On Her Majesty's Secret Service - The LS Cut

It’s hard for me to judge these old Bond films. They suffer from the success of the franchise. Imitated and parodied endlessly; from Austin Powers to even Nolan movies, the tropes now seem completely cliche. That said, I do think this movie gets a bit of bad rap and certainly Lazenby does. It works best when it does its own thing. The relationship between Bond and Tracy works, in no short degree thanks to the chemistry between Lazenby and Rigg. And that is refreshing. The more serious side of Bond works. But it frustratingly seems to want it both ways. And the sillier Bondisms mostly fall flat. The screenplay itself is puzzling. Again, it seems to want to carry on with Bond as if there’s nothing different, but then it contradicts that often. The worst error is leaving Tracy out of the film for the bulk of the middle only to way-too-conveniently emerge for the last act. I admit I’m revisiting this one because we’re heading to the Jungfrau region and Lauterbrunnen valley next month. And that scenery was fantastic. Overall, I feel like I ended up liking this movie less than I remembered. But, as I said at the outset, I think that may be due in large part to the impact of the Bond series overall. It’s probably been more than 30 years since I last watched it.

Given that I don’t have much direct memory of the movie, I have a hard time comparing the edit to the theatrical. But I’ll say the editing was never noticeable for me so Last Survivor again did a terrific job both technically and narratively editing the film. And one thing I do remember that LS has thankfully cut is the fourth wall breaking “other guy” quip. That change alone makes this edit worth it.

This is better than the original, but I still have major problems with the film. The continuity errors with the last film, Lazenby's terrible performance and Bond cheating on Tracy with no problems with it whatsoever. Oh well, I guess there's only so much you can do.

I love the original, I truly do. I appreciate the LS cut - I like the edits done to the movie.

Will be adding this to my OHMSS steelbook! Thumbs UP!

P.S. In my opinion, I'm glad Bond wasn't played by S.C., I doubt the movie would even come close to what came out in '69.

Another solid Bond improvement from Last Survivor. This edit convincingly replaces the original.

Distractions are removed, we get back to the ultimate Bond girl faster, the narrative is tighter and more rewarding. The (enjoyable!) leisurely pace is retained. Lazenby comes into his own better than ever before.

Visual and sound editing are excellent. The one visual hiccup is a helicopter making a small jump on screen when they attack the mountain. And we get another editing masterclass with the audio commentary.

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.