ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE: This Never Happened to the Other Guy

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – The 6th James Bond Film; The 1st (of 1) George Lazenby Films – Directed by Peter Hunt – Starring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Gabriele Frezetti, Ilse Steppat, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, and Bernard Lee.

While I wouldn’t put ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE alongside either CASINO ROYALE or GOLDFINGER, and while George Lazenby’s James Bond oozes this “happy to be here” vibe that just seems completely wrong in some scenes, this is a fantastic movie that can stand alongside any other film in the franchise’s run.

What’s smart about SERVICE is that this is a fully-realized movie that both stands on its own and fits into the larger, ongoing SPECTRE story. Whatever faults Lazenby has, the filmmakers have wisely decided to play to his strengths – that is, he keeps quiet, is good at the physical stuff, and he reacts accordingly.

It’s that last part that’s the most unnerving. Bond should act, not react, and yet Lazenby’s Bond basically does the opposite and reacts more than acts. There’s never really a moment on screen where you’re like, “That’s the coolest guy in the room.” Instead, Lazenby’s Bond is like a master counter puncher. Nearly everything in the film that happens, happens to him before he happens to it. When he seduces Woman #2 at Blofeld’s research institute, it’s almost like he’s a guy who’s already hit the jackpot on a slot machine (Woman #1 seduced him during dinner) and finds an extra quarter in his pocket and figures, “What the heck? Let’s give this here machine another spin.”

The reactive take on the character is different from Connery’s super-confident Bond, and that could potentially harm SERVICE in the eyes of viewers, but the film is smart enough to see it all the way through to the end, so at the very least you’re given a cohesive approach that plays to the actor’s strengths. SERVICE commits to Lazenby’s Bond, and builds a film around him in a manner that must make Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton a tad envious.

It’s almost a shame, too, that this movie is a continuation instead of a reboot because it is a bit silly that we’ve got a new Bond and a new Blofeld (Savalas) and a different take on the character and the film. Whatever that goofy poster on the upper left there makes you think, SERVICE has none of the silly gadgets that have plagued the recent Connery films. Indeed, only GOLDFINGER really gets the over-the-top bad guy more right that SERVICE does. Blofeld’s got this megalomaniacal crazy-ass plot, and he’s got a private estate tucked away in the mountains, and he’s got his henchmen, and he’s got his “angels of death” – a collection of would-be Playmates walking around in their nighties – but the film manages to make it all seem perfectly reasonable in the same way that Auric Goldfinger made his actions seem plausible.

Telly Savalas is great as Blofeld. Gone is the nerdy, physically soft Blofeld of Donald Pleasence from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and in his place is Savalas in all of his “Who luvs ya, baby?” glory. In this film, it’s Blofeld who’s the coolest guy in the room just by sheer force of will. He’s totally at home in his mountain palace/allergy treatment facility, surrounded by gorgeous women who he’s brainwashing into becoming sleeper agents, ready to demand the world gives him whatever he wants.

When he finally recognizes Bond (who’s pretending to be Sir Hilary Bray, a professor from the College of Arms), he’s standing and pacing and Bond is just sitting there taking it all in. Bond’s not tied up or tied down or drugged – he’s just sitting on the couch and reacting to what Blofeld says. I’m not saying this is a bad thing – in this part of his portrayal Lazenby is in line with everyone else who lets the blowhard talk so you can gather information, but given the silly shirt he’s wearing, it does make Bond look a bit weak.

There’s two plots competing in SERVICE. The first is the love arc with Bond romancing the Contessa Teresa di Vincenzo. Tracy is played by Diana Rigg and she’s completely amazing from first frame to last. Tracy’s father offers Bond a bribe to marry his wild daughter, but Bond is more interested in the information Daddy can give him about the location of Blofeld. Bond and Tracy do fall in love, however, and as the film takes them through this long arc you end up really caring about her and caring about the couple. Every so often (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, CASINO ROYALE) you really do get to see Bond fall in love and here it’s wonderfully played. Rigg and Lazenby don’t always have fantastic chemistry, but Rigg is so good that it more than compensates.

Lazenby’s Bond has this almost sophomoric attitude towards women. While he’s ostensibly bedding two women at Blofeld’s to get information from them, it really comes across as just him being horny with the information a happy side benefit. He’s so immature when it comes to women that he actually steals the Playboy centerfold from someone’s office. That’s just dumb, but I suppose it’s there to balance off his actual, developing love for Tracy.

The two plots combine when Bond makes his escape from Blofeld’s retreat in a really long, really well-executed chase scene on skis down the side of the mountain, where he eventually runs into Tracy. The two of them escape (the initial escape/chase sequence moves through several different segments), eventually defeating Blofeld and getting married, only to have Blofeld and his assistant drive by and gun Tracy down.

It’s a powerful ending, with Bond holding his dead wife in his arms as he tells a police officer, “It’s okay. We have all the time in the world.” The film then clomps all over it by queuing up the Bond theme. I guess they do this to send people out of the theater all happy, but it’s a downer ending and the film should have the decency to let it happen. For the filmmakers to show such strength in sticking to their character and their story for almost two and half hours and then blow it at the end is a shame.

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is a long film with a long title, and alongside the Dalton films it’s the most overlooked of the EON Productions, but it shouldn’t be because it’s a really good movie, and definitely one of the best of the entire series.

CANNONBALL RUN II: It’s General Patton and General Admission

Cannonball Run II (1984) – Directed by Hal Needham – Starring: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jamie Farr, Shirley MacLaine, Marilu Henner, Frank Sinatra, Charles Nelson Reilly, Telly Savalas, Tony Danza, Mel Tillis, Catherine Bach, Susan Anton, Jackie Chan, Richard Kiel, Jack Elam, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Alex Rocco, Abe Vigoda, Joe Thiesmann, and an orangutan.

The real “stars” of CANNONBALL RUN II aren’t Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, or Sammy Davis, Jr. It’s Alex Rocco and Abe Vigoda, who get an incredibly inordinate amount of screen time to fulfill their ridiculous sub-plot to kidnap the Sheik (Farr) in order to pay Telly Savalas $9 million to get Charles Nelson Reilly out of debt.

That, in a nutshell, is what CANNONBALL II gets completely and utterly wrong, and why the first movie works and the second movie doesn’t. There’s no great plot in either movie, of course, but the two films are about something, and it’s that difference of something that influences the two films in very different directions.

The Cannonball Run is about a love of cars and the rebellious freedom that comes with it and CANNONBALL II is about chasing money and this difference goes a long way in coloring the overall tone of each movie.

Neither of these films are cinematic masterpieces, of course, but the first Cannonball movie is funny, likable, and breezy car chase movie while the second film isn’t either funny or likable, and it’s traded its loves of cars for a love of jokes.

Perhaps the simple difference is that Brock Yates isn’t back as the screenwriter for CANNONBALL II. Yates is a car guy. He was exec editor editor of Car and Driver and a pit reporter for CBS’ NASCAR coverage in the 1980s. Most relevant to this discussion is that Yates didn’t just write The Cannonball Run, but created the actual event that the Cannonball movies are based on: the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash.

According to the Never Wrong, Yates wanted Steve McQueen to play J.J. McClure in the original Cannonball film, but McQueen’s illness prevented this and the role went to Burt Reynolds, which turned a much straighter film into the Reynolds Car Comedy it became. Comedy that it is, a love of cars permeates Cannonball Run: there’s Adrienne Barbeau’s Countach, Roger Moore’s Aston Martin, Terry Bradshaw’s Donnie Allison-inspired semi-stock car, and Dean and Sammy’s Ferrari. J.J. and Victor have a significant discussion about which car will be their best option for the race after their souped-up Porsche gets wrecked.

Almost all of this is lost in the second movie. The Countach makes a brief appearance at the start of the film (with Barbeau and Tara Buckman replaced by Catherine Back and Susan Anton), but it breaks down, forcing the women to use their sexual wiles to con their way into another car. This becomes a running gag throughout the movie, as they keep promising “a weekend you’ll never forget” to one male sap after another. Roger Moore doesn’t come back for the sequel, and neither does the Aston Martin, but the Bondian gimmicks are given to Jackie Chan’s Mitsubishi. Chan is kicked out of the driver’s seat and into the back, and in case you missed the Bond reference, Bond villain Richard Kiel is the new driver. The semi-stock car is gone (as is Terry Bradshaw, replaced by Tony Danza) and instead we get a joke limousine with an orangutan pretending to drive. Dean and Sammy’s Ferrari is replaced by a Corvette (and not a particularly classic or attractive one), and the best car they can drag up for Frank Sinatra – FRANK SINATRA – to drive is a Dodge Charger. (And no, not the cool late-’60s-70s muscular Charger, but this pedestrian, lame-ass, early-80′s Charger.) J.J. and Victor are back in costume, but instead of the ambulance driver routine, they’re now a General and Private and their traveling companions aren’t the crazy Doctor (Elam) and their lovable patient (Farrah Fawcett, who’s sorely missed), but two actresses pretending to be nuns (MacLaine and Henner) who want to get to Broadway.

MacLaine and Henner play nuns because it’s apparently hilarious to see Reynolds and DeLuise fret about MacLaine’s effect on J.J., who proclaims his desire to “jump her bones.” This whole sub-plot (including a really weird make-out session between Reynolds and MacLaine in which you half-hope, half-fear that his toupee is going to come off) goes completely counter to the chaste pursuit of Farrah by J.J. in the first movie. There, J.J.’s focus was on winning the race, but here, he’s only interested in winning the million dollars and getting laid.

Heck, J.J. is almost a completely different character – in the first movie he runs a gargae/delivery service, but here he’s become a ridiculous stuntman who stands inside a metal cylinder that looks like a bomb and gets dropped from a plane and shot through a giant bullseye and into a net.

What?

There’s way too much set-up, too. The darn race doesn’t even start until about 40 minutes into the movie and despite starting in California, it doesn’t get further east than Las Vegas until there’s about 10 minutes remaining.

There’s a whole series of absolutely groan-inducing gags that are included simply to replicate the successful gags in the first movie. It’s quite simply some of the very worst hack writing you’ll see this side of Batman and Robin.

The worst part of the movie, however, is the entire dumb sub-plot with cartoon gangsters. Charles Nelson Reilly plays an incompetent son of a head of a once-big NYC mafia family. He owes Telly Savalas $9 million, so he gets Rocco, Vigoda, and two other guys to kidnap the Sheik (to steal the race’s $1 million prize) and then hold him for ransom (to come up with the other $8 million). We then get way, way, way too many Wile E. Coyote-type schemes to stop the Shiek from Rocco and Vigoda, which completely detracts us from the race.

This is not to say CANNONBALL II is a completely unwatchable movie. By the very nature of the multitude of guest stars and the rapid-fire pace of joke scene after joke scene, the film may be terrible, but it’s not without a certain watchability. If you like cars, this film blows, but if you just want to watch a light comedy featuring a bunch of people who used to be famous, watching CANNONBALL II is better than watching a marathon of Hollywood Squares, and not just because it doesn’t have Whoopi Goldberg in it.

If nothing else, CANNONBALL II is an oddly historic movie – it’s not only the last “car comedy” movie that Reynolds does, but it’s the final movie appearances of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.