006 3/4

You Only Live Twice. Ever since his cinema debut in 1962, James Bond has been the subject of cult and caricature, spoof and spectacular. Now, five films later, he is the victim of the same misfortune that once befell Frankenstein: there have been so many flamboyant imitations that the original looks like a copy.

As in the predecessors, James Bond (Sean Connery) is once again the Fleming fantasy of the British savior. This time he comes to rescue Russia and the U.S., which teeter helplessly on the brink of war. Someone, it develops, has been hijacking both countries' space capsules as they orbit the earth, spiriting them away to places unknown. Both countries accuse each other, unaware that Peking and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. are behind it all. Naturally, the only one who can help is 007, who interrupts a love scene in Hong Kong with his Chinese mistress for the tiresome task of saving the world once more. Conveniently, the assignment takes him only as far as Japan, which gives the camera crews a chance to show a travelogue of Bond orienting himself by watching sumo wrestlers, wandering the neon-bright streets of Tokyo, climbing the green slopes of a volcano as he tracks a supervillain to his lair.

The previous Bond films have so far grossed $125 million with a surefire combination of ingredients: You Only Live Twice is the mixture as before. As always, Bond is surrounded by a scare'em harem, this time peach-skinned, almond-eyed Japanese dishes. There is the mandatory hardware and gadgetry show, featuring a mini-helicopter equipped with such optional extras as flamethrowers and air-to-air missiles. There is the ultimate confrontation with the Evil Genius, represented by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance), an asexual monster with shaved head, hideous scar and foreign accent.

Bond himself seems to be weakening: for the first time he needs outside help to finish the job. After finding the cache of stolen rockets in the defunct volcano, he is captured. As Blofeld prepares to annihilate him, hundreds of Japanese commandos--the Eastern equivalent of the U.S. cavalry--come to the rescue. At the finale, the volcano blows its stack. Alas, the effects are ineffective. The outer-space sequences would be more appropriate in a grade school educational short entitled Our Amazing Universe, and the volcanic climax is a series of clumsy process shots that no one took the trouble to fix.

Even Connery seems uncomfortable and fatigued, as if he meant it when he said that this would be his last Bond film. It may just be an off year for 007; it may be that he has received too much ribbing from Casino Royale (TIME, May 12). But it could also be that the monumental Bond issue is at long last beginning to deflate.

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