For Your Eyes Only: Special Edition (1981)

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General		Extras
Category	Bond	Booklet Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Inside For Your Eyes Only Audio Commentary-John Glen (Director) et al Audio Commentary-Michael G. Wilson (Executive Producer) et al Theatrical Trailer-4 Radio Spots-2 Music Video-For Your Eyes Only-Sheena Easton Storyboard Comparisons-The Snow Mobile Chase Storyboard Comparisons-Retrieving the ATAC Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1981
Running Time	122:27
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (100:06)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John Glen
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Roger Moore Carole Bouquet Topol Lynn-Holly Johnson Julian Glover
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	Bill Conti

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, credits roll over montage of images

    First of all, the film has taken all the classic elements of a Bond flick and mixed them in reasonable proportions: exotic locations, an exciting ski sequence, a car chase and underwater scenes, lots of explosions, and of course beautiful women (including, as discovered later, Caroline Cossey - a male-to-female transsexual with a stage name of Tula - as one of the bikini-clad beauties lounging around Hector Gonzalez's villa and swimming pool).

    Secondly, the plot is actually more realistic and down-to-earth compared to some of the more outrageous Roger Moore Bond films. Compared to Moonraker preceding it, and A View To A Kill and Octopussy following it, it is surprisingly devoid of megalomaniacs intent on destroying the world through some far-fetched scheme. This film is also unusual in that it does not have a great emphasis on gadgets and is a bit closer in spirit to Ian Fleming's novels than some of the campier Moore extravaganzas (although the film itself is not based on a Fleming novel but loosely based on two short stories - For Your Eyes Only and Risico).

    The pre-titles opening sequence has James Bond paying a visit to the grave of his dead wife (a reference to On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and then fighting for his life in a helicopter that is being remote controlled by none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld played by John Hollis (Austin Power fans will no doubt recognize Blofeld as one of the inspirations for the Dr. Evil character). Needless to say, he succeeds not only in wrestling back control of the helicopter, but dispatching Blofeld to a very long drop down a chimney! We are then treated to Sheena Easton singing the theme song in the opening titles sequence (the first vocalist to actually appear in the opening credits of a Bond film).

    After that, the film proper opens with a British surveillance ship carrying the ATAC (Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator) system sinking as a result of an accidental (?) collision with a mine. Needless to say, the Russkies are keen to get hold of this top-secret military device and 007 is dispatched to make sure it does not fall into the wrong hands.

    Next, we see Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) arriving by seaplane to meet her parents, shortly before they are gunned down by the pilot, who turns out to be a hired gunman named Hector Gonzalez (Stefan Kalipha). She swears revenge, and we later find out there's a connection between the killing of her parents and the race to retrieve the ATAC. She teams up with James Bond in an exciting car chase away from Gonzalez's villa in Spain and the pair has various adventures in the skiing town of Cortina in the Dolomites, the Greek island of Corfu and a monastery perched on top of a rock (the Meteoras). Along the way, Bond encounters two larger-than-life Greek smugglers Kristatos (Julian Glover) and Colombo (Topol). They obviously have no love for each other, but who is the bad guy and who is the good?

    Of course, there are still enough plot holes to sink ... well, a ship. Why oh why do the sharks ignore the bleeding Bond and Havelock being towed over coral, but head straight to a goon who falls into the sea? What on Earth prompted Melina to leave a valuable oxygen tank at the bottom of the sea in one scene so that they can conveniently retrieve it later while trying to escape? The answer of course is that we are watching a Bond film, so shut up already.

    Any scenes featuring the cutesy and ever so fluffy Bibi (Lynn-Holly Johnson) are rather excruciating to watch. I am surprised that Roger Moore seems so reluctant to give in to her girlish charms, and when I think of it, his behaviour is quite out of character for James Bond. Sean Connery probably would not only have gladly have obliged her, but wouldn't hesitate to use her as a human shield for any would be assailants!

    Interesting trivia related to this film include:

• This is the first Bond film not featuring M (Bernard Lee), who died while preparing for the role. The role was not recast as mark of respect, and the script was changed to say M was on leave.
• The character of Countess Lisl was played by Australian-born Cassandra Harris who, at the time of filming, was married to future Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.
• The ending of the film features Janet Brown doing an impersonation of Dame Margaret Thatcher (referred to only as 'the Prime Minister' in the film). Although Janet does a great job playing Margaret, I think the less said about this scene the better.

Video

    The transfer features excellent sharpness and detail (an example of which is the screen display at 31:53-31:59 which is clearly readable), with good colour saturation, but is a couple of notches short of reference quality.

    Some film grain is present throughout the feature, but was not major enough to cause annoyance.

    The transfer is marred by several artefacts, mainly aliasing and shimmering. These are most noticeable in scenes featuring the seaplane near the beginning of the movie as Gonzalez flies Melina to meet her parents.

    The main feature is accompanied by English and English for the Hearing Impaired subtitle tracks. I turned these on briefly, and noticed that the subtitles tended to appear in the black bar below the frame. There didn't seem to be a lot of difference between the two subtitle tracks in terms of accuracy and completeness.

    This is a single-sided dual layer disc (RSDL-formatted). The layer change occurs at 100:06 just when Bond is entering the confessional box. Although the location of the layer change is not super-annoying and doesn't interrupt dialogue, it does occur in the middle of a scene and is quite noticeable. If only they could have just waited another 30 seconds, they could have done the layer change at a scene change (100:31).

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Given that the film was released originally with a Dolby Stereo track, obviously some remixing has been done to provide us with a 5.1 channel track. The remix has been done with some care as it uses the surround speakers rather aggressively, and I noticed numerous examples of split surround effects and directional panning across all speakers. Overall, I was rather impressed by the result of the remix.

    However, in comparison with the Region 1 version of the DVD, the audio track on this disc appears to have been mastered at a lower level and generally lacked dynamics and bass. I found this surprising as the audio tracks on both the R1 and R4 versions have been encoded at the same bitrate, so I would have thought that they would have sounded very similar (apart from the 4% speedup inherent in PAL transfers). The Region 1 audio track is by no means perfect, but the Region 4 transfer in comparison sounds rather disappointing, with explosions that generally lack "punch" and music that sounds a little bit more "muffled".

    The music score by Bill Conti is quite listenable and even hummable but does sound dated, featuring lots of brass and disco beats. The title song, sung by Sheena Easton, still sounds great after all these years though.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    I do, however, have an issue with the sheer amount of extras possibly impinging on the quality of the video and audio transfer. I know that it's a Catch-22 situation for MGM: if they cut out extras to maintain video/audio quality they will get critics complaining about Region 4 being short-changed again, and if they maintain all the extras critics like myself will moan about the sacrifice in transfer quality. Next time, as a suggestion for what to do with feature-packed releases, how about splitting the content into a 2-disc set and not compromising on the quality of the video/audio transfer?

Main Menu Audio & Animation

Booklet

Featurette - Inside For Your Eyes Only (28:33)

    I found the documentary quite watchable, and it was quite interesting to see what the cast and crew look like almost 20 years after the production of the film. It does feature some on-location camera footage taken during the shooting of the film, so it is not just a "talking heads" documentary. The quality of the video transfer is quite good, apart from some minor pixelization here and there.

Audio Commentary - John Glen (Director) et al

Audio Commentary - Michael G. Wilson (Executive Producer) et al

Theatrical Trailer - 4 (3:33, 3:40, 3:40, 1:59)

Radio Spots - 2 (1:07)

Music Video - For Your Eyes Only-Sheena Easton (2:38)

Storyboard Comparisons - The Snow Mobile Chase (1:10)

Storyboard Comparisons - Retrieving the ATAC (1:42)

Gallery - Photo

• Trailer for "Tomorrow Never Dies" Playstation game
• Dolby Digital Surround French audio track

• Nothing

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall