Pre-existing Prejudices: Well, I know it’s the first of three “last” Bond movies for Connery, I know it’s the one with the volcano base, and I know it’s the one where we finally get to meet Blofeld. But it’s another I haven’t seen in its entirety for… actually I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it in its entity. Should be fun then!
The Actual Film:
Ohhh, we start in space! Or at least a painting of the Earth around which a small, unconvincing model is orbiting. That’s certainly something new. The spacewalk scenes are obviously man-on-wire but they’re ambitious, and points scored for having the Earth actually rotate beneath them as they “orbit”. But then the capsule is attacked by a giant butt-plug/spaceship eater. They’re doing their best, and the model-work is clear enough in what it’s trying to achieve, but the special effects are bit more Gerry Anderson than 2001. The American capsule is drawn inside the mysterious new craft, and the astronaut left dead in space when his airline is cut is suitably nasty, as he floats away forever. Cut to a conference inside two golf balls, and a bit of UK/USSR/US politicking. The Americans and Russians accuse each other, but the UK thinks there might be a third possibility. Hmmm…
The first time we meet Bond in this movie, he’s in bed – of course he is – and enquiring as to why Asian ladies taste different. This leads him to explain that he likes Peking Duck as much as caviar and his paramour gets the immortal line, “darling I give you best duck.” Then he’s betrayed by her, the bed flips into the wall (you don’t see that much these days…) and he’s machine-gunned. All this pre-credits material is actually relevant to the film’s plot, which is a huge improvement over the last two films.
Shanghai. A well-placed newspaper informs us Bond has been murdered.
Well, that was a short movie.
Oh hang on, there’s more, as we’re on-deck for the funeral. Bond’s body is committed to the sea. This is, I think, the first time it’s made clear in the movies that Bond is a naval commander, which is interesting. His body is taken by two underwater divers – horrible memories of Thunderball – into a submarine filled with lots of naval officers in shorts. Lovely. Bond is cut out of his shroud, alive and well – ta da! Connery’s rocking a naval uniform which really rather suits him. Oh, Moneypenny’s down on the sub too, and oh the surprise, so is M (who at least bothers to tell us why the whole fake-Bond’s-death thing was necessary – to take the heat off him). Bond is given his mission, which is to investigate what happened in the pre-credits sequence. They assume that, since the USSR didn’t launch the thing that ate the American satellite, it must be Japan. ‘Kay. Bond and Moneypenny flirting over the “I love you” password is genuinely charming, and Connery and Maxwell really are terrific together – it’s a shame they’ve not spent more time on screen really.
Off to the mission we go, and Bond’s back in the rubber so he can be fired out the torpedo tube. Er, Ok. There’s no easier way to leave the sub? Still there’s no time to ponder that, since now we’re in Tokyo, all neon and kimonos and modest-looking women. Connery’s given some Japanese to speak and does well with it – Bond properly looks like he can speak the language – even though he has the cliché of wandering through a Sumo locker room, and then to a Sumo match itself. He’s the only white person in the audience at least, which is something.
Bond makes contact with Aki using the (intentionally) awkwardly-delivered password, and Connery is doing well here – suspicious of the girl that he meets, keeping one eye on the match, and also doing normal-Bond. Yes, decent. So off she goes (she’ll be back) after delivering Bond to Mr Henderson. Mr Henderson is quite the most gay thing in a James Bond movie to date, even given Rosa Klebb. It’s the lilac cushions and incredibly fruity performance that do it. Bond whacks Mr Henderson in the leg, which is wooden, to check his identity. Nice touch. Speaking of his acquiring Russian vodka, he tells Bond, “I get it from the Russian doorman at the embassy. Among other things.” What a massive queen he is! It’s all rather fabulous, then he’s stabbed through a paper wall, which is a bit of a shame. Bond chases the killer into the garden, kills the assassin, dresses up as him (luckily the bad guy was wearing a breath mask) and jumps in the getaway car. Which takes him to…
… the rear-projected streets of Tokyo and eventually Osato chemicals. We arrive at a very fancy office for a bit of fisticuffs, and Bond gets outclassed again in the fight stakes by someone nearly twice his size, and wins as much through luck than strength. It’s good to see him being really challenged like this. He hides the body in the Worlds Biggest Drinks Cabinet, then pours himself a drink, which is appropriately cool – and pleasingly, there’s no quip, just a “cheers”. Then he finds a safe… and cracks it with hand safe-cracking gadget that he happens to have with him, which is far too overly-convenient. Connery looks suitably tense as the guards approach then leave at least. Bond get the safe open, then alarm immediately goes off, a nice touch. Bond legs it. Aki turns up in a convertible to save his arse as he runs out of the building, then he gets tricked into following her into a subway. He’s promptly captured, thanks to a sliding floor which deposits him into a waiting chair, which is very funny, though it’s not quite clear if it’s meant to be.
He’s questioned by Tiger Tanaka! So they’ve made contact at last, since he’s a good guy, but there must be an easier way to get them together – a phone call would have done it, surely? Still he’s got his own personal train, which is quite something. Bond actually turns down a vodka-martini for sake, which is a small but appreciated nod towards the fact this isn’t business as usual. Then – the briefing. We get the name of a ship, a bit of coastline, and some divers. It’s is all fine, it’s just another way of getting the exposition out of the way.
Then we get a bit of “we’re in the East, you know” stuff with a “civilized bath” and a few on-hand Asian women to wash Bond and Tanaka. Connery in a kimono is quite a, um, striking image. “I like the plumbing”, he remarks while staring at the girls. It’s all a bit “exotic oriental” but it’s not… I dunno, it’s a bit obvious but it’s not nearly as bad as I could be, and they’re addressing the fact that there are clear differences between their cultures head-on rather than just hand-waving it away or ignoring it altogether. SPECTRE gets its first mention. A towel is all that protects us from Connery’s modesty as he emerges from the bath at the end of the scene – thanks, towel!
Bond is off back to Osato Chemicals, this time in the day and with a cover story. He actually manages to use a name that isn’t “Bond” – Mr Fisher – rather than his usual technique of just strolling in and announcing that he’s Bond (yes I know he faked his own death at the start of the movie, but even so). He’s back in the same office as before, and there’s no sign of last night’s shenanigans. Chopper lands on roof, and in strolls Mr Osato himself, along with his personal secretary, Helga. There’s a rather nice moment where Bond turns down a drink because he’s afraid of Helga going into the drinks cabinet where he left last night’s guard. There’s some nice direction going on here too, with Bond reflected in the copper surface of Osato’s desk, and the x-ray of Bond carrying a gun is well done. “Kill him”, says Osato after humouring Bond throughout their conversation. Well that’s one way to end a business meeting.
Bond leaves the office in someone’s gun sight, then Aki turns up in that convertible and saves him again. She’s getting good at doing that! But wait, the bad guys are in pursuit! The gunfire is very loud and obvious – there must be a lot of gun battles in Tokyo because nobody seems that fussed by it, or even to notice it (not even a couple of reaction shots of someone looking shocked or running away). Aki’s properly competent and calls in reinforcements. Ohh and the car has a videophone and TV screen, that’s pretty cool for 1967. There’s some rear projection here but fair’s fair, it’s generally better deployed than sometimes. Then, rather brilliantly, a helicopter turns up with an electromagnet and just lifts the pursuing car off the road, a good stunt and very funny. Then the car is dropped into the sea – “how’s that for Japanese efficiency?” Bond is asked, resulting in the inevitable quip, “just a drop in the ocean”. Bond then places a request for “Little Nellie” and her father.
Down at the docks and we’ve found the ship from the briefing on the train – the Ning-Po. Bond is immediately spotted and escapes because the henchpeople didn’t think to cover the staircase he’s standing next to. Amateurs. Aki makes a break for it in one direction and Bond makes a run for it, with some impressive overhead helicopter shots as he fights his way across a building roof. He makes his way to escape by doing a couple of stunt falls onto conveniently-placed cardboard boxes, then gets immediately whacked over the head, which is both a good sequence and (intentionally, this time) funny. Also, slightly stupid.
Bond is taken to Number 11, who turns out to be Helga, and she’s quite the flame-haired chanteuse in sequins – a symphony in brown. She threatens him with skin-slicing and then snogs him. He tries to bribe her and offers to take her to Europe. She goes for it, they embrace, and he slices her dress off for a bit of canoodling (“Oh the things I do for England,” sighs arguably the most immediately-identifiable Scotsman on the planet), then they’re making their escape in a small plane. But ah-ha, Helga actually wants to kill him after all! By, um, tying him up on a plane then crashing the plane while she parachutes out (with some truly awful rear projection as she hangs on her parachute). Bond escapes his bonds (heh), just about lands the plane then manages to just about get out of it before it explodes. But it’s the usual why-didn’t-she-shoot-him? There was literally no reason for this.
Q’s here! “Hello daddy!” says Bond, with a big smile on his face. Uh-huh. Q looks like every “Englishman abroad”, lacking only a pith helmet to complete the picture. “Little Nellie”, an autogiro, is put together in stop-motion. So she (well, and Bond) takes too the air now they’ve identified the relevant bit of coastline from earlier. Bond takes a look in an old volcano for some reason… hmm how could that turn out to be important? For the first time in this movie we get the Bond theme as six grown-up choppers chase Little Nellie in the action sequence we all knew was coming from the loving way Q informed us of all the weapons on board. The stunt flying is pretty good but every time it cuts to a special effect or bluescreen it looks pretty bad, and the cutting between them just serves to emphasize the point. Points for trying, though it’s all a bit unnecessary and really just exists to show off Little Nellie. It’s also one of those sequences you know when the action is going to be over, and it’s when they run out of Bond theme to play (even though there’s clearly one helicopter left unaccounted for, because it’s in the final shot).
The Russians launch their next rocket. It’s eaten by the same butt-plug from earlier in the movie, but it’s a better-executed sequence than the first one. Still, SPECTRE’s plan here – playing the Russians and Americans off against each other while they take advantage in the middle – is reasonably solid up to this point, even though it’s mostly just the same one from From Russia With Love. Lots of people are speaking Russian at the rocket launch and they’re un-subtitled which is a good tack to take. We then get a long shot of the butt-plug going through re-entry (help yourselves), and… oh look, its landing inside a volcano. The set, though, is vast, and genuinely impressive, even though the landing sequence goes on too long. The craft lands, and it looks like it’s a model (because until then it has been) then people start to run up to it. Really great work.
The white cat is back! It’s behind everything! The USSR capsule is removed from the butt plug, and this is all genuinely well done. The cosmonauts are taken from the capsule and led away as prisoners – they won’t be seen again. This set is amazing – working elevators, multiple levels, a monorail. Everyone on Team SPECTRE is satisfied, then “Hans” – hello, Hans! – throws a ham-hock into a pool full of piranhas. Because, yes, there’s a pool full of piranhas. Ohh and Number 11/Helga is here as well – this time dressed in red rather than brown, thankfully. We get one of the classic lines – “This organization does not tolerate failure”, then Helga is fed to the piranhas for failing to kill Bond as the cat watches on in glee. That is one evil cat.
Meanwhile, back with Bond, at Tanaka’s training ground, he asks, “Do you have any commandos here?” “Much, much better,” he is informed, “Ninjas!” So we get a bit of a ninja training camp, and it’s all very, very obvious – throwing stars, swordfights, and one guy that doesn’t know how to not look down the camera. But then we reach “modern ninjas” – gunfire, cigarettes with exploding darts etc – and the whole “stereotyped ninja” thing is nicely undercut (there’s been a small theme of cigarettes being bad for you throughout the film, which is an interesting slant).
Bond is told he must take a bride, but it can’t be Aki, and instead Tanaka has someone in mind with a “face like a pig”. Eesh. Connery’s then made up to “look Japanese” as part of an infiltration ruse, and that goes about as well as you’d expect – bad wig and eye makeup. Despite the pig prospect, he’s off to bed with Aki, and there’s an assassin in the roof and there’s the famous poison-down-a-bit-of-string routine. It’s not really tense but it is something different. So the assassin gets Aki instead of Bond, and it’s all a bit too coincidental and a terrible end for Aki, who so far has been strong, competent and full of agency, yet gets taken out because Bond turns over in his sleep. It’s meant to be tragic, but instead it’s just a waste. Bond is callously dismissive after her death though, which is good for the character and feels like a return to the “nasty bastard” characterization of From Russia With Love. We then get two more days of training… it’s nice that they’re taking the time to show Bond preparing but it kind of kills the momentum of the film, and we spend minutes over a marriage ceremony – to Kissy Suzuki, Aki’s replacement – for his cover. This is achieving nothing, and is most dreadful, essentially boiling down to “ohh look at the funny Japanese people”, which the film has largely avoided so far.
OK so at least all that rubbish is over, and we’re off on a tourist boat for the mission, at long last. Bond comes ashore and limits of his disguise are immediately apparent, at least to the audience – nobody seems to have realized that a strapping six-foot slab of Scottish beef isn’t going to blend in among the willowy five-foot-nothing’s of the local population. Still, everyone gamely kids on that it’s working, despite it clearly not. It’s easy to appreciate what they’re going for here, but its deeply unsuccessful. Someone died in a cave, so they go to investigate. More abysmal rear projection, the worst yet, with Bond and stand-in Aki… um, sorry Kissy in a boat, then into a cave that’s abruptly gassed (the cave, that is), and we’re underwater… but again thankfully only briefly. They work out their must be a vent leading to the volcano. “There must be a long tunnel!” says Kissy. Genius. We lost Aki for this? Bond finally gets his honeymoon on the slopes of the volcano, while a helicopter does a fly-by. Which then lands in our volcano set – again, genuinely impressive.
Elsewhere, it’s now the Americans’ turn to launch a rocket via some stock footage, though it’s quite well integrated. Climbing down the inside of the volcano/studio set, Bond asks Kissy, in relation to the water pooled inside the volcano, “are they deep?” while staring at something that’s very obviously metal. Then he walks on it. Hey he’s got a utility belt thing! Where did that come from? Spider Bond!, He sucker-cups his way into the base. That monorail’s back too, though still looking good. Bond has a natty little balaclava, which is not threatening, but Bond is in and rescues the American astronauts. And beats out a few guards. Meanwhile, Little Miss Swimming Champion Kissy is off trying to get back to bring help but is attacked from the air – at least they bother to show her actually having to work to get back to the others.
The cat is giving orders again! Bond is in disguise as one of the astronauts and is ready to be loaded into the space butt-plug, but fucks up and the cat demands that he’s brought before him. Then, The Big Reveal. It’s not the cat, it’s actually Dr Evil Donald Pleasance! He’s even got the Collar Of Evil! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! There’s a lot of eye contact between Bond and Blofeld during the rocket countdown, and the editing does no favours here. Just kiss already! Finally the rocket takes off and it’s awful, a crap model with poorly overlaid “flames”. That’s a shame, it’s been doing pretty well until now. Ah, but now the ninjas are ready to attack…
Yes, the ninjas are ready to attack. It’s worth stating twice I feel. Why is the guy that says “zere are men in ze crater!” German? Anyway, the ninjas attack and we have some explosions, and it all looks pretty good. We get another From Russis With Love moment with Bond asking for a last cigarette again, this time with the exploding dart, and the ninjas are rappelling into the volcano and and and… the pace has certainly picked up a fair amount here.
“I shall look forward to exterminating you personally, Mr Bond,” says Blofeld. So why doesn’t he? You’ve got a gun right on him! Its typically stupid. Still, if Blofeld was any more arch he’d be parabolic. Now the ninjas are in and all the locals are doing very impressive stunt falls and dives. Yet the rappelling-in ninjas are done in sufficient numbers that this really looks like a full on pitched battle – though there’s a very incongruous tractor in the middle of it all. The battle itself is very bloodless but it’s extremely well executed, there’s no doubt about that. Oh, Mr Osato (remember him?) has been shot for failure. Fine. BUT JUST SHOOT BOND! Finally, it looks like that’s what Blofeld is going to do… and then he gets struck in the hand by a throwing star. For Christ’s sake!
The action sequences remain pretty good though as Bond goes for the stairway into the control room. Then Bond is fighting Hans in the big piranha room – how will this end…. yes Hans is in the pool. The Americans launch some planes via some more stock footage, and there’s a big race but Bond just manages to detonate the butt plug in time.
Blofeld sets the base to self-destruct (why is that a feature you would even build in? Does he expect to fail?) and his fate is left undetermined, and we get lots of big explosions with some lava overlaid on them – the explosions look good, the lava looks awful. Then they all swim for it, and there’s a rubber life raft and some more poor explosions from the volcano. Big snog with Kissy. Then a submarine arrives and lifts the raft out of the water, and, joyfully, Moneypenny gets the last line of the movie (“It’ll be a pleasure, sir” she purrs).
In Conclusion: Until about the two-thirds mark, You Only Live Twice is quite an effective little thriller. It’s not exactly revelatory, but there’s a sense that the film really knows what it’s doing, and has certainly learned from the missteps of the last two outings. We’re not back to the highs of From Russia With Love just yet, but things are vastly improved nonetheless. The new-to-the-series location is deployed effectively, there’s some good little twists and turns and, crucially, Bond is back to actually investigating stuff, rather than just having events happen at him and/or overhearing plot-convenient pieces of dialogue.
It’s not fast-paced, that’s certainly true, but there’s a methodical deliberateness to the proceedings that shows a film that’s really in control of where it wants to go. It doesn’t need to hurry along to the big action set-piece because there’s more than enough other stuff going on to hold the attention, and there’s a real sense of restraint as well – precious few quips, action deployed in small but effective bursts (the office fight that ends with Bond stuffing his unconscious attacker in the drinks cabinet), and a proper sense of progression as each clue leads Bond on. Sure, there’s the odd moment of ridiculousness, like the somewhat-convoluted way Tanaka gets Bond into his office via a collapsing subway floor, but when it’s done briefly it’s entirely forgivable, and it’s also pretty fun. Even the unconventional opening, with Bond’s faked death, feels new to the series, despite that sort of being how the last film opened, and suggests that there’s still plenty of fresh approaches that can be tried.
Then we get to the two-thirds mark, and the film falls apart like a Gelbian sand-sculpture. Really, it just utterly collapses, and instead transforms itself into an Austin Powers movie, a self-parodic end to the movie played entirely straight. Everything from the moment Bond turns up at the volcano (and, you know, he turns up at a volcano) just descends into ridiculousness and all the careful plotting and well-executed thriller material is set aside for big ‘splosions, ninjas (ninjas!) and every other attendant Bond cliché imaginable.
The problem here is that this isn’t a problem caused by watching the film contemporaneously – we’ve seen all this before. Maybe not on this scale, but still. The “pool of piranhas” is just the “pool of sharks” from Thunderball. The “playing two sides off against each other” is the same plan SPECTRE had in From Russia With Love. Lower members of the organization get killed for failing to kill Bond (From Russia With Love again, and Goldfinger bumps off a SPECTRE board member during the AGM Of Doom). Big Underground Base (Dr. No). You get the point – we’ve seen all of this before, and it’s obvious watching the movie just how much the back third of the film is just bits from the other movies but shuffled around very slightly.
And as for the Blofeld reveal… well, we’ve gone through four other movies to find out who the Man Behind The White Cat is, and… oh, it’s Donald Pleasance in some not-especially-great scar make-up. The one thing You Only Live Twice really needed to nail was Blofeld and the fact that he actually represents a threat, but here he’s mostly just laughable. Iconic, perhaps, but still laughable within the context of this film. He has multiple chances to kill Bond, yet doesn’t, indulges in stupid plans when more straightforward ones would obviously be more successful, he kills off henchpeople at such a rate you wonder why anyone would work for him… and it’s all delivered by Pleasance in a camp, near-giggling tone that makes Blofeld seem less like someone bent on world domination and more like an errant schoolboy. It’s really not a successful conceit, no matter how long it lingers in the memory.
There are moments in the last third that are defensible, though. For one, that base set is stunning – it’s by far and away the most impressive set of any Bond movie up to this point, and it’s utilized really well in the climax. We get launching and landing helicopters, and working monorails, the big butt-plug getting fired off, the whole nine yards. And that’s before it’s used as an excuse for dozens of extras to show off their martial arts skills.
The ninjas themselves might be an insanely over-the-top inclusion but you can’t say that they didn’t get their money’s-worth out of them. That sense of space at least lends some degree of scale to proceedings, and makes it seem like SPECTRE is a proper, huge concern, rather than it all coming down to a confrontation between Bond and Blofeld. But even given this, there’s just way too much wrong with the final third of the film for it to work as a conclusion to what has essentially been a five-movie arc of meeting Blofeld. The emergence of “exotic Orientalism” is extremely unwelcome as well, especially for a film that managed to strike a fair balance between using its Japanese location well and not falling into (too many) obvious cultural clichés, or at least when it did use them they weren’t quite as straightforward as they could be.
Since this is the first of three farewells Connery has to the role (Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again being the other two, of course), it’s worth pointing out that, even this late in the game he’s still doing pretty well. His performance here is a mark up from Thunderball and Thunderball itself was an improvement from Goldfinger, so this is far his worst. His callousness over Aki’s death is very well handled, and early in the movie, as Bond navigates the unfamiliar world of Japan, he’s played exactly right, with all the correct levels of restraint and respect, and here Connery shines.
As with everything else here, he loses it a bit in the final third of the movie – his “to hell with that plan!” after being told he’d be marrying someone with the face of a pig (sigh…) is especially lamentable – though he’s better during the final big fights and confrontations, and looks genuinely scared he won’t stop the Big Countdown in time to prevent the American rocket being “eaten”. There’s no real sense that Connery has run out of things to do with the role and his consistency in the role has been really rather pleasing – there’s a reason people still claim Connery isn’t a James Bond but the James Bond, and it’s because he’s mostly been great. Time will tell whether his remaining two films will continue this streak…
The over-riding feeling here though is that this just should have been better. There’s no reason for the film to fall apart quite as spectacularly as it does. It all goes really well right up until the moment it doesn’t. Thunderball was incredibly slow and tedious, but it’s not hard to understand why all those underwater sequences might have seemed like a good idea, even if they didn’t pan out in practice. Here it seems like the scriptwriter got to the two-thirds point, ran out of ideas and just threw everything against the wall to see what would stick. Sadly, however, very little does, and we’re left with a confused mess of an ending that wipes out all the goodwill from earlier.
It’s not like Bond movies can’t embrace the preposterous successfully – this film already managed it with the first meeting between Bond and Tanaka, which was daft but endearingly so – yet this ends up being stupid-preposterous, not fun-preposterous, and it’s self-indulgent in the extreme. The big action climax tries to give the impression that all this matters, but it’s just a lot of smoke and explosions in the end, unable to cover for what got us here in the first place. The “potential war” between the US and USSR never feels real, which means the threat remains fairly abstract even as Connery does his best to sell Bond’s fear of not destroying the satellite in time. Blofeld can’t help but feel like a let-down after all the build-up as well. You Only Live Twice concludes feeling…unsatisfactory, just not good enough, and given how much of the movie actually works well, that’s quite the failing.
Oh, and Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice” is a million times better than Robbie Williams’ “Millennium”, which uses the same string pattern. Seriously, fuck “Millennium”.
What Percentage Of This Film Could Be Cut? Maybe 5%, which is mostly just the very uncomfortable “exotic Orientals” material, but especially the fake marriage ceremony, the “face like a pig” material and at least some of the ninja training camp. The last third of the movie is stupid, but there’s not a lot of trimming that’s really needed, and it’s not a movie that feels overly long (especially not next to the three-and-a-half years running time of Thunderball).
Quip Level: Pretty Low. There’s one or two, but, as with Thunderball, the relative paucity of quips means that when we do get one it’s easy to appreciate, rather than getting an overload that just makes each one worse than the one before. So at least there’s one area of the film that’s exercised restraint…
2017 Cringe Level: All over the fucking place. It’s hard to know what to assign here, because some parts of the movie work really well in confronting the fact that this is taking place in Japan, and some parts are just beyond terrible. The rule of thumb is basically the earlier in the movie some reference to the locale is made, the better it’s likely to be. Bond accepting sake, knowing at what temperature it should be served, being apparently genuinely interested in a Sumo match, and showing proper cultural respect and understanding? All absolutely terrific, and though there’s a real awkwardness about the “bath” scene, at least there’s the acknowledgement that neither Bond nor Tanaka entirely understand the world the other comes from, and they make hesitant steps to bridge that gap. It’s clumsy (especially “in Japan, the men always come first” being met by Bond’s reply of “I might just retire here”), but it’s written as the characters being clumsy, rather than the scriptwriter being culturally insensitive.
But despite that good work it all ends with Connery in a kimono, cheap wig, and slanty-eye make-up of the very worst kind, and ninjas (because we’re in Japan so there has to be ninjas, right?) doing yelling swordplay and flinging throwing stars at the bad guys. It’s true that, in 1967, Japan would have seemed impossibly exotic to grey old England… except England wasn’t grey in 1967 at all, this was the era of Carnaby St and psychedelia, so the exoticism feels markedly out of step even in the context of the time it was released (just a couple of years earlier this might have been easier to… well not forgive, but explain certainly). So yeah, the stuff at the end is straightforwardly appalling and the stuff at the beginning is much better. I dunno. Draw your own conclusions.
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