You Only Live Twice(1967)
United Artists Releasing Jun 13, 1967 | Limited
James Bond and the Japanese Secret Service must find and stop the true culprit of a series of space hijackings, before war is provoked between Russia and the United States.
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(U.S. Only)
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: 4-Track Stereo
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United Kingdom,Japan,United States
Language: English,Japanese,Russian
Summaries
Plot Summary
- American NASA spacecraft Jupiter 16 is hijacked from orbit by an unidentified spaceship. The United States suspects it to be the work of the Soviets, but the British suspect Japanese involvement since the spacecraft, after having "swallowed" Jupiter 16, landed in the Sea of Japan. To investigate, MI6 operative James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to Tokyo, after faking his own death in Hong Kong and being buried at sea from HMS Tenby. M (Bernard Lee), the head of MI6. Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), M's secretaryUpon his arrival, Bond attends a sumo match where he is approached by Japanese secret service agent Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), who takes him to meet local MI6 operative Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray). Henderson claims to have critical evidence about the rogue craft, but is killed before he can elaborate (he is stalled through the paper wall of his room before he can reveal the secret to Bond). Bond chases and kills the assailant, taking the assailant's clothing as a disguise, and is driven in the getaway car to Osato Chemicals. Once there, Bond subdues the driver (who attacks him viciously upon realizing that Bond is not the assassin he was supposed to bring back) and breaks into the office safe of the company's president, Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada) (a Japanese industrialist secretly affiliated to SPECTRE).After obtaining secret documents, Bond is pursued by armed security, but is rescued by Aki, who flees to a secluded subway station. Bond chases her, but falls down a trap door leading to the office of the head of the Japanese secret service, Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba). The stolen documents are examined, and found to include a photograph of the cargo ship Ning-Po, with a microdot message saying the tourist who took the photo was killed as a security precaution. While at Tanaka's spa, Bond meets with Aki again. Having developed feelings for each other, the pair kiss and Bond carries Aki to his bed.Bond goes back to Osato Chemicals to meet Mr. Osato himself, masquerading as a potential new buyer. Osato humors Bond, but after their meeting, he orders his secretary, Helga Brandt (Karin Dor) (#11), to have him killed; both are revealed to be SPECTRE agents. Outside the building, assassins open fire on Bond before Aki rescues him again. Bond and Aki drive to Kobe, where the Ning-Po is docked. They investigate the company's dock facilities, and discover that the ship was delivering elements for rocket fuel. They are discovered, but Bond eludes the henchmen until Aki gets away; however, Bond is captured. He wakes, tied up in Brandt's cabin on the Ning-Po. Brandt interrogates Bond, before seducing him. Bond thinks he has convinced Brandt to defect to the UK. Brandt flies Bond to Tokyo the next day, but en route, she sets off a flare in the plane, seals Bond in his seat and bails out, assuming Bond will die in the crash. Bond manages to evade the trap, lands the plane and flees before it explodes.After finding out where the Ning-Po unloaded, Bond flies over the area in a heavily armed Autogyro (mini helicopter) created by Q (Desmond Llewelyn), called 'Little Nellie'. Near a volcano, Bond is attacked by and defeats four helicopters, confirming his suspicions that the enemy's base is nearby. A Soviet spacecraft is then captured in orbit by another unidentified craft, heightening tensions with the United States. The mysterious spaceship lands in an extensive base hidden inside the volcano.It soon turns out that the true mastermind behind this is Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), the mysterious leader of SPECTRE who has been hired by a great power (strongly implied to be the People's Republic of China) to start a Soviet-American war, in order for them to destroy each other so that China can replace them as the world's new superpower. Blofeld demands a payment of $100 MM for the capture of the 2 spacecrafts which the Chinese object to as the agreement was to pay the money only once war broke out. Blofeld dismisses them.Blofeld summons Osato and Brandt to his office to answer for not having killed Bond; Osato immediately blames his assistant, Brandt. Blofeld gives them a last chance, but as Brandt leaves, he activates a mechanism that drops her to her death into a pool filled with piranhas. Blofeld then orders Osato to kill Bond.Bond then meets Tanaka and Aki in Kyoto where they plan to infiltrate the island by disguising Bond as a Japanese fisherman, alongside a wife among Tiger himself and 100 of his ninjas. Bond assumes his Japanese disguise however while still in Kyoto a SPECTRE assassin tries to poison him while he and Aki are sleeping together. Bond narrowly survives when the pair move in their sleep and Aki is killed instead.Following a second attempt on his life by another assassin, Bond is introduced to Tanaka's student, Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama), who is to act as his wife. Acting on her lead, a funeral for a girl who died recently after venturing into a cave near a volcano, the pair reconnoiter a cave booby-trapped with poison, and the volcano above it. Meanwhile the US has planned another launch in 12 hrs and warned the Soviets against interference.. Bond has very little time and no solid leads of any sort of activity on the Island.. Establishing that the mouth of the volcano is a disguised hatch to the secret rocket base (They see a helicopter fly right into the volcano carter), Bond slips in, while Kissy goes to alert Tanaka. Bond locates and frees the captured American and Soviet astronauts and, with their help, steals a space suit in an attempt to infiltrate the SPECTRE spacecraft, "Bird One". However, Blofeld spots Bond mishandling his equipment, and he is detained while Bird One is launched with a backup astronaut. Bond is taken into the control room where he meets Blofeld face-to-face for the first time. Blofeld kills Osato to demonstrate the price of failure to kill Bond.Bird One closes in on an American space capsule, and U.S. forces prepare to launch a nuclear attack on the USSR. Meanwhile, a team of Japanese ninjas trained by Tanaka approach the base's entrance, but are detected and fired upon. Bond manages to open the hatch, letting in the ninjas. During the ensuing battle, Bond fights his way back to the control room, kills Blofeld's bodyguard Hans by tossing him into the piranha pool, and activates Bird One's self-destruct before it reaches the American craft. The Americans promptly stand down their forces.Blofeld activates the base's self-destruct system, a bomb that triggers a volcanic eruption, and escapes. Bond, Kissy, Tanaka, and the surviving ninjas leave before the eruption destroys the base, and are picked up by the Japanese Maritime Forces and the British Secret Service.
Storyline
- During the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union lose one spacecraft each after they are both seemingly swallowed whole by a second unidentified spacecraft. The two superpowers are quick to blame one another for the disappearances, causing tensions to skyrocket. The United Kingdom has an alternate theory regarding the disappearances however, a theory involving Japan, and sends their number one spy, James Bond, to investigate there. With the help of the Japanese Secret Service, he uncovers a plot far more sinister than anyone could have ever imagined. — goddangwatir As the fragile relationship between the United States of America and the Soviet Union teeters on the brink of collapse, with a series of mysterious spaceship hijackings adding fuel to the fire, Her Majesty's Secret Service swings into action. As a result, the intrepid Agent 007 finds himself in Tokyo to investigate potential Japanese involvement and shed light on the puzzling space disasters. However, the tentacles of the nefarious SPECTRE organisation have spread across the Land of the Rising Sun. Is the world prepared for a violent confrontation between the superpowers? Will British MI6 spy James Bond survive a brush with danger and his old nemesis, SPECTRE Number One Ernst Stavro Blofeld? — Nick Riganas With the help of the Japanese Secret Service, British agent 007 James Bond must discover and find multiple rockets that have been intercepted. James Bond and the Japanese Secret Service must find out who is behind the interceptions and stop them before more rockets are intercepted. — RECB3 When an American space capsule is swallowed up by what they believe to be a Russian spaceship, World War III nearly breaks out. The British Government, however, suspect that other powers are at work as the space craft went down near Japan. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is the force behind the theft, as James Bond discovers, but its motives are far from clear, and he must first find out where the captured space capsule is held before America and Russia initiate another world war. — Graeme Roy
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