Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever
Directed by	Guy Hamilton
Produced by	Harry Saltzman Albert R. Broccoli
Screenplay by	Richard Maibaum Tom Mankiewicz
Starring	Sean Connery Jill St. John Charles Gray Lana Wood Jimmy Dean Bruce Cabot
Music by	John Barry
Cinematography	Ted Moore
Editing by	Bert Bates John Holmes
Distributed by	United Artists
Release	30 December 1971
Running time	120 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$7.2 million
Gross revenue	$116 million
Preceded by	On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Followed by	Live and Let Die

Diamonds Are Forever is the seventh spy film in the James Bond series by Eon Productions, and the sixth and final Eon film to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.

The film is based on Ian Fleming's 1956 novel of the same name, and is the second of four James Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond impersonating a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring, and soon uncovering a plot by his old nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a giant laser. Bond has to battle his nemesis for one last time, in order to stop the smuggling and stall Blofeld's plan of destroying Washington, D.C., and extorting the world with nuclear supremacy.

Plot

James Bond—agent 007—pursues Ernst Stavro Blofeld and eventually finds him at a facility where Blofeld look-alikes are being created through surgery. Bond kills a test subject, and later the "real" Blofeld, by drowning him in a pool of superheated mud.

While assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd systematically kill several diamond smugglers, M suspects that South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping, and orders Bond to uncover the smuggling ring. Disguised as professional smuggler and assassin Peter Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet contact Tiffany Case. The real Franks shows up on the way, but Bond intercepts and kills him, then switches IDs to make it seem like Franks is Bond. Case and Bond then go to Los Angeles, smuggling the diamonds inside Franks' corpse.

At the airport Bond meets his CIA ally Felix Leiter, then travels to Las Vegas. At a funeral home, Franks' body is cremated and the diamonds are passed on to another smuggler, Shady Tree. Bond is nearly killed by Wint and Kidd when they put him in a cremation oven, but Tree stops the process when he discovers that the diamonds in Franks' body were fakes, planted by Bond and the CIA.

Bond tells Leiter to ship the real diamonds. Bond then goes to the Whyte House, a casino-hotel owned by the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte in Las Vegas, where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. Bond discovers there that Tree has been killed by Wint and Kidd, who did not know that the diamonds were fake.

At the craps table Bond meets the opportunistic Plenty O'Toole, and after gambling, brings her to his room. Gang members ambush them, throwing O'Toole out the window and into the pool. Bond spends the rest of the night with Tiffany Case, instructing her to retrieve the diamonds at the Circus Circus casino.

Tiffany reneges on her deal and flees, passing off the diamonds to the next smuggler. However, seeing that O'Toole was killed after being mistaken for her, Tiffany changes her mind. She drives Bond to the airport, where the diamonds are given to Bert Saxby, who is followed to a remote facility. Bond enters the apparent destination of the diamonds — a research laboratory owned by Whyte, where a satellite is being built by Professor Metz, a laser refraction specialist. When Bond's cover is blown, he escapes by stealing a moon buggy and reunites with Tiffany.

Bond scales the walls to the Whyte House's top floor to confront Whyte. He is instead met by two identical Blofelds, who use an electronic device to sound like Whyte. Bond kills one of the Blofelds, which turns out to be a look-alike. He is then knocked out by gas, picked up by Wint and Kidd and taken out to Las Vegas Valley, where he is placed in a pipeline and left to die.

Bond escapes, then calls Blofeld, using a similar electronic device to pose as Saxby. He finds out Whyte's location and rescues him. In the meantime, Blofeld abducts Case. With the help of Whyte, Bond raids the lab and uncovers Blofeld's plot to create a laser satellite using the diamonds, which by now has already been sent into orbit. With the satellite, Blofeld destroys nuclear weapons in China, the Soviet Union and the United States, then proposes an international auction for global nuclear supremacy.

Whyte identifies an oil platform off the coast of Baja California as Blofeld's base of operations. After Bond's attempt to change the cassette containing the satellite control codes fails due to a mistake by Tiffany, Leiter and the CIA begin a helicopter attack on the oil rig.

Blofeld tries to escape on a midget submarine. Bond gains control of the submarine's launch crane and crashes the submarine into the control room, causing both the satellite control and the base to be destroyed. Bond and Tiffany then head for Britain on a cruise ship, where Wint and Kidd pose as room-service stewards and attempt to kill them with a hidden bomb. Bond kills them instead.

Cast

James Bond
(Sean Connery)

M
(Bernard Lee)

Miss Moneypenny
(Lois Maxwell)

Q
(Desmond Llewelyn)

Ernst Stavro Blofeld
(Charles Gray)

Tiffany Case
(Jill St. John)

Felix Leiter
(Norman Burton)

Mr. Wint
(Bruce Glover)

Mr. Kidd
(Putter Smith)

Plenty O'Toole
(Lana Wood)

Willard Whyte
(Jimmy Dean)

Peter Franks
(Joe Robinson)

Shady Tree
(Leonard Barr)

Sir Donald Munger
(Laurence Naismith)

Klaus Hergersheimer
(Ed Bishop)

Dr. Mertz
(Joseph Fürst)

Bert Saxby
(Bruce Cabot)

Bambi
(Lola Larson)

Thumper
(Trina Parks)

Dr. Tynan
(Henry Rowland)

Mrs. Whistler
(Margaret Lacey)

Marie
(Denise Perrier)

• Sean Connery as James Bond: MI6 agent 007.
• Jill St. John as Tiffany Case: A diamond smuggler.
• Charles Gray as Ernst Stavro Blofeld: The megalomaniac head of SPECTRE. (Gray had previously appeared in the Bond film series when he played Dikko Henderson in 1967's You Only Live Twice).
• Jimmy Dean as Willard Whyte: An entrepreneur, based on Howard Hughes.
• Bruce Glover as Mr. Wint and Putter Smith as Mr. Kidd: Blofeld's henchmen.
• Norman Burton as Felix Leiter: CIA agent and Bond's ally in tracking Blofeld.
• Joseph Furst as Professor Doctor Metz: A brilliant scientist and world's leading expert on laser refraction.
• Lana Wood as Plenty O'Toole: A beauty Bond meets who comes to an unhappy ending.
• Bruce Cabot as Bert Saxby: Whyte's casino manager in cahoots with Blofeld.
• Bernard Lee as M: The head of MI6.
• Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
• Desmond Llewelyn as Q: Head of MI6's technical department.
• Joe Robinson as Peter Franks: Diamond smuggler whose identity is taken by Bond.
• Marc Lawrence as Rodney
• Sid Haig as Slumber Inc. attendant
• Leonard Barr as Shady Tree: A stand-up comedian and smuggler.
• Laurence Naismith as Sir Donald Munger: Diamond expert who brings the case to MI6.
• David Bauer as Morton Slumber: President of Slumber Incorporated, a funeral home.
• Ed Bishop as Klaus Hergerscheimer: Health physicist for WW Techtronics.
• David de Keyser as Doctor
• Lola Larson and Trina Parks as Bambi and Thumper

External links

• Diamonds Are Forever at the Internet Movie Database