On Her Majesty's Secret Service - The LS Cut

Watched this for the Christmas season (don't forget that Blofeld's scheme relies on the girls' X-mas presents) after putting it off for some time. I have always said OHMSS is my fav Bond film, so it was hard for me to believe an edit could improve it, but that's exactly what LastSurvivor has done.

I'll leave my thoughts on the film itself for my review here: https://letterboxd.com/nottheacademy/film/on-her-majestys-secret-service/
Instead I'll focus on what LS has changed. While I do miss most everything that was cut, for the purpose of focusing the film more, they are all good, smart cuts. Honestly, LS probably doesn't go far enough. Several of the Bond sequences could be tightened up a little (like the lawyer's office or escaping the gearhouse) and his romancing the Angels could probably be cut even more. If the goal is to keep him focused on his great love, then including more references to him 'not being interested in women' and then cutting the actual Ruby seduction would be better. I also found the very opening with Q and M to serve no real purpose since Bond won't be using any gadgets and the plot has nothing to do with nuclear lint. Better if it could be cut.

But these are minor quibbles. Most every change here is for the better, including the audio substitutions. The one that I would argue against is making Louis Armstrong's track the title credit song. It's a slow, melancholy track, not at all fitting for starting a Bond adventure. It would be much better to run this vocal version over the end credits, especially after LS has played it several times without the vocals as the love theme. Its melancholy will then be fully "given voice" at the culmination of the film. But at the start, something a little more in line with the sultry women voicing Bond's previous themes would be better. If it's absolutely necessary to switch from the best Bond theme of all time, Barry's OHMSS, then how about his unused song for the film with "Nina" on vocals?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxp-zfMWvMw

All in all, however, no change here is a "bad" change, and everything makes the story more focused. Dare I say it? This replaces the original film for me, despite my wish for an even better v2.0 (with a stereo track?)... well done, LS, and thanks!

Wow, this was a nice edit, thanks LastSurvivor! I always liked the movie in the original, and felt it was a bit underrated, but found the references to the other Bond disturbing, I'm glad you took out all of those. Mind you, it's years ago, that I watched the original, so my memory is not perfect regarding every scene...

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I loved that you brought Tracy into the focus of the movie, by reducing Bond's excessive promiscuity and by removing some of the plot regarding Blofeld (in that regard his character and role took a bit the backseat, but I didn't mind, as I just wanted to see how it went with Tracy, as she is such a magnetic Bondgirl).

So, in a sense, this is a very different Bond movie, it's not about saving the world or defeating the villain, that is only the sidestory, instead it's about saving Bond's love-life, he starts to get doubts and searching for something else besides his secret mission work, beside killing and having a jetlife. All that because he met a woman that is finally his match, his soulmate. And she, who has contempt for life and does everything to end it, finally finds something to live for after gotten to know Bond, she develops a hope for a future.

Very romantic and beautiful, and Louis Armstrong's song "We have all the time in the world" (this reminds me to buy a collection of his work, Armstrong has such a haunting voice) perfectly accompanies this throughout the movie to the sad and heartbreaking end (thanks for exchanging the credits-music with Armstrong's song, fits much better (though strangely it's in both audio-tracks for the credits, I thought one of them was the original one)).

I love how Lazenby plays Bond in that heartbreaking end-scene and what he says, it's not possible to do it better, an ending worth to be part of cinematic history, and now improved by you, thanks to the removal of the original music in the credits, and the use of Armstrong's song.



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Very well edited, love it. The only things I wished were better:
1. The dining-scene with the girls should have been longer, as it wasn't established that Bond played that he were gay.
2. The credits in the beginning show scenes from older Bond-movies, which detracts a little bit, but that is only a very minor problem.
3. I wished the line "He branched off" was removed, it just didn't fit to the intensity of the finale.

This edit is a bit polarizing for me. On the one hand, I love all the little things in this edit, the fixing of continuity errors and slight trims here and there to really tighten things and remove some of the more dated and silly elements. On the other hand, the removal of two scenes dampen my enjoyment a bit. The first is the rearranging of Campbell's ascent and capture, as I feel without the scene where they're all playing curling we lose sight of Blofeld for too long. I love Telly Savalas as Blofeld and feel the removal of this scene hurts the film by keeping him out of frame for far too long. The second is the removal of the bell room fight, one of my favorite action scenes in the film. I understand why it was cut, but I think it adds a certain element of danger to Bond's escape, that he's far from being out of the woods even when he makes it to the town. I love all the other work LastSurvivor has done, such as removing some of the egregious rear projection shots and recutting the battle at Piz Gloria to be more coherent and suspenseful, and the musical changes throughout to correct some baffling bits of tone-deafness on the part of the soundtrack. I feel that if these two scenes were retained or only slightly modified, I'd consider this a replacement for the theatrical version, hands down. Perhaps at some point in the future, there will be another version of this edit that fixes my minor quibbles. I won't hold my breath, though. However, aside from those complaints, this is a superb edit. Nearly seamless visual and audio editing and a good grasp of story and character make this an edit to seek out, even though it might not fully replace the original. It's still fun to see attention being paid to what is, in my opinion, the greatest James Bond film ever made.

OHMSS will never not feel like an outlier in the 007 canon for reasons beyond it being Lazenby's sole outing. The most classically tragic of the classic Bond films, the cliched recurring fan phrase about OHMSS has always been "it would be the perfect Bond movie if only Connery had been in it." While that may or may not be true (it's hard to picture Connery's blithe sociopath ever contemplating settling down), this edit is the next best thing, fixing many problematic moments/lines and tightening up the pace of the movie considerably, giving Diana Rigg's monumental turn as the ultimate Bond gal the showcase it deserves. LS' edit doesn't feel like a whole new movie, but it's a considerably better paced one, and a fitting addition to one's collection of Bond fan edits.

A very good edit that trims away some of the problems I have with the original. Most prominently, the scenes with the Angles of Death. The film at least moves on now, instead of dies completely. Vultural's review below really says it all, so I will only commend LS's skills as a editor. Though I would argue against Vutural that this cut makes Lazenby quite alright as Bond (despite the poorly inserted one-liners they gave him). No silly callbacks and I like some of the fights in this, especially the one on the beach.

Then again, "Lazenby would always pick the wrong wine" is a wonderful description!

A clear improvement. Well done!