It’s time for SpikeTV‘s Christmas Bondathon, and right now we’re watching the best Roger Moore Bond film, For Your Eyes Only (1981).
My favorite part of this film is maybe the opening sequence, which essentially lays to rest some of the dangling elements from the Sean Connery days: Bond’s marriage, and his old foe Blofeld (who’s filmed the way he was in the early films, without any view of his face). Despite a couple of corny lines, it’s a terrific sequence. I’d also love to get an MP3 of the incidental music from the moment that Bond yanks the cable on the helicopter, which I think is just a neat bit of adventure music.
(The rest of the film is quite good as well. It would have been a fine place to relaunch the franchise, but sadly the series spluttered creatively following this film.)
The early 80s are such a weird time to look at in retrospect: The lingering effects of late-70s fashion and pop music, but the beginnings of the businesslike conservatism of the Reagan years. FYEO navigates this territory in the bizarre manner of James Bond films, seeming both an embodiment of the period and a funhouse mirror of it. I think the fact that it remains a fundamentally serious film, and more a part of the Cold War then any other Bond film are what elevates it above the other Moore films.
Bond’s marriage wasn’t Connery. (I just watched Secret Service for the first time the other night.)
It wasn’t Connery, but considering OHMSS falls between two Connery films (the producers convinced Connery to return for one film after Lazenby departed), and Diamonds Are Forever opens with Connery-as-Bond hunting down Blofeld due to Tracy’s death, I think it’s fair to call those the “Connery Days”.
No fair giving away the beginning to Diamonds! I won’t get to see it til this weekend. 🙂
What I need to do is find somebody who owns the complete collection on DVD so that I don’t have to wait for Netflix…