The sixties, peace, love, psychedelia and the peak of Bond mania, passed into history. The Beatles split up, Jim Morrison flat-lined in a bathtub and Vietnam was napalming the American dream to ashes in a controversial conflict that was fast starting to look like an epic fail.
The Bond movies had been spoofed, ripped-off, imitated to near death and creatively dismissed by many critics. Lazenby had jumped ship, convinced that Bond was "old hat" and had no future other than a rattling decline into celluloid oblivion. This smacks of the same type of miscalculation made by the Decca A&R exec who turned down signing The Beatles because "guitar bands are on the way out." New American cinema was starting to turn out some of the greatest genre defining movies ever made. The world was going all glam, glitter and shock-rock - Alice Cooper, Slade, New York Dolls, Sweet, David Bowie.
And the original Bond returns in a glitzy, camp, sci-fi extravaganza, that still manages to be the fourth highest grossing film in the US of it's year. Ahead of Dirty Harry, Carnal Knowledge, A Clockwork Orange, Klute, The Last Picture Show and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. No indicator of quality, but certainly of a sustained popularity.
DAF is a slyer, more-knowing, self-deprecating artifact of it's time than most give it credit for. In it's sweep, it satirises the absurdity of Howard Hughes and his eccentric reclusivity, the global obsession over the lunar landings (and accompanying conspiracy theory surrounding beliefs of their fakeness), the conquest of space, and pokes fun at the mecca of arbitrary gambling-addicts and those dazzled by the air-headed neon facade of sleazy, hollow glamour.
Beneath the veneer of such glamour, death lurks, dispensed by two gay contract killers in the pay of a criminal cross-dressing mastermind with a penchant for white cats and impersonating a reclusive kidnapped multi-millionaire industrialist. And making doubles of himself - for some reason. Are we beginning to grasp it's charm yet? There are so many continuity, plot and logic errors in DAF, that sooner or later one might suspect they are deliberate. Connery coasts through, nonchalant and laid-back and still irrefutably BOND. DAF, it's fair to say, lost the plot, in the tipsy haze of a high-tech Rat Pack hangover. But, as a kid I loved it unconditionally, and I still think it's a blast today. OK, it may not have aged as well as some of it's counterparts from the sixties and seventies, but at the time and in the climate it was released, the escapism it provided and the way in which it integrated/resonated with the mood and flavour of that time and climate, made it stellar entertainment. There's something about it's inherent sincerity and lack of forced, contrived, self-conscious cynicism that appeals.
There are some crackling one-liners and dialogue, a ferociously brutal unarmed combat episode in a lift, an eye-melting pink tie, bizarre vehicle chases and the most unconvincing toupee a leading actor ever wore up to that point. It had a bizarre life of it's own.
Oh, did I mention Connery was back as Bond? I'd pay the price of admission for that fact alone. Wouldn't you?
The Bond movies had been spoofed, ripped-off, imitated to near death and creatively dismissed by many critics. Lazenby had jumped ship, convinced that Bond was "old hat" and had no future other than a rattling decline into celluloid oblivion. This smacks of the same type of miscalculation made by the Decca A&R exec who turned down signing The Beatles because "guitar bands are on the way out." New American cinema was starting to turn out some of the greatest genre defining movies ever made. The world was going all glam, glitter and shock-rock - Alice Cooper, Slade, New York Dolls, Sweet, David Bowie.
And the original Bond returns in a glitzy, camp, sci-fi extravaganza, that still manages to be the fourth highest grossing film in the US of it's year. Ahead of Dirty Harry, Carnal Knowledge, A Clockwork Orange, Klute, The Last Picture Show and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. No indicator of quality, but certainly of a sustained popularity.
DAF is a slyer, more-knowing, self-deprecating artifact of it's time than most give it credit for. In it's sweep, it satirises the absurdity of Howard Hughes and his eccentric reclusivity, the global obsession over the lunar landings (and accompanying conspiracy theory surrounding beliefs of their fakeness), the conquest of space, and pokes fun at the mecca of arbitrary gambling-addicts and those dazzled by the air-headed neon facade of sleazy, hollow glamour.
Beneath the veneer of such glamour, death lurks, dispensed by two gay contract killers in the pay of a criminal cross-dressing mastermind with a penchant for white cats and impersonating a reclusive kidnapped multi-millionaire industrialist. And making doubles of himself - for some reason. Are we beginning to grasp it's charm yet? There are so many continuity, plot and logic errors in DAF, that sooner or later one might suspect they are deliberate. Connery coasts through, nonchalant and laid-back and still irrefutably BOND. DAF, it's fair to say, lost the plot, in the tipsy haze of a high-tech Rat Pack hangover. But, as a kid I loved it unconditionally, and I still think it's a blast today. OK, it may not have aged as well as some of it's counterparts from the sixties and seventies, but at the time and in the climate it was released, the escapism it provided and the way in which it integrated/resonated with the mood and flavour of that time and climate, made it stellar entertainment. There's something about it's inherent sincerity and lack of forced, contrived, self-conscious cynicism that appeals.
There are some crackling one-liners and dialogue, a ferociously brutal unarmed combat episode in a lift, an eye-melting pink tie, bizarre vehicle chases and the most unconvincing toupee a leading actor ever wore up to that point. It had a bizarre life of it's own.
Oh, did I mention Connery was back as Bond? I'd pay the price of admission for that fact alone. Wouldn't you?