You Only Live Twice (1967): Sean Connery as James Bond 007
Directed by Lewis Gilbert, based on the novel by Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (1967) is the fifth film in the James Bond series and the 5th to star Sean Connery as MI6 Agent 007. The story concerns a cat-stroking megalomaniac who is using Cold War tensions to instigate a battle between the U.S. and Soviet Union by stealing spacecrafts in orbit. The film had a bigger budget than previous Bond films, and utilized exotic on-location cinematography in the Japanese Pacific. Full of explosions, chases, bikini-clad girls and gunfire, the film moved further into the prototype (and stereotype) of what subsequent 007 films came to represent. Sean Connery is great, as always, reprising his role as James Bond. Donald Pleasence is diabolical as the scar-faced super villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the terrorist syndicate SPECTRE. Karin Dor, Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi are all lovely as Bond Girls. The film was notably parodied in the lackluster comedies, the Austin Powers series.
