Sex and Guns and Judi Dench — You Only Live Twice— A Reactionary Transcript #7

In the hunt for the finest of the Bond pictures, I must take notes during my viewing. Here are my notes for the seventh of these case studies; You Only Live Twice.

The results will be posted heeeeeeere.

You Only Live Twice spoilers ahead.

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I’m lookin at stars

DOLBY DIGITAL

FBI warning

I swear i’ll do nowt bad

There’s also a warning about the bonus commentary, so some shit goes down on there

LION ROAR

Sweet barrel sequence, lovely hat

We start in space

As always

That’s a very shaky spacecraft

Goin for a spacewalk by just popping the roof of the entire ship

Unidentified object closing in on them, oh my

Astronauts don’t see owt

It’s another spacecraft

The front is opening

The new spacecraft is gonna eat the original one

And so it has

But it’s cut the guy who had gone for the spacewalk loose horrifyingly

Now we’re… in a meeting

UN or somet

US thinks Russia want to weaponise space

UK calls US stupid

UK say their man in Hong Kong is working on it

Cue Bond macking with some Hong Kong broad

HIS FIRST LINE, LITERAL FIRST LINE IS

‘WHY DO CHINESE GIRLS TASTE DIFFERENT TO OTHER GIRLS?’

WHO IS THIS MAN

This whole piece of dialogue is bizarre and legendary, not all in a good way

He says it’s not better, just different

Holy shit, that turned

Ling turned on him, trapping him in a Murphy bed and then guys get in and shoot the bed to bits

Then leave

Rude

Cops are here

Bond is pronounced dead

OH SHIT

OPENING CREDITS

BOND’S DEAD

Holy shit, Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay

He must think Chinese people taste different

Matilda’ll never be the same

It’s in the paper now, he’s deffo dead

Being buried at sea

Kinda undignified

Divers are ‘ere now, collectin bodies

Takin him to a sub

He’s woken up by a load of sailors in shorts and high socks

HE AIN’T DEED

Moneypenny’s on board

She laughs at a bad joke, but at least there’s workplace respect

M’s pretending he’s a navy boy now

It’s a big one

So MI6 can’t find it, they’re gonna send Bond, now that he’s dead

Shit, 3 weeks to find wassup

The password is ‘I LOVE YOU’ and Moneypenny wants Bond to repeat it back to her, but he’s like nah, none of that gay stuff

She gives him a phrasebook, but of course he got a first in oriental languages at Cambridge, so

Off he goes, launched off like a torpedo

TOKYO!

He’s already being watched by suspicious women speaking into their handbags

Sumo class apparently

Sumo event apparently

Anytime he speaks Japanese, he just sounds like Jen from The IT Crowd, saying things that vaguely sound Japanese

A lass looks at him and sits next to him

…

…

This is an awkward first date

Bond says ‘I love you’ and it works

Never works when i do it

Bond’s suspicious that his contact couldn’t come himself

I think it’s more suspicious to go to a sumo event for three minutes than just meet in a back alley

Japanese lass potters off as Bond goes to meet Henderson

Bond immediately points a gun at him

He takes Henderson’s cane and wallops his leg with it

It’s wooden

Trust now?

Henderson tells Bond about Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service

Henderson is hinting at shit and I don’t know what, but it sounds homoerotic

And Henderson’s been stabbed

DAMN THESE PAPER WALLS

I once lived in some paper walls

Queen’s Park it was

Henderson was nice, and I’m sure he plays Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, we’ll have to wait and see

Bond gets the assailants, takes him down, pretends to be him and gets away in the getaway car to Osata Chemical spot

Henderson was about to reveal who he reckoned was behind it, so not that important

The getaway driver carries Bond in, who’s pretending to be hurt but then reveals himself and scraps with the big boy getaway man

But it’s okay cos Bond attacks him with a sofa

Sends the guy flying then opens the bar and sneaks a bevvy

Hates the vodka cos it’s siamese and not russian, what a voddy snob

Sees a safe, wants to crack it

SOMEONE’S COMING

No they’re not, they’re going back

He’s in

TROUBLE THAT IS

ALARM

Money and paper and stuff in the safe, but he skidaddles, easily hiding from the coppers

He shoots a cop and they are both terrible shots before getting picked up by the Japanese lass from the sumo event

The lass is suddenly trying to run from him so she doesn’t have to give Bond any info and she’s quicker than she looks

SHe stops, he approaches and then he slides down a trap door in a beautiful sequence

He gets laughed at

By…

This guy who keeps asking him trivial questions and swapping seats and slut shaming Bond

There we go it’s Tiger Tanaka

Tiger tells Bond ‘I LOVE YOU’ and then they’re golden

Bond tells Tiger that lox is the american name for smoked salmon and the technical name for liquid oxygen which makes rocket fuel

This is what he found in the safe

That was an easy visit

Aki is the girl who was running I think

Bond shows off how much he knows about alcohol by saying that he likes Sake served at the right temperature, which is 98.4 degrees fahrenheit, so there ya go

The photo from the safe is a boat and strip of land

The caption says Ning-Po and that the lady who took the photo has been liquidated, so

They just guessing at where the photo might be

Tiger’s very welcoming, he’s come a long way from shaming Bond

Bond then gets undressed by three or four bikini clad girls

Tiger number one rule is ‘never do anything for yourself when someone else can do it for you’

And rule number two is oh christ ‘men always come first, women second’

That’s also the rule in my bedroom, but in a different way

I don’t know about any of this

A real weird tangent about how Japanese girls are subservient

I don’t know a lot about the culture, lark, but this don’t feel good

Tiger says that English girls would never wash their men and that Moneypenny wouldn’t do it for Bond and then says that the Japanese lasses are enthralled with Bond’s chest hair cos Japanese guys all have ‘beautiful bare skin’

Bond fires back with ‘Japanese proverb say, bird never make nest in bare tree’

But Tiger dunks his head in the water before he can finish the proverb, then just bangs on about Henderson’s theory, rude

And huh

Back to the actual plot

They reckon someone else is launching shit from Japan, so Japan get the blame

Bond blames SPECTRE, but he always does

Tiger then gets right back to the real business, asking which girl Bond wants to massage him and he picks one that looks like an English woman trying to look Japanese

Then Aki takes over and kisses his ear

Then they make out

Aki says that she will enjoy serving under Bond

Back to work I guess

They managed to get very little story in that bit, so well done there

Bond is now Mr. Fisher and he’s in the Osata chemical place where he stole the safe things from before

So surely on camera

And he’s three and a half minutes early, the cheek of the man

The secretary watches him on a camera

And Bond has spied the camera

Top spy work

The boss is here in his chopper

Miss Brandt is with him

Bond is glaring at Brandt

She pops into the fridge where Bond deposited the big lad

But he ain’t there

Then the big boss wants champagne

At his desk, he x-rays Bond and sees his guns

He’s got a big mirror across the front of his desk

Miss Brandt comes up and says that Mr. Osata, the boss’ name, believes in a healthy chest, weird way to say that, but boobs I guess

That didn’t make a tonne of sense, but Bond’s outta there and now Osata wants him dead

Sense = none

Aki picks him up and they both survive a lame shooting attempt

But a chase is on now

A big helicopter flies over the assailants and picks them up

The guy at the wheel is still trying to drive

It drops them in the sea

Bond is heading to Kobe to check out the vessel from the picture and requests Little Nellie with her father from M

The vessel is owned by Osata Chemicals

When they get there, a forklift comes for them, but they really casually step out the way before they have to fight a load dock workers

He shoots one point blank

ANother one sneaks up on him with a bit of wood, but sneaks badly and gets shot like ten foot from Bond who casually jogs off

We get a really birds-eye shot of Bond beating up dock workers on a roof while running away

He takes a lot of jumping chances

Then gets bollocked with a wrench

Mr. Osata is now right there

Brandt takes him in and interrogates him

Ooo, she got dental stuff and is gonna torture him

Bond maes a bad move by flirting with her

It seems to work though

Bond then confesses that he’s a spy and bargains with Brandt

Brandt cuts him loose when Bond sez he’ll split money with her

He then uses the dental tools to cut her dress off

WHAT IS THIS

Flimsy, that’s what it is

RIGHT STOP

The two of them are flying off, let’s just skip over how they got outta there

Brandt then drops an explosive IN THE PLANE

TRAPS BOND IN WITH A PLANK OF WOOD

AND JUMPS OUT

WHYYYYY

OF course Bond breaks loose and saves the plane, landing himself safely

It then blows up as Bond gets away

HE’S BACK IN TOKYO WITH TIGER AND AKI

AHHHHHHHHHH

The coastline in the picture has been discovered

When trying to work out if the Ning-Po Osata ship stopped there, they say that they don’t know because it was dark, FUCKIN DARK, YOU’RE SECRET AGENTS

BUT THEY GET A CRYSTAL CLEAR PHOTO OF IT AS WELL

Little Nellie’s here and Bond’s off

It’s Q!

He don’t want none of Bond’s shit

What’s he got today

Little Nellie is a larl helicopter

Mines, rockets and guns intact

And he’s off to check out the island

Oh, Q was Little Nellie’s father, I see

He gets over the island but don’t see nothin

Sees a volcano, but nowt to report

He’s being followed

Here come the men in black

These bad lads are firing so much and cannot hit Bond with their guns, but a sky-high flamethrower does the trick for Jimmy

Someone finally hits him

Bond drops a mine on ‘em

In the sky

Blows up another one

And the last one

Not too thrilling, but it does the job

Russians launch a space shuttle

Chillin in space with some Russians

Somet’s sneakin on ‘em

It’s the same thing from the start and it eats them too, but with no horrifying space walker getting set adrift this time

The eating shuttle then settles back down to earth

The volcano Bond was looking at opens up and it’s a lair

The shuttle is gaan into it

The UN are meeting again and are confused about whodunnit

Brandt and Osata are in the volcano

A SPINNY CHAIR AND A WHITE CAT

Lots of drawn out sequences in this one

They take the Russian spaceship out of their eating one and remove the Russians

White cat man heads off to his quarters to chill

The volcano has some nifty transport, like the total recall train cars

Anyway, white cat man is in his office congratulating some dudes on their fine equipment

White cat man tells his guy Hans to feed the piranha, very good flex

Okay, so white cat man wants war between the US and Russia and the guys in his office aren’t paying him cos it hasn’t officially started yet

White cat man does not like that Brandt and Osata failed to kill Bond, who he reckons is alive, cos he’s the ONLY one who uses a Walther PPK, so white cat man feeds Brandt to his piranha and tells Osata to kill Bond

Back in Tiger’s HQ

Weird pacing here

Tiger tells Bond he has something better than commandos, ninjas

Then shows Bond his ninjas who’re all just screaming and running across a field

We see some ninja stuff

Then some ninjas maybe actually killing each other

Ninjas shooting scarecrows with guns

They keep saying that Bond smokes a lot of cigarettes, but he hasn’t had one in this film

Oh god, the plan is to turn Bond Japanese, have him become a quick ninja and then marry a local woman, with Tiger saying that she has a face like a pig, so Bond’s like ‘to hell with that’

My god, they actually meant, make Bond Japanese, he’s in like surgery and they’re putting eyepieces on him

All the surgeons laugh at his bad joke

He doesn’t even look Japanese

Just a funky toupee and a bit of a racist eye job

A guy sneaks in while he’s kissing and sleeping with Aki

The guy lowers a thread and drips poison down it

But Bond turns his head and AKI RESTS HER HEAD ON BOND

SHE DRINKS IT

She begins to struggle and Bond wakes up, shooting the guy

But Aki dies

How did that guy get past 100 ninjas

While Bond is training, one of the ninjas tries to stab him, so Bond stabs him instead, and it turns out that fella was a stranger, so another fecker just strolled right in and pretended to be a ninja

Bond now has to marry his pig-faced wife

Different older women come up the stairs and Bond’s just pouting like a petulant teen

Then he sees a young one and is all like phwoar get me a slice of that

Now watching the full marriage ceremony of this Japanese woman and this obviously Japanese man

Like, if they wanted more culture in this film, cool, but it don’t work if you rip the piss out of it as well

They’re on a boat now, goin to the volcano island

Four days left to find out wassup

Bond gets eyed-up as he walks onto the island, I can only assume for how un-Japanese he looks

He genuinely looked more Japanese when he was just Sean Connery

In fact Sean Connery 2020 looks more Japanese than this get-up

Bond’s new missus shows him around his new house

Bond tries to clever his way into bed with her, but she ain’t having it

While she sleeps, he just watches her, fanning himself

Tiger comes to see him

Oh no, the countdown has started early, it’s tonight

But Tiger and his men haven’t found anything weird on the island

Then Bond’s wife (literally don’t know her name) chirps up like ‘oh there was one weird thing, a mate went into a cave on her boat then she was dead when she came out’

DIDN’T WANNA BRING THIS UP BEFORE

So they go to the cave

After they sleep, cos no urgency of course

They get to this cave where they last hear A PERSON DIED and she’s got her tactical bikini on while he’s wearing fishing pants, they are not prepared

Bond smells gas so they run away

Phosgene gas apparently

They have to go to the top of the volcano now

They’re hiking and she’s still in her bikini

Kiss

Because she’s fallen in love with him after all the talk of death and gas

Helicopter approaches

And it handily lands in the volcano so Bond can see

The costume department must have had a day off here cos it’s jarring this

The Americans launch their shuttle

Even though they know there’s somet about that eats shuttles

Just wait til you figure it out lads

Unless you’re setting bait

It is now night time

They started this mission in the morning

They have been sat looking in this volcano all FECKIN day

The top opens

Bond tells his wife to run BACK DOWN THE VOLCANO AND GET TIGER

FOR FUCK’S SAKE

He’s now in some nice tactical gear actually

Costume department back

He’s got suction cups on his knees and hands

He’s in the lair though

The costume department really came through, I take it all back

Bond hides on one of the transport thingies in the lair while they prepare to steal the American shuttle that got launched

He then unveils himself in his sticky pyjamas

Bond frees the captured astronauts and they all beat up a guy each then get their clothes on

Bond’s wife is swimming to Tiger and a helicopter gets real close to her

Then it tries to shoot her

But she goes under so she’s fine

Bullets can’t go through water, stupid

Bond and the astronauts beat up a load of folk and steal clothes like it’s a hobby

90 mins to launch

Bond and an astronaut dress up as the astronauts

OH NO, white cat man wants the reserve astronaut (Bond) brought to his office

Bond fucked up while looking like an astronaut

OH MY GOD THE WHITE CAT MAN IS BLOFELD

He said it, he said You Only Live Twice, BINGO

Blofeld doing all the work though, nobody else would’ve noticed shit

THough he does go ahead with the plan which probably ain’t smart

Countdown to launch

Very slow launch

I get that it’s building suspense, but we know there’s a good astronaut on there

Bond’s wife is back with Tiger and his ninjas, all in very fetching ill-fitting sticky suits like Bond

So SPECTRE have launched a Russian ship to start the war

Blofeld immediately sees the ninjas and shoots at them

Horrible ninjas

Bond’s wife had time to throw a jacket on but is still wearing a bikini

Bond asks to smoke and they let him

It’s obviously the rocket cig and he kills one guy then jogs off

The ninjas slowly slip and slide their way in

A lot of them get killed immediately

One plants a massive bomb that opens the roof permanently

No offence to Tiger, but commandos would have been better

Blofeld is still very sure of this plan going through

Bond’s wife even dropped in, bikini and all

It’s big, it’s explodey and it’s fun to watch

One guy has a samurai sword while there’s guns and grenades, and he’s doing the best

Blofeld’s cat is freaking out, that ain’t fun

Blofeld shoots Osata because he failed

Blofeld then waits until he’s sitting comfortably to shoot Bond, but Tiger throws a star into his wrist, feckin him up, but he still slides away on the lovely transport

I don’t remember Blofeld being so weird

Bond and co hide behind barrels of flammable material to cover from gunfire and grenades

Lots of folk breaking into pirouettes when they get shot or blown up

Bond has to face off with Hans in Blofeld’s office now

He’s very strong

But Bond dumps him in the piranha pool, signing off with a cool ‘bon appetit’

Bond then gets to the control room and just kinda forces the controls to do what he wants, blowing up the bad spaceship that I was sure had an American astronaut on board

The Americans are all very chill about their enemy blowing up, just then getting up and walking off like their film at the cinema had finished

Blofeld flips his master switch that blows errything up

Oh, and the volcano sets off

Okay

It’s not a great look, but I get it

The ninjas escape with Bond and his wife and they get dropped lifeboats

WHO THE FUCK IS BOND’S WIFE

WHAT IS HER NAME

WHO IS SHE

Well they’re out now and I now have way more questions than I did five minutes ago

Bond and his wife make out saying that MI6’ll never find him, but an MI6 submarine gets under them and pulls them up

Moneypenny goes to get Bond

THAT’S IT

WHAT

Jesus mary

That was confusing

Whether I just missed stuff or what, but that confused me

There is a character in the credits called Kissy and I know there is a character called Kissy Suzuki, so I’m assuming that is Bond’s ‘wife’, but she was not named ONCE in the film, NOT ONCE

And they spell ‘through’ like ‘thru’ right at the end

It’s over and i don’t know

FIN

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Keep it streets ahead,

CLR