The Running Man (1987)

At the time of this entry, there are only two days remaining. Two days until the triumphant return of one of the greatest Action Movie Gods of all time. He is the giant who cannot be hit by bullets. He is the man who can make something explode just by pointing something else at it. He is the man who can look badass in both a loincloth and a spandex bodysuit. He's the King of The One Liner. He's also one of my favorite actors. I can be speaking of none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this week, he returns.

I can't accurately describe my excitement for "The Last Stand." I'm so excited, in fact, that I couldn't help myself and needed to pre-game before seeing it. I decided to pop in one of the less popular Arnold vehicles, "The Running Man."

Right off the bat, I can see two reasons why "The Running Man" is usually not one of the films mentioned often in conversations about Arnold movies, unless the people discussing are big fans. The first is that frankly it's not one of his better movies. That's not to say it's bad, but it's a little too tame on the violence and a little too cheesy for its own good to hold up next to some other classic Schwarzenegger films. Which brings us to the second reason: 1987 saw the release of two Arnold movies. "The Running Man" was one. The other movie was "Predator."

Yeah, "Predator" wins.

How in the world any movie is supposed to hold up next to what is one of the best action films of all time I have no idea. It seems unnecessarily cruel to compare the two, since the source material at a base level is better in one over the other, but especially so since "Predator" director John McTiernan went on to do "Die Hard," and "The Running Man" director Paul Michael Glaser went on to do "Kazaam." Did "The Running Man" ever have much of a shot at being the more memorable film?

"The Running Man" is set in what is now considered a pretty cliched setting: In the not-too-distant future, television and The Media will be the most powerful thing on the planet, and there will be a distopian landscape where human life is held with the same amount of reverence as used toilet paper. In this future, the most successful and popular show is "The Running Man," where criminals (as determined by the corrupt government) fight to the death in embarrassing bodysuits against gladiators in even more embarrassing outfits known as "stalkers" in order to win their freedom. Of course, it's all a hoax and even if you win, they kill you in secret.

Hey, it may be cliched now, but I'm sure back in 1987 it was a bit less plausible and frighteningly less close to home.

Bee tee dubs, he's the author of the book it's based on. #themoreyouknow

Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards (yeah right), a former cop who gets thrown in the slammer after not killing a bunch of starving people, whom he's then framed for killing anyway. After breaking out of the most ineptly run prison in the world after only a year and a half, Ben ends up in the custody of the government after being a bit of a prick and trying to abscond to Hawaii with this random girl who he finds now living in his brother's apartment. They make it as far as the airport before she predictably betrays him to the authorities at the first possible opportunity.

Ben is then forced into participating in "The Running Man" by the guy who runs away with both the literal and proverbial show, the movie's villain Damon Killian, played by Richard Dawson. Dawson was on a lot of TV shows, most notably "Hogan's Heroes," but everyone remembers him as "That host of Family Feud that tried to make out with all the female contestants." Richard Dawson was awesome, and he was actually a very good actor as well. There's no contest when I say that out of everyone in "The Running Man," Dawson throws down the best performance as the slimy bizarro-version of himself as the host of the eponymous show. And to be honest once again, were it not for him I really wouldn't consider "The Running Man" to be watchable. Even with Arnold in it.

Arnold's bulge was up for a Golden Globe. It lost to David Bowie's. True story.

There's just too little payoff to be found, in my opinion. There are really only four big fights in the entire film that Arnold has, and none of them last very long or are satisfying in terms of the carnage we'd expect from the premise. The first fight between Ben and Subzero (played by not-Harold Sakata professional wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka) starts off reasonably promising, but it's over pretty quick as Arnold takes him down with a single maneuver. The next stalker, Buzzsaw, has the longest fight and goriest kill, but most of it consists of Buzzsaw dragging Ben around behind his motorcycle and the violence isn't shown. Not very thrilling. The walking Lite-Brite Dynamo just crashes his car with Ben never touching him. Lastly, the stalker with the best weapon, Fireball (played by NFL legend Jim Brown) doesn't seem to realize how easily he could kill him with a flamethrower and gets taken out like a punk with barely any fight at all.

There's also a decent fight between Jessie Ventura and Arnold, but it's not actually the character of Ben Richards. It's only a guy with Ben's face mapped over his own in post. Although we never do find out who they had just sitting around the place who just happened to be a competent but expendable fighter the exact size of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know. It's an 80's action flick. I'm not going to lose sleep over something like that. But it still doesn't change the fact that for an R-rated action movie about futuristic gladiators staring Schwarzenegger, this is a pretty tame outing.

"And if you survive, the grand prize will be...having your story be repackaged as a teen fiction phenomenon which will serve as a better alternative to a lousy teen fiction phenomenon!"

Also, if you have Arnold promise the villain with the horribly cheesy but strangely badass line, "I'll live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine" and you don't have him follow through with that promise...reconsider how you are going about making your film. Seriously you guys, that one was a freebee.

This. I want to see Arnold do this.

Lastly, "The Running Man" is just a little too corny for its own good. Don't get me wrong, my favorite thing about Arnie is the one-liners, but here they just aren't up to par. There's a couple groan inducing ones including "What a hot head" after he roasts someone and "What a pain in the neck" after he garrotes someone else to death, but as you can probably already tell, they weren't very creative. Some also required some pretty forced lead-ins. Even the most memorable one-liner "Here is Subzero! Now plain zero!" is honestly just confusing to me. "Plain zero" implies simply nothing, while "Subzero" implies less than that. Is he saying that he's improved Subzero by killing him? Has he made him at least break even now?

Hell, the best one-liner in "The Running Man" came from Richard Dawson when, after Arnold says "I'll be back," he quips "Only in a re-run." Taking away my hatred for whenever they have Arnie recycle a line, when compared with any of the numerous phenomenal quotes from that same year's "Predator" it's not even close. That can't compete with stuff like "Stick around." That can't even compete with "Knock, knock." This movie wishes that it could have that same badassery, and it tries, but when you kill your main villain by firing him into a wall in a rocket-car and the line after is "Well that hit the spot," it's just sad.

What spot? Was the rocket-car's name "Spot?" What the hell are you talking about?

THE BOTTOM LINE - While "The Running Man" should be required watching for anyone who's a fan of Arnold, it's probably the weakest of his 80's films, if only because back then his peaks were so high. It's alright, but this is one of the weakest. The only ones worse are probably "Conan The Destroyer." Or "Red Sonja." Or "Twins." Okay, so maybe "The Running Man" ain't all that bad. At least see it for Richard Dawson being awesome.

House at The End of The Street (2012)

Why do I torture myself like this? I'm coming down off one of the freakiest movies I've seen in a long time, "House of The Devil," and I immediately go to this garbage? What the hell is wrong with me? I knew it was going to suck. It's a PG-13 horror movie. There's only been one of those that was ever any good. And no, it doesn't matter one damn bit if it is the UNRATED VERSION YOU COULDN'T SEE IN THEATERS that I'm watching. If what I saw was the version too intense for theaters I can only assume that when it was released, it was rated G.

"House at The End of The Street," or #HATES as the trailer wanted us to refer to it as and tweet about, is a film that, to be quite blunt, should have been smothered in its sleep. This is a thing that should not exist. This thing is a travesty and complete failure on every conceivable level, and there is an hour and forty minute window of my life that I spent watching it, and I will never get it back. This is the kind of movie that makes me want to donate to a charity somewhere so that I can say I've done something of value with my day.

#HATES is about a girl named Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) who moves with her mother into a house in Rich Asshole County, USA. This house is right next door to the eponymous house where, four years prior, a husband and wife were murdered by their daughter, who subsequently ran away and presumably drowned. Now the son, Ryan (Max Thieriot) lives there by himself. And because it's populated by horrible people, the entire town hates him because he has the gall to have parents who have been murdered.

Seriously, what a dick.

Yeah, that's the first huge sticking point for #HATES. Every single person in this movie - EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM - is a raging douchebag of Brobdingnagian proportions. Not only are all of the neighbors the standard rich, white, stuck-up twats who would be the villain who got their rightly deserved comeuppance at the end of any random teen girl coming-of-age movie, but they go so far as to beat the ever-loving crap out him and try to burn his house down. And why do they do that? Well, because he showed up somewhere, of course. I mean, his parents got murdered. Clearly there is no place for him among polite society.

And what of Elissa? Well, she's a disrespectful, lying brat who calls her mom a whore right to her face and is too stupid to piece together that when a guy has a woman locked in a secret dungeon in his basement, maybe that would be a good indicator that you should leave and call the police. So that's nice. That's our protagonist.

If I may, can I say one thing about Jennifer Lawrence? Everyone needs to stop freaking out about her. She's not that good. Yeah, she's okay if blandness is your thing, but if there was one actress out there who gets FAR too much credit for what she does, it's her. She's like the female Sean Penn. Only instead of scowling and looking like she's eternally smelling something really bad like Sean Penn does, she's just eternally starring ahead and slightly off camera with jaw slightly slack. I never see any life in any of her performances. I don't get the hype.

She's just so bland...

The mom (Elisabeth Shue) is a nagging, drunk harpy who likes to politely invite guys that her daughter likes over for dinner, and then gets wasted and tells them to leave her daughter alone for no good reason other than he's "in college." Oh, and that the guy has murdered parents. If you have murdered parents you can't date her daughter.

So what this all boils down to is that even though we do find out that Ryan, the guy living in the #HATES, is indeed a psycho killer and has been abducting women and keeping them in his basement, he is still the most sympathetic, likable character in this movie. I am not even kidding right now.

Because here's the thing - all the hate that is channeled toward him by the town is unwarranted in every conceivable way. As they believe, it was his sister who killed his parents, and he wasn't there when it happened. There wasn't even a suspicion of "maybe he did it." No, it's case closed as far as everyone is concerned. The official, confirmed story is that the sister ran off and drowned in the dam, and her body was never found (although if the body was never found, how do they know she drowned in the dam?).

Now, as it turns out, he actually did kill his parents. In an exceedingly stupid and nonsensical "twist," Ryan's sister, Carrie Anne, died years prior when she accidentally fell off the swing set. For some reason that I can't fathom because it makes no sense, the parents decided to cover it up, buried her in the woods, and dressed Ryan up as Carrie Anne, beating him into pretending to be his sister. And then one night he snapped and killed his parents. Ever since then, he's been abducting young women, keeping them in his spooky basement dungeon and pretending that they're Carrie Anne until they die and he needs another one.

"Oh no. I am tied to a rickety old chair by very thin strips of cloth. I am trapped. There is no escape. I, a fully grown, adrenaline-soaked adult in a struggle for my life, couldn't possibly escape this death sentence. Woe is me."

So okay, he's a villain. But the problem is that nobody actually knows all that. For all everyone else knows he's actually a very polite, nice kid who hasn't harmed anyone. I'm not giving a pass on everyone else in this movie being a horrible person just because they happened to be right by shear luck. That's freaking stupid.

And despite all of that abduction and murder stuff, I still feel more sympathy towards Ryan than I do any of the rest of the townsfolk. Ryan may be a psycho killer but at least he's got an excuse. His parents used the guilt he feels over his sister's death and their fists to screw with his head until he could have been the lead in "Sleepaway Camp." I'm sorry, I'm going to feel more towards him than an entitled, rich, snot-nosed teenager whining about first-world problems like her mom giving her a curfew.

I have a suspicion this person has more problems than you.

But even if for some reason I were inclined to root for the villain, that doesn't work here because he's really bad at what he does. I just don't understand how he managed to keep what he's doing secret for so long when the girls he kidnaps keep escaping. Maybe if he kept the key on him instead of putting it right above the door where the girls can do the whole "slide paper under the door and knock the key down and pull it back under" thing. Although how in the hell they knew it was there when they never would have seen him put the key there since the door is closed at that point is a mystery to me. I guess they figured he was really stupid and lucked out.

"Aw, son of a - that's the third one this week! Man, I need to get better at locking doors."

The fact that everyone else here is also incredibly dumb doesn't help matters either. Like I mentioned earlier, Elissa's first reaction to seeing a woman gagged and tied up in a secret hidden dungeon this dude has down in his basement isn't to kick him in the nuts or beat him with a pipe or pepper spray him or call the police or anything that might help that poor girl, but to calmly go upstairs and get a drink of water. And as she justly deserves, he immediately knocks her dumb ass out and ties her up. You know what? At that point I'm willing to give it to him. Go for it, dude. Nobody here is bright enough to live.

I swear, if I have to suffer through one more of these crap horror films I might just snap. When I finally do, promise me you won't let me wear any dress that doesn't flatter my figure. And as far as wigs go, I've always liked how I look as a chestnut brown.

THE BOTTOM LINE - #HATES is a train wreck, and not the enjoyable kind. If there was a recent film to rival "The Apparition" in terms of how to screw up a horror film in every possible way, this is a strong contender. It's not scary at any conceivable point, the story is riddled with nonsensical ideas, the acting is one-note and boring, and there is not a single likable character at any point during it's entire run time. Well, except for the drunk chick at the party who hurled in the toilet. She contributed the most value thing in this film: vomit. And of course it being PG-13 means that we can't even have scawy bwood in our HORROR MOVIE. Because heaven forbid the kiddies get nightmares.

House of The Devil (2009)

Nothing quite like a good old Satan-worshiping cult movie to warm you on a cold winter evening, eh? Honestly, for as much as I like weird, twisted movies, the "satanic cult" genre is one that I've not really explored very much. I'm not sure why, as I don't have any natural aversion to it. It's just one of those things that I don't have much knowledge of. But hey, as long as it's good like "The Last Exorcism" or "Borderland" I'm down. Let's do this.

"House of The Devil" hits a lot of high notes. But it's a film that isn't going to just belt them out for you right off the bat. No, it's going to make you wait for it. And it's going to make you wait a long time. Whether or not this will negatively effect the total experience for you is a matter of personal taste. But even if, as a viewer, you can only tolerate so much slow burn there is still enough in "House of The Devil" to warrant a hardy, albeit heavily footnoted recommendation.

We follow college student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) as she takes a job babysitting for the evening. Clearly there are good reasons for her not to take the job, considering the guy offering it gives her the creeps, it's out in the middle of nowhere, her friend driving her has a bad feeling about it, and the dude lied to her about what the job actually entails, but after extorting him for $400 she decides the money is enough to risk it. This winds up to be just as bad of an idea as it could possibly have been.

"I should have asked for $500."

To the surprise of nobody who noticed that the name of the movie is "House of The Devil," satanic culty stuff is afoot, and Samantha has been selected to be a sacrifice to coincide with the total lunar eclipse that functions as the film's ticking clock. And the horrors that await her are nearly indescribably intense and, for my money at least, horrendously scary. This is one frightening movie that director Ti West has unleashed on us, and when the horror is in full gear it's less of a movie and more of a waking nightmare.

When the rites are being preformed, and the cultists and...other things...are doing their...thing..."House of The Devil" may just rival "The Exorcist" in how utterly, bone-chillingly terrifying it is. At least for me. In fact the effects and visions that Samantha begin to see are quite reminiscent of the spooky white face in "The Exorcist" that appear to scare the crap out of you. But whereas "The Exorcist" spaced those flashes out so that you had almost forgotten about it by the time the next one came up, "House of The Devil" outright punishes you with it by cramming a movie's worth of jump scares into the last 15 minutes. It's a different way of going about it, but I thought it was just as effective.

Making "House of The Devil" even more intense were fantastic performances all around, not only by our lead, Jocelin Donahue, but also Tom Noonan, the original Tooth Fairy from "Manhunter," but also AJ Bowen, who gave a very creepy performance which surprised me after seeing him be so lackluster in "Rites of Spring." And for fans of the slasher genre, "The Howling" and "The Hills Have Eyes" legend Dee Wallace even has a cameo in the beginning in a role that means nothing, but it's cool to see her there.

Now, I mentioned "the last 15 minutes." This is an important thing to bring up, because it has to do with the one thing about "House of The Devil" which will make or break it: the pacing. This movie starts slow, building up a sense of unease as we have more and more time to consider how bad of an idea this job seems to be. For about the first 30 minutes that's really all that's going on. It's just Samantha playing phone tag with the guy offering the job, talking about it with her friend, driving with her friend while talking about it, and then talking to the guy about it when they get there.

THRILL AS SHE SITS ON THE LOVE SEAT!!!

Then something happens so shocking and so brutal that it really sets the whole movie spinning on its head. Or at least it does for a time. One would expect at that point for "House of The Devil" to go in a completely different direction, but then it crawls to a snail's pace again right afterwards. For the next 40 minutes, all we do is watch Samantha in the house. That's it.

She walks around the place. She listens to music. She dances around. She watches a little TV. She orders a pizza. She eats the pizza. The glacial rate at which we are watching this girl made me start to wonder if anything bad was actually going to happen to her. After a half hour of watching her putz around the house, I seriously started to wonder whether or not the cultists just kind of forgot about the whole thing, or maybe they got a flat tire on their way to the house and were stuck somewhere out on the road. True, there's still "Grandma" upstairs somewhere, but we haven't seen her once all night. In fact she's keeping pretty much to herself. Hell, if Samantha keeps quiet she might not even know she's there.

And not having "Grandma" know you're there is for the best. Trust me.

Then the last 15 minutes hit, and everything that was slow and methodical about the last hour and change you've spent watching this movie comes completely unhinged. "House of The Devil" gets insane. Utterly, unabashedly, horrifyingly insane. And it is really a thing to behold. It's one of the best endings to any movie I've seen in a very long time.

But that being said, I can't help but feel that there was just a little too much lead-in before we got there. Slow building tension is fine, in fact it's generally how I prefer my horror movies to be, but there does come a point where it can get a little over-indulgent with it. And "House of The Devil" certainly does reach that point in the second act. At least it had the good sense to actually have a fantastic payoff, unlike the "Paranormal Activity" series, a franchise I find boring to the point of being insulting. "House of The Devil" may have just as much if not more build-up as "Paranormal Activity" does, but when it gets to the end, GEEZ was it worth it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to decontaminate my underpants...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "House of The Devil" is a mixed bag, but the parts inside that bag that are good are absolutely delicious. If you are a fan of the slow-burn technique, this might just be the most terrifying thing you've ever seen. If not, well, you might be bored senseless for the first 80% of this movie. But trust me, stick with it. That last 20% will totally be worth it.

Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

Sometimes there's not much you're expecting from a film upon first glace. But can you really blame me? Come on, look at that cover to the left of this sentence. That's a Nazi-Zombie movie. You know your brain just rolled its eyes at it.

And I'm not going to lie, I did the exact same thing. The first of only two reasons I picked up "Outpost: Black Sun" was because the dude at the video rental place told me it was actually pretty solid, a statement I took with a grain of salt. The second reason was because I made it into the store with all of 3 minutes until they closed, and I was desperate for something.

One thing I don't get is the rising popularity of the Nazi-Zombie. If you keep tabs on movies coming out, particularly in the direct-to-video market, there are lot of these movies lately. Probably way more than you'd think. Is it all because of "Call of Duty" that we have this rash of these things? I know that's a popular part of those games, and Nazisplotation has been around for a long time, but why are Nazis suddenly an "in" thing now? It seems to coincide with the same "ironically awesome" status that Nazis now have that made Chuck Norris a legend after his time, but is that really enough to warrant the resurgence of an entire genre of movies?

Back to "Outpost: Black Sun." It's true that my expectations were low for this one, but I have to say that when all was said and done, this is actually a pretty decent flick. I'm not joking with you right now. I find it hard to believe myself, but not only is the acting shockingly good, the action tense and exciting, the makeup great and the story interesting, but it even goes so far as to look good too. 

"Baby, I know I look good..."

This is a direct to video movie with a budget of $3 million dollars, but it does not look like it at all. This movie looks like a theater released, big budget action film that in terms of looks could have held its own with pretty much any other film of the genre. This looks just as good as any random Paul W.S. Anderson outing. In fact it's a hell of a lot better looking since there's no obnoxious abuse of slow-motion. You know, after seeing "Outpost: Dark Sun" I'm fully of the opinion that writer/director Steve Barker should have been given the "Resident Evil" franchise. It would have been a hell of a lot better than the dreck we wound up with. Hell, this movie is already a better "Resident Evil" film than those and it didn't even try.

"Outpost: Dark Sun" is a sequel to the 2008 film, "Outpost," also by Steve Barker. Unfortunately I have not seen it, although I kind of want to now. I'm not sure what happens in the first film, but this one begins with an investigator named Lena, played by Catherine Steadman, who I started referring to as "Not-Maggie Gyllenhaal." She hunts down an old Nazi war criminal in a retirement home, and in a cheesy but still pretty effective scene, she finds a map which leads her to eastern Europe, where an old experiment by the Nazis is about to be unleashed on the world. The experiment, as you could probably tell, is zombies. Zombies that are Nazis.

 No, seriously. Are you sure you're not Maggie Gyllenhaal?

An aspect of "Outpost: Black Sun" that is worth mentioning was that it did a good job ratcheting up the tension, which helps keep the plot moving and suspense high. The zombies in this film only possess their indestructible nature in this magnetic field generated by a machine hidden in a top secret bunker. Once turned on, the field slowly grows bigger, and the range of the creatures grows larger and larger. This is highlighted rather brilliantly by continually cutting back to the army that is combating this Fourth Reich, as their front line gets pushed back more and more as the field expands.

Once the zombies reach far enough, the army has decided to nuke the whole area. So it's up to two task forces to take down the generator and stop the zombies. We only follow one of them, as the other team is only reported as "missing." And despite being made up of some standard stereotypes, the soldiers I felt were acting pretty realistically, and I grew to like all of them, even the Scottish jerk, Hall, played by Ali Craig. Actually, he turned out to be my favorite of all of them. He was brilliantly entertaining.

The one thing that really caught me off guard with this movie was just how serious it took itself. This could have been campy, but instead they played it off as dead serious, dark and grim. You can take that for whatever you feel that is worth, but I really liked that aspect of it, honestly. That along with how (again) shockingly good this movie looks is the thing that made it stand out for me. There's also some pretty intense moments to be found.

Guuuggghhhglarrghghahghagblargh *shudder*

As for any downsides, well suffice to say that while it is indeed different than what you might be expecting, it's still not very shocking in terms of where the story goes. There's no twists or anything. The plot goes down pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to. That's not to say it's bad, it's just not anything we haven't seen before.

If there was a single aspect of "Outpost: Black Sun" I found to be outright bad, it was this really obnoxious...I don't even know what to call her. She was like this mad-scientist/nurse/Dr. Mengele zombie with a hump who's sole job it appears is to walk around the bunker with a hypodermic needle while incontrollably cackling in this sing-song, babbling child's voice. I know it's supposed to be creepy, but I found her giggling to be unbearably annoying, and cheered mightily when she gets taken out, but not for the reasons I think the filmmakers intended. Thankfully she's only in the movie for like 15 minutes, but it's a long 15 minutes.

Another reason I loved Hall. He shoots her in the face. And then calls her a bitch. Hall is astute.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW IF YOU CARE

It must also be said that the ending, while admittedly somewhat surprising, really smacks of unsatisfying. It's not that I'm upset that one of the characters turns coat at the end, even though my favorite character gets taken out in the process, it's just that I'm still not sure why they did it. It really seemed out of nowhere for the sake of setting up a sequel. And while it's true that one is set to come out this year, "Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz," which I'm looking forward to, from the description available it doesn't sound like it will be following up on this story. That's pretty lame because it's wide open.

Also, as much as I liked the character of Lena, I'm just not buying the Rambo-esque promise of vengeance that she gives the traitor over the phone at the end. I have to side with the traitor when he says "Good luck with that" after she flat out tells him she's gunning for him. She's not exactly Charles Bronson. And now he knows to watch his back. And he's got Nazis on his side now. She weighs 110 lbs soaking wet and the only person I've seen her kill was a 97 year old man in a wheelchair. Yeah, she bashed a zombie's face in with a fire extinguisher, but he was pretty much down for the count at that point. I'm not even sure if she knows how to shoot a gun. At least accurately. When did the idea of letting a guy who's actually a killer know she's coming seem like a good idea?

END SPOILERS

"In 2012 a crack commando unit was sent to an underground Nazi bunker by their superiors to stop a war they didn't start. These men promptly blew up the bunker and escaped to the Eastern European countryside. Today, still wanted by the Reich, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a Nazi problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find enough Phoenix Downs to bring them back from the dead, maybe you can hire...these guys. They haven't thought of a catchy monicker yet."

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Outpost: Black Sun" was a nice surprise. Despite the ludicrous premise, the plot getting a little too complex for its own good at the end, and ripping off the climax of "Raiders of The Lost Ark" at one point, it's one of the better direct-to-video action films I've seen in a while, and it's a pretty effectively entertaining time all around. I look forward to the sequels. Now I just have to get my hands on the first one.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Welcome to the final installment of my "Bond - Sean Connery, Part II" Trilogy. We're looking at the final three Eon films that starred Sean Connery as Agent 007 in an official capacity. I didn't care much for "Thunderball" at all, while "You Only Live Twice" I found to be an admittedly sillier but far more entertaining venture. Now let's check out Connery's final certified outing as the world's most famous secret agent in "Diamonds Are Forever."

But before we go any further, one thing must be addressed. And this is, to the dread of some, the acknowledgment of the existence of one Mr. George Lazenby.

1971's "Diamonds Are Forever" was not the next Bond film after 1967's "You Only Live Twice." You notice the 5 year gap in between? In 1969 there was another movie and another Bond, with Australian model George Lazenby starring in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Both Lazenby and the movie met with mixed reactions, and didn't do as well as they wanted. So, by paying Connery an unheard of salary, some $1.2 million dollars (in 1971 money), they got the original article back for one more go around.

I'll get to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" sometime later, but suffice to say that the only thing you really need to know about what happens in it (since you can extrapolate they are related based on the intro) is that Bond really, really, really wants Blofeld dead. I mean, you could have assumed that based on the crap Blofeld put him through earlier, but yeah, if you watched "OHMSS" you know that saying "This time it's personal" really doesn't do the situation enough justice.

Well, that's cheerful.

And the beginning of the movie pretty much settles that. The opening scene has Bond strong-arming people all over the world looking for Blofeld, and he's not above choking a women with her own bikini-top to find out where he is. At least we know he can still be a pig even when he's raging. The whole thing is played up to keep his face hidden so that his reveal is all the more dramatic, and I suppose if you had been a big Connery fan and hated Lazenby it would have been quite effective, especially if they had kept it going just a little longer. But I must wonder if anyone back then didn't know Connery was back when every single poster always started with "Sean Connery IS James Bond in..." Oh well. It's just fan-service. Nothing wrong with that.

Well, Bond does in fact find Blofeld in the process of creating a double using the powers of both mud and science. Not really sure how giving a guy a spa treatment for a few days is supposed to change his face, but then again, I'm not a megalomaniacal evil genius. And he does kill both the double and the real Blofeld.

OR DOES HE?!?!

Ahem. No. You find out later that was merely another double. There's a lot of Blofelds running around in this movie. And hey, one of them is actually the real one. And no, he isn't played by either Donald Pleasence or Telly Salavas. This time it's Charles Gray, who is pretty good, but he isn't as slimy as Pleasence was, and it's annoying that the character keeps changing actors. I guess consistency isn't a priority in Bond movies. Except for Desmond Llewelyn (17 movies), Bernard Lee (11 movies) and Lois Maxwell (14 movies). What, was Bond's arch nemesis just not an important enough character or something? We had to save the consistency for the secretary who's in one scene every movie in which she's the one person on the planet who is hornier than James?

And why doesn't he ever go after Moneypenny? Dude would bang a toaster if he thought the damage wouldn't go beyond 1st degree burns...

The plot of "Diamonds Are Forever" is shockingly about diamonds. Specifically it's about diamond smuggling, which turns into a plot to blow up nuclear weapons unless they get a lot of money. I know, SPECTRE's plots are ever changing. At the outset, though, Bond is trying to get to the bottom of a South African diamond smuggling operation by taking on the identity of a professional smuggler. He does this a bit before winding up in Las Vegas, where Blofeld is discovered to be behind the whole thing.

I said before that Charles Gray makes a passable Blofeld, and it's true that he does. He has a bit more of a sense of humor than earlier, which also goes along with the lighter overall tone of the film. "Diamonds Are Forever" is the closest the Connery series ever got to the zaniness of the Roger Moore era (*shudder*) but it still keeps it mostly within the realms of not being annoying or overly weird.

I said "mostly."

Yeah, the very special assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. Hoo boy. These two guys. I'm not quite sure what to say about them. They're either one of the best or worst things about "Diamonds Are Forever," I can't tell for sure, but I'm leaning towards the later theory. I guess it depends on who you ask. On one hand, they're pretty creepy with how utterly soulless and blasé they are about the many, many people they kill throughout the movie. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure what they were going for with these guys.

Mr. Kidd, played by jazz bassist Putter Smith is the more subdued one, and of the two acts most like an actual human being. A cold blooded killer, but still human. It's Mr. Wint, played by Bruce Glover (father of Crispin) who comes off more as a psychopathic murder-bot from Outer Space loaded up with Quaaludes and the personality quirks of Peter Lorre doing Bronson Pinchot. All while being played by Crispin Glover's dad. Who acts just like Crispin Glover. A strange character is Mr. Wint.

I think it's possible to also get a little riled up at the fact that they're obviously gay. And having the only gay characters in the series be psychopathic killers could easily be looked at as kind of a jerk thing to do. So one could be offended by all that if they were really sensitive, but at the same time it's never implied that they are evil because of "The Gay," so that's a point in it's favor. They're just sick, twisted psychos with a penchant for debauchery. Being gay doesn't factor into it. It's probably not something to get worked up over, but it's still an odd character trait to have because it really doesn't add anything.

Besides this very dignified moment. *facepalm*

Aside from very strange hitmen, "Diamonds Are Forever" includes two lady henchmen, Bambi and Thumper, who wind up being basically useless despite all their overly elaborate and unnecessary flipping and tumbling. Or maybe it's because of it. But there's also a really good car chase through the Vegas strip, a reasonably passable final climax on an oil-rig, and a decent confrontation between Bond and Blofeld (for reals this time).

All of this is done while keeping the wackiness to a somewhat reasonable minimum.

I said "somewhat."

And I must admit to there being a line or two that did get a good chuckle out of me. It's nothing close to the dry wit of "Goldfinger," but when given a decent one-liner, Connery is still the man. Then again, I did laugh at Bond saying "Sorry, old boy" to a rat. I have no explanation for why I do what I do.

It's worth mentioning that Bruce Cabot makes an appearance as one of Blofeld's villains. He famously played Jack Driscoll in my favorite movie of all time, the original "King Kong." Also, Jimmy Dean (yes, that one) plays a Howard Hughes-style recluse. Who is also a cowboy. That's awesome. 

"I'm just amazed there's been no mention of sausages yet."

"Your mother wash mentioning them lasht night, Dean!"

But finally, and this must be addressed one last time, because it just blows my mind every time it happens, but Connery's Bond is absolutely insane with the epic, disgusting pig lengths he will go to in order to get laid. I thought it was bad in "Thunderball" where he grabbed that poor woman in the spa, shoved his tongue down her throat, and then proceeded to follow her into the next room as she tried her hardest to set the world land-speed record for stripping. I thought I'd seen everything, but in "Diamonds Are Forever" Bond makes history with the first recorded attempt of The Naked Man Maneuver. AND IT WORKS.

"Two out of every three times, man."

You know what? At this point, I ain't even mad. Props, James. The Naked Man takes guts to pull off. You do lose points because of the fact she's a total whore, though. And you pulled it off with probably the weakest of the Bond girls you had to choose from throughout your career. But hey, Barney Stinson would be proud.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Diamonds Are Forever," much like its predecessor, is a fun romp that's sprinkled with a fair amount of camp. Fortunately it's not enough to distract from the movie as much as the Roger Moore films did. Bond hasn't gone full-blown comedy. Not yet. In terms of quality it's about middle of the road for the Connery series. And it does get props for having a somewhat decent ending for freaking once.

THE END OF THE

"BOND - SEAN CONNERY, PART II" TRILOGY

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE"

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Welcome to the second part of my "Bond - Sean Connery, Part II" Trilogy, where I'll be looking at the final three official Bond films made by Eon featuring the definitive 007, Sean Connery. Last time we looked at the most successful film in the franchise, "Thunderball," which is coincidentally my least favorite of the Connery series. Today, we're going to both Japan and outer space in a film that I personally think is a big step up from the last outing - 1967's "You Only Live Twice." Get your martinis (shaken, naturally) and join me in a rollicking good time with everyone's favorite secret agent!

"You Only Live Twice" finds James Bond getting to the bottom of the abduction of Soviet and US spaceships. Each time one of the two countries launches a mission, it is quickly nabbed up by another mysterious vessel that swallows it up and brings it back down to Earth, where it is quickly lost to radar and vanishes.

"Om nom nom nom."

Both countries are under the impression that the other is behind it somehow. True, either country sabotaging their own space program makes little sense, but hey, it was the Cold War. That was like the U of M/Ohio State rivalry. It doesn't have to make sense, you just know you hate the other guy because he's terrible and stupid and sucks and you're better than him even if he clobbers you.

In any case, each side threatens war if another one of their ships is abducted. And for the $10,000 prize, can you guess who is behind the nefarious plot? It's a tough one since they've only been the villainous entity in nearly every single Bond movie so far. Of freaking course it's SPECTRE.

At least this time their base of operations is subtle.

After faking his own death so as to keep the enemy's attention elsewhere, James Bond goes to Japan, the place MI-6 believes to be the most likely location for the ship to have originated from. With the help of Tiger Tanaka (Tetsurô Tanba), he investigates a lead involving a shady Japanese business mogul, Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada), who naturally winds up being involved with SPECTRE.

It's at this point that in all honesty, the plot starts to run away from me. It's probably one of the more difficult stories in the Bond franchise to follow, at least for me anyway. There's a whole thing about Bond masquerading as a potential buyer for Tanaka, which seems to not accomplish much. And then he "gets married" in order to do...I'm not sure what. And then in the most infamous part of the movie, Sean Connery disguises himself as a Japanese person.

This succeeds just about as well as you'd imagine it would.

It's not that any of this is bad, with the exception of the whole "slanty-eyes makeup" thing, but putting all the pieces together is a little difficult upon reflection. The whole second act of "You Only Live Twice" is probably the weakest part, as the plot gets a little overly complex. On the other hand, it also throws helicopter battles and ninjas at you at the same time, so even if you're not exactly sure what's going on, it's still entertaining as hell.

The final act of "You Only Live Twice" more than makes up for any confusion that may have occurred earlier in the film. Bond penetrates SPECTRE's hidden base inside the crater of a volcano, which is one of the coolest and most iconic villainous lairs in the franchise's history, and we finally come face to face with the man who's been pulling the strings and punishing failure in henchmen for three films now, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Blofeld is played with slimy, evil menace by Donald Pleasence, one of the great unsung champions of slimy, evil menace. It's true that one film later the much tougher and physically intimidating Telly Savalas would play him, but for my money Donald Pleasence was the best. He is just so creepy and wrong with that hideous scar over his eye, and Pleasence was capable of being super intense while not so much as raising his voice. I think it's the eyes.

HOMEBOY NEVER BLINKS.

The first face-to-face meeting between Bond and Blofeld is one of the great moments in film history, and manages to be pretty intense even though there's no chance that you would ever think Bond isn't coming out on top. The dialogue by itself would be dynamite, even without Connery's sneering bemusement and Pleasence's oily conceit. And hey, it's even got the best title drop in the franchise.

Blofeld: "They told me you had been assassinated in Hong Kong."
Bond: "Yes. This is my second life."
Blofeld: "You only live twice, Mr. Bond."

I love it.

I'm not one to generally say that any one performance or sequence is worth the price of admission by itself, but seriously, I love the last act of "You Only Live Twice." Between the great acting between Connery and Pleasence, Tanaka's ninjas swarming Blofeld's lair and killer piranhas, it's a rocking good time. And yes, while it's true that "Austin Powers" and even later Bond films would bring these kind of things into the realm of near to outright comedy, at least at the time "You Only Live Twice" was actually taking itself relatively seriously, and it comes across as such.

There's also a weird little thing where Charles Gray, the actor who would go on to play Blofeld in "Diamonds Are Forever," has a small role as Henderson, an MI-6 operative in Japan who meets an untimely end right before he can give Bond some much needed info. Casting the same actor as a villain later seems strange to me. It would be like if they cast Gary Oldman as Ra's al Ghul when they next reboot Batman. It's a weird thing seeing him there, too. It's like I can see into the future and yell "That's him, James! Take him out! Take him out now!" He was good in the role, however. I liked him.

If I had to find things to nitpick about this one, it's essentially made up of the same things that were bugging me before. Many of the women are still far too dumb and horny to be taken as anything other than a total joke, although it's nowhere near as bad as "Thunderball" was. Actually the Japanese women, Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi, who were both very big stars in Japan, are probably the most reserved and dignified of any of the Bond girls. They were the exception though. One can't forget the small bit part of Ling, played by Tsai Chin (who had a little cameo in "Casino Royale" many, many years later) who says one of the most groan-worthy phrases in Bond history: "Darling, I give you very best duck."

Um...thank you?

I'm also not a fan of the title song. The motif keeps popping up too, all throughout the film, as is normal for Bond. I don't know, I just prefer my Bond themes loud, bombastic and kind of skanky sounding. That way you've got a musical theme to crank over an action scene as opposed to hearing the soft strains on violins during softer moments. I don't want to equate the theme with softer moments! I want to equate the theme with 007 kicking ass.

The opening montage is boring, too. Oooh, umbrellas. That screams action right there.

The ending is also, as per the usual in these movies, very abrupt with no time to breathe at all before the credits roll. But at least it was slightly less abrupt than "Thunderball."

And for the love of Bahamut, can we please have a Bond movie that doesn't end out on the ocean? Is that just a thing that we do in a Bond movie? Is there nowhere else to end it? I think "Goldfinger" is the only Connery vessel that hasn't ended on the ocean at this point. Let's check...

"Dr. No"

"From Russia With Love"

"Thunderball"

"You Only Live Twice"

Wait a minute...let's fast forward here. How does "Diamonds Are Forever" end?

Pictured above - Two people on a yacht at sea.

SON OF A BITCH.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I liked "You Only Live Twice" a hell of a lot more than "Thunderball." I know it's not as well received, and it's easy to make fun of, but I still prefer it. I'd personaly put it among Connery's best Bond outings. This is just a fun, fun movie.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER"

(WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THAT ONE GUY WHO DID THAT ONE MOVIE BETWEEN THAT ONE AND THIS ONE. BUT WE'RE NOT GOING CHRONOLOGICALLY BECAUSE I COULDN'T CALL IT "BOND - CONNERY, PART II" THEN NOW, COULD I? ANYWAY. HE'LL COME LATER. IN THE MEANTIME WE'LL JUST PRETEND THAT ONE NEVER HAPPENED EVEN THOUGH YOU KIND OF WOULDN'T GET A LOT OF REFERENCES TO CONNERY BEING BACK, AND THE BIT ABOUT REVENGE ON BLOFELD MIGHT BE LOST IF YOU DIDN'T WATCH THE ONE WE'RE SKIPPING HERE, BUT WHATEVER. JUST ROLL WITH IT. AM I RAMBLING? I'M SORRY. WHAT I'M ESSENTIALLY TRYING TO SAY IS...)

GEORGE LAZENBY

WILL APPEAR (LATER) IN

"ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE"

(SORRY, GEORGE.)

Thunderball (1965)

Fire up your high-speed boats and jet-packs, boy and girls! Prepare yourselves for the next trilogy of entries following the adventures of the world's most famous spy: Agent 007. In the last trilogy we looked at the first three films of the Bond franchise. Now we look at the last three official Eon films staring the definitive James Bond, Sean Connery. Join me in taking a look at the first film in my "Bond: Sean Connery, Part II" trilogy. Thrills and ludicrous shenanigans await us!

After the awesomeness that was "Goldfinger," the Bond series had a lot to live up to. The next year gave us "Thunderball," which when adjusted for inflation is still the highest grossing Bond film of all time, even after the spanking that "Skyfall" gave the box office. "Thunderball" is still the reigning champion. It also took the over-the-top elements of "Goldfinger," which while dubious seemed not fully insane, and brought it further towards the brink of crazy. This was a movie that set the franchise going down a pretty silly road. To the film's credit, though, it's still not as over-the-top as your average Roger Moore outing.

Although how in the hell Bond managed to pull this straight out of his ass is a mystery to me.

Oddly enough that's not the most bizarre thing to happen in that opening sequence, as not 30 seconds earlier he had just finished having a dramatic fight to the death with a guy in drag. It seriously looked like he was tussling with Frank N. Furter wearing his Sunday best. It was awesome.

So what's going on in "Thunderball" besides random jet packs and dudes wearing nylons? The plot is that SPECTRE uses an impersonator to take the place of an RAF pilot who is part of a training flight that is carrying two live atomic warheads. He kills the crew and crash lands the plane in the Carribean, where the warheads are acquired and hidden in an underwater cave. SPECTRE then threatens to blow up two major cities somewhere in the world unless they get...da Da DA-NA-NA!

100 million dollars!

It's true. Anyways, after an exceedingly long sequence at a spa where an assassination attempt almost kills him in an extremely dignified fashion involving looking like he dry-humped a weight-lifting bench till he died (don't ask) Bond is sent in to find the warheads. Using all of his *ahem*...charms...he "befriends" main Bond Girl for the evening, Domino (Claudine Auger). She is the mistress of Largo (Adolfo Celi), who is Blofeld's second in command, and is SPECTRE #2. He uses her to expose Largo and in an underwater climax which became the film's most memorable sequence, lots of spear-guns are fired, the warheads are found, Largo is defeated, Blofeld is most likely pissed off, and the movie once again ends out on the ocean.

So that's "Thunderball" in a nutshell. It's one of the most popular Bond movies ever.

It's also pretty damn boring and dull. I don't like "Thunderball." Not much at all. It's probably, no definitely is, my least favorite Sean Connery Bond film. And that's including "Dr. No."

This movie should have been called "Wetsuit: The Movie." So many damn wetsuits.

Here's the thing about "Thunderball." The plot isn't bad. In fact the plot is pretty solid. The biggest issue is that there's just not that much action going on, despite what it sounds like in the description. Most of the film is just Bond walking around talking to various people, then we go underwater and get an extended diving sequence which is about as much fun as holding your breath, Bond acts like a creepy rapist, gets laid, and then goes to talk to someone else before we get another extended diving sequence. It's just a chore to watch this thing, and I could never bring myself to get invested in it.

The underwater battle at the end between Largo and the frogmen had the potential to be really exciting, and at least at the start, it is. This is mostly to do with the fact that it's such a nice change of pace for something to be actually happening in one the boring and endless underwater sections. But it wears out its welcome pretty quick for me. It feels like it's going in slow motion, which makes sense since it's underwater, but even though it makes sense it's still not very conducive to a thrilling action sequence. This is especially so since the sequence is essentially 12 minutes of the same random dude in a black diving suit and another random dude in an orange diving suit killing each other. In slow motion.

This guy was my favorite. I called him Tom.

And getting back to that whole "creepy rapist" thing. You know, there's a few issues that start to bug me at this point in the Bond franchise, specifically with Connery. The first is that Bond seems less like a suave ladies man who is just a total mack-daddy who cannot be resisted and always knows exactly what to say, and more like the women are simply so incredibly horny and stupid that they will jump on the first breathing thing they see and start vigorously rubbing their crotch on it. It's seriously two steps away from being a porn where Sean Connery is the pizza delivery guy, and Claudine Auger is the barely dressed women who doesn't have enough money to tip him.

I've got nothing but mad love for Sean Connery but seriously, at this point in the franchise it's just ridiculous. Even in "Goldfinger" Bond basically forced himself on Pussy Galore, and yeah, it was creepy back then, too. By the time we get to "Thunderball," though, I'm really rooting for the villains to castrate this randy bastard, because he's out of control. He's outright grabbing unwilling women and jamming his tongue down their throats. Any normal woman would have doused him with enough pepper spray to season a wooly mammoth, but since it's Bond they can't help themselves and instantly strip.

"Why James, you're so charming when you're a disgusting pig..."

And the only thing that I can extrapolate from the whole thing is that James Bond's penis is magical. That's the only possible explanation. In addition to its mind control abilities, it also has the power to screw the evil out of anything it desires, as we've seen several times that the ladies in the villain's camp needed only a visit from a certain "Distinguished Gentleman" to see the light and come over to Bond's side.

In Sean Connery's defense though, if there was one guy who did in fact have a magical penis...

I know that it's just something that happens in these movies, and that's fine, but you can do it well and you can do it poorly. Once "Thunderball" came about, they weren't even trying anymore. The sad part is that it actually got worse from here. Guh. That's the one thing about the Bond movies I've never really liked.

The second problem is that I'm really getting annoyed with the character of Felix Leiter being played by a different actor in every single stinking Bond film I see. Seriously, it's really obnoxious. I'm not being nitpicky, either. Of the 10 Bond films that character has been in, there have been 8 different actors playing him. And the last movie he was in he was suddenly a black dude. Is it so difficult to get an actor back? Especially when I'm supposed to know who the character is on sight? For crying out loud...

The third problem I have with these early entries in the Bond franchise is that there is a serious lack of denouement. Sequences have a tendency to end abruptly with no breathing room, and sometimes before we can even process what just went down. For instance, let's look at both the beginning and end of "Thunderball," because they're both good examples of this problem.

In the opening sequence, Bond has a fight with a guy in drag, goes to the roof where he inexplicably has a jetpack waiting for him, and uses it to escape from a bunch of bad guys running after him. Silly, yes, but still exciting. He lands right by his car, takes off the jetpack and gets in the car when the bad guys, still in pursuit, start shooting as they run towards him. For some reason deciding not to simply start driving away, he fires what seems to be water out at them from the back tail lights. Then as they're slipping and sliding around *BAM* we crash cut to the opening credit sequence and Tom Jones starts wailing about how Bond "strikes like Thunderball," whatever that means.

Do you see a problem with that? Nothing got resolved. The bad guys are still there, they're just on the ground. We never saw Bond drive away, or shoot them, or set them on fire or just do something to give us some kind of closure on the scene we just saw. We can assume he drove away, but at least give us a quip to go along with what you just did. Hell, "Goldfinger," the movie before this one has my favorite Bond one-liner ever immediately before the opening credits. It doesn't take much to put an effective stinger on a scene. This ain't difficult, people.

Um, move out of the way maybe?

The end is the worst, though. After defeating the bad guy, Bond and Domino are on a life raft for all of 30 seconds before a plane comes by to sky-hook them away and rescue them. As they fly out of the raft and into the air the music starts up and the credits start rolling. It's impossible for me to accurately convey how jarring this is. It just ends.

The best thing I can do is to ask you to imagine if in "Return of The Jedi," the Death Star blew up, everyone on Endor looked up and cheered, and the credits started rolling over the Millennium Falcon flying away from the explosion. That's what it feels like. No reunion of the characters after the fight, no funeral pyre for Darth Vader, no Luke nodding and smiling at the ghosts of his mentors and father, no final cast shot as everyone celebrates. Nope. None of that. The Death Star blew up. That's all you need to know. You see what I'm saying about winding down? It's important.

A lot of early Bond movies did this, and it's really annoying.

And as a side note, I'm pretty sure I saw Peter Lorre in there. I know Peter Lorre died a year before this movie came out, and he's not listed anywhere as being in this film, but seriously, that was him. Whoever it is, he appears at the end as this guy who just comes right the hell out of nowhere to tell Domino he defused the atomic bomb and that it won't go off now. That seems mighty nice and impressive of him since I have to assume he's just a random crew member on the boat since I have no flipping clue who he is, as I'm pretty sure he was never mentioned before. He's. Just. There. And it's a good thing, too, because Bond never does jack about the warhead. So yeah, good job, James. That's the second time in two films that you've been saved from an atomic bomb by pure luck and someone else.

So that's "Thunderball." I don't get it. I don't know why it's considered a great Bond movie, because honestly I find it more dull than "Dr. No" despite all the gadgets and zaniness.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Thunderball" is, obviously, not a film I am a fan of. It's Connery's weakest outing, if you ask me. Honestly, I've never been able to make it through "Thunderball" in a single sitting, because I either get so bored that I need to stop it halfway and finish later, or I fall asleep. If there was a Connery Bond film I had to watch, this would be my absolute last choice.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE"