With Connery returning, so does the attitude of where the series left off when he was previously Bond making the serious, relatively faithful adaptation of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" an anomaly (never mind that Connery's first four films before "You Only Live Twice" were also somewhat faithful to Fleming's novels or at least more faithful than the series was becoming). Connery brings with him an amped up bag of camp, wit, gadgets, silliness and charming sex appeal all while the series is struggling to find it's footing yet again with a change of leading man to someone who is starting to look a bit old for the role.
This is the third and last time we will see Blofeld on screen (at least his face) and this time he's played by Charles Gray (best known to today's audiences as The Narrator of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" -- he seems to have no neck in this film either). Gray is better than Pleasance, but not as good as Savalas. He's got the charm, but very little of the brutality & creepiness. Jill St. John is adequate as Tiffany Case. She varies between strong-willed and ditz at the drop of a dime. We get a new Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) who is about as memorable as all the prior Felix's (that four in seven films for those keeping score at home) as he has little to do but play Zeppo to Bond's Groucho (literally -- Bond seems to keep tossing one liners at him).
The plot involves Blofeld using a kidnapped Howard Hughes-ish businessman (named Willard Whyte and played by "Sausage King" Jimmy Dean) to threaten the world with a giant diamond laser on a satellite. I'm pretty sure this is where the "Austin Powers" movies stole all their ideas from. Bond pretty much stumbles into this story as the film opens with him still hunting Blofeld (presumably for the murder of Tracey in the previous film...but he goes about it pretty casually for a man bent on revenge for the death of his wife). The action scenes are exciting in that late 60s/early 70s way before "The French Connection" hit the screen (even though it came out two months earlier). Yet, the film is saved from being complete bottom of the barrel Bond by an exciting John Barry score, a fun title song sung by Shirley Bassey and the presence of Connery...which would be his last in the EON Bond series...
Connery was replaced by Roger Moore. Moore was 46 at the time he started. Connery was 41 at the time he stopped. You do the math. Moore does a decent job, but the tone of the series continues down the road of gadgets and comedy. We also get the continued trend of taking Fleming's title and a few characters and chucking the plot of the novel out the window.
Moore's first outing is bland at best. Instead of dealing with megalomaniacs with grand plans of world domination, we're back to the smaller plans like Goldfinger's. A gangster known as Mr. Big wants to give away free heroin to put the mafia out of the drug business and then jack up his own prices. He's being helped by the dictator of the island of San Monique where the drugs are manufactured. All of this is wrapped up in the cliches of the blaxploitation era of the 1970s with a touch of Voodoo thrown in for good measure.
For the first time since he appeared in "From Russia With Love", Desmond Llewelyn's Q is missing from the series. So Moneypenny not only gets whatever dialogue he would have had to introduce the gadgets, she does it at Bond's apartment (where she & M show up at the wee hours of the morning -- is it normal for the head of the British Secret Service to personally go to the houses of his agents to give them new missions). The first scene is the first in a series of silly things that derail the film. We get an overly long boat chase with one or two good stunts across the bayous of Louisiana. This scene also adds the character of Sheriff J.W. Pepper to the series played by Clifton James (who would pretty much play the same character in "Silver Streak" and "Superman II"). Pepper is a walking stereotype that sticks out like a sore thumb.
While the film's pace is all over the place, what works best are the villains and their voodoo aspect. Yaphet Kotto is pretty imposing as both Mr. Big and Kananga. Julius Harris' Tee Hee is a memorable henchman almost on the level of Oddjob. Geoffrey Holder brings a creepy air of the weird and the strange as Baron Samedi (is he real or a spirit or what). Jane Seymour makes her big screen debut as the fortune telling Solitaire who is of course seduced by Bond (with many more witticisms from Moore than Connery ever had). Kananga's plot makes sense (for the 1970s), but it unravels once we get to his secret lair in the last ten minutes of the film (where he gets what has to be the most ridiculous death in a Bond film ever).
CIA Agent Felix Leiter shows up again and we get the fifth actor in the role in eight films. David Hedison (best known for playing the title role in "The Fly" in 1958) doesn't bring anything new to the part, but will later on get the recognition of being the only actor to play the role twice (before the Daniel Craig reboot). The character continues to remain little more than a prop in the films to get Bond from point A to point B and get him out of trouble with American authorities.
This is not a good start to Moore's tenure. Most of the film is boring, bland and silly. What does work is barely there. While Fleming's novel was filled with racist language that would have been offensive in the 1970s, there was probably more to use since the novel ultimately works better than the film (and it was only Fleming's second novel -- still would love to see Daniel Craig and company tackle this one in the same way they did "Casino Royale" modernize it, lose the racist stuff and give Jeffrey Wright more to do as Felix and you'd have a cracking good film). Unfortunately, Moore's Bond (and the series as a whole) was about to get worse before getting better...
Be seeing you.
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