It is a film which had helped me in my 11th grade English class.  When I had to submit an oral summary on Shakespeare.  During my palaver topic I used the word 'impregnable', the very word Bond's nemesis used to describe his volcanic fortress.  Later on, my teacher pulled me aside and told me that I was far too advanced to be in her class and needed to be in a higher level course.  Other moments in my life would be trivial yet effective, such as explaining to my lascivious blonde date at a Japanese restaurant that Sake needed to be served at 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit.  Or winning a radio contest for knowing who sang the title song.  The list is endless when it comes to these lifelong experiences I have encountered from this film.  

Please join me in celebrating this flamboyant Bond classic as I take you down memory lane to relive a wonderful, and at times shocking, moment in an otherwise innocent childhood.

The Summer of 1967. . . 

The ‘Summer of Love'.  A time, when the hippie generation, was tuning out from the establishment.  Vietnam was prominent in the evening news and the U.S. Presidential election was beginning to heat up.  I was seven and the only thing that was heating up in my mind was the latest episodes of Batman, Green Hornet and the fifth OO7 film adventure "YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE".

In late spring, NBC television broadcasted the one-hour documentary special "Welcome To Japan, Mr. Bond."  It showed scenes from behind and in front of the cameras as United Artist prepared to release their most ambitious OO7 film yet.  As for myself, well Batman and the Hornet could wait another night.

Advertisement for the NBC special.

It was a torrid Saturday afternoon when my father surprised the family by announcing he was taking us to see James Bond.  The family hopped into our ‘64 Ford Fairlane, with plastic seats, that had been exposed to the afternoon sun.  Hot enough to melt the skin right off your thighs.  Let alone the car did not have air conditioning either.  With all four windows lowered and a warm breeze blowing through our hair we ventured down New Hampshire Avenue to a little known area called Langley Park, Maryland.

The local movie theater, the KB Langley, was an immense, one screen building, that could seat 1000 patrons.  It sat in the middle of a strip mall between a record store and a television repair shop.  It took nearly thirty minutes to travel to this silver screen Mecca and when our car was parked, I finally saw the enormous marquee that had the words YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE embossed on it.  Waving in the summer breeze were banners, hanging below the marquee, adorned with the movie's title and an image of James Bond between the separating words TWICE.  Posters of Bond and his beautiful women were adhered to the glass doors of the theater.

Panels were adhered to the theater doors.  What a way to enter the world of OO7.

As we entered the spacious lobby, the smell of butter popcorn enveloped my nostrils.  But it was not the popcorn that peaked my senses.  On the walls of the lobby were these extravagant three sheet posters of various scenes from this epic adventure.  There was that miniature helicopter being pursued by SPECTRE helicopters while a rocket prepared to launch from inside a volcano.  There was another poster with OO7 being bathed by Japanese women (boring to the average seven year old – but enticing to the adult no less).

 What every red blooded male would want - unless you're seven years old.

However, it was the third poster artwork that made my mouth water.  The poster I still consider the best and most eminent poster of all Bond films.  The poster that is known as the ‘Volcano" poster.  It shows Bond hanging upside down, above the secret volcano hideout.  Explosions, rockets and helicopters are in every corner of this superior poster.  My arm began to ache as my older brother was trying to pull me into the theater.  I left this eye candy monument and proceeded into the darkened abyss.

As my eyes began to adjust from the bright-lit lobby to the dimly lit auditorium, I noticed my family was standing in the back of the theater.  An area that had concession machines built into the back walls.  It was in a way, another lobby in the back of this theater for people who wanted to smoke or buy food without missing the movie.  Which, to my horror and excitement, just happen to be playing.

Apparently, my father got us to the theater too early.  I discovered that the film from the previous show, and the last twenty minutes, was still playing.  Bond had just been captured by SPECTRE agents and was now facing the ‘never-seen-before’ head of SPECTRE.

"Allow me to introduce myself."  The man with the Persian cat said to a space suited OO7.  

"I am Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  They told me you were assassinated in Hong Kong."

"Yes," said Bond. "This is my second life."

"You only live twice, Mr. Bond." 

The words thundered across the theater as I watched this scarred face, bald headed man, savor his well-chosen words.  So here at long last is the diabolical mastermind.  The fiend, which his own employees feared, was now rearing his ugly head towards my cinematic hero.  My anger began to build.  I thought, "Come on James, kill this guy."

My father was standing next to me.  "You better not watch, you’ll spoil the ending," he said.

But that is like telling a kid on Christmas morning you cannot open your presents until you have had some breakfast.  I had to see this scene, and what a scene it was.  Explosions, rocket ships and helicopters just seem to fly off the screen.  That Volcano poster was really beginning to come to life.

The poster every young adventurous boy wanted.

The film ended and the lights came on.  We took our usual seats in the back.  These were the same seats we always sat in when we came to this theater. I think the reason was because my mother needed a quick getaway in case one of those love scenes got too hot and lewd for my seven year-old, innocent mind.  A lesson she learned when we came to see Matt Helm romps like THE AMBUSHERS.

After 20 minutes of impatient agony, the theater finally darkened and the famous gun barrel scene played out.  We witness an ambitious hijacking of an American space capsule and, to my unbelievable eyes, the assassination of OO7.  "How can this be", I thought.  Completely forgetting I saw Bond alive and well and defeating SPECTRE at the end of this same film.  What do you expect, a genius at age seven?

The movie sped along at a breakneck speed. Car chases, dock fights and helicopter battles played out, all accompanied by a music soundtrack that I would eventually get for Christmas seven years later.  Ah, nectar for my senses.

This poster said it all.

As the movie came to an end, my excitement finally reached a pinnacle.  "This was the best Bond film yet," I thought.  Goldfinger, Thunderball were just distant memories. But just like the poster said, "THIS MAN IS JAMES BOND".  Who was this guy named Sean Connery anyway?  All I knew was that James Bond was real and that he was coming back in a film called "Her Majesty's Something Secret Whatever".  

Life was indeed good.

However, there are moments in one’s impetuous life when you can remember where you were and what you were doing when an important bit of news was announced.  For example, I can remember where I was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  I was three years old and I was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my parent’s kitchen.  My mother had the television on and she told me the dreadful news. 

It would be the same a month or two later after seeing YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, when I discovered from some of the older kids in the neighborhood, that, Sean -What’s His Name, was quitting the role of James Bond.  "That’s impossible", I said as I stood beside an enormous oak tree inside my best friend’s yard.  "How can James Bond quit?"

The sting of that announcement stayed with me for the remainder of that tumultuous summer.  As the first leaves began to lose their color, I noticed how quickly the world had changed.  School was beginning and I was starting third grade.  The Green Hornet show was cancelled.  Batman was adding Batgirl to its dying series and OO7 was leaving us forever.  With that revelation hanging heavy on my poor little soul, all I could do was thank God for John Steed and Emma Peel.