James Bond Ranked - George Lazenby

Okay, it’s obviously a joke to claim that this is a ranking of George Lazenby’s Bond films, but I have a theme I’m going with here, so the Lazenby and Dalton entries are going to be on the short side. Because of this, Lazenby’s sole effort is going to get more attention from me than any other Bond film as I work through my ranking of each Bond actor’s tenure. 

1.  On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

It’s easy to hate this one for one single moment: “This never happens to the other fellow.” That line, delivered directly to the camera near the beginning of the film, nearly ruined the entire movie for me. It took the rest of the very solid movie to make up for that 4th wall breaking nonsense. 

I can see why the filmmakers thought they could get away with it; this is the series, after all, that had already featured jet-packs, crotch lasers, volcano lairs, and piranhas. It’s not exactly Shakespeare. It annoys me because they didn’t follow through with it. After that line, they make a point to make it clear this is still the same James Bond, despite the actor change. Moneypenny calls him the “same old James,” and there’s a scene in his office (I didn’t even know Bond actually had an office; I thought he just dropped in from time to time to talk shit to M, annoy Q, and flirt with Moneypenny) in which he reminisces about his past adventures while cleaning out his desk. Make all the jokes you want, if you’re going to make it clear that this is actually a different James Bond. If he’s the same Bond, however, then keep your cheeky fucking jokes on the cutting room floor.

Perhaps this is an overreaction to a simple joke, but On Her Majesty’s Secret Service strives to be so serious that it makes the joke stick out as a strange oddity rather than a little bit of Bond fun. This is the film that has Bond get married only for his new wife to be killed minutes after the wedding. If this had been more like You Only Live Twice, that joke wouldn’t have felt so out of place. 

The serious nature of the film does make you (almost) forget the joke by the end. Lazenby’s Bond is much more driven than Connery. With Connery, it felt like he was always trying to have a good time and saving the world just got in his way. Here, it’s the opposite. 

Who knows what Lazenby would have been like in future movies, but since he called it quits with this one, I’ll always think of him as the serious Bond. Perhaps that’s for the best, because it’s doubtful the filmmakers would stick with the serious tone (even the super serious Craig run had the goofy Spectre). That would have forced Lazenby to try to be Connery, and that would have been a mistake. In fact, the moments in which Lazenby tries to be funny are the weakest moments. When he’s brooding over Tracy’s kidnapping, he’s at his best.

Time has been kind to Lazenby and this film overall, and I understand why. It’s one of the better Bond films both in tone and scope (the avalanche and assault on Blofeld’s compound are great, despite the terrible insert shots of the actors skiing in front of a screen). Lazenby had the thankless job of following Sean Connery. Today, we take for granted that the Bond role will always continue with a new actor. Sure, people still bitch about the new guy, but they at least accept that it was going to happen. WIth Lazenby, it seemed like a mistake at the time since Connery came back to the role in the next film. That wouldn’t happen now. People would know the role had changed hands, and that was that. 

But Connery did come back, and while the film and Lazenby are given plenty of credit today, it’s still an oddity in the series. Who knows what might have been? As it stands, I can at least claim this with certainty: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is George Lazenby’s best Bond film.

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

The sped up fight scenes in these early movies just suck.

The reference to “the other fellow” and the look directly into the camera make me want to hate this movie.

It just makes no sense. He’s not playing a new 007. He’s playing James Bond. He is the “other fellow.” I get that they felt the need to address the fact that Sean Connery was now George Lazenby, but there are better, subtler ways of doing it. Just have Moneypenny or Q say something about him looking different or something. Anything but a 4th wall breaking wink to the camera.

And when he does see Moneypenny, she says, “Same old James!” What the fuck?

What the title sequence lacks in vocals it makes up for in shadow nipples.

Draco is a strange father. “Please, Mr. Bond, have sex with my daughter until she loves you!”

That’s quite the handy device Bond uses in the lawyer’s office: a portable safe cracker / copy machine. You wouldn’t think you’d need those two things at the same time all that often, but you’d be surprised.

How many mental patients is Bond going to fuck in this one?

Also, the insane horniness is usually fine, but since this one is half a love story, it’s a bummer.

“He had lots of guts!” I’m typically not a fan of these silly one-liners, but this one is fine with me since it’s so dark. Yeah, all of these little zingers are told over a dead body, but somehow making a joke after a dude is turned to mush by an industrial strength snow blower is more hardcore.

And there’s father of the year Draco with a powerful right cross to knock his daughter out cold.

It’s wild for a Bond movie to have a wedding at the end.

And to see all the spy folk at a wedding is so strange. M and Draco are talking to each other like they play on opposing baseball teams rather than opposing sides of the law. Crazy.

You know Moneypenny was happy when she found out about Tracy’s death.

Hats off to this film for having a darker ending for Bond than even No Time to Die, you know, which ends with him being dead.

James Bond Ranked - Sean Connery

This started, as do most of my articles these days, with a podcast. The Rewatchables covered Casino Royale a while back, so I rewatched it to listen to that episode. It had been a while, and I loved it even more than I thought I did. This made me want to revisit Quantum of Solace to see if I still hated it (I do). Then I thought, “Fuck it, I’ll watch all of the Daniel Craig Bond movies.” This helped me to enjoy No Time to Die so much more this time around, since the Craig Bond movies are much more serialized than any other actor’s tenure. Anyway, finished with that, and decided to go back to the beginning and work my way through every one of these movies.

The first thing that surprised me was how little I had actually seen of the series. I consider myself a Bond fan, but the only tenures I’ve seen in their entirety are Brosnan and Craig. Before this, I had only seen two of the Connery movies (Dr. No and Goldfinger), and that’s it before Brosnan. I had not seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, nor had I watched a single Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton film. So this was mainly new territory for me, and I suppose I’ll find out how true a fan I am of this series. 

Before I get to the ranking, I wanted to get into my overall thoughts on Connery as Bond. Even though his tenure ended before my birth, I always considered him THE James Bond. Everyone else is putting their own stamp on the character, but he’s the original. Maybe this is why I never watched all his films. I watched a couple and thought they were all like that. Imagine my surprise when I ended up thinking some of these kind of suck. Despite this, I just like seeing Connery in the role. While I don’t want to watch most of these ever again, I wouldn’t mind them as background noise because there’s a comforting quality to them. I can’t say that about the Craig movies, even though I like them more. Connery brought something to the role that made me just want to hang out with him, and I can’t say that about the rest of the crew. 

Finally, I put Never Say Never Again on here. I know it’s not canon, but it is Sean Connery playing James Bond so I’m including it.

1. From Russia with Love

This is generally cited as the prototypical Bond film and rightfully so. It established everything I love about the series: location shooting (this movie made me start Googling traveling to Istanbul, a trip I have neither the time nor money to take), Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.R.E., Q and the gadgets, etc. It further established Connery in the role. It featured a truly great villain in Robert Shaw’s Red Grant, and the train fight is a series standout. The story moves quickly and is easy to follow, which is possibly the most important aspect in a series that can get convoluted with its villain’s plans. Put simply, this is what I think of when I think “Classic Bond,” which makes it my favorite Connery entry.

2. Goldfinger

When I first planned this, I assumed Goldfinger would be first, and it would be more about figuring out the order for the rest. From Russia with Love surprised me, but Goldfinger is still an extremely close second. This continues my idea of a classic Bond film, and it features my favorite theme by far. I don’t actually care for the lyrics of the title song, but every time the music kicks in during the film, it turns boring moments into classic moments. And it has some all-time characters in Goldfinger, Odd Job, and Pussy Galore. Maybe not characters, but at least character names.

3. You Only Live Twice

This is where we get into Austin Powers territory, and I love it. By far the goofiest entry, what with the volcano lair, ninja school, evil cat stroking, piranhas, rocket guns, Donald Pleasance, and a cigarette gun. I can see why people would hate this or find it too silly, but this is what I want from at least one film in every Bond actor’s tenure (this is why I like Spectre, even though it’s generally considered one of the worst movies in the series). I just wish Connery had called it quits for good after this. It would have been such a high note to go out on, instead of his two unnecessary and forgettable comebacks. 

4. Dr. No

Honestly, I appreciate this one just to revisit and compare it to what the series has become vs. how it started. My favorite element to compare: villain plans. The Craig movies kept introducing villains higher up the food chain that have been orchestrating decades-long plans seemingly just to get to Bond. Not even to kill him, but to destroy his soul. Part of Dr. No’s plan in this film is to give a henchman a big spider, which the henchman puts in Bond’s bed. Bond wakes up and eventually kills it with his shoe. I love the new films, but I miss simple shit like, “Take this big spider and put it in Bond’s hotel room. Maybe it’ll bite him. Fuck it.”

5. Diamonds Are Forever

You could actually shuffle these bottom three because they have one thing in common: they’re boring. You would think sending Bond to Vegas would make for some of the funnest shit in the series, but this really did not need to take place there. I just couldn’t get into the diamond smuggling plot, and bringing Blofeld back yet again at the end was just tiresome. This was Connery’s first return to the series, and it not only completely did away any lasting goodwill from the far superior On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it just seemed like he wasn’t having fun in the role any longer. 

6. Never Say Never Again

This is just a rights-battle remake of Thunderball that was made…out of spite? I don’t feel like looking any further into the behind-the-scenes stuff because this movie didn’t work for me at all. Aside from commenting on Connery’s age, nothing interesting is done with the fact that a 50+ year-old man is doing silly spy shit (to be fair, the canon series at the time was in the same boat with the even older Roger Moore). I guess I like it a little more than Thunderball because there are slightly fewer underwater sequences. But in the place of that is a truly baffling video game scene in the casino, which is there because this was made in the 80s? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

7. Thunderball

I didn’t know this until I watched Thunderball, but apparently I fucking despise underwater scenes. They just bring this movie to a screeching halt every time. There’s one extended sequence in which henchmen recover some warheads and then cover a plane with a tarp, and we are shown every single moment of this. Maddening. Maybe I’m being too harsh on this one, but when I try to think about any other element of this film, all I can remember are those boring underwater scenes. Oh wait, I also remember that the movie starts with a stupid jetpack, and then Bond spends way too long at a health spa. Yeah, fuck this movie.

Evil Dead - Ranked

Evil Dead Rise is streaming on Max right now, so I decided to revisit the entire series. This is a series that I love, but I don’t know exactly what I want from it. As you’ll see with the rankings, I dig both the horror and comedic elements, but other elements factor into my overall enjoyment. One thing is for sure, nothing will ever top the Rami/Campbell entries. The two newer entries are both solid, but due to nostalgia or whatever, there’s nothing there that can touch what Raimi and Campbell did with the original trilogy. But here’s my ranking anyway.

1.  The Evil Dead  

This is the most straight-up horror entry that Raimi made, and it always surprises me how much more I like this one compared to the more comedic films. I consider myself mainly a fan of the series for Campbell’s goofy performance in the second and third film, so this one, in which he’s only funny because he’s so cowardly, surprises me every time I watch it. I chalk it up to the low budget aesthetics of it all. I love the slow drive up to the best cabin in cinematic horror history. When it comes to horror, a lower budget always works for me. It just makes it all feel that much more real. Raimi is still doing amazing things with the camera and special effects despite the low budget, but it all feels real. And that’s what keeps this at the top of my list after every rewatch. Much like the characters stumbling across the Necronomicon, this film at times feels like found footage, which is what sets it apart for me.

2. Army of Darkness

This was the first film in the series I watched years ago, which is probably why I like goofy Ash so much. It’s crazy that this film went from a cabin in the woods to Medieval times, but the film went from horror to straight up slapstick comedy, so why not? Bruce Campbell is at his career best here, and it really sucks that this is the end of his run in the films (sorry, but I just couldn’t get into Ash vs Evil Dead). It would have been great if he and Raimi could have come back every couple of years and sent Ash into a different time period. Oh well. We at least got this wonderful nonsense. I’ll never get tired of hearing “It’s a trick; get an ax,” or seeing a skeleton army storming a castle.  

3. Evil Dead II

This should be my favorite entry in the series because it’s the perfect blend of horror and comedy. It’s the bridge that made Army of Darkness possible. But I just like the other two movies a little bit more. That’s it. This is simply about personal preference because if this is about the most solid, well-made film of the original trilogy, then it’s this one, hands down. But when I go to revisit this series, which I tend to do every year, I always watch The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness before I watch this one. 

4. Evil Dead Rise

The latest entry in the series is a lot of gory fun, though it’s still too focused on horror for my taste. The laughs here come not from a wise-cracking hero, but from reactions to the gross shit happening throughout (eyeball popping, cheese grater, glass chewing, etc.). There’s plenty to enjoy here, and I like how it mentions three books existing making it possible for another completely separate story to take place. I had a lot of fun with it, but it’s lacking two things that keep it from being great: Sam Raimi directing and Bruce Campbell starring.

5. Evil Dead

This one decided to almost completely cut out the comedy (aside from laughing at how fucking brutal it can get at times) and went hard with the horror. It worked, as this is easily the hardest film in the series to watch (licking the fucking box cutter, anyone?). Because of that, it’s my least favorite. I like revisiting these movies, and I don’t want to watch this one again. That makes it a good horror film, but it also makes it my least favorite Evil Dead movie.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done - "Razzle Dazzle Them."

There’s no rhyme or reason for why I write about certain movies right now. I have plenty of articles planned, but even those are poorly timed. For instance, I’m currently working through every single James Bond movie and plan on ranking each Bond actor’s set of films. But why now? Craig ended his run over nearly two years ago, and who knows when the next Bond will be announced? But it’s what I’m doing because I watched Casino Royale a few weeks ago, and I decided to just keep going. For this article, it was because I came across a YouTube video of Michael Shannon picking out movies from the Criterion Collection’s closet. Anyway, I just felt the need to kind of explain why I write about some of this stuff at seemingly random times.

“Razzle Dazzle Them.”

I first noticed Michael Shannon in Tigerland, and something about the edge in his voice and the intensity of his face has stuck with me ever since. So when I found out he was going to be the star of a Werner Herzog movie, I was very excited. This happened when my love of Herzog was at its apex. I had just gotten into his Kinski movies, and I loved Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (which Shannon also had a small part in). In other words, My Son, My Son came out at the perfect time for me. And the plot, based on the true story of a mentally unstable man who killed his mother with a sword after becoming obsessed with a play (Orestes) he was in, seemed perfect for Shannon’s intensity and Herzog’s dark sense of humor.

This is very much Herzog’s film, but Shannon is the main draw for me. Like most people aware of Shannon, I am a fan of his darker, angrier roles. While he gets to yell all kinds of crazy shit in this movie, it’s actually the more quiet, strange moments that are lasting. Herzog decides a couple times in the film to just bring things to halt and have the characters just exist in the scene, sometimes staring into the camera. It makes no sense, but it’s perfect somehow because Michael Shannon simply staring at you through the screen is effective.

Shannon’s entire performance is surprisingly understated despite the loud moments of the film. Yes, he yells and pivots wildly from emotion to emotion at times. But the moments of his performance that stick with you are when he’s staring off into space, trying to work out what is happening in his head. Playing crazy can be an easy performance for many actors the same way playing a villain can be: you get to be loud and bold. Nuance can go out the window. But a truly great insane performance will feature both. 

As much as I would like to see Michael Shannon marching around a house jabbering away while he holds two flamingos hostage (that is actually a major portion of this movie), it’s the quiet moments with Shannon trying to work out his insanity that stick with me. 

Not as Weird as You’d Think, but Still Pretty Fuckin’ Weird

The true story of this film is enough to make it weird, but when Werner Herzog became attached, this truly became a weird project. Then it became a “David Lynch Presents” film, and my weird expectations went through the roof. But when faced with the crazy possibilities of a Herzog/Lynch team-up for a true story of matricide, the actual project ended up being shockingly coherent.

First off, this is much more faithful to the true story than you might expect, so there is a little devotion to what actually happened. Second, and more importantly, David Lynch was only involved in helping finance the film; he didn’t write anything, and he was never on set. 

I was not disappointed by the lack of Lynch. I like some Lynch, but I’m a bigger fan of Herzog. And it’s not like Herzog has ever been labeled as a normal filmmaker. He’s all the weird I need for a film like this.

Herzog definitely brings some oddness to the film. There are the aforementioned flamingos, and most of Shannon’s dialogue is classic “crazy guy” stuff. Then there are the pauses in which the characters either freeze or just stand there staring at the camera. I found it all to be effective rather than just weird for weird’s sake, however. 

More important than bringing weirdness to the film, Herzog brings his usual dark humor to the project. This is tricky since this is based on a real murder, and it’s in poor taste to make light of that. Thankfully, the humor has nothing to do with the murder. Most of it is just the result of a much needed relief to Shannon’s insane intensity. You need to be able to laugh at some of this stuff or the tension would make it unwatchable. A lot of the humor comes from the idiosyncrasies of Shannon’s performance. But the comedic heavy lifting falls on Dafoe and Michael Peña as the detectives responding to the murder. 

They feel like they’re in a different movie that collided with this one. Dafoe’s straightforward handling of all the crazy shit going on makes for some funny moments. And Peña plays an overzealous rookie who tries multiple times to do some stupid shit, like lacing a pizza with sleeping pills or offering himself up as a hostage, and he gets shut down immediately. 

If you don’t like this movie (first off, how and why the fuck did you find this article?), then it probably seems like I’m trying to make excuses to like this movie. Because, typically, when two characters seem to be in a different movie than the main character, that would be a problem. But I sincerely believe that Herzog is going for some absurdity of life shit here, and I find it more funny than baffling. 

I like weird movies as much as anyone (and I know it’s lazy to keep referring to this film, and Herzog and Lynch films in general, as “weird,” but I am lazy, so there), but there has to be some enjoyment involved, as well. When David Lynch goes all in, like with Inland Empire, it’s just not for me. It’s too inaccessible. So the “David Lynch Presents” being a bit of a misrepresentation was a relief to me, while I imagine others were disappointed that the movie was surprisingly straightforward. But I prefer Werner Herzog’s type of weird, and there’s plenty of it in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

“And Brad Dourif as Uncle Ted” is one of my favorite “And”s in recent memory.

Don’t know why, but a disgruntled Michael Shannon sitting at a drum set he refuses to play makes me laugh.

“He’s claiming his name is Farouk. He shouts about God and tosses oatmeal at us.”

I’m not sure any actor can transition from rage to gentleness in the same scene as convincingly as Shannon.

“This Jell-O looks hideous.”

If you only watch one movie in which an ostrich tries to eat Udo Kier’s glasses, make it this one.

No way would I drive Michael Shannon around while he’s holding a fucking sword and quoting the Bible.

It’s nice that the movie has a few moments when the actors stand still, sometimes looking directly into the camera, that give you a chance to decide if you want to keep watching this wacky shit.

So Brad Dourif had a plan: he would buy a tiny horse (think Lil’ Sebastian from Parks and Rec), which a little person would ride, and his giant chicken, Willard, would chase the horse around the biggest tree in the world. This was going to be a commercial, though Dourif doesn’t know for what, but it would make a “lot of money.” I watch a lot of weird shit, so I’m pretty used to the idea that creative people come up with some nonsensical shit. But this is one of those rare moments that make me stop and wonder, “How the fuck did someone actually come up with this scene?”

According to Wikipedia, Herzog and Shannon went to China to film a scene in a market without permits, and the scene has nothing to do with the story aside from it being a scene in which Shannon’s character feels uneasy. This is the kind of nonsense that makes me love Herzog.

IMDb claims Dave Bautista is one of the SWAT guys at the end, but I couldn’t spot him.