Operation: Watch All the James Bonds: Episode 5: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
by killem_dafoe
As much as I have truly enjoyed the first five of the James Bond flicks, I’m very ready to start treading some new territory. As a newcomer to the early installments of the franchise, Sean Connery made a lasting impression on me, as he fully embodied everything I came to understand of both the character and the series. He was suave, handsome, bad ass, a womanizing rapist pig, and undeniably coo...
As much as I have truly enjoyed the first five of the James Bond flicks, I’m very ready to start treading some new territory. As a newcomer to the early installments of the franchise, Sean Connery made a lasting impression on me, as he fully embodied everything I came to understand of both the character and the series. He was suave, handsome, bad ass, a womanizing rapist pig, and undeniably cool in every aspect. How do you replace that?! It was a task of the tallest order.
The end of Connery’s first run as Bond of course means major changes, and those changes came in the form On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The red-headed stepchild of the Bond series. You don’t hear a lot of people talk about this one for some reason. However, most of the people that do like this movie seem to really, REALLY like this movie. I’ve heard time and again that the action is the film’s strongest aspect, and in some respects I can see the how and why. I was incredibly intrigued to check this one out because the way some people talked about it made it seem like the underdog of the franchise. I’m generally an underdog kind of a guy, so this should be right up my alley.
Some of us achieve great butt chins, others are simply born into them.I can’t start this thing off without mentioning the totally illustrious George Lazenby, replacing Connery as the master spy with a dick of stone. EVERYTHING was riding on him at the time, but OHMSS was his one and only turn at being Bond, so…guess it didn’t work out to well, huh? I’m sure this lead a lot of people to think that he was somehow impossibly inept and terrible at playing the role. But you know what? He was actually really damn good, if not a breath of fresh air. He still had that classically handsome look, with a magnificent chin that almost rivals the likes of Bruce Campbell, but he brought a different energy. He’s brings a slightly more grounded and serious gravitas to Bond, and is certainly less of an arrogant cocksucker. He's also comes across as a bit more skittish and vulnerable. It was a refreshing change of pace that I turned out to enjoy quite a bit. Unfortunately - and I'm gonna go against the grain a bit here - the movie that Lazenby is in isn't actually that good.
Aw yeah..who wouldn't want their junk to be treated like an ear of corn?That's not to say it's terrible, but I didn't find it as enjoyable as I was lead to believe it was. This one takes things considerably more seriously than most of the previous entries. The over-the-top characters and ridiculous situations are scaled back quite a bit, but not to the point of non-existence. Bond witnessing a woman being brainwashed by listening to Blofeld over a PA system installed in her room, telling her that she will "learn to love chicken" is up there with the very best I've seen so far. The dinner scene in which Bond enjoys the company of the dozen women who all seem to swoon over him immediately is just stiffened rock hard with overt sexual innuendo. For the most part, though, OHMSS plays it straight. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, because I don't NEED the cheesy nonsense to enjoy the movies, but what they had in place of it is just not that interesting.
Bond is going after Blofeld yet again. This time, he's apparently researching allergies high up in the Swiss Alps, and of course this has to involve a bunch of beautiful women from around the globe for no reason other than putting a bunch of attractive and scantily clad women in the film. And he's doing this under the name "Blochamp", because keeping the "blow" half of your name doesn't ring suspicious at all. Bond goes there under the guise of some famous doctor, but Blofeld somehow does recognize Bond despite having met in the previous film (I think this has to do with the books occurring in the opposite order). Yeah, the whole set-up is dumb...but it's just not dumb enough.
Sometimes, having just one penis doesn't seem like enough.I think the biggest departure from the rest of the franchise was the filmmakers trying to make Bond less of a man-whore who's trying to get his dick wet every opportunity he gets. The movie opens with him saving Tracy, played by the beautiful Dianna Rigg, from trying to drown herself in the ocean while fighting off a bunch of guys on the beach. They then fall in love and plan to get married, but not before going off on his mission. There was a brief second there where I had thought Bond turned a new leaf and wasn't going to be a polygamous herpes factory, but I breathed a sigh of relief when he cheats on his new love while in the Alps. Phew! I thought something was seriously wrong there! He gets with one of the test subjects right before she's convinced that chicken is her new love, and then minutes later he hooks up with another test subject using the exact same pick-up line he used on the other chick. Bond either has no game or the best game, but either way I need to start taking pages from the James Bond playbook.
As I said earlier, the action is supposed to be the best part. I can understand why some would say this. The action is fast and brutal in ways that movies weren't back then. It uses some filming and editing techniques that were ahead of their time. It almost almost feels like a prototype of modern action films at times. The part where this doesn't work is that is uses some of the absolutely worst aspects of modern action films. The jump cuts. OH MY GOD THE JUMP CUTS. TAKE THEM AWAY! THEY'RE SO TERRIBLE. The fight scenes are riddled with obnoxious and illogical cuts that destroy the flow and continuity of the action. In one shot, a guy's lying the floor, then suddenly in the next shot he's standing and attacking Bond with a chair. The scenes just cut to moves and actions without bothering to show how the characters got there. And it looks fucking awful. If the fights were shown in their entirety they might've been brilliant, but instead they were edited by a cocaine-addled ape with ADD.
Snow cones, anyone?I thought the action got slightly better as the film went on, admittedly. Not by much, though. The massive two-part ski chase down a mountain is... sorta cool? The impressive shots of a bunch of actual skiers are inter-cut with a plethora of really bad greenscreen work. I'm not sure that humor was what they were going for here, but it worked! The chase worked when it showed Blofeld's henchmen meeting their end in a variety of ways. I will never forget seeing a dude fly into a massive snowblower and get chewed to pieces. They even show a geyser of blood spewing from the machine. In a 1969 PG film! Maybe I found it awesome because it was so unexpected, but that shit is raw by any standards! Another guy gets thrown off a mountainside cliff, and they make a point to show him fall aaaaaaall the way down AND the impact. Wholly unnecessary but completely funny.
There's also the final assault on Blofeld's mountain resort that's not too bad, but I don't recall Bond participating that much in it, aside from sliding on his belly while shooting a machinegun. The final battle between Blofeld and Bond comes in the form of a bobsled chase, where the villain is presumably killed after getting his neck wedged in between a forking tree branch. It's like the end of Speed, only terrible! This whole movie felt like they tried to turn the winter Olympics into an action film. So yeah, there is a decent amount of action in the movie, but the people who say that it's some of the best of the series are out of their goddamn minds.
Ms. Moneypenny is so sad that she makes me feel slightly better about my relationships.The end of the film is a total curve-ball, and HUGE SPOILER ALERT... Bond and Tracy get married, which is pure insanity in and of itself. They happily drive away, leaving the perpetually lonely, jealous, and pathetic Moneypenny pretending to be happy for them while tears stream down her face, and the movie easily could've ended there. Then they stop to take in the scenery on a cliff-top road. The still-very-much-alive Blofeld does a drive-by on them, shooting and killing Tracy in the process. The last shot is Bond hugging her dead body in the car, mourning the death of his new wife. It's dark and fucked up, ain't it? None of this ever would've happened in the Connery films, so it was interesting to see them trying something new. Unfortunately they completely abandon that style in the next film.
I came away thinking it was an okay movie, but not loving it. I felt let down after hearing so many good things about it. It felt like an experiment in the grand scheme of the franchise, with some elements that worked very well and would make a return much later in the series. But there are also many moments where it felt stuck between being what the series has been all along while also trying to be something new and never swinging all the way in one direction or the other. I feel like it has rewatchability potential, though.
Title Sequence Assessment
There is no proper Bond theme song for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the title sequence is bland and instantly forgettable, what I would imagine getting a BJ from Kirsten Dunst would be like. The rest of the score is well done, however.