On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the sixth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is based on the 1963 novel by Ian Fleming. Following Sean Connery’s decision to retire from the role. Eon selected George Lazenby, a model with no prior acting credits, to play the part of James Bond. And yeah, it shows. In the film, Bond faces Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who is planning to hold the world to ransom by threatening to render all food plants and livestock infertile through the actions of a group of brainwashed “angels of death”. Along the way Bond meets, falls in love with, and eventually marries Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). Lots of Alpine mountains and snow, lots of skiing and luge-ing, and really fake action sequences. The end scenario of Blofeld and Bond fighting while on luges going down the mountain is particularly laughable, and the very last scene where Blofeld and his henchperson (Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt) doing a driveby hit, killing Teresa as she and Bond are driving away from their wedding, suddenly and inexplicably ends the movie. But it gave Lazenby a chance to show his acting chops (as if) as he mourns over her body. The less said the better.
OK, on to the ratings;
Bond; 25 out of 100. Lazenby gets 25 for showing up & putting on the costumes. That’s about it.
Villain; 41 out of 100. Telly Savalas gets 1 more point than Louis Jordan in Octopussy because at least he didn’t look bored. Savalas is a good actor and can be really believable in the right roles. A sophisticated genius is not one of those roles.
Bond Girls; 75 out of 100. What a waste of a marvelous actor. Diana Rigg is a beautiful, powerful and adept actress. She does everything she can with the script and the actors surrounding her. But there’s not much there to work with. And the 12 “Angels of Death” (1 of whom is a young Joanna Lumley) are there , and 2 of them end up with Bond, but nope, they are neither compelling nor particularly sexy. the rating would be WAY lower if Diana Rigg wasn’t involved.
Bond Theme- 24 out of 75. It’s just a variation on the original Bond theme music. I like the Bond theme, but isn’t it kinda lazy to just rehash previous work with very little variation?
Henchman- 21 out of 50. lse Steppat as Irma Bunt was just Lotte Lenya in “From Russia with Love”, but not as good.
M, Q, Moneypenny, etc; 15 out of 25. Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, Bernard Lee as M and Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Good solid Bond veterans doing good work. A few bonus points for Joanna Lumley.
Total- 201
Scoreboard;
- Goldfinger- 419
- Goldeneye- 407
- Spectre-397
- Live and Let Die- 396
- Skyfall- 383
- Casino Royale / Die Another Day / Skyfall- 382
- The World is not Enough- 367
- A View to a Kill- 359
- Dr. No- 346
- The Man with the Golden Gun. 331
- License to Kill- 321
- Octopussy- 255
- The Living Daylights- 228
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service- 201
practicallywell.net 