Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6260 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-07-17
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Greek, Dutch, Hindi, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, English, Swedish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 112 minutes

Special Features
THE ULTIMATE EDITION CONTAINS: NEVER BEFORE RELEASED ON DVD: DECLASSIFIED: MI6 VAULT Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond • Whicker’s World - Highlights From 1967 BBC Documentary • On Location With Ken Adam 007 MISSION CONTROL Interactive Guide Into the World of You Only Live Twice THE COMPLETE SPECIAL FEATURES LIBRARY: MISSION DOSSIER Audio Commentary Featuring Director Lewis Gilbert and Members of the Cast and Crew • Inside You Only Live Twice • Silhouettes: The James Bond Titles Plane Crash: Animated Storyboard Sequence MINISTRY OF PROPAGANDA Original Trailers, Photo Gallery, TV Spot & Radio Communications

Synopsis
With the Soviet Union and the United States blaming each other for mysteriously missing space capsules, nuclear warfare between the two superpowers seems imminent. However, Her Majesty's Secret Service suspects the rockets are being held in the Sea of Japan and assigns James Bond to fake his death in order to go undercover. Believed to be dead by the public at large, Bond travels to Japan to track down the missing U.S. and Russian space capsules. Racing against the nuclear clock, 007 discovers that the maniacal Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), the luscious Helga Brandt (Karin Dor), and their terrorist organisation SPECTRE have planned to incite a full-scale global war. With the help of Japanese agents Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama), Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba), and a slew of ninjas, Bond must once again save the world from nuclear obliteration. For his first directorial take on a Bond movie, Lewis Gilbert draws on storytelling techniques from his previous films ALFIE and THE 7TH DAWN (quick cuts, long aerial pans), rendering Roald Dahl's clever script with a fluidity not seen in previous 007 films.

Customer Reviews

Bond runs riot in Japan
You Only Live Twice has all the classic Bond ingredients that you would come to expect from a 007 movie: exotic locations, a deranged madman with a monorail (and a big cat here), gadgets, great music and a plot that involves averting World War 3.

The action is fast-paced and the bodycount is high. Interesting aspects include Bond turning Japanese, getting married (or at least pretending to), Little Nellie (the famous, lethal flying machine that Q packed into two suitcases) and help from the SIS (the Japanese equivalent of the CIA).

On the downside, the spaceship scenes now look so primitive that they're almost akin to Thunderbirds material, but hey, this was 1967 and I'm sure the producers did their best with the technology that was available at the time.

You Only Live Twice is classic Bond and the extra features make this a great package for the price. The feature on Maurice Binder, who created the famous gun barrel sequence and the credit sequences to a large number of Bond pics was particularly interesting.

The biggest and best of the special effects show Bonds
Faced with box-office rivalry from the spoof Casino Royale the same year, EON put aside their plans to follow Thunderball with OHMSS and pulled out all the stops to promise the biggest and best-paced Bond to date. While they failed to match the phenomenal success of Thunderball - still the biggest ticket seller in the series' history by a huge margin - this certainly is the best of the special effects show Bonds, and for many it's scarred, bald, Persian-cat stroking super-villain ensconced in his hollowed-out volcano lair plotting to start a world war is the quintessential Bond movie. Departing from Ian Fleming's novel in all but name and boasting a plot the producers were so taken with that they've used it at least twice since The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both also directed by Lewis Gilbert), but by 1967 the series was already beginning to feed off itself - the pre-title sequence where Bond is killed is more or less borrowed from From Russia With Love.

After years as an offscreen presence voiced by Eric Pohlman, S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s Ernst Stavro Blofeld finally makes his first on-screen appearance in the form of Donald Pleasance (causing that awkward continuity problem in the subsequent OHMSS where he fails to recognise Bond), with Charles Gray preceding his turn in the role on the side of the angels as our man in Japan, getting his vodka from the doorman at the Russian embassy ("among OTHER things"). This time the villains work for a large Japanese industrial company to cash-in on the Connery films' popularity in the Japanese market while offering some colorful locations, but action, not scenery, is the order of the day here. The action scenes themselves are terrific and often imaginatively shot (as with the long overhead helicopter shot in the fight at Kobe Docks) and the production values are still the best of the entire series. Visually it is certainly the best looking of the series thanks to Freddie Young's incredible photography, while Ken Adams production design is superb and the lush score marked a real turning point for John Barry.

Roald Dahl's screenplay strangely discards Blofeld's garden of death (too downbeat said the producers) and omits Bond's Japanese counterpart Tanaka's background as an ex-Kamikaze pilot (too sensitive) but has just the right internal logic to justify its outrageous elements, as well as some neat humorous touches (such as Bond being constantly castigated for his smoking). Although many fans were critical of his approach - Dahl made little secret of his opinion that Bond was a 'resourceful but rather insensitive fellow' - he is more astute about the character than many writers in the series, bringing Bond's smug superiority to the fore in lines like "You forget I took a First in Oriental languages at Cambridge."

It's particularly disappointing that the 2-disc set only includes five minutes of the very entertaining and surprisingly comprehensive hour-long Whicker's World special on the making of the film, which revealed Connery's fondness for Custard Creams. We do get the glossier and less interesting 48-minute Welcome to Japan, Mr Bond (which makes an injoke of the fact that OHMSS had originally been scheduled to be made that year by having an unseen actress complain that she was supposed to be Mrs Bond) and Ken Adams' home movie footage, but there's not enough new to justify the `Ultimate Edition' tag here.

You Only Live Twice - A Review
Here is my review for You Only Live Twice. Mainly set in Japan Bond is sent to investigate some spacecrafts myseriosely dissapearing it turns out once again that SPECTRE are trying to start WWIII. Sean Connery's performance is pretty wooden in this one but the gadgets are brilliant. Japan is a brilliant setting and Nancy Sinatra's title song is a classic. This is the definitive Bond film for eleven-year-olds to get their teeth into. It has ninja's, huge enemy bases, beautiful women, action, suspense etc. and the most important thing about this film is that we are introduced to the evil head of SPECTRE, Ernst Stavra Blofeld played masterfully by Donald Pleasence. An underrated gem.