Bondathon: Diamonds Are Forever

The seventh film in the official Bond series saw the return of Sean Connery in the role that made him famous. It was a final official Bond adventure for the Scot.

After finding and killing Blofeld, M assigns Bond on a mission to investigate a diamond smuggling ring where the people on the smuggling chain are getting killed. Bond’s investigation takes him to Amsterdam and Las Vegas and sees the spy face an old enemy.

Despite On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s current reputation as one of the best Bond films, contemporary reviews were not so kind and it was considered a flop by the franchise’s standards. The producers and United Artists resolved these issues by using tried and tested methods. Sean Connery was brought back with a lucrative offer: he was paid $1.25 million and United Artists promised to produce two films for Connery, leading to the production of The Offence. The Offence was the best thing to come out of Diamonds Are Forever.

The producers used Goldfinger as a template when making Diamonds Are Forever. As well as bringing back Connery, Guy Hamilton reclaimed the director’s chair and Shirley Bassey sang her second of three Bond themes. The plot of both films centred on perilous materials and both were predominately set in America. Also, like Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever went for a lighter tone. This lighter was one of the film’s biggest issues.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was one of the more serious films in the franchise at that point in time and had the most sombre endings for a Bond film. This was a turn-off for audiences at the time but Diamonds Are Forever did a complete 180. Tracy’s death was ignored and any idea of character development was gone. Diamonds Are Forever was a film where Bond drives a moon buggy, makes wisecracks when freed from a trap or going into one, has Blofeld having identical doppelgängers and Blofeld had a diamond powered space laser. This film featured two gay hitmen who made jokes after they killed someone, an elephant using a slot machine and two female bodyguards called Bambi and Thumper. Looking at this film with modern eyes it seems more like an Austin Powers spoof.

In the film Bond gets captured three times and this added to Austin Powers’ comparisons. I thought of Scott Evil telling his dad just to shoot Austin instead of complicating things. Bond nearly gets cremated, gets trapped in a pipe, and taken by one of Blofeld’s goons and Bond escapes every time. The worst of these was when Bond was locked in a coffin that was being burned and gets saved by the villains because the writers realised they wrote themselves into a corner.

To be fair to the film it did have a decent first act. Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd killing their way through the smuggling ring made for a good hook, there was a solid fight scene in a lift, and Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) was shown to be competent when she met Bond. It all goes downhill when the film moves from Amsterdam to Las Vegas. Diamonds Are Forever ended up being the 1970s version of Die Another Day. Both films had decent starts, diamonds played an important part in the plot, and the villains had giant space lasers.

Bond films, both good and bad, had spectacle in their favour. Diamonds Are Forever looked cheap when compared to some of the previous films in the series. The villain’s lair was just an oil rig and the special effects involving the space laser terrible. Connery’s previous Bond film, You Only Live Twice, had excellent effects: it had the volcano lair and great model work for the space scenes.

Charles Gray took over the role of Blofeld. He previously appeared in You Only Live Twice as Bond ally. Gray lacked the menace of the previous two incarnations: a low point for him was dressing as a woman to escape the Whyte House Hotel. Yet this is partly due to Diamonds Are Forever’s lighter tone. I did like a moment during the climax where Blofeld ordered one of his underlings to stay on the oil rig and then planned his own escape.

Diamonds Are Forever have the worst Bond girls in the franchise at this point. Tiffany Case started off okay because she was smart enough to check Bond’s fingerprint and only fooled because of Q’s invention. But as the film progressed Tiffany became dumber and dumber. When she was on Blofeld’s oil rig she was useless (like when she used a gun) or made things worse (switching the tapes). Lana Wood as Plenty O’Toole was an attractive woman but she couldn’t act and she suffered in the film. Plenty O’Toole was thrown out of a window where she could have gone splat and was drowned in a swimming pool.

Another issue was the choice of location. Previous Bond films had a sense of glamour or exoticism: Las Vegas has none of that. The producers were aiming to market the Bond franchise by setting it in America and even considered casting an American actor. But Las Vegas felt like a characterless concrete jungle in the day and tacky at night. The casino scenes films like Dr. No and Thunderball radiated class; in Las Vegas they were dark, crowded, and unpleasant. Bond doesn’t even play a card game, he plays craps. The area around Las Vegas was just a featureless desert.

After six films that ranged from good to great, the seventh Bond film was the first dud in the franchise. It disappointed on story, character, and spectacle levels. If Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice served as templates on how to make a Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever was a how not to make one.