Fifty years ago this month, the fifth official James Bond film You Only Live Twice (yes, we carry the DVD) was released.
Based very loosely on the 1964 novel by Ian Fleming, YOLT had 007 (Sean Connery) trying to stop the SPECTRE organization from setting off World War III by hijacking American and Russian spacecraft. The bad guys have a secret rocket base hidden inside a volcano somewhere off the Sea of Japan, so Bond heads there.
The movie is goofy, entertaining fun, but it’s nowhere close to Fleming’s original dark (and dark-humored) novel. That novel had a revenge-seeking Bond go after archfoe Ernst Stravo Blofeld for the murder of Bond’s wife in the previous novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Aside from Blofeld’s Japanese castle headquarters (which is built over a volcano) and the various poisonous plants and wildlife surrounding said castle, the literary You Only Live Twice is played pretty straight.
The Japan Times published this interesting article on the movie, the novel, AND the backstory of what led Fleming to write the book. Check it out!
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