Monday, December 12, 2016

"Maurice Binder, who created many of the famous [Bond] title sequences...was so horrified by the butchering of his work for television...that he would later start filming both theatrical and television versions of his opening titles"

007D:
In 1975 ABC started to become more bold in it's edits: Diamonds Are Forever was edited to remove any hint of the homosexual nature of the relationship between Mr. Wint and Mr Kidd and later that same year, You Only Live Twice was shown with the beginning of the movie confusingly and needlessly re-edited. The film began, as it should, with the space capsule but eighteen seconds into the scene it cuts to Bond already dead in his bed and then the credits begin to roll! (If anyone has a recording of this that they would like to share please let us know!)

However, all of this pales in comparison to the abomination that was the "ABC cut" of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. OHMSS was first broadcast on American television in February 1976. By then they had shown all of the Sean Connery James Bond films, and Live And Let Die would not be shown until the fall of 1976, so all that left was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which starred that other chap that nobody had heard of again since he left the role. The ABC television promos for On Her Majesty's Secret Service did not mention George Lazenby at all, instead they described the movie as starring "Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas"