The Movie: Diamonds Are Forever was the last real Sean Connery Bond film... That one he made in the 80's when he was way too old doesn't count in my book. But anyway, I hadn't seen this movie before, and well, I heard that a big chunk of it takes place in Vegas, so I had to check it out!

As a Bond film, this one wasn't so great, in my opinion. There were very few gadgets, and we didn't get the usual total destruction of the enemy headquarters. Well I mean, they did trash the place quite a bit, but they didn't bring the whole place down like the do in many of the other movies. And fercrissakes, the coolest car in the movie was a Ford!!, and it did not have any rocket launchers, or machine guns, or oil slicks, or anything! Come on now! Also, the plot could use some work as well. For most of the movie you see James Bond chasing around small time diamond smugglers -- it isn't until a good 75% through the movie that you realize that they are using these diamonds to build a big laser to blow up the planet. So for most of the movie, I wasn't really that interested in what was going on because I didn't know that the whole planet was in danger... if that makes any sense.

But there was some fantastic 1971 Las Vegas footage, including a great car chase through downtown Las Vegas... which to me was more great because of the awesome shots of Vegas more than it was great for being a good car chase. It was also pretty interesting to see just how undeveloped the Strip was at the time. Compare Fremont Street, which looks more or less the way it does today:

The strip is basically just DIRT!! Actually what we're looking at there is the intersection of Las Vegas Blvd and Flamingo Road. That low lying motel in the first strip photo is where Barbary Coast now stands today, with the Flamingo in the top left of the frame, and Caesars off the left side of the picture. The Dunes once stood where Bellagio is now today, and in the second strip pic we are looking east down Flamingo Road where we see a lot of dirt! The area on the right side of the pic is where Bally's now stands today.

They also used the International (now the Las Vegas Hilton) as the exterior of the "Whyte House", a fictitious hotel/casino, as well as showing the interiors of a number of casinos, including Circus Circus (complete with a slot machine playing elephant!).

So back to this movie. It was pretty clear that the character name of Alotta Fagina from the first Austin Powers movie drew it's inspiration from Diamonds Are Forever's Plenty O'Toole. Overall, the movie was pretty boring -- It's gotta be one of the least entertaining Bond films that I've seen. But seeing the old Vegas stuff was pretty darn cool.

The DVD: Although all the information I could find on this DVD suggests that the aspect ratio is 2.35:1, and as far as I can tell, the original film was shot in 2.35:1, the actual aspect ratio on this DVD is closer to 2.50:1 -- but it is in anamorphic format. The transfer is pretty grainy, and quite dirty at times, but overall, not too shabby, with decent contrast and blacks.

The audio was pretty bland, encoded on the disc in the original mono. There were a number of special features, however. The menu design is pretty slick, and you get some extra stuff, like the original behind the scenes documentary, a featurette on Cubby Broccoli, the producer of many Bond films, a few deleted scenes (including a cameo by Sammy Davis Jr. that was cut from the film), preview trailers, radio spots, and a commentary track featuring the director, and members of the cast and crew. Quite a lot of stuff!

But again, for me the coolest part of the movie and DVD was seeing the old Vegas footage.