Yes, I know. It’s been ages since I knocked out one of these Bond reviews. I was pondering this very thing the other day while applying a second coat of Thompson’s Water Seal to my new gazebo, wondering how the unstoppable tsunami of blog momentum I had going down the stretch of Q4 2007 was reduced to a lonely dripping faucet in a Panera Bread men’s room a mere eight weeks later. Was it the end of the writers’ strike and my return to the Working World? How about the physical and psychological ordeal that is the WFMU marathon? Could it have been the general grind of living in Q1 2008?
I’m sure all those things do factor in to a degree. But being completely honest, the main reason it took me two and a half months to review ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is because the movie is bad. Not just bad. And not even “bad” bad. I’m talking about the kind of bad that makes you question the accuracy of your moral compass. Teeth-rattling bad. Borderline evil bad – Craig Ferguson bragging about killing a derelict on his twenty-fourth birthday back in Scotland bad.*
But enough about bad. Let’s get to the good! As in my review of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE! Lemons into lemonade, people! Lemons into lemonade!
SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU READ ON, YOU WILL HAVE THE INSUFFERABLE PLOT OF THIS SHITTY MOVIE RUINED!
The film opens with the classic shot of Bond walking through a white room before shooting the cameraman in the face. But within twenty seconds something’s not right – the melody of the normally epic Bond theme music is played by a chintzy-sounding synth straight out of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. This does not bode well for the remaining 141 minutes and 30 seconds. Yes, the movie is 142 minutes long.
The story starts at British secret spy headquarters, with Q and M wondering where on earth James Bond could be. Little do they know, he’s tearing down the costal highways of Portugal, tailing a fancy sports car. The chase leads him to a beach, where the driver of the sports car – a pretty lady, naturally – runs into the ocean in an attempt to kill herself. Bond runs after her and pulls her from the water.
Some goons slide into frame and challenge Bond for the girl, culminating in a second rater of a fight that is shot to disguise the cold truth that SEAN CONNERY IS NO LONGER PLAYING JAMES BOND. With the exception of a quick one-shot, nearly everything is filmed from a quarter mile away and shrouded in a deep blue tint. It’s almost like Cubby Broccoli knew that audiences were legally unable to request a refund if they stayed in the theater beyond the six minute mark. And who is the powerhouse who has taken Connery’s place? A dumb slab of meat named George Lazenby, who answers the question ‘what would Joe Namath look like if he fell into a nuclear reactor?’
Look at that guy! Nice ears, jerk! And no, I’m NOT going to pay you, View Images!
Bond defeats the goons, only to watch the pretty lady drive off into the dusk. So instead of chasing after her, Bond picks up her shoes and looks directly at the camera, saying ‘this never happened to the other fella.’ Unbelievable – in one moment the integrity of entire franchise has been compromised for a cheapo joke – the only thing missing is the sound of a slide whistle pathetically pitching downscale for the five people who might’ve missed the joke. (Call me and I’ll replicate the effect!)
After an astonishingly low-rent credit sequence, we join James Bond as he checks into a fancy schmancy hotel. After being shown to his room – which features a giant bed tackily set on the balcony – he heads to the casino to play the same dumb paddle card game we “thrilled” to in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. The hot woman that he rescued on the beach joins the game and loses a quick hand. She doesn’t have the money to pay up, so Bond graciously covers for her by tossing a chip the size of a slice of Sicilian pizza onto the table.
Oh, how far the mighty James Bond has fallen – now he’s paying off the gambling debts of hot ladies who split before engaging in customary post-life-saving intercourse? This 007 seems like the kind of sap who believes that a stripper really likes him because she talks about her favorite TV shows between lap dances. I never thought I’d say this, but bring back the sexist subhuman from the previous five movies!
The hot lady – whose name is Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo – tells Bond to meet him in her suite later, where considering the way this Bond has been operating, she’ll sell him a stake in a Florida timeshare. Bond goes up to the room only to be attacked by one of the goons from the beach goon fight. After a half-decent hotel room fight, Bond leaves the unconscious goon behind and heads back to his room, where the Contessa pulls his own gun on him. He wrests the pistol from her hand and slaps her across the face for good measure – THERE’S the troglodyte we love! – in an attempt to find out what her deal is. They inevitably make their way to the outside bed and finally get down to some sex business.
Bond wakes up to discover that the Contessa has skipped out on him. As he walks through the hotel lobby, he is intercepted by the same goons from before! Now I’m no Syd Field, but there must’ve been a way to tell this story without being this fucking redundant. They escort Bond into a warehouse, and – of course – he fights them YET AGAIN. I’m not much of a history buff, but was there a Portuguese goon shortage back in 1969? Because we’re almost a half hour into this movie and the only action has been Bond fighting these same goons over and over.
After quickly decking the goons, he ducks into a nearby office, finding himself face to face with a mob boss named Draco.
This snooze of a man launches into a boring story about how he is the Contessa’s father and how he blah blah blah boring boring please stop. These scenes are positively glacial – were audiences in the late 60’s this desperate for entertainment? Did they only make one movie a year or something back then? The only notable part is when Draco starts talking about how the Contessa – who we will refer to as ‘Tracy’ from hereon – needs a man “to dominate her – who will make love to her enough to make her love him”. And when I say ‘notable’, I really mean ‘really creepy’.
Draco asks Bond to marry his daughter in an attempt to put her on the straight and narrow, but 007 respectfully declines, reminding the mob boss that he’s got “a bachelor’s taste for freedom”. But after Bond asks where he might find Ernesto Blofeld – the missing-in-action boss of the crime organization SPECTRE – the old prevert proposes an interesting arrangement: while he would never tell the British government where Blofeld was hiding, he would tell his future son-in-law. Intruging? Eh, still gonna say really creepy.
Bond returns to the OSS offices and is told by M that he’s being removed from the Blofeld case because he hasn’t made any progress in two years. Double-O Seven promptly resigns from Her Majesty’s Secret Service in protest, heading down the hall to empty out his office.
Yes, that’s right. His office. Apparently James Bond has an office. And it’s tiny, with a shitty little desk that would insult a mid-level shipping clerk. If that’s not insane enough, he comes across little keepsakes from past adventures as he packs up – Honey Ryder’s belt from DR. NO, the watch garrote from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, the underwater breathing device from THUNDERBALL – all accompanied by fragments of each movie’s respective theme music. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. This whole thing is wrong. Watching this charmless pile of chuck attempting to reminisce about missions that an infinitely better actor actually undertook is torture.
Miss Moneypenny cleverly submits Bond’s resignation as a request for a two-week vacation, freeing up 007 to go finish out the remaining ONE HUNDRED AND TEN MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE. I’m gonna accelerate things here, because if I don’t I might hurt somebody. Is this the same way Craig Ferguson felt on that cold Scottish night when he forced that unsuspecting drifter to draw his last breath?**
Bond meets up with Tracy and Draco at a bullfight. Tracy bullies her father into giving Bond all the information he’s got on Blofeld. Cut to a romantic montage of Bond and Tracy walking through gardens and riding horses to some horrible Louis Armstrong song. They’re falling in love! Whee!
Draco’s information leads Bond to a lawyer’s office in Switzerland. When the lawyer steps out for some rosti***, Bond sneaks in and cracks the guy’s safe. Oh, and while he’s waiting for an oversized safe cracking machine to do the trick, he leafs through an issue of PLAYBOY. Can’t this guy go three minutes without thinking about sex? And do these movies really need such obvious time stamps placed on them? Bond copies the information in the safe and ducks out before the lawyer returns.
Bond brings the information to M, who is busy at his estate, mounting butterflies. They decide that Bond will infiltrate Blofeld’s Swiss lair posing as a genealogist named Sir Hillary Bray. Butterflies? Genealogy? This just might be the most exciting Bond adventure yet!
Blofeld has been interested in tracing his family history and has established a correspondence with Sir Hillary. I think. This whole thing is so numbing that I’m just going to assume that I’ve got that right and keep plowing forward. Bond arrives back in Switzerland and is led to Blofeld’s research institute stationed atop a huge mountain. Oh, and for the next half hour, Bond’s voice is dubbed by another actor, which makes for a viewing experience that does not in any way make you doubt the acting ability of George Lazenby.
After checking out his room in what seems like real time, Bond-as-Sir-Hillary goes to dinner and is greeted by a virtual convention of sexy ladies from around the world, who are all attending the clinic to treat their various allergies. Oh, and he’s wearing a kilt. A KILT. He bores the ladies – who assume he’s gay – with boring stories over dinner before getting led off to meet Blofeld, who is portrayed by a very Dave Attell-looking Telly Savalas.
Bond snoops around the compound and goes to the room of one of the pretty allergic ladies and has sex with her. At this point I was never so relieved to see Bond bone a woman. Their post-coital bliss is interrupted by a subliminal message pumped into the room – apparently this sexy lady is scared of chickens, so the soothing sound of Blofeld’s voice helps her get over her fears. Justifiably creeped out, Bond goes back to his room to find another woman waiting for him and he has sex with her.
Then – one hour and fourteen minutes into the movie! – we are treated to the thrill-a-minute curling scene. Bond then sneaks off to bone another one of the women but is tricked by a fiendish Blofeld lackey named Irma Bunt – who looks something like Nancy with a metabolism problem – and is knocked out!
He wakes up to find that Blofeld figured out who he is because of some genealogical research that Bond screwed up. I would’ve thought that Blofeld could’ve put two and two together because he was face to face with him in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Or are the filmmakers implying that Blofeld doesn’t recognize James Bond because he’s being played by a different actor? Who directed this thing, Joel Schumacher?
Blofeld informs Bond that he’s planning a chemical attack that will render any species of his choice sterile, and the sexy ladies at his clinic are going to be his means of distribution. Bond fights a couple of Blofeld’s goons for eight seconds but loses. They dump him into the room filled with the massive gears and cogs for the chalet lift. Bond is nearly mashed into jelly by the gears, but he escapes from the room by shimmying along the chalet car cable. Great move by the way, Blofeld. Dump your prisoner in a room WITH A GIANT HOLE IN THE WALL. Who directed this thing, Renny Harlin?
Bond jumps onto a chalet car heading back to the institute just as Blofeld gives the ladies creepy subliminal instructions – the chemicals are hidden in perfume kits (the only thing ladies are interested in, right?) that they will unknowingly neuter the world with. Desperate to stop the ladies before they can perfume the world impotent, Bond straps on a pair of skis and heads for the village at the bottom of the hill. Blofeld and his goons chase after him, firing machine guns at him the entire way down. And while there are a few impressive skiing stunts, the reliance on blue screen diminishes the entire sequence. It’s not hard to imagine the producers skimping on the budget, unsure whether this was the last go-round for the Bond franchise.
Bond makes it to the town and resumes his pursuit of the pretty ladies, with Blofeld’s goons still on his tail. There’s a fight in a room full of bells, which I refuse to explain further. Then there’s a chase down a street where everybody is on ice skates. Again, I’m really not going to expound on this shit. Bond is rescued by Tracy, and they drive their car through an auto race while being chased by the goons, and suddenly we’re in a fucking Herbie movie for five minutes. Bond and Tracy wreck the race, and the goons’ car is run into an abutment and explodes. Who directed this thing, Hal Needham?
With a snowstorm rolling in, Bond and Tracy hole up in a barn for shelter. Bond confesses his love for her – apparently forgetting the two women he had sex with eighteen hours earlier – and proposes to her. Then he has sex with her.
Bond and Tracy go skiing, but Blofeld and his goons catch up to them, and we’ve got yet another ski chase. A goon falls into a snow plough, then Blofeld causes an avalanche and drags an unconscious Tracy off to his clinic.
M refuses to help Bond rescue Tracy, so 007 organizes a helicopter raid with Draco’s assistance. During the rescue, Tracy judo chops her way to freedom and reaches her father’s helicopter. Draco wants to take off then and there, but Tracy won’t stand for it – Bond is still chasing after Blofeld in the compound, which is set to explode in a matter of minutes. So Draco handles this disagreement by knocking his daughter out cold by punching her square in the face, saying “spare the rod and spoil the child, eh?” to one of his henchmen. Parent Of The Year!
Bond and Blofeld barely escape from the exploding compound and engage in a thrilling bobsled fight. Blofeld gets clipped in the neck by an overhanging branch, and Bond is rescued by a snow dog.
Bond and Tracy get married and drive off, ready to spend the rest of their lives together. Except that Tracy’s life lasts only another two minutes as Blofeld and Irma Blunt machine gun their car. She dies. Bond has a ‘touching’ breakdown over her death. The end. Who directed this thing, Peter R. Hunt? Wait – actually he did.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
1) I know I said it repeatedly in the review, but George Lazenby was a horrible James Bond. Why the producers brought this sack of potatoes on as the replacement for Sean Connery is beyond me. The guy is clearly overmatched – after all, he was an Australian car salesman whose biggest claim to fame had been lugging a giant chocolate bar over his shoulder in a series of British candy commercials. Lazenby is incapable of maintaining the balances necessary to making the character work – confident without being too cocky, playful but not winking too much at the audience.
2) But the blame falls on the producers – Lazenby didn’t write this snooze of a movie, and he’s not the one drumming up all the rickety touches like James Bond’s office. They also skimped on the production values this time around – there’s too much jaw flapping and not enough jaw dropping. (Nice turn of a phrase, Tom!) (Thanks!) (You’re welcome!) (So are you hungry?) (Yeah, a little bit.) (What do you want to eat, Panera Bread or something?) (No, I’m really trying to lay off eating to much bread.) (I hear you on that. But they have salads too.) (Good idea, Tom!) (Thanks, Tom.)
RATINGS (On a scale of 1-10)
JAMES BOND QUIPS – 1
When you can’t stand the face of the guy quipping it up, everything’s going to just lay there. Which is exactly the feeling when Bond says, ‘he had a lot of guts’ after a goon skier falls into a snow plough and gets splattered out in a torrent of pink snow. Boo!
ACTION/STUNTS – 2.5
Some of the skiing stuff is good, but the dominance of the blue screen makes things like the final bobsled piece worthless.
SEXY LADIES – 8
I thought all the ladies were sexy.
SEXISM/CHAUVINISM - 9
Maybe I’m just too ‘PC’, but I still haven’t warmed up to the notion of watching a woman get slapped or punched in the face.
VILLAINS - 5
Savalas as Blofeld is an even swap for Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, which isn’t saying that much. At least this time he puts up a fight after evacuating his exploding lair. And Irma Blunt is a pale imitation of Rosa Klebb from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Third rate!
RACISM – 2.5
The only thing this movie has going for it is that it doesn’t give itself much of a chance to get seriously racist, although the bullfighting does rate a mention.
GADGETS – 1
I don’t think there are even any gadgets to get excited about this time, unless you factor in the items that Bond was packing up FROM PREVIOUS MOVIES. There’s a mention of a lint weapon in the opening scene, which I actually would’ve liked to have seen.
TOM’S BOREDOM LEVEL – 10
I could not wait for this movie to end. I got drowsy more than once and had to rewind it to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I’m getting sleepy just thinking about it right now, and I’m driving my car while writing this!
I KNOW IT’S OLD BUT THAT’S JUST EMBARRASSING – 8
This time out I’m going to chastise the producers for pacing a movie this horribly. I think I speak for everybody when I say that the producers are completely within their rights to edit 45 minutes from this nightmare for the Blu-Ray release. Get to it, estate of Cubby Broccoli!
One other thing – the estate of Cubby Broccoli might want to consider changing the issue of Playboy that Bond flips through to a Girls Gone Wild DVD or something. He can watch it on the screen of his safe cracker, which will also have to be updated as well.
THEME SONG – 2
In lieu of a vocal theme, we get a serviceable instrumental. I still would’ve like to have heard someone – Richie Havens, perhaps? – attempt to sing a song with the title “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”.
TITLE SEQUENCE – 1
A sleepwalk through past glories, showing clips from the previous movies over a martini glass and the British flag and sexy silhouetted ladies.
OVERALL – 1
An unqualified snooze. For shame! Egg on everybody’s face! Thank Christ that George Lazenby thought James Bond was about to become an outdated icon and quit the franchise – he wanted Bond to get hipped up, which I would’ve loved to have seen on a perverse level. Just imagine Bond having Q design him some sort of briefcase bong!
Next up a return to Sean Connery ‘glory’ with DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER!
Bugs not hugs –
Tom.
*Allegedly?
**Allegedly? ****
*** Swiss food!
**** Allegedly.