) aims to end Silicon Valley’s dominion over microchip manufacture and distribution, cutting a deal with heads of world industry that HE would be the sole microchip maven. It’s a scene not unlike GOLDFINGER, where a diorama rises from below (showing San Francisco’s Silicon Valley) and all Zorin’s guests are amazed like the bad actors they are. But the grand plan reads as ridiculous to us modernaires, because we know Silicon Valley is only an inventor’s paradise, and drowning all the property and people there will not guarantee you become the only marketer/distributor of that tech, as that tech is promulgated around the world. Even back then, designs and distribution companies for that tech would not have all been crowded together in that one space, but in numerous physical locations around the globe. [smh] – those olden days people…

Another cold open involving skiing, with James Bond (Moore) being chased by soldiers; magnificent stunts and stupid rear projections, then, as Bond snowboards down a cliff like a total boss brah, cue the Beach Boys’ California Girls – a moment just as cringey as Pierce Brosnan para-sailing that wave more than a decade hence…

Bond rendezvouses with a submarine captained by a stunningly beautiful blonde (Mary Stavin). And bangs her.

Into opening credits and the feeble Duran Duran song, View To A Kill, the only Bond song to reach #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts, illustrating the population’s execrable taste in music. Duran’s bassist John Taylor reportedly asked producer Albert Broccoli at a party, “When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?” Well, there was already Wings, Carly Simon, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Nancy Sinatra; I mean really, the arrogance of this new romantic unformed child – putting himself above Wings?! So we assume Duran got the job, with their synthesizer orchestra stabs and Simon Le Bon’s out-of-tune yodeling, because Broccoli once again couldn’t get someone decent…

To Paris, Bond’s spy agency MI6 tailing Zorin, all attending a festive horse race – secretary Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), weapons expert Q (Desmond Llewelyn), leader M (Robert Brown) and Bond. In a pink outfit way too youthful for her advanced years, Maxwell, who thought she was going to be replaced with the Egyptian-eyed hotness from the last film, manages to hang on to Moneypenny until this film, Moore’s swansong, being told by Broccoli that this was her definite last; she harbored designs on being promoted to M – but it’s a man’s world. (A female M is a decade away, in Brosnan’s GOLDENEYE.)

Q’s only featured invention is a small radio-controlled spycam robot, that would only come into play as the last gag in the film.

STRANGE IRONIES ON MOORE’S AGE:

• Moore inadvertently added to his failing looks by having a facelift between the last film and this one – one would think this could only be an improvement, but the procedure made his eyes bulge out like a sitcom actor and his already furrowed face digress toward Humphrey Bogart’s, i.e. the underside of a running shoe.
• In 1985, Moore’s age of 57 was regarded as too old for an action star, in this film that was up against Stallone’s RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and ROCKY IV, two movies from a guy who was 39, and who would continue being an action star well into his 70s.

MORE COINCIDENCES:

• This was Dolph Lundgren’s first film (as a nameless henchman). His second film – was ROCKY IV as Drago!

The gang meet Tibbet (Patrick Macnee, from SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK 1976, where he played Watson to Moore’s Holmes); there is a fun undercover interplay between them, as Bond makes Tibbet perform menial tasks as his “personal attaché.”

He’s either the ugliest man in the world or the scariest woman in the world – Grace Jones is Zorin’s right hand man—uh, woman?—uh, assassin, called May Day. Bond tails him/her up the Eiffel Tower, where s/he jumps off the top with a parachute (reminding us of Franz Reichelt, the inventor who tested his parachute design in 1912 from the first platform of the Tower – and died trying). Bond tails May’s parachute in a car that keeps being chopped smaller and smaller.

Bond infiltrates Zorin’s horse show under an alias, James St. John Smythe, for which there is a running gag about the pronunciation of “St. John” (pronounced as “sin-jin”) – but I gotta ask, and maybe this is cultural ignorance on my part: What is it with Britain’s ass-over-tit pronunciation of Saint John?! 1994’s FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL also has a whole bit dedicated to this gag. WHY is “sin-jin” the correct way? And if it is, WHY aren’t British people aware of it? Long discussion, another time…) No matter the alias, Zorin blows Bond’s cover almost immediately with his new-fangled device called a computer, exhibiting a futuristic function which would actually turn to reality soon – facial recognition technology. (Apparently the real life CIA were so impressed, they got to work to make it a reality after seeing this film.) Of course, knowing there’s a spy spying on you doesn’t prompt a Bond Villain to simply shoot the spy in the head, and we must suffer through a drawn-out series of misadventures of Zorin trying to make Bond die as circuitously as possible.

After a silly steeplechase where all the other jockeys/henchmen try to kill Bond via horseback, Zorin reveals he knows who Bond is, to which Bond gives that same hubristic warning that if he doesn’t report back to base, his agency will retaliate. Zorin has the creamiest retort, that every Bond Villain should have used since DR. NO: “If you’re the best they have, they’ll more likely try to cover up your embarrassing incompetence.”

Oooo, what a burn, Zorin! Pwned!

Walter Gotell is shoehorned into the plot, reprising his Russian General Gogol, who threatens Zorin, “No one ever leaves the KGB!” There is some kind of “enhanced steroids” sub-plot and Gogol intimates Zorin might be a “creation” of the KGB; it’s all apiece with Zorin’s horses being able to run faster and jump higher, and May Day is also alluded to as enhanced. This thread goes nowhere. Otherwise, why couldn’t Zorin defeat Bond easily in hand-to-hand during the climax, or hold his own weight to stop himself from falling off the bridge? Well, Bond writers are notoriously inconsistent…

Tanya Roberts (the last CHARLIE’S ANGEL, and Playboy Bunny October 1982) is geologist [snigger] Stacey Sutton, ten times more luscious than the opener blonde. That’s why she can totally play a geologist. Her acting chops are inversely proportionate to her blondeness. Zorin has offered her money for her land, but she won’t sell due to reasons given during bad line-reads. Bond’s stuntman helps her drive off Zorin’s goons, then Bond doesn’t sleep with her.

As per Moore’s autobiography (My Word Is My Bond, 2008), he felt there was no onscreen or real-life chemistry between he and Roberts (he was older than her mother!), and I guess director John Glen felt that way too, as Bond is kept pretty hands-off the goods, except for a badly-staged fire rescue where, for some strange reason, Stacey loses the use of her legs, and Bond must carry her down the fire engine’s ladder (all we can think is: this poor old man’s stuntman!); and then the last scene, where we see them very briefly in a shower through Q’s spycam. For some reason, there’s an idiotic chase scene where Bond and Stacey escape arrest by stealing a fire engine and Bond goes climbing unnecessarily out on the speeding engine’s ladder because someone musta told John Glen you could squeeze comedy out of that predicament.

In his book, Moore also revealed a dislike of Grace Jones. Nonetheless, to escape being found out, Bond finds he must bang May Day, and if you think that’s gross, imdb Trivia reports that during the mock fight scene between May and Zorin, a freeze frame will reveal a snatch of Grace Jones’ pubic hair. (I promised myself I wouldn’t hurl.)

Bond and Stacey infiltrate Zorin’s mine through the cunning use of stealing miner’s uniforms – luckily, Stacey found one with a snug pearbottom fit. Zorin proves his insanity by arbitrarily machine-gunning all these workers who have planted the charges to blow the tectonic plates for him. (Moore was against this scene, as it took the “fun” out of Bond movies and replaced it with real clinical psychopathy.) May turns against Zorin when he buries her also in the mine, “I thought that creep loved me!” She allies with Bond and goes out in a poignant sacrifice.

Zorin kidnaps Stacey and escapes in a zeppelin, and heads toward the climax at the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course, the villain HAS to kidnap the damsel in distress otherwise how would we involve all three principals in the final scene? The iconic fight on the cables, reproduced in the movie poster. This is when process shots work best, as static shots – as we see the San Francisco Bay stretching out under Bond and Zorin.

Ultimately, it’s an inauspicious end to Moore’s run as James Bond; as Bond and Stacey soap each other up, we can almost hear Q as he spies their final shower shot, “Oh, grow up, double-oh seven!” He did, Q. He did.

END

Eight times the vagina.

James Bond was this close to being James Brolin.

After five films as Bond, Roger Moore was ready to quit, he himself feeling that his age was becoming an untenable factor in the action-packed life of his playboy spy. After Moore’s previous film, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s EON Productions went hunting for another Bond – and found one! Mr. Streisand.

But suddenly – Connery!

Sean Connery was contracted to do a Bond film outside the auspices of EON, another filmic adaptation of THUNDERBALL called NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN. So at the last moment, the 55-year-old Moore was cajoled into signing back on as Bond, probably saying he’d never say never again. And OCTOPUSSY, the 13^th Bond film, becomes the 6^th Bond film for Moore (from Ian Fleming’s 1966 short story collection, Octopussy And The Living Daylights). The film’s slogan would be “Nobody does him better,” a sly wink to this movie’s competition with the original Bond, and a callback to Carly Simon’s nostalgic song.

Bond investigates a smuggling ring in India and the screenplay somehow gets tangled up in geopolitical espionage between Russia and America. Plot within plots, but I can’t honestly say it’s an elegant or smart screenplay. Regular Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum just lets the story tumble into itself, keeping Bond in action scenes that occasionally come somewhere near the plot, while two other writers flank him (George MacDonald Fraser and Michael G. Wilson), whom I presume were there to keep him from straying too far into Stupid; I imagine them sitting cross-armed on either side of Maibaum while he typed away timidly.

Michael G. Wilson: administrator extraordinaire.

Michael G. Wilson starts his rise to prominence with this film (as a producer), but he has been sneaking around the outskirts of Bond like a spy since GOLDFINGER, where he was the 3^rd assistant director, working his way around and through the franchise in various administrative jobs, until he became executive producer on MOONRAKER and retained that post on every single James Bond movie made by EON Productions since, and screenplaying five! Any wonder? He’s the son of producer Cubby Broccoli’s wife, Dana, and her previous husband Lewis Wilson, making him Cubby’s stepson. Nepotish much?

The opening mini-plane scene is an exciting little vignette, but I can’t figure why it even exists. To clarify, many Bond movies open with a stunt-driven vignette unrelated to the movie’s main plot, but they usually make sense within their own little mini-plot. But in this senseless scene: Bond tries to blow up a Cuban prototype plane, fails, is captured and escorted off-base on an open flatbed truck, unrestrained in any way; escapes, flies this mini-plane back toward the base with no weapons on it. Was he banking on the Cubans to fire a heat-seeking missile at him so that he could lead it into the prototype’s hangar? Maibaum must’ve written this scene while those two goons were having lunch.

Opening titles, over a well-constructed ballad called All Time High, with insipid vocals by Rita Coolidge, undermining the song’s potential. I’m speculating the composers (John Barry and Tim Rice) and the producers crafted Coolidge’s lackluster vocalization based on Bond’s age. Maybe they didn’t want to misrepresent the aging Bond with a powerful vocal? (Think about how Daniel Craig’s first Bond is represented, with the scalding power of Chris Cornell; or consider how Moore’s first Bond was introduced – with the crunch of McCartney’s voodoo power chords.) All Time High could have been one of the great Bond songs with the talent of Donna Summer or Gladys Knight behind it – or bring back Carly Simon! That would have been a great tie-in with the slogan!

A new M (Robert Brown) sends Bond on a mission to investigate a stolen Faberge Egg. It has something to do with national security because Agent 009 was killed with the Egg.

The trail leads to India, where we see the Taj Mahal immediately (kinda like how you can see the Eiffel Tower no matter where you stand in France). With Egg as McGuffin (Egg McMuffin?), Bond tails art dealer Kamal Khan (played by French actor Louis Jourdan, and I honestly can’t tell whether he’s playing an Indian badly with that accent, or whether they’ve “darkened” his skin to make him look Indian.) I guess he thinks pronouncing it “Mr. Bund,” is a good stab at a Hindi accent.

Bond makes contact with the MI6 Agent in India, Vijay (played by real life tennis star Vijay Amritraj in his first movie role). Disguised as a snake charmer, to get Bond’s attention, Vijay plays the Bond Theme. A little meta; I mean, that’s the theme for the movie series, not Bond’s life! How did Bond recognize it? Has he seen those Sean Connery movies where he plays a spy?

Khan’s men, led by Gobinda (the imposing Kabir Bedi), try to kill Bond immediately, just for an action sequence, making use of all the local color in the Indian market – a bed of nails, a sword swallower, hot coal walkers – climaxing in a mini-cab chase through crowded streets. Vijay uses a tennis racket (yeh, right?) to ward off assailants, and every time he hits someone with it, even with glancing blows, we hear the sweet-spot tennis ball foley. This is the first bit of comedic idiocy that’s meant to be a laff-riot.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is the real comedic punch of this movie, not just doing his usual cameo as weapons expert but participating as a field agent throughout the movie, bringing his cantankerous disdain to Bond’s adolescent behavior, telling Vijay, “Don’t let him teach you any of his bad habits!” It’s almost like he’s writing these sarcastic jabs himself. Q even gets to rescue a bevy of women – and reap the rewards – the old dog!

Now compare Q growing into his role (with Llewelyn at the advanced age of 69), while Moneypenny (56-year-old Lois Maxwell) was being phased out, her striking young assistant, Penelope Smallbone, catching Bond’s eye. Bond makes a few age-ist innuendos, and Maxwell can’t seem to hide her distaste, either onscreen or in interviews, for this obvious ploy to overhaul her auntiness. I’m surprised Maxwell lasted this long! She looked like Bond’s aunty in her very first appearance in DR. NO. What can I say? That’s how evolution plays men and women: past breeding age, women lose their attractiveness, while men can breed into their 60s and 70s, so retain their good looks and attraction. Am I wrong? One word: Sean Fucking Connery.

The picture says it all: Lois Maxwell was none too happy that a pretty new face was being primed to replace her. She’s so mad she’s turning from an aunt into an uncle.

And OCTOPUSSY seems intent on winnowing out the unattractive; it definitely holds the Bond record for the most beautiful women in the supporting cast – the female Octopussy cult. Eight times the pussy content of other Bond films. When they’re not acting as a strike force or rowing team, they’re all lounging around a pool scantily-clad.

And it’s India, so of course, there are mostly white women.

The body most beautiful belongs to flame-haired Kristina Wayborn as Magda, Khan’s main woman, whom Bond cannot seduce, due to her loyalty to Khan – and then she sleeps with him when Khan tells her to steal back the Egg from Bond, for which Khan spent 500,000 rupees at an auction (about $4.75 in US dollars). I’m thinking there are other ways to steal an Egg, but you do you, gurl. Magda sports a tiny blue-ringed octopus tattoo, telling Bond, “That’s my octopussy.” What’s that supposed to mean? Well, when she escapes off the balcony, unraveling her sari to reveal a shockingly slim torso you envision wrapping your palms around, we understand: it means she can take eight guys at once— okay, come on! Surely the producers explored every schoolboy innuendo that a movie named OCTOPUSSY would invoke – and then named it OCTOPUSSY anyway. I’m probably the 10-millionth schoolboy to think these thoughts. How did they get past the censors anyway, who are more dirty-minded than we are? Were we being primed all along, with Honey Ryder, Plenty O’Toole, Dr. Goodhead and Pussy Galore?

Lording over the cult as Octopussy herself is Melania Trump lookalike Maud Adams, in her second appearance as a Bond Girl; she was Scaramanga’s kept woman in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 1973 – now, she’s the Boss. She brings a strong demeanor to differentiate from her past subjugation, but an overall tepid acting performance that reeks of the screenwriter not knowing how to impart information except through clunky exposition dialogue.

When Bond confronts Octopussy (by simply walking into her room on a heavily-guarded Women-Only island), she reveals she is grateful to Bond for allowing her criminal father an honorable way out – suicide – rather than facing prison. It’s a story out of nowhere, about a character we’ve just learned about, applied to elicit sympathy for this female felon. It was actually the original plot of the book, which Maibaum, as usual, paid no attention to, using the book’s plot as backstory simply to get Octopussy in bed with Bond.

As she feeds her pet octopus, she tells Bond her father loved octopi and his pet name for her was Octopussy. Hon, that doesn’t explain anything, matter of fact, it raises even more questions! Either your dad was naïve in the interactions of men and women, or he was banging you– oh, I get it now! Here’s the thread: Maud Adams looks like Melania, and Dumbo Donald has sex with his daughter. Got it! They knew back then.

Octo strolls with Bond trying to recruit him for her organization, then gets mad when he declines. Bond grabs her and kisses her in anger – it’s all very rapey and molesty but she seems to enjoy it after the first NoMeansNo. I think because it reminds her of her father.

Khan intrudes, hardly surprised to find Bond in Octo’s chambers, and calling her “Otte-PIS-sy” in that excellent Hindi accent, asking her permission to kill Bond (“–dude, I’m right here!”). Khan is the second man she says No to that night.

In all Bond movies, the villains tell their henchmen, “Kill Bond!” only to have the henchies bring Bond back alive to the villain, for more talking not shooting. Well, Octo specifically tells Khan ‘Do NOT kill Bond!’ and then what does he do? Actively tries to kill Bond, including hiring a guy with the oomph-Bond-gimmick of a yo-yo buzzsaw, where he would drop this saw on his targets from a higher balcony – meaning that he’s relying on the good graces of his victims to have higher balconies when he comes to kill them.

Why are you going to all this trouble to contravene your boss’s orders?

The most extravagant murder attempt is surely Khan and Gobinda on elephants hunting Bond. As sad as it is to see these magnificent beasts enslaved to carry fools around, it IS cool to see them tracking through the jungle; adds a unique flavor to this Bond adventure. A tiger puppet attacks Bond, intercut with a real tiger. Bond gives it the “Sit-T!” command (a piss-take on Barbara Woodhouse’s famous dog-training methodology). The other idiocy that’s meant to be a laff-riot is here, as Bond swings through the trees emitting a Ron Ely Tarzan yell. Those other two writers musta been on break again.

Like whiplash, we are in Berlin. Walter Gotell reprises his role as Russian General Gogol, at odds with conquest-crazy General Orlov (the ice-savage Steven Berkoff, whose forehead lump would become famous in this decade for appearing in BEVERLY HILLS COP and RAMBO II back to back after this film).

Orlov and Khan are smuggling jewels via Octopussy’s circus (because Octopussy owns a traveling circus out of nowhere for this third act). And then Orlov plants a bomb, which Bond deduces is set to blow up an American army base in Berlin, triggering worldwide disarmament because when it is found the bomb was not an attack via a missile, the world would attribute it to a malfunction and disarm globally, thereby allowing Orlov to march across the borders of any country and conquer them…

Which 9-year-old wrote this again? You’d have to be under drinking age to think that the world would disarm after an unidentified bomb explodes. Just like the world stopped running oil pipelines after that one oil spill in 1974, right?

Gary Oldman, method acting as Gary Oldman and Gary Oldman.

There are twin knife-throwers, Mishka and Grishka (David and Tony Meyer), who look oddly like young Gary Oldman, who are the equivalent of talking-not-shooting with knives, by throwing knives to pin Bond’s sleeves to the wall, instead of just aiming for his heart, lungs and neck from the get-go.

In the spirit of the circus act that Bond was becoming, he gets to disguise himself inside a crocodile suit, inside a gorilla suit and as a clown. And then drive a Merc along train tracks in pursuit of the train that Octopussy rides, now as a B-character in her own movie, because the Russian bomb plot has taken up all the air in the vagina.

Hanging onto the outside of the train, Bond taps on Octopussy’s window, while she’s getting a nude massage. Khan walks in, as unconcerned as you please, sees someone at the window and shoots. Octopussy wraps herself in a sheet, asking, “Did you see who it was?” instead of, “Ever heard of KNOCKING, pervert? I was getting a massage!”— Oh sorry, I keep forgetting: Melania is used to Dumbo Donald just barging in on naked women.

Bond defuses the bomb – like Sean couldn’t in GOLDFINGER. They learned from Bond’s mistakes of the past, not to make him look like a bitch.

Bond leaps onto the side of Khan’s plane! Tom Cruise, eat your heart out! Granted, that’s not Roger Moore riding the outside of this twin-prop plane, but that’s definitely the stuntman in all these death-defying exterior practical shots. Coincidentally, and ironically, the stuntguy looks like Tom Cruise!

Director John Glen is responsible for OCTOPUSSY’s overall lack of luster; he is responsible for calling a wrap to scenes where he definitely hasn’t captured the best performances. Yes, I know – budget and filmstock and light and unions, etc. but when a celebrated actor like Louie Jourdan is crashing a plane and his last yell, “Nooo!” doesn’t sound like a man going to his death, but rather, a man realizing his gym membership is cancelled, there’s a systemic problem, starting and ending with the person responsible for getting the shots and drawing out the best from his actors. You could get away with the flamboyant stunts and the Tarzan yells and the sexism and quipping if the film itself was not a patchwork of uneven performances glued together with plotholes.

It became known as The Battle of The Bonds. OCTOPUSSY out-grossed NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN at the box office. Proving one thing: You can’t lose with eight times the pussy.

END

A film that goes Greek on us…

James Bond 007 retrieves a missile controller from a sunken British warship, and helps a Greek woman avenge her parents’ murder while trying to go Greek on her.

In the cold open, we meet Bond (Roger Moore, 5^th time) laying flowers on the grave of Teresa Bond, “Beloved Wife of James Bond. We have all the time in the world.” (Wooow! That’s some callback! From ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and the Louie Armstrong song, five films ago – with George Lazenby as Bond!)

A silly helicopter sequence exists simply to cameo Blofeld (John Hollis, whose face we never see, although we see from behind he is bald again, after Charles Gray played him with hair) and he’s in a neck brace and wheelchair! Bond dumps Blowie down an industrial funnel – with a slide whistle cue as he falls! – will these guys never learn? (The director and composer of GOLDEN GUN forever regretted their use of a slide-whistle during the corkscrew car stunt.)

Blowie never pops up again in this adventure; simply a pointless gag to set a campy tone. Or is there a more snide reason? You know how hip hop artists diss each other via songs? Well, this is how filmmakers diss each other. Producer Kevin McClory (co-producer-writer THUNDERBALL), who owned the Blofeld character, disallowed Albert Broccoli’s EON Productions to use Blofeld after DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. So Broccoli sanctioned this ersatz Blofeld (crediting him as “Wheelchair Villain” and coyly denying it was the character we all know it was meant to be: “people can believe whatever they want”). Dumping Not-Blofeld down the funnel, in essence, killing the character definitively, was Broccoli’s middle finger to McClory: We don’t need your character. (Which also explains the churlish slide whistle.)

We slide into the elevator muzak of Sheena Easton doing For Your Eyes Only. It’s the first time the performer of a Bond song has actually appeared within the opening credits, alongside the naked lady silhouettes. Though Easton was hot on the rise at the time, with only one album to her name, this song (composed by Bill Conti and Mick Leeson – that won a Grammy for Best New Artist) sounds a little too much like walking around Macy’s. The only reason it’s nostalgic is because we heard it in the 80s! And I hate to say it, but Conti – hot off ROCKY and ROCKY II – also slathers the movie with the dullest, forgettable soundtrack you will ever hear this side of Kohl’s Department Store.

James Bond sucks the life out of another unsuspecting blonde.

A young woman’s parents are murdered and she becomes The Bond Girl simply because the murderers are the same people Bond is pursuing. Carole Bouquet, with the face of a she-wolf and the eyes of a tiger, plays Melina like she’s slightly bored. Even when she runs to her gunned-down parents, she’s got a look on her face like she left the ice cream in the car and it melted. The last shot of her closeup eyes would have made a better shot into the opening titles. Right? Get it?

Let’s talk about the guy responsible for the weird shit that’s going down – director John Glen (NOT the astronaut, who is spelled with two ‘n’s). Glen makes his directorial debut after being editor on three Bond films. And he is an awful director. He’s what the industry would call workmanlike, a veiled insult that means you’re not exactly phoning it in, but you’re pretty close to dialing the number. His action scenes are interesting, due to filmic techniques improving (minimal rear projection required; mounted cameras on moving vehicles; unique chase scenes), but his probable attitude of “we’ll-fix-it-in-the-edit” is responsible for the inconsistency of the performances, the vapid blocking and bad looping, and the decisions to go with Stupid rather than somber. And it doesn’t help that King Stupid, Richard Maibaum, is screenwriter, adapting a collection of Bond novellas by Ian Fleming, published 1960 (“adapting” in the loosest sense of the word).

Bernard Lee: 1908-1981

No M! Sadly, Bernard Lee (who played the head of MI6 in the previous 11 Bond films) died of cancer in January 1981. Producer Cubby Broccoli, out of respect, did not recast the role of M, but instead had two British toffs (Geoffrey Keen and James Villiers) assign Bond’s mission: retrieve the Polaris missile launcher (called ATAC, pronounced “ay-tac”) before their enemies do. Walter Gotell reprises his role as KGB Leader, who orders an unseen operative to get the launcher first. Before entering M’s ex-office to meet the new toffs, Bond throws a rose to Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) – a farewell gesture?

In his spanky white Lotus Esprit, Bond surveils a suspect – and is captured immediately. If it weren’t for Melina, he would have been behind the game again. The anti-theft device on the Lotus is: when someone tries to smash the window, the car explodes. Great screenwriting! Are you saying Q is so stupid that he would make Bond’s means of escape from life-threatening situations EXPLODE if something hits the window, never mind a burglar? Maibaum said he wanted to strip Bond of his technology, and this imbecilic concept is how he writes out Bond’s car? The crooks couldn’t throw a grenade at it? Thus forcing Bond to escape in Melina’s toy car, while shopping mall music plays them through the chase. She introduces herself as half-Greek. And Bond’s first thought is exactly your first thought.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) takes up some slack for the missing M. From this movie forward, Llewelyn comes into his own as a comedic presence. Bond and Q work on the Identigraph to identify a henchie – a futuristic police sketch-artist computer program. (Today it looks as futuristic as Pac-Man.) Later, Q turns up masquerading as a priest. So Q is a field agent now? Who’s paying attention, as long as he’s chiding double-oh seven like a step-child?

Q fixes up a nice new red Esprit for Bond, to tool around Greece. Like THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, the location shooting is gorgeous (with the local color of the villages and villas inserted at various points), but nothing comes close to the majesty and awe of the Egyptian monuments from that previous film. Still, we can’t help thinking that director Glen is using the Greek backdrops to distract us while he goes Greek on us.

After a minimal bit of intrigue involving characters who are not who they say they are, Bond allies with a Greek guerilla named Columbo (played by Topol), who alerts Bond to a businessman Kristatos (Julian Glover) smuggling heroin. Kristatos’s niece Bibi (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is an ice skater training for the Olympics and—[record scratch]—Wait, what’s this got to do with that sunken British ship and the missile launcher? Nothing – but I suspect Maibaum (who is pushing 70) is simply indulging his “dirty old man,” by making the 18-year-old Bibi seduce Bond. Thankfully, Bond (with Moore pushing 53 himself) shuts down her naked advances. (I’m sure the first draft of this script is a sight for dirty old men.)

Bibi’s Nordic boyfriend is played by John Wyman, a chiseled Viking who tries to kill Bond in chase scenes, instead of just shooting him point-blank. Bibi’s trainer is Jill Bennett, whose only purpose is to look like Lindsay Crouse.

Columbo’s blonde mistress is Cassandra Harris (an Australian, married to Pierce Brosnan since 1980; she introduced Brosnan to Broccoli during this shoot); strikingly beautiful with her hair down and clothes off, but with acting so bad that when she publicly fights with Columbo in a restaurant, with Bond watching, I thought it was a ruse for her to be picked up by Bond and suck information from him. Well, Bond does pick her up on the rebound – but all she did was the other kind of sucking.

Bobsled-Skier-Motorbike. What will the European Olympic Union think up next?

The production values are not bad, and the ski chases are all entertaining, especially the scene where a bobsled crew is racing down their tubular track and Bond on skis leaps into the track, being chased by a motorbike that also joins the chase in the track! Good practical shots and great editing – but we can’t get our teeth into the tension for the shopping mall muzak. There’s also Bond exhibiting boss cruelty in kicking a car teetering over a cliff, sending a henchie to his death remorselessly. Although the cringey “humor” in all the fight and chase scenes reminds me of Richard Lester’s pantomime idea of humor in SUPERMAN II and III; like Bond beating the hockey guys into the goal and the goal noise bleeping, or when a bike leaps through an outdoor party and a guy gets a pie in the face. For every boss move, there are ten Chad demerits.

There’s a creative technique for closeups in the underwater scenes: they film the actors in slomo and blow their hair up as if it’s “floating,” with superimposed shots of bubbles rising up – makes for a pretty good B-movie underwater effect.

Hey, there’s young Charles Dance as a henchie. No lines, just gun-pointing and Spock Chopping.

Note this is the first movie where Bond never does bed The Bond Girl. Not that he doesn’t want to, but Melina is dead set intent on squeezing off her crossbow on Kristatos, the killer of her parents, rather than squeezing her thighs around his face. Bond quotes a Chinese saying to her: “Before setting out on revenge, you first dig two graves.” Like James Bond can give us moral advice, especially when it comes to murder, from a guy with a license to kill. But I see his point: he’s a mercenary, while she is killing with clouded judgment when she should be bonking him instead. (Coincidentally, the only woman he would bed is the wife of a future Bond!)

Each action vignette is well done – what brings the production down is how these scenes fail to jigsaw into a cohesive plot. As always, because King Stupid keeps resorting to the asinine devices of Talking Not Shooting and Chasing Not Killing, thus making many sequences unnecessary from the get-go from a plothole point of view. The number of times Bond is accosted by arbitrary henchmen trying to kill him – in the stupidest of ways that guarantee he won’t die – it becomes shorthand for ‘Look over here while I Greek you.’

Bond could really use some of John Glen’s diversionary tactics on Melina…

I totally know where you’re looking.

Bond and Melina, in a tiny sub, recover the McGuffin, that looks like an old-timey cash register. Meanwhile, right above them, Kristatos in his 80-foot yacht sends a guy to wrest it from them in a deepwater diving suit that looks like Robbie the Robot. My question: Why didn’t Kristatos go get it FIRST?

Bond, always terrible at his job, gets captured yet again, and the Bond Villain (also incompetent), ties Bond to Melina in a Catholic Missionary Position (i.e. face-to-face, but legs down) and drags them in the water behind his boat. Some people mistakenly call this keelhauling, but technically, keelhauling is when you drag someone all the way under the keel and up the other side again – front to back, or under one side and up the other. The stunt folk were actually swimming with sharks during this bit – very nice. Kristatos continues to waste petrol on his 80-footer, circling back around time and again for god-knows-whatever-reason instead of just driving in a straight line and shredding their bodies on the coral; cos every time he turns the boat, Bond gets enough slack to slip his bonds…

For the finale, Bond scales a sheer cliff face to sneak up on Kristatos Castle. A tense moment when he reaches the top and a henchie with a machine gun kicks him off. Bond falls and is grappled to a stop by his rope and pitons; tension mounts as henchie starts knocking out the pitons one by one… well, henchie could have just shot Bond instead of kicking him. So – totally deserved to die.

Another unnecessary conundrum when Bond’s small team, led by Columbo, attains the top of the mountain and a henchie is wounded by Melina’s arrow. To stop him from squealing and alerting others, they shove a gag into his mouth… Hmm, all other henchies are summarily murdered by Bond’s gang, so what’s wrong with cutting this grunt’s throat? After minutes of desperately trying to quiet the henchie, Columbo eventually knocks him out. You couldn’t lead with that? See how Maibaum “creates” this false tension from situations which shouldn’t even be tenable if people were doing their jobs properly? And is this little diversion integral to the plot? No. Thank you, Richard Maibaum.

Bond ends with a midnight swim with his wolf-woman, while a Thatcher lookalike (Janet Brown) is patched through on his watch-phone, and he leaves the watch with a parrot to squawk improprieties. The gags just won’t stop. What, no sex to end a Bond movie? The final title card: “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN IN OCTOPUSSY.”

How ironic that in a movie where Bond never spanks The Bond Girl, the last word we see is pussy.

END

This never happened to the other fella…

Bond versus Blofeld, who threatens to wipe out life on Earth – with a virus! (That word, that concept, has taken on different worlds of meaning in 2020!)

In the cold open, the gun barrel graphic moves across screen, and a new Agent 007 bends to one knee to shoot at us!

new bond: lazenby, george lazenby

The end titles of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE promised: “James Bond will return in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE”… And this guy shows up! After Sean Connery quit the series (on bad terms with producer Albert Broccoli), 22-year-old Timothy Dalton was offered the role of Bond. He declined. 40-year-old Adam West was also considered – from Batman to Bond! We can’t even envision that now (the fruity BATMAN television series had just ended in 1968, so West’s profile was sky-high), but thankfully, he also declined. BAZOING!

After 29-year-old Australian commercial ad model George Lazenby literally beat down the stunt coordinator in an audition at producer Albert Broccoli’s office, he was contracted for 7 films as the next James Bond. (Coincidentally, 29 was the age of the classic Silver Age Batman!)

The almost 6’2” Lazenby, with the refined Aussie accent and chiseled mannequin cheekbones, must have made Australia proud. But he didn’t foresee himself going further than this one film. We can hear the regret in his voice in interviews – not regret that he turned his back on the franchise, but that his agent advised him that Bond was becoming a dinosaur; that the character’s ethos of sophistication and misogyny was becoming dated in the wake of more grounded films that appealed to the younger, incoming ‘70’s counter-culture generation (THE GRADUATE, EASY RIDER). In one sense, his agent was right, but no one could foresee that both genres could exist side by side. Lazenby also hoped that the producers would, like those other modern films, inject popular music into the soundtrack. So his hippie heart wasn’t in the character. It was just another acting job – actually, his first acting job (on a feature film).

I feel sad for Lazenby. Sad that he was badly advised by the person who was meant to be looking out for his interests; sad that he is endlessly compared to the other Bonds on this one performance, instead of growing into the role; sad at wondering what this man’s life might have been had he stuck to the double-oh.

M, Q, Moneypenny: the backbone of National Security!

M (Bernard Lee), Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) are all crammed into the first scene to give us something familiar to embrace. M wonders where Bond is – CUT TO:

A redhead in a ball gown walks along a beach, clearly intending to drown herself. A shadowed man in a car watches from afar. It’s Bond, but the movie is taking it’s time to reveal him. After he saves her from the dawn surf, he introduces his wet self to her, “My name is Bond, James Bond” – and two men accost them, which Bond beats savagely. The girl flees in her car. Bond looks after her, amused, and with a wink to the camera, says, “This never happened to the other fella!”

A great, self-effacing, self-aware introduction, that slinks into the opening titles, a theme with no lyrics, because ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE was deemed too clunky to try to fit into words; silhouettes of naked females intermingling with scenes from the past Bond movies, to achieve a sense of continuity. (The “movie’s song” would be cued under the romantic montage later: “We Have All The Time In The World,” sung by Louis Armstrong (1901-1971); an ironic title in retrospect, as this would be Armstrong’s last recording before his death.)

It’s the 6^th Bond film (from the 10^th Bond novel by Ian Fleming, published 1963), and George Lazenby’s first and last Bond.

Bond comes across the redhead at a casino in Monaco, where she bends down at the card table to expose her perfect cleavage, causing Bond to spot her $20,000. Diana Rigg plays Tracy (aka Teresa or Contessa) as the daughter of an Italian mob boss, so her spoiled rotten demeanor accounts for her trying to commit suicide in a ball gown, blowing money which she doesn’t have, and using her body as collateral. (Is Rigg the first Bond Girl with fakes? Or are those naturals just PERFECT?!)

Rigg comes to MAJESTY from another successful spy series – she’s Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS (Seasons 4 to 7); the second Bond girl from that British TV show, the first was Honor Blackman from GOLDFINGER. Rigg kicked butt cutely, and was afforded more sexual respect in AVENGERS, but – as Lazenby would find out – the calcified Bond conventions don’t change overnight, so even though the producers allowed Rigg a level of toughness here (when she fights back against henchmen, or treats Bond with the same one-night-stand callousness that he exhibits toward women), she must still conform to using her sexuality as bribe and payment. Sorry, ladies, that’s how the world turns. Still, there is a very unique, poignant fate that awaits Tracy as a Bond Girl.

Bond is taken to the mob boss Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), who beseeches Bond to marry his wayward daughter Tracy: “What she needs is a man to dominate her; to make love to her enough until she loves him…” He’s either a really progressive father, or it’s still Biblical Times inside Draco’s mansion. He offers Bond one million pounds to pound his daughter into submission. And Bond, principled as he is to Queen and Country, agrees to woo Tracy only if Draco gives him the location of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, SPECTRE’s crime kingpin that Bond has been pursuing since he was a young Connery. That seems like a fair, moral trade.

Bond visits M, who is definitely on the rag. There is a behind-the-scenes story related by Lois Maxwell: “Bernard had been drinking since about 9am. George Lazenby was on a horse and Bernard stuck a glass of wine under its nose. The poor thing reared up and kicked Bernard through some barbed wire.” A vet stitched up Lee’s gashed leg, and he made it back to the set later that day. So his injury was HIS fault, yet we sense a real dismissive hostility in M toward Bond (Really, sir, would you take that tone with Connery?), so do we surmise that Lee was allowing that personal incident to bleed into his professional performance?

M, who sounds like he’s just waiting to get back at Bond for letting a horse kick him, takes him off the Blofeld case, called Operation Bedlam, then shouts at him a little too parentally: “Your license to kill is useless unless one can set up a target!” It’s a shock to us as well. How can Bond be denied from pursuing his sauciest nemesis? Remember when Bond said, “This never happened to the other fella”?…

Bond, flailing for respect at this point, RESIGNS from Her Majesty’s Secret Service!

This never happened to the other fella.

He empties his desk, removing his tiny breather device, his garrote watch, his diving knife and belt – does he actually sit and work here or is it his gadget museum? We might think these gadgets are more connective tissue with the Bond legacy, but it’s more a symbolic act, because director Peter Hunt wanted to eschew the infamous Bond gadgets for a more realistic approach, as per Fleming’s novel. Aficionados assure us that Hunt succeeds more than any director before him.

This never happened to the other fella.

Moneypenny is shattered at Bond’s intent to resign, anxiously wondering whether any of the other double-oh agents will flirt with her auntiness – but M doesn’t accept Bond’s resignation and instead gives him two weeks leave.

Bond uses the time to woo Tracy, in a tiresome panty-cultivating montage that features the movie’s theme song, under Bond and Tracy getting to know each other by being outdoors and pointing at stuff and laughing.

Then the film takes a very strange turn…

Bond is being driven somewhere with Draco and Tracy, as if on their way to some social event, Draco rolling his eyes at Bond and Tracy making googoo eyes at each other. Bond exits, telling Tracy to keep the martinis cold for him. So they are going on ahead and he’s catching up later. Okay. Next he’s cracking a safe, copying documents, meeting with a British fop, Sir Hilary, and the next thing we know – Bond is in the Swiss Alps in the guise of the fop genealogist, Sir Hilary, meeting Blofeld! But is Tracy still keeping those martinis cold? How many days have passed? What happened to her and Draco? Does anyone care we’re in another movie now? Did George Lazenby actually do two Bond movies and squish them together?

Bond’s ancestral coat of arms sports the Latin motto: “The World Is Not Enough” (we slap our thighs in recognition…). As Sir Hilary, he’s investigating the genealogy claim of this secretive scientist up in his Alpine laboratory – a scientist that turns out to be Blofeld!

Telly Savalas is Blofeld! Savalas had a few classic movies under his belt at the time (CAPE FEAR 1962, BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ, GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, DIRTY DOZEN) but he was not yet KOJAK, to premiere in 1973. Savalas gives a rock-solid performance as a megalomaniac, but there was nothing as chilling as Donald Pleasance playing Blofeld like a fey absent-minded sociopath. I was very sad Pleasence didn’t reprise his role from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Also, Savalas has lost Blofeld’s oomph Bond gimmick – the scar tearing down the right side of his face. Not only was it icky, it also signified the right side (i.e. the good side) of his humanity was damaged.

This is another strange anomaly, because Bond and Blofeld should know each other (from LIVE TWICE). But both of them here have to slowly figure out who each of them is. And that missing scar! The producers were aware of all these continuity errors – and just ignored them.

With his kilt on, Bond walks into a room full of women. No undies required. Overlorded by a battleaxe (Ilse Steppat as Bunt), these strikingly beautiful women (including a young, unrecognizable Joanna Lumley amongst the harem) are from all over the world and supposedly subjects for Blofeld’s experiments in allergies.

After plonking at least three of them (including Angela Scoular and Catherine Schell), Bond discovers their role in Blofeld’s plan: his Angels of Death, brainwashed to spread his “Virus Omega” which causes total infertility in all livestock, grains – and people (“nothing is born, no seed even begins to sprout”). As Bond discovered, Blofeld could have done just as much damage by making people listen to these shrill girls jabber after sex.

In one sense, movie derails itself in this Alpine ruse; we’ve forgotten all about boo Tracy and bitch M, and anyway, is Bond actually going rogue on leave, or is he on assignment? It’s a muddle. And suddenly – Tracy! Bond escapes Blofeld’s lair, skis down to a village (in the worst rear projection scenes ever committed to an A-list movie!), tries to lose Blofeld’s henchmen in a festival – and Tracy ice-skates up to him out of nowhere, “You’re in trouble, darling – what’s the matter?!” Just like that. It’s like she ran into him in their own neighborhood. No surprise, no “Where the FUCK did you go?!” or “I was holding that goddamed martini for 2 days!” Just immediately slides into HIS world without any preamble. And what is she doing in the Alps?

It’s not like there’s a twist, like she’s there to assassinate Blofeld for her father’s sake, so that he can be Number One. How did this coincidence ever happen? We never find out.

Also – James lies in the straw with Tracy, declaring his love and asking her to marry him – This never happened to the other fella! – but didn’t he just bang three chicks up at the clinic? Not well-adjusted one-night-stands, but exploited, imprisoned, brain-mashed chicks that were desperate for man, therefore Bond exploited their loneliness! I guess those are good qualities in a husband…

At 2 hours, 22 minutes, we feel the length of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. Written once again by Richard Maibaum, I can see why many Bond fans consider this a closet classic, and it is well-made for the most part, with two major demerits:

1) clusterfuck editing on fight scenes

MAJESTY is Peter Hunt’s directorial debut; he was actually editor on five previous Bond films, which is ironic, considering he let his editor here (John Glen) run wild like an ADHD child. The body of the movie is fine, the fight scenes are atrocious! They are not only cut from so many angles and faster than the eye can follow, but cut to the point where the action is LOST; as an example, cutting to a shot after the punch has connected, but no shots of the actual contact, so we only see the follow-through and not the strike or even the lead-up. Either Hunt couldn’t control Glen, or get enough coverage to make the scenes work. Scarily, John Glen would go on to direct 5 Bond films himself (from 1981’s FOR YOUR EYES ONLY to 1989’s LICENSE TO KILL). But this would be Hunt’s swansong as a Bond director, having attained his Peter Principle – he had risen to the level of his IN-competence.

2) laughable rear projections

In skiing scenes, the stock-car scene and the final bobsled chase scene, Hunt’s practical shots are more than adequate to convey the speed and fear of the chase. He’s got lots of coverage, enough to cut together exciting chase scenes; there are good tracking shots on the skiers, many exterior driving shots, and some very thrilling practical footage of the violent bobsled fight.

And then he keeps cutting to rear projections during closeups. And we fall out of the movie completely, as the backing screen shows the land tilting at hilarious angles, with no bearing whatsoever to the person’s closeup face, at speeds that never match the practical shots. We could blame the editor, but that’s like shouting at an ADHD child.

How did the public take ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE? It was a financial success, yet when worldwide grosses were compared to the previous Connery films, it was not as lucrative. MAJESTY grossed only half as much as Connery’s YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. And when Connery would return for the next Bond, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, that movie would also be more financially successful than MAJESTY. I know many ladies might have thrilled to this situation – but Lazenby ended up the bitch in a Connery sandwich.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

Bond marries Tracy!

This never happened to the other fella.

There’s a very sad moment at the wedding where Bond’s eternal flirt, Moneypenny, weeps openly, while looking into his eyes from afar. Which not only proves Lois Maxwell a good actor, but makes me feel bad for all the jokes I made at her expense over the years. Her auntie-love was REAL… It’s quite emotional. And then it gets even more so…

… as Blofeld, still on the loose, does a drive-by on Tracy! A new wife, a new death, a new emotion for Bond. It’s a plot point that comes out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason – I mean, why not give Bond a happy ending? – but it’s played with enough weight that we feel it in our romcom nerve.

This never happened to the other fella.

And then again, maybe it’s a caveat on why Bond should stick to blandly banging in lifeboats…

The end titles promise us: “James Bond will return in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER” … and it’s the other fella!

END