Riding the Bond Reissue Bandwagon

The 60^th Anniversary celebration of the James Bond phenomenon in British cinemas that has been running for a few months now sent me back to examine the extent of the James Bond Reissue Double Bill.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, the Dr No (1962)/From Russia with Love (1963) revival in 1965 kicked off the biggest-ever demand for a screen character, one of whom the public never seemed to grow tired, certainly for the next decade until the first of the series were sold to television. Prior to United Artists’ approach with the Bonds, unless a picture had Oscar-driven box office power it would not even be considered for revival for around seven years, considered a generation in audience terms.

In Britain, the movies were guaranteed circuit releases on the Odeon chain. However, contrary to the approach in the United States, the movies were not thrown back into circulation right away and it wasn’t until three years later that the next double bill – Goldfinger (1964)/Thunderball (1965) – put in an appearance. But thereafter, there was no stopping the Bond bandwagon. In 1969 You Only Live Twice (1967) went out with either From Russia with Love or Dr No (cinemas could choose their preferred pairing).

In 1970, United Artists took a break from the Sean Connery reissue business by concentrating on the studio’s other big male star Clint Eastwood, doubling up For A Few Dollars More (1965) with A Fistful of Dollars (1964).  But by 1971 it experimented with playing Connery and Eastwood together, first pairing You Only Live Twice/A Fistful of Dollars and later the same year Goldfinger/For a Few Dollars More. But in 1972 the studio reverted to type with Thunderball/Dr No and the following year Diamonds Are Forever (1971)/From Russia with Love.

In 1974 it was You Only Live Twice/Thunderball and  few months later Dr No/Goldfinger. Come 1975 it was time for two of the later offerings to enter the revival business – Live and Let Die (1973) and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) followed at the end of the year by The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and Live and Let Die. The next year brought a programme change – Diamonds Are Forever teamed up with new Bond Roger Moore in the non-Bond adventure Gold (1974).

In 1977, for the first time in nearly a decade the Bond reissue was absent from British cinemas although the following year saw a re-teaming of Live and let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. But that pretty much spelled the end of the annual James Bond double bill, television by now too quickly eating up new product.

The British approach was almost conservative compared to the way the Bond revivals were handled in the US. After the sensational performance of Dr No/From Russia with Love in 1965 U.S. exhibitors had to wait only a year for Goldfinger/Dr No. United Artists showed little restraint, following a policy of “play them till they drop,” and launching the Connery/Eastwood combo in 1968 with You Only Live Twice/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967) plus a straightforward Connery item Thunderball/From Russia with Love the same year followed by Goldfinger/Dr No in 1969.

In the U.S. the year of the missing Bond reissue was 1970. But in 1971 United Artists reissued two Bond dualers six months apart. First out was Thunderball/You Only Live Twice and then Dr No/From Russia with Love. Ahead of the television premiere of Goldfinger in September 1972, UA brought back Goldfinger/From Russia with Love and then the triple bill (“Spend a Night with James Bond!”) of Goldinger/Dr No/From Russia with Love plus a double bill of Thunderball/You Only Live Twice, the last program incidentally knocking up a colossal gross of $122,000 – equivalent to $853,000 now – from 14 houses in New York in its opening week.

But the bonanza came to an end when television ponied up $17.5 million – equivalent to $126 million today – for the first seven pictures in the series. And this was before residuals kicked in from VHS, television resale and syndication, DVD, cable and streaming. Even when the MCU can guarantee billion-dollar revenues from many of its movies it’s doubtful if any one of its blockbusters made as much money as the best of the Bonds in their lifetime, much of that extra revenue coming from the way the revivals proved the enduring popularity of the series.  

SOURCES: Allen Eyles, Odeon Cinemas 2: From J. Arthur Rank to the Multiplex (Cinema Theatre Association, 2005) p211-220; Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You (McFarland, 2016) p147-151, 175-177, 227.