1967 - You Only Live Twice
Alternate Title - Only Zombies Live Twice
PG - 117 minutes
Director - Lewis Gilbert
Stars - Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Donald Pleasence
A vagina space shuttle abducts a NASA space shuttle. Cue the Bond theme.
Why does every girl that Bond has sex with have to wait until after she’s done riding his hog to call in her bosses to kill him? We first see Bond rolling over post-coitus with a woman in China. She pushes a button that makes the bed fly up into the wall with Bond inside. I laughed because I pictured the process of the bad guys spending hours and a ton of money building a folding bed that can hold a man’s weight. Men come in and shoot the bed a thousand times and simply walk the fuck away without checking to see if they were successful. Out of nowhere police show up and pronounce him dead which is all part of a rouse to fool someone that Bond is dead for some reason. They drop his body into the ocean where he is taken in by a submarine and is shown to be alive so that the title of the movie isn’t complete nonsense. Bond is sent to Japan where in under fifteen seconds in the county is recognized. Why waste the time faking his death? No matter where he goes he’s constantly being recognized by everyone. For being a secret agent his face and presence is never a fucking secret. He might as well have a goddamn nametag on and a baseball hat that says ‘Bond’.
This movie is full of rich white men pretending to be Japanese. Regardless of the fact that much of Japan is just as modernized as the states are, every white guy in this movie is dead set on having a traditional Japanese lifestyle.
Anyway, a bunch of shit happens that isn’t that interesting until Q brings in a bunch of briefcases full of parts and builds Bond a giant toy helicopter. (Picture on the poster) Bond flies this little son of a bitch all over the countryside with no apparent goal. He sees a volcano that appears to have a lake inside of it until previously mentioned vagina space shuttle comes back to earth, the volcano opens up and the shuttle lands inside of it. BAM! Secret base of evil.
After this it becomes a list of go-to Bond jokes. The villain has a pet cat and a pool of piranhas. He presses buttons and sends people to their deaths. His henchmen are numbered instead of named. Basically this movie is the reason the Austin Powers franchise exists. I actually like Spectre as a villain instead of some of the lame one-off villains of later Bond movies. It’s a shame they couldn’t stick with it because of a lawsuit.
There is a scene in this movie where they literally turn Bond into a stereotypical Japanese man through a complete makeover. I wish I made that up but it totally happens. He looks more like Spock than a Japanese man. He towers over the rest of the men as a clearly 6’2” white dude. The purpose of the makeover isn’t explained. The best I can assume is they wanted to see how much they could get away with on the dumb white guy in the village.
Donald Pleasence (Blofeld) is an awesome villain but falls for the rouse that most Bond villains fall for: he gives Bond his gadgets by mistake. Make that two mistakes: he doesn’t kill Bond but instead teases him for 20 minutes about how he’s going to enjoy killing him. Hey fuck-head, shoot him in the goddamn head right now and save yourself some classic Bond shenanigans.
An epic war breaks out at the Spectre volcano base while a nuke rocket is heading for the USA to be pinned on the Russians. Blofeld keeps bringing Bond along from room to room while he explains his plan which makes you feel sad for Blofeld. It seems more like he’s lonely than evil. Like he uses evil to express his feelings instead of his words.
Blofeld pulls a switch that of course exists which blows up his own lair. If you were building a base of operations would you seriously put in a self-destruct option? What the fuck for? What possible outcome would warrant the necessity for that kind of insurance policy?
Overall it’s a pretty enjoyable Bond movie. If you’re looking for one to get into and all you know is Austin Powers jokes then this is the starting point for you. Also if you’re into the idea of Bond but find him too white for your tastes then this movie has your racist name written all over it.