Adam H. Kerman
2017-08-29 20:38:27 UTC
I'm going through my DVD box set of James Bond movies, and I've now finished
the Connerys. I don't own Never Say Never Again. I don't intend to see it.
I've seen bits of it on tv.
I skipped On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but I had re-watched that not
all that long ago. I hadn't seen Diamonds Are Forever in years.
DAF's pre-credit sequence begins with Bond seeking revenge against
Blofeld for killing Tracy. It's Bond back to being the cold-hearted bastard
of Dr. No and doesn't fit in with the light comic tone of the rest of the
movie.
Goldfinger's director, Guy Hamilton, returns, and I suppose this was
demanded by Harry Saltzman, who used Hamilton on two of the Harry Palmer
movies. Saltzman despised Sydney J. Furie who directed The Ipcress File,
a better movie than the two sequels, although Funeral In Berlin has
its merits. (Read the very excellent novel instead.)
Shirley Bassey, also from Goldfinger, is back to sing my second favorite
opening title theme song from the Bond series. I wonder if Saltzman
also insisted on this. It's such a contrast between Bassey's huge voice
and Nancy Sinatra's little voice on You Only Live Twice. Frank Sinatra
was Broccoli's friend for years. I'm sure it was a favor.
Richard Maibaum is still adapting the novels, as he would through
License to Kill. That one and The Spy Who Loved Me are original
scripts, not adaptations. On DAF, he's joined by Tom Mankiewicz.
If you're keeping track, he's son of Joseph (who directed a certain
Bette Davis movie), nephew of Herman (shared credit on the Citizen Kane
screenplay), and first cousin once removed of Ben (the guy on TCM).
Mankiewicz would also have co-writer credits on Live and Let Die and
The Man with the Golden Gun.
I've always suspected that the script problems with these three films
were more on Mankiewicz than Maibaum, but we have no idea what Maibaum's
first draft of the scripts looked like nor why Broccoli insisted on
hiring Mankiewicz.
The movie has a ton of fun stuff in it. Wynt and Kidd are hysterical,
cleaning up the smuggling operation. Their introduction is great: The
murder of the dentist, then the murder of the helicopter pilot, followed
by the two of them skipping out of the scene, holding hands. It pokes fun
at the jaded audiences of the early 1970s: Evil henchmen? Big deal. You
mean, they're gay lovers?
The script is full of witty lines. Jill St. John is gorgeous. The
wig-changing scene leads to the famous "as long as the collars and the
cuffs match" line. The other famous line is Slumber's henchman's exchange
with Bond. "I got a brudder." "Small world", and the other henchman who
tossed Lana Wood out the window. "Exceptionally fine shot." "I didn't
know there was a pool down there!"
I liked the ridiculous gag of Tiffany being equipped with her own
fingerprint analysis unit, and Q thinking of helping Bond impersonate
Franks with the phony fingerprints.
The close quarters fight in the elevator at Tiffany Case's apartment
building in Amsterdam is well choreographed and looked damn dangerous.
(It ends with the product placement gag: Bond plants his Playboy Club
Key Card on Peter Franks' corpse! For a secret agent, Bond is absurdly
well known at clubs all around the world.)
You've got the entertaining chase scene through downtown Las Vegas. It's
hard to believe they got permission to do that, as it would have been
shut down for a couple of days. Hint: The chase that's five times of
long in the middle of LALD is not improved by adding significant length.
The comment is that there was so much ambient light in downtown
Las Vegas that the cameraman didn't have any rigged lights set up.
Something like 80 new model Ford cars and trucks are destroyed in the
making of this movie.
The fight with Bambi and Thumper is loads of fun, although how Sean
Connery got his second wind, I'll never know.
The movie has serious plot problems. First of all, why is Slumber part
of the smuggling operation at all? Supposedly, moving the diamonds
in the corpse (Alimentary my dear Leiter) was Bond's idea (still pretending
to be Peter Franks), so this would have been the first time they used
a corpse to smuggle. Right? Tiffany couldn't have had ALL of the diamonds.
How could that have gone wrong?
What the hell is Shady Tree's role in the smuggling operation? Why did
he need to be on stage? Why not just use one of the mortuary attendants?
When the hell did they cut and polish all the diamonds? The diamond
miners were smuggling out raw diamonds. Let's assume Metz had to do that,
but it was just something we never saw. Besides, Blofeld advanced the
plot, so when was there time? You can't just cut a diamond and expect
it to be able to focus the laser beam.
The very idea that it would work at all...
I loved the guys running away from the nuclear missile silo Blofeld took
out in North Dakota. I think they'd have been vaporized.
The big confrontation on the oil platform... sigh. The plot kind of
fizzles out at that point. Also, Blofeld supposedly escapes (given that
he was supposed to return in later movies), but we're not shown that. Last
we see, Bond bashed the sub into the control room.
I still have no idea how that shut down the satellite.
The two women are such plot problems. As is much discussed, Lana Wood's
demise makes no sense whatsoever. The DVD includes a missing scene: She
was supposed to find Tiffany's Las Vegas address.
Why was Tiffany placed in that huge house with a pool? Trivia notes that
it's Kirk Douglas's house. Much of Tiffany's role in the smuggling makes
no sense.
The problem with Tiffany is that she's professional near the beginning
of the movie, and gets dumber and dumber as the movie goes along. Take
the machine gun, which she doesn't even try to point, sigh. It's just
used for the gag of her falling off the platform.
I played the commentary track. Mankiewicz speaks over portions of it.
He makes a point. Obviously he's watching the movie. "Oh! There's
Jill St. John. Isn't she lovely." It's one of the several close ups
of her ass on the oil platform. Her ass has several good close ups that
her face doesn't get. It's a lovely ass.
The movie is famous for the most embarassing car chase gone wrong in a
big budget picture: The car goes into the narrow alley on its right
wheels, and comes out on its left.
Mankiewicz narrates and doesn't explain how the blunder occurred.
Obviously the stunt was performed twice but how the hell it was
performed to flip the vehicle onto the left wheels isn't explained
as we don't see a second ramp. Mankiewicz claims no one spotted it
until the film editor did.
In an extra, they've got footage of the car exiting the alley on
its right wheels but there's no explanation as to how they
reversed it. You can't just flip the film over. There are
too many signs on the buildings.
the Connerys. I don't own Never Say Never Again. I don't intend to see it.
I've seen bits of it on tv.
I skipped On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but I had re-watched that not
all that long ago. I hadn't seen Diamonds Are Forever in years.
DAF's pre-credit sequence begins with Bond seeking revenge against
Blofeld for killing Tracy. It's Bond back to being the cold-hearted bastard
of Dr. No and doesn't fit in with the light comic tone of the rest of the
movie.
Goldfinger's director, Guy Hamilton, returns, and I suppose this was
demanded by Harry Saltzman, who used Hamilton on two of the Harry Palmer
movies. Saltzman despised Sydney J. Furie who directed The Ipcress File,
a better movie than the two sequels, although Funeral In Berlin has
its merits. (Read the very excellent novel instead.)
Shirley Bassey, also from Goldfinger, is back to sing my second favorite
opening title theme song from the Bond series. I wonder if Saltzman
also insisted on this. It's such a contrast between Bassey's huge voice
and Nancy Sinatra's little voice on You Only Live Twice. Frank Sinatra
was Broccoli's friend for years. I'm sure it was a favor.
Richard Maibaum is still adapting the novels, as he would through
License to Kill. That one and The Spy Who Loved Me are original
scripts, not adaptations. On DAF, he's joined by Tom Mankiewicz.
If you're keeping track, he's son of Joseph (who directed a certain
Bette Davis movie), nephew of Herman (shared credit on the Citizen Kane
screenplay), and first cousin once removed of Ben (the guy on TCM).
Mankiewicz would also have co-writer credits on Live and Let Die and
The Man with the Golden Gun.
I've always suspected that the script problems with these three films
were more on Mankiewicz than Maibaum, but we have no idea what Maibaum's
first draft of the scripts looked like nor why Broccoli insisted on
hiring Mankiewicz.
The movie has a ton of fun stuff in it. Wynt and Kidd are hysterical,
cleaning up the smuggling operation. Their introduction is great: The
murder of the dentist, then the murder of the helicopter pilot, followed
by the two of them skipping out of the scene, holding hands. It pokes fun
at the jaded audiences of the early 1970s: Evil henchmen? Big deal. You
mean, they're gay lovers?
The script is full of witty lines. Jill St. John is gorgeous. The
wig-changing scene leads to the famous "as long as the collars and the
cuffs match" line. The other famous line is Slumber's henchman's exchange
with Bond. "I got a brudder." "Small world", and the other henchman who
tossed Lana Wood out the window. "Exceptionally fine shot." "I didn't
know there was a pool down there!"
I liked the ridiculous gag of Tiffany being equipped with her own
fingerprint analysis unit, and Q thinking of helping Bond impersonate
Franks with the phony fingerprints.
The close quarters fight in the elevator at Tiffany Case's apartment
building in Amsterdam is well choreographed and looked damn dangerous.
(It ends with the product placement gag: Bond plants his Playboy Club
Key Card on Peter Franks' corpse! For a secret agent, Bond is absurdly
well known at clubs all around the world.)
You've got the entertaining chase scene through downtown Las Vegas. It's
hard to believe they got permission to do that, as it would have been
shut down for a couple of days. Hint: The chase that's five times of
long in the middle of LALD is not improved by adding significant length.
The comment is that there was so much ambient light in downtown
Las Vegas that the cameraman didn't have any rigged lights set up.
Something like 80 new model Ford cars and trucks are destroyed in the
making of this movie.
The fight with Bambi and Thumper is loads of fun, although how Sean
Connery got his second wind, I'll never know.
The movie has serious plot problems. First of all, why is Slumber part
of the smuggling operation at all? Supposedly, moving the diamonds
in the corpse (Alimentary my dear Leiter) was Bond's idea (still pretending
to be Peter Franks), so this would have been the first time they used
a corpse to smuggle. Right? Tiffany couldn't have had ALL of the diamonds.
How could that have gone wrong?
What the hell is Shady Tree's role in the smuggling operation? Why did
he need to be on stage? Why not just use one of the mortuary attendants?
When the hell did they cut and polish all the diamonds? The diamond
miners were smuggling out raw diamonds. Let's assume Metz had to do that,
but it was just something we never saw. Besides, Blofeld advanced the
plot, so when was there time? You can't just cut a diamond and expect
it to be able to focus the laser beam.
The very idea that it would work at all...
I loved the guys running away from the nuclear missile silo Blofeld took
out in North Dakota. I think they'd have been vaporized.
The big confrontation on the oil platform... sigh. The plot kind of
fizzles out at that point. Also, Blofeld supposedly escapes (given that
he was supposed to return in later movies), but we're not shown that. Last
we see, Bond bashed the sub into the control room.
I still have no idea how that shut down the satellite.
The two women are such plot problems. As is much discussed, Lana Wood's
demise makes no sense whatsoever. The DVD includes a missing scene: She
was supposed to find Tiffany's Las Vegas address.
Why was Tiffany placed in that huge house with a pool? Trivia notes that
it's Kirk Douglas's house. Much of Tiffany's role in the smuggling makes
no sense.
The problem with Tiffany is that she's professional near the beginning
of the movie, and gets dumber and dumber as the movie goes along. Take
the machine gun, which she doesn't even try to point, sigh. It's just
used for the gag of her falling off the platform.
I played the commentary track. Mankiewicz speaks over portions of it.
He makes a point. Obviously he's watching the movie. "Oh! There's
Jill St. John. Isn't she lovely." It's one of the several close ups
of her ass on the oil platform. Her ass has several good close ups that
her face doesn't get. It's a lovely ass.
The movie is famous for the most embarassing car chase gone wrong in a
big budget picture: The car goes into the narrow alley on its right
wheels, and comes out on its left.
Mankiewicz narrates and doesn't explain how the blunder occurred.
Obviously the stunt was performed twice but how the hell it was
performed to flip the vehicle onto the left wheels isn't explained
as we don't see a second ramp. Mankiewicz claims no one spotted it
until the film editor did.
In an extra, they've got footage of the car exiting the alley on
its right wheels but there's no explanation as to how they
reversed it. You can't just flip the film over. There are
too many signs on the buildings.