Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Lana Wood, Jimmy Dean, Bruce Cabot, Putter Smith, Bruce Glover, Norman Burton, Joseph Fьrst, Bernard Lee,...
When Bond investigates mysterious activities in the world diamond market, he discovers that the evil Ernst Blofeld (Charles Gray) is stockpiling the precious gems to use in a deadly laser satellite capable of destroying massive targets on land, sea and air. Bond, with the help of beautiful smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), sets out to stop the madman, but first he must grapple with a host of enemies. He confronts offbeat assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, as well as Bambi and Thumper--two scantily-clad beauties who are more than a match for Bond in hand-to-hand combat! Finally, there's the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean), who may just hold a vital clue to Blofeld's whereabouts.
AMAZON.COM REVIEWS FOR DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971): Sean Connery casts a long shadow over the James Bond legacy. He created the movie persona and starred in six of the first seven features, all but establishing the cool cold warrior as the world's most suave secret agent. The six titles in MGM's third collection celebrate the Connery Bond with three of his classics, including From Russia with Love, 007's second and perhaps finest outing. A blond, buff Robert Shaw plays Bond's most ruthless nemesis, and Lotte Lenya and the great Pedro Armindáriz costar in this sleek, high-energy trip through the Iron Curtain. Connery travels to the Far East in You Only Live Twice, which introduces the international criminal conspiracy SPECTRE and its cat-loving mastermind, Blofeld (Donald Pleasence). After a brief retirement, Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever, his final "official" appearance in the Bond series (15 years later he played Bond for a rival studio's Never Say Never Again). This more tongue-in-cheek adventure takes 007 to Las Vegas, where he battles Blofeld (this time played by Charles Gray) and his minions--namely, a pair of fey, sardonic henchmen and a team of bikini-clad karate killers.
Octopussy, a colorful cold war thriller and one of Roger Moore's better Bond outings, stars Louis Jourdan as a corrupt Afghan prince and Maud Adams (making her second Bond appearance) as the ringmaster of an all-babe traveling circus team that unknowingly carries a nuclear bomb. Christopher Walken hams it up under a platinum-blond hairdo while his Amazon bodyguard, Grace Jones, growls through A View to a Kill, a silly but often visually impressive adventure that made it obvious Moore was too old and stiff to carry on the Bond legacy. The torch was passed to Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, an attempt to clear away the camp elements of Moore's portrayal and return to a lean, hard-edged spy thriller for the post-cold war era. It lacks the larger-than-life characters and spectacle of previous Bond pictures, but Dalton was a tough, ruthless 007 and a worthy inheritor of the legacy, which was then passed on to Pierce Brosnan.
The DVD editions of the films each feature audio commentary by the director and key members of the crew, "making of" documentaries, and a host of stills, TV spots, trailers, and other supplements. --Sean AxmakerDiamonds are Forever (dvd):
Amazon.com video review:Sean Connery retired from the 007 franchise after You Only Live Twice (replaced by George Lazenby in the underrated and underperforming On Her Majesty's Secret Service) but was lured back for one last official appearance as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. He's in fine form--cool but ruthless--in a sharp precredits sequence hunting the unkillable Blofeld (a suavely menacing Charles Gray in this incarnation), but the MacGuffin of a story (involving diamond smuggling, a superlaser on a satellite, and Blofeld's latest plot to rule the world ) is full of the groaning tongue-in-cheek gags that Roger Moore would make his signature. Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton keeps the film zipping along gamely from one entertaining set piece to another, including a terrific car chase in a parking lot, a battle with a pair of bikini-clad killer gymnasts named Bambi and Thumper, and a deadly game with a bizarre pair of fey, sardonic killers who dispatch their victims with elaborate invention. Jill St. John is the brassy but not too bright American smuggler Tiffany Case, and country singer and pork sausage king Jimmy Dean costars as a reclusive billionaire with not-so-subtle parallels to Howard Hughes. Shirley Bassey belts out the memorable theme song, one of the series' best. Connery retired again after this one but he returned once more, for Never Say Never Again 15 years later for a rival production company. --Sean Axmaker
AWARDS FOR DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971):
- Academy Awards, USA
1972
Nominated
Oscar
Best Sound
Gordon K. McCallum
John W. Mitchell
Al Overton
- Golden Screen, Germany
1973
Won
Golden Screen
- Satellite Awards
2004
Nominated
Golden Satellite Award
Best Classic DVD Release
Also for From Russia with Love (1963), You Only Live Twice (1967), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), The Living Daylights (1987) and The World Is Not Enough (1999) [Vol. 2].Also for Thunderball (1965), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Live and Let Die (1973), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985) and Die Another Day (2002). [Vol. 3]For "The James Bond DVD Collection", volumes 2 & 3.
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