On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Even a man who lives for danger may finally find someone worth settling down for, though fate rarely lets a spy have a happy ending. When Sean Connery stepped away from the role of James Bond, Australian model George Lazenby took over the world's most suave secret agent in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Connery returned in "Diamonds Are Forever" before Roger Moore took over, and Lazenby's film career never took off, but his lone outing produced one of the finest Bond films of all time. Frustrated by his fruitless hunt for SPECTRE mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), Bond takes matters into his own hands, tracking him to a mountaintop allergy clinic in the Swiss Alps, where Blofeld is brainwashing a group of young female patients to unleash a biological plague that would wipe out the world's crops and livestock. Along the way, Bond teams up with Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), the charming boss of a powerful crime syndicate, and falls in love with his spirited, troubled daughter, Tracy (Diana Rigg). Bond, settling down? Not right away, since he still flirts his way through Blofeld's clinic, but eventually he proposes. Lazenby lacks Connery's intensity, but he has fun with the quips and even pokes playful fun at the Bond legacy in the pre-credits sequence, while Rigg, fresh from playing Emma Peel on "The Avengers," is 007's equal in every way. Former editor Peter Hunt makes a strong directing debut, handling the elaborate action, including a ski chase, a bobsled showdown and a car chase that turns into an icy stock-car race, with energy, style and humor. Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" adds poignancy to its heartbreaking ending. Though not a hit on its release, it has become a fan favorite and is often called the closest the series has come to the spirit of Ian Fleming's novels.