Review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) by Jeff Z — 07 Mar 2009

One of the big problems with this film is director Peter Hunt, who did such a fine job editing the first three Bond films, gets sloppy here and doesn't make trims and cuts he should have. A more experienced director might have also helped Lazenby more. Can you imagine if Hunt had tried to dub Connery when he played Sir Hillary with the supporting player's voice? Hunt should have dubbed the supporting player with whatever voice Lazenby came up with so he would not be undercutting his own star. The script also has a number of very poor comedy one liners that even Roger Moore would have rejected. They even try to cram some in in post when Lazenby's mouth isn't even moving!

Rigg is good as Tracy and Savalas gives us a very different Blofeld in that he's active and tends to do a lot of things himself, rather than sit back stroking the cat while his henchmen louse things up.

The action sequences are pretty good (though the ski chase scene goes from night shots to bright day shots to day for night shots to studio back screen shots) though there are too many of them. The music is great.

A lot of people make note that Lazenby did not do a second Bond, but don't forget neither did Hunt who went on to direct a few second rate films after this (including two starring Roger Moore) and was NOT invited back to do more 007.