For Your Eyes Only (1981)

After the tepid MOONRAKER (1979), I think I wanted less Roger Moore as James Bond than more Roger Moore. Moore was beginning to show his age as were the Bond filmmakers.  They seemed to be running out of ideas. MOONRAKER was a retread of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) only in outer space.  The next 007 film to follow would be FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) which for me is the end of the Roger Moore era.  Moore would make two more films after FOR YOUR EYES ONLY with the catchy title but boring OCTOPUSSY (1983) and his final appearance in the violent and awful A VIEW TO A KILL (1985) which wastes a good Duran Duran theme song. In my humble opinion, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is Moore's last good Bond film which may be giving it more praise than it deserves.

Number 12 in the Bond series, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is a return to the original Bond films with the British and the Russians racing against one another to find a missing device that can control a fleet of English nuclear submarines and its missiles. The film has some great locations, bringing Bond back to some ski action and stunts in the Dolomites region of Italy.  Greece is also used extensively including an amazing Greek monastery (in which the actual monks protested the filming by placing bed sheets over the monastery to disrupt production) sitting precariously atop rocky spires. Tired of aging European cinema icons of yesteryear playing the main villains (German Curt Jurgens in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and Frenchman Michael Lonsdale in MOONRAKER), FOR YOUR EYES ONLY goes with a handsome yet boring villain (with a fantastic goatee) in English actor Julian Glover (INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE) playing a sinister Greek smuggler working for the Russians. 

The main Bond girl French actress Carole Bouquet (THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE) is pretty but underwhelming (although she's grown on me with each viewing). The filmmakers throw a curveball with a second Bond girl casting Lynn Holly-Johnson, an actress and ice skater (see ICE CASTLES) trying to shed her wholesome image by portraying a sexually insatiable Olympic ice skating hopeful.  Singer Sheena Easton delivers with the slow but catchy theme song of the same name For Your Eyes Only. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY feels like it should be an earlier Bond film with Sean Connery but here it is nineteen years after the debut of DR. NO (1962).

With a screenplay by Bond veteran Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson (based on two James Bond short stories by Ian Fleming For Your Eyes Only and Riscio) and directed by former Bond 2nd Unit  Director and film editor John Glen (more about Glen later), FOR YOUR EYES ONLY begins with an interesting, unorthodox opening sequence.  After visiting the grave of his deceased wife Teresa (killed in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE), James Bond (Roger Moore) is picked up by helicopter for urgent business. But the helicopter is hijacked by a wheelchair bound, bald, cat-loving SPECTRE baddie (representing the various incarnations of Ernst Stavros Blofeld) who controls the copter by remote control. Bond manages to disrupt the takeover and dispatches the villain. Off the coast of Albania, a seemingly typical Maltese fishing trawler the St. Georges hides inside a secret British intelligence operation that houses ATAC, a sophisticated device that communicates to Britain's nuclear submarines. The trawler strikes a mine and sinks.  Immediately, British intelligence and Russia's KGB led by General Gogol (Bond veteran Walter Gotell) race to recover the top secret machine. 

Off the coast of Greece on the island of Corfu, Melina Havelock (French actress/model Carole Bouquet) visits her parents including her ocean archaeologist father Professor Havelock (Jack Hedley) who besides excavating an underwater Greek temple, works for the British government to locate the sunken fishing vessel and the ATAC encryption machine.  Melina barely escapes with her life as her father Havelock and mother are gunned down by Cuban hitman Hector Gonzalez (Stefan Kalipha). The British Minister of Defense (Geoffrey Keen) sends Bond to Spain to interrogate Gonzalez. Bond sneaks into Gonzalez's villa where he spies a man with glasses paying off Gonzalez for the hit. Before Bond can capture the hitman, Gonzalez is shot with a crossbow arrow by the revenge minded Melina. Bond and Melina escape through the olive groves in Melina's clunky Citroen 2CV evading would be killers. 

Back in London, Bond meets with Q (Desmond Llewelyn) at his gadget laboratory. Q uses the Identigraph to help Bond determine that the man with the glasses was Belgian Emile Locque (Michael Gothard) he saw at the Spanish villa. Locque's last known location is Cortina, Italy.  Bond flies to Cortina where he's introduced by his Italian contact Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno) to the mysterious Greek smuggler Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover) who's watching his Olympic protege ice skater Bibi Dahl (Lynn Holly-Johnson) train. Kristatos believes Greek shipping magnate and pistachio munching Milos "the Dove" Columbo (Topol) may be trying to salvage the ATAC. Bond is pursued by killers Claus (Charles Dance) and Erich Kriegler (John Wyman) who chase Bond through various winter Olympic courses including the bobsled run on skis and motorcycles. Bond evades his attackers. When he returns to his Italian contact Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno), he finds Ferrara dead, garroted, with a white dove pin attached to his jacket.

On the trail of Columbo, Bond returns to Corfu where Melina is continuing her father's work. Bond seduces Columbo's mistress the Countess Lisl (Cassandra Harris) only to see her killed by Locque and Claus on the beach. Columbo and his men spring from the water in scuba suits and save Bond. Columbo reveals Kristatos is a double agent, working for the Russians. After Bond and Columbo raid one of Kristatos's heroin factories looking for the smuggler, Bond and Melina use her father's mini-sub Neptune to explore the St. Georges wreck and grab the ATAC. But when Bond and Melina return to their boat, Kristatos awaits to snatch the ATAC from them. Kristatos drags Bond and Melina behind his yacht over reefs and hungry sharks before the two manage to escape.  Kristatos sets up the exchange with Gogol for the ATAC at St. Cyril's, a Greek monastery atop soaring needle like rocks. Bond, Melina, Columbo, and his men begin a final assault on the monastery to stop Kristatos and keep the encryption machine out of the Russians hands.

Director John Glen who started out in the Bond universe as a 2nd Unit Director for ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and promoted to editor on THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER has initially been my fall guy for the decline of the James Bond series. But upon further review of Glen's first effort with FOR YOUR EYES ONLY after many years, Glen's appreciation for the character and franchise is to be commended. After having Bond up in space in MOONRAKER, Glen had stated he wanted to bring Bond back to earth for his next film. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is a throwback to the older classic Bond movies. After the disappointment of MOONRAKER, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY was a jolt of fresh air to my teenage eyes, taking me back to the good old Bond films like DR. NO and GOLDFINGER (1964).

Glen pays homage to the first Bond film he worked on in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE by having Bond place flowers on his wife's grave (played by Diana Rigg in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) to begin FOR YOUR EYES ONLY and then tussle with a crippled but still maniacal Blofeld like villain (Blofeld killed Bond's wife but broke his neck at the finale of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE). Glen reminds us there are demons in Bond's past that he can never completely be rid of. 

One thing that stuck with me when I saw FOR YOUR EYES ONLY in high school were the set pieces. They are excellent and never completely topped in Moore's remaining Bond films or the two Timothy Dalton Bond films that Glen also directed. The car chase in the hills and small towns of Spain (actually Corfu, Greece) with Bond and Melina is both exciting and humorous (courtesy of famed stunt driver Remy Julien). The ski chase sequences in Cortina, Italy are breathtaking and well photographed (courtesy of famed ski cameraman Willy Bogner) with Bond chased by motorcycles with studded tires while skiing off chalet roofs, tables,  and even down a bobsled run. The assault on Kristatos's heroin factory reminds me of Bond's invasion of a gypsy camp in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) and capped off by a beautiful, cinematic explosion on the dock.

Greek villain Kristatos's sadistically dragging the bound Bond and Melina through the Mediterranean waters is a scene borrowed from Ian Fleming's novel Live and Let Die complete with sharks nipping at our hero and heroine. Finally, the assault on the towering monastery in Meteora, Greece showcases some exciting rock climbing (and falling) by Bond stuntman Rick Sylvester (who skied of a cliff and parachuted to safety as Bond at the beginning of 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME). 

Family has always been an important part of the Bond franchise. Producer Albert Broccoli, his wife Barbara, and son-in-law Michael G. Wilson (who co-wrote FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) have managed the series since 1962 (Broccoli's producing partner Harry Saltzman departed after THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN).  Crew like director John Glen or production designer Peter Lamont both started out as editor and art director previously and moved up through the Bond films to more prestigious positions.  Interestingly, in the FOR YOUR EYES ONLY plot, Bond and the people he encounters unite to become a sort of family.

Bond himself, we learn from SKYFALL (2012) is an orphan. Melina loses her parents early in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, killed by the hitman Gonzalez. Olympic hopeful Bibi Dahl doesn't seem to have any parents, just a stern ice skating coach Brink (Jill Bennett) and her wealthy but sinister patron Kristatos who may have slightly lascivious reasons for supporting Bibi. Columbo becomes a father figure to Bond after rescuing him from Lochte and Claus and setting him straight about Kristatos. Bond, Melina, Bibi, and Columbo are misfits who join together as a unit (or family) to stop Kristatos who has hurt each of them in some profound way. 

It's only fitting that since part of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY takes place in Greece, there be some references to Greek mythology and the ancient Greeks.  Melina Havelock's choice of weapon to extract revenge on hitman Gonzalez is a crossbow.  The image of Melina with a crossbow hearkens to the Greek goddess Diana who was the patroness of hunters and was often painted with a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. There's a nice underwater sequence where Melina oversees her father's men excavating a submerged Greek temple (it's a set but still a tribute to the ancient structures still found all around Greece). The finale takes place high in the clouds (the soaring monastery) where in Greek mythology, the Gods and Goddesses lived and played. The only reference the filmmakers got wrong was the name of Melina's underwater submarine Neptune.  Neptune is the Roman name for Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea.

Today's James Bond films have Oscar winning actors left and right (Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Christophe Waltz, and Remi Malek to name a few) but back in 1981, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY'S cast was an eclectic group.  As the pistachio popping Columbo, Israeli actor Topol was more famous as Tevye in Norman Jewison's FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971) but EYES ONLY would introduce him to a new generation of filmgoers.  Lynn-Holly Johnson who plays Bibi Dahl was better known as an ice skater then as an actress. Her only two credits before EYES ONLY were ICE CASTLES (1978) with Robby Benson and the Disney suspense film THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS (1980) with Bette Davis. But Johnson brings a spark to FOR YOUR EYES ONLY with her bubbly personality. In a sign of the times, Bond has to fight Bibi off as he feels he's too old for the teenage Olympic hopeful, a harbinger that Moore was beginning to feel too old for some of his leading ladies. 

As in previous Bond films, the filmmakers went the route of models and international beauty pageant queens casting French actress/model Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock. Bouquet was more famous as the face for Chanel perfumes but after FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, Bouquet has had a long acting career appearing in mostly French films.  When I first saw EYES ONLY, Bouquet didn't seem like the typical Bond girl but repeated viewings have won me over to Bouquet and her famously luxurious long hair. Cassandra Harris who plays Bond's brief one night stand Countess Lisl has an interesting connection to the Bond franchise.  At the time she appeared in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, she was married to Pierce Brosnan who would one day take over the role of James Bond beginning with GOLDENEYE (1995). Sadly, Harris passed away while married to Brosnan from cancer in 1991. Both Julian Glover who plays the sinisterly suave Aristotle Kristatos and Charles Dance (in his first film role and no dialogue) as the killer Claus in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY would appear later in their careers in the HBO megahit GAME OF THRONES (2011 - 2019). Dance as Tywin Lannister and Glover as Grand Master Pycelle.

A few final FOR YOUR EYES ONLY tidbits.  This would be the first film that the great Bernard Lee (THE THIRD MAN) who played Bond's superior M did not appear in.  Lee was too ill for filming and would pass away in 1981 when FOR YOUR EYES ONLY was released.  Lee appeared in the first 11 Bond films. Singer Sheena Easton is the first and only performer to sing the Bond theme song and appear in Maurice Binder's opening credit sequence. James Bond films always had sexy posters but FOR YOUR EYES ONLY'S poster may have been the most provocative yet. The poster featured the backside of a long legged woman in the foreground and Roger Moore as Bond facing the unknown woman framed between her legs. A crossbow hangs from her side, implying it might be Carole Bouquet (it's not. It was New York model Joyce Bartle) and sticking with the Greek goddess Diana motif. Some groups protested the  sexy poster and adjustments were made on some posters. 

Director John Glen may have resurrected the classic Bond themes and action in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY but that momentum would not carry over in Moore's last two Bond films as Moore had become too old for the role in my opinion. But give Moore credit for carrying the torch from Sean Connery and giving us four good Bond films out of the seven he would appear in. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY was a memorable film for CrazyFilmGuy when I saw it in the summer of 1981. Little did I know that the Bond franchise was about to take some bumps and bruises for the next 14 years as Roger Moore would eventually retire from the role and producers Albert Broccoli and his wife Barbara Broccoli would have to find new actors to play the most recognizable character in film history -- James Bond.