ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (OHMSS)
This film celebrated its 50th birthday this year and recently aired on TMC. I believe it’s gotten greater appreciation with time and I consider it one of the BEST BOND films in the franchise.
The story simply put, James Bond tracks his arch-nemesis and SPECTRE chief Ernst Blofeld to a mountaintop retreat where he's training an army of beautiful but lethal women. Along the way, Bond falls for the handful Italian contessa Tracy Draco -- and marries her! It has a great cast with Diana Riggs from THE AVENGERS playing Tracy, Telly Savalas as Blofeld and Gabriele Ferzetti as mafia-boss Draco. Beautifully directed by Peter Hunt with majestic landscapes. The storyline has some inspirational element from Shakespeare's "The Taming of Shrew."
George Lazenby often gets dissed as the “One Hit Wonder from Down Under” only having the role once, but I found his portrayal of playing 007 very believable. He wasn’t too dissimilar from Connery as far as appearance goes making him a good transition of the character. With the more modern Daniel Craig films, George Lazenby possessed the physique you’d expect to carry off the action scenes of a British assassin. This came to my mind as TMC aired both ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE back to back with DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and you can’t help to compare the two after watching them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a BIG Sean Connery fan and he’s on a pedestal of his own, but OHMSS is a great film and had things worked out with George and EON Productions, it would have been interesting to see how the franchise would have evolved.
Last year, I was fortunate enough to meet him in person and learned how he got the role, which is an amazing and UNBELIEVABLE story. Knowing this now, I think it also adds some appreciation of the film. If you haven't seen this film in awhile or haven't all together, I highly recommend watching this 6th 007 adventure, a grittier Bond thanks to George Lazenby.
To quote Telly Savalas, “Who Loves You Baby?” I do George. 😊
