Rating: 15/20
Plot: Annie's adoptive father is at it again, this time putting out an advertisement for "Hot Chicks with Allergies" in order to create an army of hypnotized women to help him kill everybody. James Bond is sent to stop him.
I'm not exactly a James Bond expert, but I'm pretty sure George Lazenby is universally considered the best 007. This entry suffers a bit from some dated special effects and general silliness, both exemplified in some exciting skiing scenes featuring obvious blue screens and a plummeting dummy. Still, they're thrilling scenes. There's also a pretty bitchin' icy car chase. Aside from some effects, this also suffers from a few cliches, including the whole bad-guy-giving-away-all-his-plans-and-refusing-to-instantly-dispose-of-the-good-guy thing. You know, like in almost every episode of the Batman television show. But I imagine people don't really watch James Bond movies for the realism. This movie does have some nice stylistic touches--there's a whistling midget (what they were called back in '69), some cool colors and the CASINO reflected in a pool near the beginning, great music enhancing beach fisticuffs, dizzying jump cuts and weird angles and close-ups during other brawling scenes, and one great death featuring pink snow that might rival Fargo's woodchipper scene. You even get to see chunks if you're into that sort of thing. Of course, the subsequent "He had lots of guts" is the kind of brilliantly stupid line that makes you want to high-five somebody. And James Bond movies really need a director who knows how to properly display a woman, and Peter Hunt does a good job with showing us Blofield's brainwashed beauties. I hope that doesn't sound too chauvinistic. I really do like Lazenby. There's a bit of meta-humor with a line about "the other guy," and I like how he steals a Playboy. He's suave, and the dialogue's got all those double entendre you'd normally expect along with some fun dramatic irony. The Alpine setting is cool, and Savalas's Blofied, seemingly not all that popular, is a worthy adversary up until the end when a chase scene gets way too stupid. I think I might just like Savalas because of the way he smokes his cigarette here. I also liked how Blofield was using cassettes to brainwash the women. It just seemed so quaint--"Do you remember when you were allergic to chickens?" I can imagine Savalas saying, "Is that really what you want me to read here?" I'm really not sure how I feel about the wedding and honeymoon that follows, a marriage that is only slightly longer than a Kardashian's. It humanizes the character a bit, but it all seems so cheap.
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