My Review of You Only Live Twice (1967)

 

Written by Roald Dahl

Directed by Lewis Gilbert 

James Bond: "Oh the things I do for England."

I'm nearing the end of the Sean Connery era of James Bond and after a few brief appearances in other movies, a certain someone decided to make his presence felt. That and his very white cat.

I'm of course talking about Ernst Stravro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance). Yup, this film very much had him as SPECTRE's main villain and he got some rather delightful scenes with James Bond himself.

Arguably some of the best villain scenes were with Blofeld and Bond. Blofeld was hired to help start a Soviet-American war and he came rather close to succeeding. Blofeld also tried to have Bond killed at the start and then punished those who failed to do so. Alas, poor Helga Brandt (Karin Dor). She was piranha food.

Did Blofeld overall win in his endeavours? Of course not but he did live to see another day compared to past antagonists and again, I have to commend Donald Pleasance's performance throughout this film. He's just brilliantly pitted against Sean Connery.

As for the women in Bond's life, this time we had Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama). She actually got to marry James as part of an undercover storyline but she very much matched him throughout. Perhaps one of the more underrated of Bond women in this franchise.

There's also the Japanese secret service themselves who aided James Bond in this film. I quite liked the character of Tiger Tanaka (Tetsurō Tamba). He served as both a strong ally and slight foil to Bond and his scenes were a delight to watch.

- George Lazenby would step in for the next movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service but Sean Connery would reprise the role for Diamonds Are Forever.

- James was also sleeping with doomed agent Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) before her death. We got some scenes with M, Moneypenny and Felix and pointed comments about James's smoking.

- Standout music: John Barry's You Only Live Twice.

- Chronology: Mostly set in Tokyo after Bond faked his death in Hong Kong. 

You Only Live Twice had James forge a married life of chaos and finally had Blofeld front and centre as a villain. I'm also shocked this film's screenplay came from Roald Dahl to boot. Great stuff.

Rating: 7 out of 10