And You Thought It Was…Safe(?)

Tag: Bernard Lee

  • Moonraker (1979)

    For various reasons, I haven’t been feeling so well lately. And when I feel like shit I like to take it out on bad movies. So I am very glad to be reviewing a Bond film I honestly despise, considered by some people to be The Worst James Bond Movie Ever Made. Of course, things […]

  • The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

    “Art from adversity” is a tired cliche at this point, casually bandied about by all manner of creative arts professionals and self-appointed self-help gurus. If those people every wanted a Bond movie to back them up, they could do a lot worse than The Spy Who Loved Me. Nothing went right with this and it still […]

  • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

    Eleven James Bond novels and one short story collection reached store shelves before their author, Ian Fleming, shuffled off this mortal coil in 1964. The Man with the Golden Gun was one of those unfortunate books you sometimes see after bestselling authors kick it: a rough, unfinished work with no real meat on its bones, […]

  • Live and Let Die (1973)

    First, a salute to Baron Samedi: Great Tracy’s ghost, it’s finally here! The debut of Roger Moore, the Third and Longest-Lasting Bond (so far), who’ll carry the weight of these next seven films for a very long time. I feel like a kid at Christmas because the Moore Era contains some of the series best and worst, irrevocably cementing […]

  • Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

    Never say never. Connery shouted it from every rooftop he could find during and after the production of You Only Live Twice. When Eon came begging him back he took a page from SPECTRE’s playbook and extorted the largest amount of money anyone had ever received for a lead role up to that time, officially beginning our modern Lead […]

  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

    Like I said, To this day I wish Connery had stuck around for one last swan song. Bond fans could’ve avoided a whole lot of heartache… But then again, maybe not. I like Connery, but not the bored, sick-of-it-all self-parody he became by the time he filmed You Only Live Twice. So I might as well confess: […]

  • You Only Live Twice (1967)

    And now we get to talk about Sequelitis. You’d expect the fifth Bond movie to bear some resemblance to its predecessors, but You Only Live Twice can’t seem to help calling attention to its heritage. Personally, I blame Roald Dahl. He should’ve turned this project down from the start. He and Ian Fleming were apparently good friends […]

  • Thunderball (1965)

    “Well…can’t win them all.” Way back in my Halloween 4 review I half-joked that, in the vast multiverse of franchise films, only Star Trek and Godzilla have managed to field strong fourth entries. I was immediately “well, actually”-ed by friend of the site David Lee Ingersoll‘s contention that Thunderball “isn’t bad.” Shopping this critique around, I realized […]

  • Goldfinger (1964)

    “Sir, I’m aware of my shortcomings. But I’m prepared to continue this assignment in the manner you suggest…if I knew what it was about. Sir.“ And so we come to the production model: James Bond v. 3.0 Alpha. Current series producer Michael G. Wilson has said they start off every film trying to make the […]

  • From Russia with Love (1963)

    With Dr. No, Bond producers Harry Slatzman and Albert Brocoli turned one million dollars into sixty. The collision of good casting and good direction, along with enough sex appeal for most genders and orientations to get at least something out of the deal, created a sustained fusion reaction between the Cold War Era spy thriller and […]