Aodhanrooney George Lazenby was not a bad Bond nor was the casting decision. The script is well written and paced and offers new surprises for a new Bond thrill-ride adventure! Also, I plaud the decision to use make a Bond movie without the use of gadgets and tricks up Bond's sleeve. Like the Sean Connery Bond movies, the excitement is just as enlightening and satisfactory without with these elements. Prior excitement of gadgets like the Aston Martin DB5 was satisfying and enjoyable, but future Bond movies starring Roger Moore relied heavily on gadgets and fans grew tiresome of this. While the performances and casting is noteworthy - as is the well written story - the biggest let down of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is poorly edited action scenes. The movie opens with Bond rescuing main character Tracy from an attempted suicide on the beach, in which Bond decisively rescues her only to be followed by a brief intrusion of two opponents - followed by a weakly edited fight scene, which looked fake and unalarming. Other additional fight scenes in which Bond encounters Draco for the first time and another before Bond escapes Blofeld's fortress in the Swiss Alps, are lazily edited and not great.All criticism aside, On Her Majesty's Secret Sevice is nothing short of amazing and delivers non-stop thrills, spectacular drama and a joyful ski chase. Also, filming locations are still incredible and inspirational, making this instalment a fun choice for the closure of the 60's.

RNDorrell This was the sixth Bond film, and the only one starring George Lazenby as Bond. He was surprisingly good, despite a pair of outwardly jutting bat ears and a slight edge of goofiness. Lazenby had been an unknown male model before winning this role, then he ridiculously declined to ever act as Bond again, a decision he later publicly regretted.So, its stand-alone nature makes it unique in the Bond catalog, but on its own merits, it's one of the very best films of the entire series, with a sinister Telly Savalas bringing actual physically threatening demeanor to the role of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and Diana Rigg as a captivating heroine, a Bond girl with evident brains, guts and ample self-determination. It features a taut, no-nonsense script, with a tongue-in-cheek opening teaser sequence. ("This never happened to the other fellow," the other fellow being Sean Connery, who had walked away from the franchise after "You Only Live Twice," then returned in one later last official performance, "Diamonds Are Forever.")Savalas was menacing and smoothly evil, this time Blofeld is threatening global destruction of major foodstuffs crops as the means of an enormous extortion scheme, biological warfare to be delivered by a cadre of brainwashed beauties, Blofeld's Angels of Death. The flick boasts rich location settings in Portugal and Switzerland, plus some of the best alpine action scenes ever filmed in the entire Bond series, capped by that wicked fight during the long, long bobsled run. The score by John Barry was excellent, as was Peter Hunt's direction.Critics at the time found Lazenby merely passable, but I found him to be droll, emotive and athletic in the proper proportions, big ears or not. Savalas and Rigg brought their late 60s star power to bear, and the result both shakes and stirs, especially with the shocking ending. This film is among those few in the Bond series that is worthy of repeated viewing, it's right up there with "Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Skyfall." (Note that I refuse to designate one of the two droning, spiritless Timothy Dalton Bond entries as among the best.)

bowmanblue Oh, dear, the 'Bond franchise' really was in a bit of a dilemma after the departure of – arguably the best Bond – Sean Connery. On the plus side, they seemed to have a decent replacement in the form of George Lazenby, better known as 'Who?' to most of us, but there was still the little matter of how to bring him out from behind Connery's massive shadow and make the role his own. What followed was a mish-mash of everything we know as 'Bond,' combined with some things we'd never expect from the world's most famous secret agent. 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' is often (unfairly!) labelled as 'the worst of all the Bond films.' It's not. Quite often those who finally sit down to watch it come round and see that it's not all bad, it's just different. And it knows it.Right off the bat it pokes fun at itself for the change in leading man (a running joke if you look closely to certain lines of dialogue) and the does its best to carry on the story. However, George Lazenby, albeit a capable actor, is just too wacky to be taken seriously. I know Connery's Bond was quite dark and the producers obviously felt that a 'lighter' touch would help go some way to distinguish the two Bonds. However, as my title suggests, it feels like more of a parody of a Bond film that 'official' spy movie spoofs like the original 'Casino Royale.' We see this new Bond playing a new role, i.e. he's in disguise, but the disguise is so geeky that he could have been played by Kenneth Williams and no one would have noticed. Now, you may say that Sean Connery went undercover as a Japanese man and Roger Moore as a clown. However, these were for mere minutes of their respective films. Lazenby's performance lasts a fair portion of the second act. Plus he wears a kilt and no Bond should wear a kilt! However, like I said, it's not all bad. The action and the women are both there (even if there does seem to be an abundance of 'jump cuts' in every fight scene which are more noticeable than ever when watching on your typical large flatscreen TV). And, most importantly of all, this film really does try something new. It tries its hand at romance. Now, most of us would hardly consider Mr Bond, James Bond, to be the most romantic of characters. Yes, he gets the girl, but – technically – 'romance' is the last thing on his mind. However, here we actually see Bond fall in love. Now, I know that the modern audience may collectively cry 'so what!' as we've seen this more recently from Daniel Craig. However, back then (and after Connery's 'love 'em and leave 'em' attitude') it really was quite shocking. I read one review online which described the feeling pretty well. It said something about how previous Bond outings were spy/action movies, whereas this was a romance film, sprinkled with elements of action and spying. I think that's a reasonable appraisal of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.Unfortunately, for all its new and daring moments, it just never worked. It felt everywhere and all over the place, constantly trying to give the audiences something they'd recognise while trying to establish a new face for the super-spy. Plus, if you look deeper into the trivia surrounding the making of the film, you'll see that George Lazenby made himself notoriously unpopular with the producers and critics before he was even unleashed on the audiences. Ultimately, it seemed that the world just wasn't ready for a new Bond. George Lazenby isn't as dark and doesn't have as much screen presence as Connery and couldn't carry the wry humour that Roger Moore found so easy.Once again, the lead villain is Blofeld and, once again, he's being played by a new actor. Telly Savalas does his best with what's given and is a far more physical mastermind than Bond is used to, plus the sets really do show off that funky late sixties feel, but, just because 'Never Say Never Again' is – technically – the Bond film that should be overlooked due to it not being part of the official franchise, this one will always remain the film most casual fans choose to skip.

Dan OHMSS is a solid entry in the James Bond series, but I had a number of issues with the film that I found distracting. Such as the roughness of the editing (especially during fight scenes - too many cuts and tight camera shots to try and make the action more exciting), the repetitiveness and overuse / misuse of the leitmotifs (for example the simple musical phrase that plays for over 5 minutes during the safe-breaking operation), and some problems with the fit of Lazenby as 007 (particularly the voice overs - they should have modified the script to have better suited the actor they committed to).The settings were fantastic and the story solid, but there were just a number of rough edges that kept grabbing my attention. Perhaps if 15- 20 minutes more ended up on the cutting room floor then this would rank as one of the best James Bond installments in my mind.