For the first time in the series, “James Bond Will Return” means Bond but not the actor playing him, as Connery gives way to George Lazenby’s one-and-done attempt to take over the title role. But is his poor reputation deserved, and does one of the most forgotten of all Bond films deserved to be relegated to “oh yeah, that one” status?
Pre-Existing Prejudices:
If I’ve seen this one all the way through then I have absolutely no memory of it. I know the famous final scene well enough, and a couple of set-pieces, but beyond that… blank. So Lazenby is going to get a fair crack of the whip, if nothing else – I honestly have no idea how good or otherwise he is in the role, nor anything else about him at all, really. I’m rather keen to watch what amounts to an entirely new Bond, so let’s get on with it!
The Actual Movie:
So here we go with Lazenby’s big moment in the spotlight and we start with the Bond theme and the gun-barrel sequence, which feels right, though the theme is a bit plinky-plonky. We open on Universal Exports, and begin with M and Q chatting away. They’re looking for Bond, it seems, though it’s a rather peculiar scene with Q waffling on about radioactive pocket lint. Then we get Lazenby’s first moment, in a rather dark-shot Aston Marten with the Bond theme tootling away, but they do a good job of keep him in darkness even as he lights his cigarette. So there’s a real effort made to actually reveal Lazenby as Bond, not just have him be there, despite a car chase that seems slightly familiar.
And oh look, it’s Mrs Peel Diana Rigg! Bond zips down to the beach (in the car!) and runs into the sea after her as she wanders into it. When she’s pulled from the water, Lazenby gets his “Bond, James Bond” moment, then he gets his first big fight moment. He looks physically up to the part, and when the fight moves into the ocean it works well, all fading light and arcing water, but the bits on the beach prior to that are not well directed at all. Still, the fight-at-twilight isn’t something we’ve seen before. It’s a good attempt to give a different visual aesthetic even if the fight is not remotely convincing, with bits of speeded up footage looking as rubbish as ever. The pre-credits sequence ends with the famous “this never happened to the other fellow” but it’s delivered pretty well, self-aware but not really winking.
Then after a title sequence apparently designed to remind people that there used to be a different Bond and a different Blofeld (why would you do that?) the film kicks off properly. Bond pulls up to a requisite fancy hotel in an Aston that’s not a patch on the DB5 of the previous few films, and we get a bit of exposition. Bond is shown to his room, and there’s an excellent cross-fade of a high-shot of the pool in day, filled with swimmers, to a night shot, with the Casino name reflected in the water. Bond makes it to a card table in a shirt with so many ruffs Jimi Hendrix would have been ashamed of it. He plays for a while but… it would be quite nice to have some idea of why he’s even here?
Eventually Diana Rigg puts in an appearance, still un-named and motive-free. Off to dinner the two of them go, and we finally learn her name is Tracy. They do appear to be staying at the Liberace hotel – it’s pretty chintzy, and the 70’s have arrived whether we want them to or not. There’s a fight sequence in her suite, and Lazenby really looks like he can really throw a punch, not that it does him much good in the short term. But he eventually wins, and looks like he actually could have. He gets his first quip – “gatecrasher!” – which… yea it’s certainly not Connery delivering it, that’s for sure. But he shortly thereafter gets to slap Tracey – so some similarities, then – but its not quite there yet. Christ that shirt is awful. Despite the slap, this is a noticeably gentler Bond – they do sleep together, but she kisses him first, not the other way round.
The next morning Bond is ushered at gunpoint outside – “We’ll give it to you outside” is followed by “perhaps we can make it a foursome” which is not, I think the sexual innuendo the script was going for. Then he’s driven into an office with a dwarf and a broom? Um, sure. There’s a fight sequence, which is simply awful, before Bond bursts into discover… Draco! Draco introduces himself before narrowly avoiding a knife, then he and Bond chat away. SPECTRE gets a quick name-check, but we’re informed Draco is running a crime syndicate. Bond, its worth pointing out, is wearing an orange turtleneck and a brown onesie. Draco is… not good while delivering the Tracy Exposition. Turns out Draco is her father, which is nice, and has been keeping an eye on Bond because of his interactions with his daughter. She needs help, we’re told. This scene goes on for ever. But Draco presses Bond into pursuing his daughter. Sexually. How very fatherly.
Back to London, and Bond gets to do the throwing-the-hat-on-the-stand routine. Moneypenny is described as “Britain’s last line of defence” and again shows how good Maxwell is because she almost generates chemistry between her and Lazenby. Almost. M takes Bond off the case, and we’re told that Blofeld has been pursued by Bond for two years without success, so M is giving him a newer target because he’s rubbish at this one. Which is a surprisingly accurate judgement. Bond resigns, and ends up going through a few of Connery’s old props for some reason (so is he the same character or not?). Ahhh, nostalgia. Then he gets drunk, reflected in the portrait of the Queen, a strangely touching little moment. M accepts Bond’s resignation, with two curt words (request granted). But actually he’s just been given two weeks leave – Moneypenny really is the greatest!
Tracy’s arrived at a ranch in a car with a massive F for France on the rear of it. With horses. Then bullfighting. And… um… where is this set again? Anyway Bond is there, making zero screen impact. In truth, Diana Rigg is acting Lazenby off the screen, and indeed everyone else including her father. Her father eventually tells Bond that Blofeld is in Switzerland. She storms off, he follows her, and actually she’s rather unexpectedly crying, because, um, they’ve fallen for each other. Okay… When? Then we get a bit of a montage of the happy couple, which works fine as a shortcut, but there needed to be more establishing work done before the montage to sell it.
But fine, the work is done and they are all in love, all while Louis Armstrong reminds us that they have all the time in the world 9or at least until the closing credits roll). Still now they’re back in… somewhere. This film is not doing a good job of establishing locations. Austria? Germany? Switzerland? Lets go with the latter, since its at least been mentioned. Bond sneaks into an office, rearranges the furniture then steps out onto a balcony. A black box is ferried across to Bond from a crane by a curly-haired man – a strange sequence, but sure – and it’s got a big old safecracker inside. Didn’t Connery have a hand-held one of those in the last film? Lazenby isn’t great at doing relaxed, and he’s still not got a lot of on-screen presence. But Bond gets into the office safe. Turns out the safecracker also works as a photocopier! Oh, hi-tech! Couldn’t he have just taken pictures? Bond sneaks the photocopier back out the way it came in – by crane – as the office person returns, but there’s no tension here at all.
Finally we get confirmation that this is in Switzerland after all, while M does some stuff with butterflies. Bond is going undercover exploring his family tree – the motto The World Is Not Enough is mentioned, which is rather great – and we are off to Switzerland proper at long fucking last (obviously there’s an advert for Toblerone visible) and they meet up with Bunt, a grim Klebb-lite. They get on a sleigh while Lazenby does his best upper-crust Englishman impression (it’s not great). Up to the lodge they go then into a helicopter. The blonde bloke from the crane move is following Bond, though we know not why, and have no real idea who he is. Well, at least the scenery is nice, which is just as well because we get a lot of it. Until we eventually get to the Big Mountaintop Base which is “prrrrrivate!” we are informed. This is all fine but it’s going on for too long. Lazenby in his disguise looks rather like Phil Coulson…
Telly Savalas gets his first appearance, shot from above and behind, but at least he looks like he owns the cat rather than the cat looking like it’s the one in charge. After checking his room for bugs, slowly, Bond turns up to a reception party in full highland kit because it seems that, even when played by someone audibly Australian, Bond is still Scottish. There’s a lot of ladies, and und zie fraulein Bunt is definitely now established as a Rosa Klebb Mk II. Like the new Aston, she’s not as good as the first one. The room is full of women, for some reason, and lots and lots of food. It’s opulent, but pointless. Oh, there’s a Princess Leia haircut – this haircut might just might be the most interesting thing in this scene so far! Oh, but someone has written her room number on Bond’s leg, under his kilt, with her lipstick, which is genuinely funny in a way nothing else so far has been.
But finally he leaves the fucking dinner and we move into something rather more… Underground Base-y. About time. Finally Telly Savalas actually gets a scene, and he’s already great, even when delivering tedious stuff about his family past About Which We Don’t Care. There’s not really a sense of Blofeld and Bond circling each other, though it’s kind of interesting they’ve both changed their face since they last met. Then on to a bit it of late-night seduction which even manages to include a “what do Scotsmen wear under their kilt” gag. Then some stuff about curing someone from Morecombe Bay of her chicken fear, which is… prosaic.
Daytime, and That Curly Haired Guy is trying to get to the super-verboden-mountaintop-base. He tries to climb, but he’s thrown off the mountain… Well, escorted off at the very least. Bond observes this while curling with the ladies from last night’s dinner. When he’s making passes at them he just seems creepy, and there’s very little charm or sense that he can actually get away with this tier of flirting. So off he goes for another liaison, and it all ends with him finding Bunt in bed rather than his paramour he and ends up being knocked out in spectacularly unconvincing style.
On waking, Blofeld finally drops the act and admits he knows who Bond is – which, duh, they’ve met before – and tells us of This Movie’s Big Plan, which is how he’s threatening the whole world economy. Savalas is a million times better than any Blofeld we’ve had so far. His threat – to wipe out whole species at a whim – feels more credible than some of SPECTRE’s plans (not a high bar, admittedly). And we find out what the ladies are for – they’re Blofeld’s Angels Of Death. Somewhat quirkily, Bond is locked up in the machine room for the cable cars. Why? Um… Anyway his pockets are ripped out to cover his hands on the cable while Bond tries to make his escape, while the Angels are fed drugged egg-nog. Of course the cable car lurches into life while Bond is on it, leading to yet more awful speeded up footage and no tension. On the second attempt Bond makes it outside, and its almost tense as he jumps onto an approaching cable car. Blofeld, meanwhile, is still conditioning his Angels Of Death. It’s all very of its time (not a criticism, just an observation), as they are sort-of hypnotised with flashing lights, drugs and Tell Savalas’s soothing baritone. We should be grateful he didn’t try to croon “If” at them… We get another woeful fight scene as Bond comes out of a lift, and again Lazenby is delivering on the action only to be let down by more shitty fight direction.
So now it’s time for Bond to make his escape on skis, and it’s a mixed bag. The actual skiers look great, and the action is well staged, but there’s some rear projection which very much isn’t. It’s a slightly uncomfortable mix. Bond is, at least, down to one ski, so its not all plain sailing, though he does look a bit silly with only one. Henchepeople getting taken out by trees is never not funny (“Idiot” says Blofeld, and he’s not wrong). One hencehperson goes off a cliff and has a looooooong fall, and that looks absolutely great. Bond takes out another with his own ski, and it looks like Lazenby’s Bond might be starting to show some worth (an hour and thirty eight minutes into the movie).
At least Bond has two skis now, and makes it to the village down below. There’s a fist fight among some bells, which is unusual. Bond makes it into a crowd (safety!) and discreetly avoids Bunt who’s on the hunt… and oh there’s Tracy, conveniently back in the movie after a long stretch of not being. They make their sharp exit under fireworks and get to her car so they can drive to a post office to make contact with London, which is very sweet. But it doesn’t work, and Bunt has found them. So we’re back into car chase mode. Turns out Tracey can drive pretty great (note to self: avoid obvious Mrs Peel joke here), and certainly better than her pursuers. They swerve into an improbable stock car race (the crowd might discourage them from pursing suggests Bond… sure). “I hope my big end will stand up to this” Tracy declares, which, sorry, this is unavoidable but does sound a lot more Mrs Peel than Tracy). Despite being fairly nonsensical, this is still a well-shot sequence.
Eventually their pursuers tip over, apparently out of a desire to just not be in a chase scene any more, and they make their exit from the race. A blizzard whips up, and with a now-failing car they make their way into a barn, which is… a stable. They sure do love their horses in this film series. Tracy was doing quite well – all spunk and good driving – but now she’s suddenly in soft-focus. For… reasons. Then some more soft focus and a bit of a heart-to-heart. But strangely when Bond is on shot, everything is perfectly focussed, but the reverse shot has so much Vaseline smeared on the lens you could have used it to help birth a lamb – it’s a really weird scene as they cut between the two. But Bond admits he loves her – and they’re going to marry!
The next day they make their escape down the slopes on skis, but they’re being followed again by Blofeld and his goons, somehow. She’s at least given the chance to show off he own skiing skills. One henceperson ends up in a snow-plough – “he had lots of guts” – then they’re in an avalanche zone and of course Blofeld sets one off. The avalanche takes care of a few hencepeople and eventually catches Bond and Tracy. They survive – just – but more by luck than judgement. Blofeld is able to retrieve Tracy, which is no good to Bond, who’s next seen in London (there’s a brief but excellent moment of him at a window with her being dragged away projected onto it, with Bond staring lonely into the distance, which suggests what Lazenby might be good at). M wont countenance any kind of attack as Blofeld asks for immunity, recognition of his title etc. So Bond goes to Draco to get round that, because Draco is a demolition man.
Tracy is now with Blofeld, who is trying to work her. Helicopters approach on a “mercy mission” and there’s a lot of “but we really are on a mercy mission!” thing, which goes on a bit too long. Then the attack begins. Finally, some action! Tracy takes on a couple of henchpeople with champagne bottles. The Bond theme kicks in and we’re off with lots of jumping out of helicopters and so forth. Some well directed sequences here (Bond sliding across the ice on his belly, firing). There’s a brief reunion where Bond and Tracy both get to be safe, then more action! It’s all kicked off now!
Bond finds Blofeld’s Big Map Of Evil, then it becomes really personal between them – about fucking time! The base is rigged to blow. Five minutes! “He knows the schedule”, Draco ominously declares. Tracey won’t leave so her father punches her out. That Daddy Of The Year award remains safely out of his reach. Then the explosives go off and a pretty convincing model of the base gets blown up while Telly Savalas does some decent stunt work and he and Bond have a luge escape. Some more decent footage as they shoot at each other, then Blofeld throws a grenade. Bond survives (allegedly – it doesn’t look survivable, but anyway) and then jumps on Blofeld’s luge for a bit of fisticuffs. At least this finally feels like the personal battle that Blofeld vs Bond always should have been. No music here, just punches, kicks and fighting – the right choice. Eventually Blofeld is pushed into a tree – looks a bit silly but actively painful. “He’s branched off”, Bond attempts to quip, despite nobody having used “branched off” in that way, ever. Bond jumps to safety and… a St Bernard ambles over to him for a final tick on the cliché-o-meter.
Off to the wedding! Mr and Mrs James Bond! Even M and Q are present (Q getting another seventeen seconds of screen time or so). There’s the Aston decked out in flowers as everyone wishes him well. Moneypenny’s in tears as Bond throws her his hat. Bless. So off they go, into the sunset, and it’s all fairly charming. They pull over to take the flowers off the car. Tracy telly Bond, in classic someone’s-about-to-die style, that Bond already gave her a wedding present – “The best I could have – the future”. They’re playful together, so that’s something. Then Blofeld (in a stupid-looking neck brace) and Bunt zoom past, opening fire. Bond is fine… but not Tracy. She’s dead. But a question – Blofeld opened fire side-on, but the bullet that killed Tracy came through the windscreen. How? Well, perhaps it’s best not to dwell on the details, since the film clearly hasn’t. Still, Lazenby gets his own moment of actually good acting, and it ends quietly on the bullet hole in the glass.
Which would be great.
Except it then cuts to the Bond theme, which feels crassly misjudged.
Not great.
(Oh, and Joanna Lumley is credited as “English” in the closing titles, which might just be her most perfect screen credit ever.)
In Conclusion:
If there’s a word to describe On Her Majesty’s Secret Service that word would be “frustrating”. There’s obviously a decent Bond movie in there somewhere, at least on a scripting level, but unfortunately this isn’t it. What we do get is a sub-par run-around which, while not the worst movie in the Bond series so far (that honour still goes to Thunderball), does nevertheless seems to be incapable of not working against its own best interests. To take one example which summarizes this – the pre-credits scene on the beach. There’s some lovely dusk shooting, which looks more cinematic than almost anything else in a Bond movie to date. There’s a few properly impressive shots in there, and really suggests that either the director or cinematographer is going all out to make things look strikingly different – as they should, with the whole series needing to find a new direction after Connery’s departure. And Lazenby gets a fight where he shows off his prowess physically as a way to help establish him in the role – and holding back the reveal of Bond is an inspired way of handling the transition from Connery to Lazenby.
But he’s let down at almost every turn by incredibly shoddy fight direction, ill-advised speeded up footage that’s often lacking only “Yakkity Sax” to complete the transition from tense to hilarious, and a general antipathy towards making any of this look remotely convincing. It all ends with “this never happened to the other fellow”, which could have been dreadful but actually works well – Lazenby delivers it with a light touch that stops it from becoming overly self-indulgent – before… launching into a title sequence that seems to have been custom-built to remind the audience of other, better, Bond movies that came before this one. It’s a series of really interesting approaches let down by obvious failings that should have been easy to pick up on and correct. See what I mean about frustrating?
One thing that is welcome is that this doesn’t try to top You Only Live Twice in terms of going for an even bigger scale. There we were, technically, threatened with all-out war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., there was a spaceship-eating spaceship, a vast underground volcano base, and more henchpeople than you could shake a stick at. Here Blofeld does have that rather lovely base in the Swiss Alps, but it’s at a much more relatable – and practical – level, so though his plan to blackmail the world is nearly as improbable as previous Big Plans, it’s taking place in a setting that suggests credibility, and thus lends credibility to the plan.
Well, some of it. Not his Angels Of Death, which is a stupid idea done stupidly, but the idea that he’s developed a virus that can wipe out whole species feels real in a way that a lot of Blofeld/SPECTRE plans don’t, so the sense of threat behind it holds water. But for all that, here we go again, because the movie is once more working against itself– the plan is good, the execution via make-up kits is idiotic and not really even in a fun-Bond sort of way. Still, if nothing else On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is gifted with the best Blofeld of them all. Telly Savalas makes an immediate impression as Blofeld, light-years away from the camp, childish giggling of the last movie that was so difficult to take seriously. And, because Savalas is actually a decent actor, he’s able to do the different aspects of Blofeld just as well as the mwa-ha-ha-evil-plan side of the character, which also goes a long way to selling him as a real person. And he has a physicality – he can ski, he can take part in chases normally reserved exclusively for henchpeople, he looks like he can physically handle himself in a fight – that helps imbue the character with more credibility than he’s ever had. Even the fact that one of his blackmail demands is that his title be recognized helps put some character meat on the bone – even after all his nefarious plans, he still wants to be accepted by the Establishment. Make of that what you will… So yes, Blofeld is one of the great successes of the film. What a shame it takes us to nearly the halfway point before he’s actually introduced (so more movie-working-against-itself then).
And what of Lazenby himself? Well, after Connery’s career-making performance over the last five movies, it was always going to be tough finding a leading man to take over what had become such an iconic role, and something the film definitely succeeds in is that it doesn’t have Lazenby just try and be Connery’s Bond but with a different actor. There’s moments where there are obvious similarities – his bedding two women in one night at the lodge seems like an obvious point of comparison – but by and large Lazenby isn’t stuck doing a Connery impression. Unfortunately.
Look, comparisons to Connery are both inevitable and unavoidable here, and that doesn’t do Lazenby any favours at all, but even without the comparison to his predecessor, Lazenby never really convinces as Bond. I really, really wanted to like him in the role, to find a Bond that’s overlooked but a worthy addition to the series, but that’s not what Lazenby’s Bond is. He simply has no screen presence. He can say the lines, and he looks the part, but there’s no spark there. He lacks that crucial something that animates the character beyond stock lines about martinis and evil bad guys, and he’s simply dreadful at delivering the puns and quips. These are – thankfully – kept to a minimum, but every time he’s given one to deliver the film crashes to an awkward stop. Indeed Lazenby appears far more comfortable (and is simply better) playing Bond-in-disguise rather than Bond himself, which is a huge failing.
His Bond has at least some rapport with Tracy, but that’s almost all coming from Diana Rigg, who’s simply brilliant here, and really rather wasted in this film. She’s able to give her character that extra dimension that Lazenby’s Bond so obviously lacks, and seeing them in scenes together just helps emphasise how much better she is. She acts him off the screen, in fact, but then again of course she does – quite apart from the fact that Rigg is a great actor, she’s essentially been playing a competent Bond girl over on The Avengers for years, so this is second nature to her. There’s a few moments when they do work well together – hiding in the barn after getting caught in a snowstorm, despite the weird soft-focus thing – but for the most part it’s all from her, not him. Really, Savalas and Rigg aside, this isn’t a well-cast film, and little of the supporting cast make any impression at all, even in fairly major roles like Draco. Ilse Steppat steps into the second-in-command henchwoman role, taking up the mantle of Rosa Klebb’s grimly-Eastern-European approach to working for her boss, but even then… well she’s fine but she’s just Klebb Mk II, where a more distinct character would have been a better approach.
So, anyway. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service just doesn’t convince. It ought to, but it doesn’t, and it’s easy to see how it could have. The fact that there are a few moments of real quality just highlights how mediocre everything else is, and there’s a… flatness to much of the film that stops it becoming engaging for great lengths of its run-time. The action sequence at the end, with the big attack attack on the lodge? Fantastic, and indeed as good an action sequence as any we’ve had. But it’s taken us two hours to get to it and, good though it is, that feels like way too long. The setting, high in the Swiss Alps, is pleasingly different from any previous film, but it takes us half the movie to get there, and indeed to the point of any of this, and that also feels way too long.
Blofeld’s defeat-by-tree feels like a poor way of Bond finally besting the character… ah but of course he doesn’t actually best him here at all, and Blofeld makes a return to take his revenge on Bond. Those final few minutes of the film, with the wedding and the death of Tracy, get a lot of focus and attention, and quite rightly so. The wedding works well, with the regular cast turning up to wave Bond off (and some more great work from Lois Maxwell, naturally), even if it’s not the most… discreet wedding for a super spy, before the final, shocking couple of minutes. And there’s something that works well in the fact that Tracy’s death is almost arbitrary – either of them could have been shot or neither of them, but the random nature is something that even someone like Bond can’t predict or prevent.
Lazenby gets his best moment of the film here, cradling her dead body while telling the attending police officer they have all the time in the world, and it’s really quite affecting and deservedly the moment the film is most remembered for and indeed a highlight of the series. But it’s also too little too late – and once again we return to the dominant theme of this film working against itself, because the moment with Bond holding Tracy’s body is terrific, then it cuts to a shot of just the bullet hole in the glass and silence… and it’s a powerful moment. Then the Bond theme crashes in and ruins everything, crassly undermining a rare moment of real emotion. And that’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in a nutshell. Unable to overcome its own flaws to actually allow itself to work.
What a terrible waste.
What Percentage Of This Film Could Be Cut?
Loads of it. It takes us so damned long to get to the Swiss base and Blofeld’s actual plan that much of the run-up to it just feels like marking time until the plot gets going. Yes, there’s a bit of that time spent trying to persuade us that Bond And Tracy Are A Thing, but it’s not hugely convincing, and it’s not worth spending half the movie on. And once we get to the base we spend far too long with the Angels Of Death, faffing about rather than getting on with things. So let’s go for… oh 25%. At two hours and twenty minutes, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is already the longest Bond film, and often feels like it. Shave off a good chunk of the first half, jettison Draco altogether and just have Tracy and Bond meet in some (any!) other way, and pare back the character-free Angels Of Death (tellingly, in the credits they’re not even given names, just nationalities) and you’d have a noticeably stronger film.
Quip Level:
Low, thank Rassilon. Lazenby just can’t deliver them, so the fact that the puns and quips are few and far between means the film doesn’t shudder to a halt too often. Especially lamentable is Blofeld’s “he’s branched off”, which isn’t funny and barely counts as a pun/quip. Though as mentioned, he does the “this never happened to the other fellow” surprisingly well, so that’s something.
2025 Cringe Factor:
Performances apart, you mean? Other than Bond slapping Tracy or Draco punching out his own daughter (!), actually, this can probably scrape a Fine, because surprisingly there’s nothing really cringe-y here. Bond’s slap of Tracy is deliberately recalling the same action in From Russia With Love, and though Lazenby doesn’t have the steel that Connery does, the film is obviously going for the same thing. The Angels Of Death walk up to the line of cringe, but they’re just a crap idea rather than being actively buttock-clenching. Yet there’s no racial stereotypes (unless you want to count the Swiss having a love of winter sports), no uncomfortable power dynamics with even Bunt seeming to be there of her own volition, Tracy herself has skills and agency and isn’t just a love interest for Bond (she even gets to do a bit of henchperson beating!), and the whole thing is broadly cringe free.
But wait, actually I’ve made a mistake, because there is one thing that is incredibly cringe-inducing, and it’s this – the fashion. It’s fucking awful. This might have been made in 1969, but the 70’s have crashed the party early in all their orange-and-brown glory. One of the things that holes On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – though not the only thing by a long chalk – is that it just looks incredibly tacky on screen. Bond movies don’t have to be glamorous – Dr No certainly isn’t – but they do need to avoid looking cheap and gaudy on screen, and that test On Her Majesty’s Secret Service fails badly. So lets up the rating to an Ouch and do our best to forget Bond’s orange turtleneck, the disco-hypnotist lights in Blofeld’s base, or The Most Ruffled Shirt In Cinema, shall we?
The Bonds, Ranked
1. Connery
2. Lazenby
JG Judgementally Comments... 