BEFORE: Well, I've hit the halfway point for the year, assuming I watch 300 films in 2013, this is #150. And it's a good time too, just as I'm making the Connery/Moore transition, and watching one of the two Bond films that I've seen part of before. How do I justify including a film I might have seen before, as a kid? Because all I really remember is watching Jill St. John running around in a bikini - I was an impressionable little tyke, I guess.
This is the last appearance of Connery (last seen in "You Only Live Twice") as Bond, unless you count "Never Say Never Again", and I'm being told I shouldn't count that one, as it's just really a remake of "Thunderball" (Aren't they ALL just remakes of "Thunderball"? Aren't they?)
THE PLOT: A diamond smuggling investigation leads James Bond to Las Vegas, where he uncovers an extortion plot headed by his nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
AFTER: It seems like I wasn't the only one tracking Bond continuity - they were doing it back in the day, as well. The apparent "mistake" where Blofeld first met Bond face-to-face in successive films led to the "fix" depicted in this film. Turns out there's some kind of Blofeld cloning facility - well, not cloning exactly, but turning men of the appropriate height build into Blofelds. Besides being ridiculous, this just served to muddy the waters even further, because now nobody could be who they appear to be. Even worse, the actor who plays Blofeld here also played Bond's ally Henderson in "You Only Live Twice", so what can we infer from that? Was Blofeld masquerading as Henderson, and if so, why?
This is what's so maddening about Bond continuity - we're supposed to be aware of previous events, yet by switching actors, writers and directors every few films, we're also supposed to take each film at face value and not worry about these things. So, which way to go? Probably easiest to not think of such things at all, but that's just not in my nature. Heck, even Lazenby's Bond seemed to be aware of the switchover, he broke the fourth wall and made some reference like "This never happens to the other guy..."
Then we've got those pesky references to real-world continuity, things like the Cold War and the U.S. Space Program. There's a bit in this film where Bond infiltrates a facility run by a Vegas casino owner, and inside there's a room that looks like the surface of the moon (even though they're working on a satellite, which won't get farther than Earth's orbit...). What should I infer from this, that even as early as 1971 there was an in-joke about the moon landing being faked? (There's a bit like this in "GTA: Vice City" as well, if you wander around the porn studio, you find the movie set with a cratered surface and a lunar lander...) Bond steals a "moon robot" to make his escape, leading to one of the most extremely silly chase-scenes in the franchise.
Now, as for the actual plot, which starts out investigating a diamond smuggling ring, but ends up with the villain threatening foreign countries (again?) with a ransom, while threatening to destroy countries that won't pay up (again?). It's really just a twist on "You Only Live Twice", so clearly by this time they found a formula that worked, and kept doing it.
The problem is, it's still junk science. So diamonds + laser + satellite = world domination. somehow. And somehow this satellite can threaten North Dakota and the Soviet Union at the same time - so no one really understands how an orbiting satellite works. And I'm no gemologist, but I have a feeling that most diamond smuggling concerns gem-grade stones, and industrial-grade diamonds are a different animal, and they're probably cheaper and easier to obtain in other ways. And if Blofeld used gem-quality diamonds for an industrial purpose (usually for drilling and thermal conductivity, but I don't see anything about focusing lasers with them...) then that means he's got a ton of money, and doesn't even need to hold the world hostage in the first place.
The typical Bond denouement (get to the villain's hide-out, blow up his thingy) is a bit rushed here - as well as the wrap-up scene. It feels like the clock was ticking, and somebody was trying desperately to finish up before the two-hour mark.
LOCATIONS: Amsterdam, Las Vegas, Baja
VILLAINS: Blofeld, Mr. Wint + Mr. Kidd, Bambi + Thumper
BABES: Tiffany Case, Plenty O'Toole (her name only really works if she's a transgender person or a hermaphrodite, or something. Name fail.)
ALLIES: M, Q, Miss Moneypenny, Felix Leiter (yet another new actor), Willard Whyte
PASTIMES: Craps,
CARS: Red 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1
GADGETS: Grappling-gun pants, electronic voice boxes.
THEME SONG: "Diamonds Are Forever" by Shirley Bassey. Great theme, but it sounds an awful lot like "Thunderball" at the same time...
Also starring Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn (all carrying over from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"), Jill St. John, Charles Gray (last seen in "You Only Live Twice"), Jimmy Dean (yes, the sausage guy), Lana Wood, Bruce Glover, Putter Smith, Norman Burton.
RATING: 5 out of 10 trapeze artists
No comments:
Post a Comment