George Lazenby Movies
Poor George Lazenby achieved a negative fame for most of his career as The Man Who Would Be James Bond. The son of an Australian railway worker, Lazenby's first paying job was as an auto mechanic. He worked his way up to car salesman before exploiting his good looks as a male model in England. When Sean Connery briefly left the James Bond film series in 1967, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli decided to invent a "new" Connery, and Lazenby was selected to portray 007 in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Although his performance was by no means as bad as some critics have claimed -- in fact, time has been kind to his no-nonsense interpretation of the character -- Lazenby invited reams of bad press when he spoke ill of his highly respected leading lady Diana Rigg. While Secret Service earned nine million dollars (less than its predecessors, but still a success), Lazenby's future career as James Bond was scuttled when Sean Connery agreed to return to the fold in Diamonds Are Forever in 1970. Lazenby has continued to appear in films ever since, albeit often in a campy manner alluding to his failure to capitalize on his brief Bond fame. From 1984 to 1985, Lazenby was a regular on the American syndicated TV soap opera Rituals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 197z
The Pig (Harold Sakata) is an international crime lord who has commissioned the creation of a lethal "freeze bomb," which he plans on auctioning off to the highest bidder. Dr. Mason (T.E. Forman) is appalled; he intended his climate control device to be used to eliminate droughts. He sabotages the operation, destroying his files and condensing all the data into a microdot which he implants in the forehead of his assistant, Felicia (Terry Moore). When Mason turns up dead and Felicia is kidnapped, it's up to karate-kicking detective John Ash (Jim Kelly) to investigate. With his partner, Li (Myron Bruce Lee), Ash infiltrates the Pig's cathouse hideout and finds the girl, though the sadistic villain has already cut the microdot out of her skin and escaped to the mountains via ski lift. While Li cleans up some police corruption they've discovered in the Pig's organization, Ash pursues his quarry until he can exact justice with lethal martial artistry and an airplane crash. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
- 1969
- PG
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It wasn't as well received at the box office as the pictures that preceded it or followed it, but Peter Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the finest of the James Bond movies and also arguably the last truly great movie in the series. James Bond, portrayed here by George Lazenby (in his only performance in the role) has spent nearly two years trying to track down Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the head of SPECTRE. He has been taken off the case by his chief (Bernard Lee), an action the pushes him to the point of considering resigning from Her Majesty's Secret Service, just as he opens a possible new avenue of attack on his quarry. Whilst in the field, Bond has chanced to cross paths with the Contessa Teresa Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), a beautiful but desperately unhappy woman, whom he rescues from one apparent suicide attempt and an embarrassing moment at a casino gaming table -- the Contessa, who prefers to be called Tracy ("Teresa was a saint"), is the daughter of Marc Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), an industrial and construction magnate and also a crime boss, who is impressed with Bond personally as well as professionally, and would like to see him marry his daughter. Bond is, at first, unwilling to involve himself with a woman -- any woman -- on that level, but Draco's underworld contacts give Bond a vital clue to Blofeld's whereabouts that get him back on the case and hot on the man's trail. Journeying incognito to Blofeld's mountaintop retreat in the Swiss Alps, Bond finds the criminal mastermind posing as a would-be nobleman and also as a philanthropist, running a clinic devoted to the treatment and eradication of allergies. It's all a front for a surprisingly sinister (and scientifically valid) plot for international blackmail that would make any previous Bond villain quake in fear. And in the process of staying alive long enough to have a chance of stopping Blofeld, Bond discovers the Tracy is truly like no woman he's ever known before -- one special enough that he finds himself willing to give up his life as a free-living, free-loving bachelor. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, (more)
