Diamonds Are Forever is the seventh film in the James Bond series . It is the sixth and final film to star Sean Connery, who returned to the role as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, having declined to reprise the role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). That duty fell to the Mr. George Lazenby, whom we reviewed in a previous blog. Hmmm. The film is based on Ian Fleming’s 1956 novel of the same name and is the second of four James Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond impersonating a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring and uncovering a plot by his old enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld ( Charles Gray, in this iteration) to use the diamonds to build a space-based laser weapon. Bond sets out to stop the smuggling but discovers he must defeat Blofeld before he destroys Washington D.C. in his plan to blackmail the world with nuclear supremacy.
MI-6 head M suspects that South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping and assigns Bond to uncover the smuggling ring. Impersonating smuggler Peter Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet contact Tiffany Case (Jill St. John). Bond kills the real Franks, then switches IDs to fake his death and assume Franks’ identity. Tiffany and Bond go to Los Angeles, smuggling the diamonds inside Franks’ corpse. At the airport, Bond meets his CIA contact Felix Leiter and travels to Las Vegas. At a funeral home operating in the smuggling ring, Franks’ body is cremated, and the diamonds are passed on to smuggler Shady Tree. The funeral home operator double-crosses Bond, and Wint and Kidd, 2 contract killers working for Blofeld, try to cremate him alive but fail. At the Whyte House, a casino and hotel owned by billionaire Willard Whyte ( Jimmy Dean). At the craps table, Bond meets Plenty O’Toole, and later brings her to his room. Slumber’s henchmen ambush them, throwing O’Toole out the window and into the pool below. Bond climbs to the Whyte House’s top floor to confront Whyte. He is instead met by two identical Blofelds, who use an electronic simulator to sound like Whyte when communicating with the outside world. Bond kills one of the Blofelds, who turns out to be a look-alike. He is then knocked out by gas, picked up by Wint and Kidd, taken out to Las Vegas Valley, placed in a pipeline and left to die, but Bond escapes. He locates Whyte’s desert home, defeats Blofeld’s henchpersons Bambi and Thumper, and rescues Whyte. Whyte identifies an oil rig off the coast of Baja California as Blofeld’s base of operations. Bond foils Blofeld’s plans, killing him in the process, and escapes with Tiffany. Bond and Tiffany then head for Britain on an ocean liner, where Wint and Kidd pose as room-service workers and attempt to kill them with a bomb hidden in a cake, but are folded and killed in the process, leaving Bond and Tiffany some quality time on the cruise as the film ends…
OK, on the the ratings.
Bond; 98 out of 100. Connery at the top of his game. Great action sequences and Bond dialog, with some quality bad guys to play off and Bond girls to play with.
Villain; 89 out of 100 Charles Gray is a good, serviceable Blofeld. Good bad guy looks and smarmy delivery.
Bond Girls; 98 out of 100 Jill St.John as Tiffany Case, Lana Wood as Plenty O’Toole, Bambi & Thumper the “bodyguards”. St.John stands out as a gorgeous woman who can act, but they are all excellent. And Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) has a small uncredited role!
Bond Theme; 72 out of 75. Shirley Bassey’s 2nd Bond theme is just as well done and iconic as her first,(Goldfinger) hence the identical score.
Henchman; 47 out of 50 Bruce Glover and Putter Smith as Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are different, odd and totally draw you in. There are all kinds of overtones here. Gay / Straight, a couple? On the spectrum before there was a spectrum? So good.
M, Q, Moneypenny & misc. 24 out of 25. Bernard Lee as M, Desmond Llewelyn as Q, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny are all good, solid support. Plus Jimmy Dean as Whyte, Leonard Barr as Shady Tree, Horror icon Sid Haig in a cameo. Just a lot of happy surprises.
Total; 428
Scoreboard;
- Diamonds are Forever- 428
- Goldfinger- 419
- The Spy Who Loved Me.- 410
- Goldeneye- 407
- Spectre-397
- Live and Let Die- 396
- Skyfall- 383
- Casino Royale / Die Another Day / Skyfall- 382
- Tomorrow Never Dies- 377
- The World is not Enough- 367
- A View to a Kill- 359
- No Time to Die- 355
- 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
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