Saturday Is Bond Day #5: You Only Live Twice

I'm a week late writing about You Only Live Twice -- the boys and I watched the next movie this very afternoon -- so I'll be brief, and make this post mostly for the sake of symmetry.

This is the one where Bond's death is faked before the opening credits, where we finally see the face of Ernst Stavros Blofeld (in a scarred Donald Pleasance), and where we learn that even ninjas are no match for 007. It also continues the SPECTRE plot, which has been bubbling along since the first movie, Doctor No -- though its focused down to a Bond vs. Blofeld showdown at this point.

So: Bond is officially dead, and so Bond goes to Japan to find out what happened to an American space capsule (which was captured within a mysterious spaceship, which then disappeared somewhere in the Japan Sea). Of course it's SPECTRE and Blofeld, fomenting a US-Soviet war in order to pick up the pieces afterward, and of course Bond leads a team of ninjas to attack the SPECTRE base and foil the nefarious plot -- but he has to get involved with a couple of girls first!

You Only Live Twice has excellent action sequences, and one of the quintessential Bond villains in Pleasance's Blofeld -- it's just a shame that Pleasance and Connery didn't stick around for the next movie, since their replacements were much less exciting.