James Bond Ultimate Edition - Vol. 4 (Dr. No / You Only Live Twice / Octopussy / Tomorrow Never Dies / Moonraker)
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DVD details
Actor: Anthony Dawson, Bernard Lee, Jack Lord, Joseph Wiseman, Zena MarshallBrand: TCFHE/MGM
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Danish (Original Language); English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Italian (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language); Russian (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 598 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-12-12
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of James Bond Ultimate Edition - Vol. 4 (Dr. No / You Only Live Twice / Octopussy / Tomorrow Never Dies / Moonraker)
DVD Review: Another mixed bag of Bond films
Summary: 4 Stars
Hard to believe now, but on its first release Dr No, the film that started it all, was sold as much on the scenery as anything else. In the days before foreign package holidays really took off, the glamorous locations gave the low-budget film an exotic look that helps hide some of its limitations.
Terence Young, Cubby Broccoli and co-writer Richard Maibaum had all previously worked together on the Alan Ladd starrer The Red Beret - indeed, many of the Bond regulars had worked on Broccoli's fairly undistinguished British pictures - and at times the initial uncertainty of tone is noticeable, with the film occasionally threatening to turn into a predictable British `quota quickie' at times. Young's direction of some of the early scenes is, it must be said, rather ham-handed - indeed, turn down the colour and you could be watching an early episode of The Saint. You can even see the arc lights reflected on the paintwork of the getaway car at (something that would become one of the series less recognised trademarks in the Connery years!).
Its attitude to the black characters is also rather less than enlightened - not just Bond treating Quarrel like a houseboy ("Fetch me my slippers, Quarrel.") but also the way John Kitzmiller is required to turn into Stepinfetchit in the `dragon' scene. Considering British films' strong record on tackling racial issues in the 50s and 60s up to the sixties, this may possibly be attributable to the fact that the Bond films, while British, were always produced by an American and a Canadian: certainly Hollywood was somewhat lagging behind British cinema on the race relations front at the time. But if you can ignore that, there's much to enjoy: Connery introducing himself with the immortal "Bond, James Bond" for the first time and Joseph Wiseman's superb villain's equally memorable entrance ("One million dollars, Mr Bond."); Ursula Andress emerging from the sea; the spooky Sisters Rose and Lily; and some good action scenes.
The film also has a darker tone than any its successors until Casino Royale. Bond is quite cold blooded in a way he never was again during Broccoli Sr and Saltzman's watch, be it sleeping with a girl while he waits for the police to arrest her or waiting for Dent to empty his gun before killing him ("That's a Smith and Wesson and you've had your six."). Similarly, Honey is not above the use of a Black Widow spider on those who have wronged her ("It took him a whole week to die," she tells Bond matter-of-factly).
Sadly, while pitched as the `Ultimate Edition,' the transfer on this repackaged two-disc edition is still problematic. The picture quality is certainly improved over the original single-disc issue, but rather than the original British 1.66:1 ratio, it's presented in the cropped 1.85:1. There aren't many new features - featurettes on restoring the films, the premiere and a 1964 archive featurette `The Guns of James Bond.' Most of the features from the original release have been carried over (with the exception of a double-bill trailer which can be found on the From Russia With Love Ultimate Edition), though accessing the film is more laborious than it needs to be as you work your way through logos, promos, dull but unskippable `set' menus that take you to another menu that take you to a sub-menu that take you to another logo and not one but two copyright warnings before you can get anywhere near the film or a special feature (a feature on all the Ultimate Editions, as are the poorly designed, slow and far too small stills galleries). By the time you've gone through all that, you'll feel like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. So, not quite the ultimate presentation...
Faced with box-office rivalry from the spoof Casino Royale the same year, EON put aside their plans to follow Thunderball with OHMSS and pulled out all the stops to promise the biggest and best-paced Bond to date with You Only Live Twice. While they failed to match the phenomenal success of Thunderball - still the biggest ticket seller in the series' history by a huge margin - this certainly is the best of the special effects show Bonds, and for many it's scarred, bald, Persian-cat stroking super-villain ensconced in his hollowed-out volcano lair plotting to start a world war is the quintessential Bond movie villain. Departing from Ian Fleming's novel in all but name and boasting a plot the producers were so taken with that they've used it at least twice since The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both also directed by Lewis Gilbert), but by 1967 the series was already beginning to feed off itself - the pre-title sequence where Bond is killed is more or less borrowed from From Russia With Love.
After years as an offscreen presence voiced by Eric Pohlman, S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s Ernst Stavro Blofeld finally makes his first on-screen appearance in the form of Donald Pleasance (causing that awkward continuity problem in the subsequent OHMSS where he fails to recognise Bond), with Charles Gray preceding his turn in the role on the side of the angels as our man in Japan, getting his vodka from the doorman at the Russian embassy ("among OTHER things"). This time the villains work for a large Japanese industrial company to cash-in on the Connery films' popularity in the Japanese market while offering some colorful locations, but action, not scenery, is the order of the day here. The action scenes themselves are terrific and often imaginatively shot (as with the long overhead helicopter shot in the fight at Kobe Docks) and the production values are still the best of the entire series. Visually it is certainly the best looking of the series thanks to Freddie Young's incredible photography, while Ken Adams production design is superb and the lush score marked a real turning point for John Barry.
Roald Dahl's screenplay strangely discards Blofeld's garden of death (too downbeat said the producers) and omits Bond's Japanese counterpart Tanaka's background as an ex-Kamikaze pilot (too sensitive) but has just the right internal logic to justify its outrageous elements, as well as some neat humorous touches (such as Bond being constantly castigated for his smoking). Although many fans were critical of his approach - Dahl made little secret of his opinion that Bond was a 'resourceful but rather insensitive fellow' - he is more astute about the character than many writers in the series, bringing Bond's smug superiority to the fore in lines like "You forget I took a First in Oriental languages at Cambridge."
It's particularly disappointing that the 2-disc set only includes five minutes of the very entertaining and surprisingly comprehensive hour-long Whicker's World special on the making of the film, which revealed Connery's fondness for Custard Creams. We do get the glossier and less interesting 48-minute Welcome to Japan, Mr Bond (which makes an injoke of the fact that OHMSS had originally been scheduled to be made that year by having an unseen actress complain that she was supposed to be Mrs Bond) and Ken Adams' home movie footage, but there's not enough new from the original single-disc edition to justify the `Ultimate Edition' tag here.
Roger Moore's biggest box-office hit during his tenure as Bond, Moonraker has seen its reputation plummet to the point where its widely regarded as the worst film in the entire series. It's not exactly difficult to see why. The ill-advised jokes that end the otherwise stunningly shot pretitle sequence of Jaws and a parachuteless Bond battling midair unfortunately give a hint of what is to come, but for the first 35 minutes it chugs along very competently, even throwing in one good setpiece in a G-Force simulator. Then comes the gondola/hovercraft sequence, a setpiece that abandons any notion of internal logic for cheap gags and illustrates one of the film's biggest problems: there's no real menace when we know Bond doesn't need to rely on his wits because he's got an absurd gadget for every occasion, and without any sense of threat the action scenes constantly fall flat. Many of them aren't even particularly well-staged but look rather haphazardly thrown together. Worse still, by offering the second consecutive reworking of You Only Live Twice's plot (all from the same director, Lewis Gilbert) it all feels like it's just going through the motions because they can't think of anything better to do.
While it doesn't show the contempt for Bond that Octopussy seemed to revel in as it seemed to go out of its way to humiliate Bond by making him literally butt of all the jokes, it constantly winks at the audience as if to say "We know it's nonsense, but at least it's very expensive nonsense." Unfortunately, it does set up two of the least welcome future developments in the series - as well as being the one where the product placement started to get out of control (my, didn't 7-Up and British Airways do well?), it also started the unfortunate tradition of the Michael G. Wilson cameo. Still, it's nice to see Bernard Lee getting to play a warmer M in his final Bond, finally proud of the boy (the film is very much the end of an era, with most of the surviving members of the old team breaking up - this was Lee, Gilbert and Ken Adam's last film), the great special effects are genuinely impressive even 28 years on and Michel Lonsdale provides the series with one of its best villains and gets all the best lines ("Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him") even if he is wasted by the derivative plot.
There's not a huge amount in the way of new extras on this repackaged two-disc Ultimate Edition over the original one-disc issue several years ago - Roger Moore's audio commentary, a 1979 making of featurette, footage of the Rio shoot, test footage for the skydiving sequence and a couple of storyboard sequences. Sadly the teaser trailer sending up hairspray and perfume ads is still not included, although all the extras from the original edition have been carried over.
Facing up against a rival Bond project for the first time since You Only Live Twice - and one with Connery attached to boot - the obvious expectation was that once again the Broccoli camp would pull out all the stops and come up with one of the best Bond films yet. Instead, Octopussy is the one where they threw in the towel and began copying others rather than leading the pack.
For Your Eyes Only had gone head-to-head with Raiders of the Lost Ark and come off the worse. As a result, Octopussy shamelessly copies its market chase and truck sequences to remarkably little interest or excitement. Even the location seems second-hand - in 1982-3 you couldn't move for film crews in India, what with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Far Pavilions, The Jewel in the Crown, Gandhi and Heat and Dust all reviving the Raj. Only one sequence, with a deadly yo-yo (sometimes heavily cut in the TV prints for some reason), works - and then only briefly.
Worse still, this one drags its feet more than any other entry in the series, with very long waits between very lacklustre setpieces. The plot is similarly uninvolving. With a similar hook to The Fourth Protocol, but nowhere near as good (and The Fourth Protocol isn't exactly a masterpiece), this is so alarmist it's a wonder Broccoli didn't hand over the producing reins to Euan Lloyd. Maud Adams makes a poor job of the title role, but Steven Berkoff is completely off the scale as the renegade Russian villain. With the diction of a demented Dalek and the subtlety of a Spitting Image puppet, it's quite an achievement to sit through any of his scenes without squirming in embarrassment.
The cheapest looking Bond film, it is doubtful that anyone would have gone to see such a geriatric action movie without the Bond name attached. The silly jokes are pretty pathetic - a snake charmer playing the Bond theme, a series of terrible tennis jokes built around Vijay Amritraj's appearance as Bond's ill-fated sidekick (British actor's union Equity actually tried to call a strike over his casting) - and would have been rejected from the very worst Carry On film. There's even some lovable xenophobia thrown in for good measure ("That'll keep you in curry for a few weeks.")
That it could have been worse is borne out by one of the DVD's most interesting extras - a series of screen tests with James Brolin as Bond. He gives it a good try, but he's trying to hard as if clearly aware that he's terrible casting. It's a moot point as to whether Brolin would have got the part had Connery's return to Bondage persuaded the producers to stick with the tried-and-trusted Roger Moore, but it would have been more of an impersonation than a performance if he had.
The history of the latter Bond films is one of false dawns, with sporadic good or near-great Bond films promptly followed by horribly disappointing ones. OHMSS was followed by the lazy Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me by Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only by Octopussy, and sadly Pierce Brosnan's enjoyable Bond debut GoldenEye remained true to form in being followed by another clunker. Tomorrow Never Dies was a famously troubled shoot, with a constantly rewritten unfinished script the most visible of its many problems. It's that classic `inbetween good Bonds' film that just feels like its treading water while they recharge their creative batteries for the next one. The premise may sound absurd - Jonathan Pryce's media mogul tries to start a war in Asia to boost circulation and viewing figures in return for local TV concessions - but it's a scam that William Randolph Hearst pulled for real in the Spanish-American War with his infamous telegram to a reporter "You supply the pictures and I'll supply the war." True, he didn't use a Stealth Ship or a guided drill-torpedo to do it, but the film almost pulls it off as a framework for a Bond movie. The problem is that, aside from David Arnold's excellent score, not much else really works.
Pryce isn't exactly a threatening supervillain and his henchmen are a rather bland bunch with the exception of Vincent Schiavelli's master assassin, who opts for broad overacting rather than menace. It may be an inspired idea to cast Michelle Yeoh as the leading lady, but with only one brief fight it seems rather pointless hiring one of the best action stars in the world if she doesn't get to do much. Worse, the action scenes are distinctly hit-and-miss. The pretitle sequence is terrific and the remote-controlled car chase one of the more enjoyable gadget showcases, but somehow the motorbike vs. helicopter chase through the streets and rooftops of Saigon never works nearly as well as it should: the footage is good but there's something almost haphazard about the editing that robs it of much of its potential. The film's big finale is little short of disastrous. Reputedly intended to be on a larger scale but scaled down because the effects shots wouldn't be ready in time for the film's opening date, there's literally nothing at stake by this point - with WW3 safely averted, all that's left for a somewhat bored Bond to do is walk around a badly designed and unappealingly photographed set shooting extras like he was in a bad video game before killing an old man with glasses.
Throw in lazy plotting and some of the worst dialogue in the series history and even the few promising ideas thrown up along the way tend to get lost in the hurry to get something releasable in the can. While Die Another Day is most Bond fans' choice for Brosnan's worst Bond, that at least threw up some good ideas in the first half - this feels like a film where no-one had a decent idea between them but were contractually obliged to deliver a movie in time for Christmas anyway. Horribly disappointing.
There's not a great deal of in the way of new extras to justify an upgrade if you have the previous special edition - aside from the extras carried over from that, there's a featurette on Moby's Bond theme remix, some redundant clips from the movie and some weak deleted scenes. Among them is an extended briefing scene in M's car where everyone is drinking cocktails that is so clumsily executed (every shot ends with them raising a glass to their lips) that it looks like an outtake from the old Thunderbirds TV series, so the film could clearly have been even worse, but that's scant consolation. As per all of the Brosnan Bond DVDs, there's no proper making of documentary either, just the odd puff-piece from its first release. One for the Bond completists only, really.
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Description of James Bond Ultimate Edition - Vol. 4 (Dr. No / You Only Live Twice / Octopussy / Tomorrow Never Dies / Moonraker)
INCLUDES:DR NO 1962 AND BONUS DISC, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, ANDBONUS DISC, MOONERAKER AND BONUS DISC, OCTOPUSSY, AND BONUS DISC, TOMORROW NEVER DIESBestsellers in DVD
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