Longtime lurker here and I had to sign up just to post here as a lifelong Bond fanatic not to mention cinema diehard.
I think the IB prints were through at least DAF in the US but probably continued in the UK a little longer. The constant reissues were running original prints over and over until there was nothing left before striking new prints if any as far as I understand it. (Sadly almost all of the theatrical reissues happened before my lifetime so I’ve only been able to see some of the first 16 Bonds properly on the big screen a few times)
In my own researches into the films in both their exhibition and video histories I’ve come across some mentions and musings of possible magnetic stereo runs for some of the films in addition to the handful of titles never confirmed of having 70mm blowups.
For magnetic prints it is thought they could have been mono or stereo on certain titles for any of the first nine films. I think Dr. No is out because it was a low budget production, and likely FRWL as well. It’s possible on Goldfinger but I think unlikely. The one cool note about GF is that the 003 bomb timer did make it into certain prints which seem to be the initial December 1964 UK prints and by the time of the 1965 US and other territory releases the Harry Saltzman 007 timer idea had been inserted.
Thunderball is the really confusing one. TB was excessively rushed to theaters and barely made its already pushed back Christmas 1965 date. Peter Hunt was editing like mad and had to get the four hour rough cut down which meant most of the second act was drastically hacked down. Eventually the film was released in scope 35mm mono but you’d think such a big event would have had a blowup version. (Cubby Broccoli apparently didn’t like the roadshow system.) What did happen was that two distinct audio mixes appeared with dialog and music differences. For years I’ve tried to figure out why this is and what happened. At first I thought perhaps one was an abandoned 70mm mix but my best guess is like GF above that there was a second mix done later for the US and other country releases that had the differences and the first was used in the UK. On video all we ever had was a mono track that ends with a Thunderball instrumental. Eventually for the big CAV 1995 anniversary Laserdisc boxset someone at MGM wanted to do the film in stereo and they pulled some stems. They then inserted John Barry’s score in full stereo around the mono mix and turned it into a ProLogic affair which was later bumped to 5.1 and is still on disc today. The interesting thing is whatever source they pulled was this second mix with differences and ends in the original 1962 James Bond theme. Since this was MGM/UA in Los Angeles I assume it must be a master of what I think is the US mix. The older mono from prior video releases then went unheard for years until it resurfaced on the latest editions as a secondary track labelled “original mono”.
You Only Live Twice is the one rumored to have an unconfirmed 70mm blowup possibly only played in Japan. Freddie Young reportedly with Lewis Gilbert asked to use Super Panavision 70 to better shoot the massive volcano set but was refused by EON. Their budget mindedness is why mono upheld for so long and why I found the rumors of mag runs so surprising.
OHMSS is the tipping point. I first read I think on the home theater forum somewhere about possibly the 70’s films having mag stereo runs and that was it. Then when reading John Glen’s autobiography “For My Eyes Only” he details having to tear apart and install new sound equipment for the OHMSS premiere because it had been mixed in magnetic stereo and the venue was apparently only rigged for mono-and this was days before the premiere!
Diamonds Are Forever has a good mono mix already so I’d love to hear a stereo mix if it exists.
Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun are the two films where I’m convinced if any were done in mag stereo it would be these. They already display a very healthy increase in fidelity and dynamics and are so good they almost sound stereo in places but remain mono. On LALD I would buy a magnetic run being done since you had both the Wings title song and George Martin doing the score. Then they would have likely repeated the practice for the next film. Another fun fact is that on the earlier video releases of Golden Gun where they went with a 1.33 opening up of the 1.85 frame the source is a print with cues and the sound is an okay mono. But when they finally did it letterboxed on Laserdisc in 1994 (the last to finally be letterboxed on video) while the source element was the same (this time matted) the sound is suddenly MASSIVELY improved and while still mono is so full bodied you’d swear it was stereo.
Realizing this it’s likely these were perhaps magnetic mono runs. The only other note I have is the rumors of the LALD title song existing in some sort of quad mix. The score did get released as a quad 8 track which I’d love to find someday. Some have said in the (otherwise atrocious 5.1 remix) they tried to make the song sound like the quad mix in the title sequence.
The first officially to have anything other than mono was The Spy Who Loved Me but it has no Dolby credit as that was first used on Moonraker two years later. However, Spy turned up with a four channel LCRS surround encoded mix for the first time on the 1991 letterbox Laserdisc release. I’m pretty sure what happened was that a four track (perhaps magnetic?) mix was done for premiere engagements but that it wasn’t Dolby since it was after Star is Born ’76 but before Star Wars took the world by storm and made Dolby famous. It’s possible it could have been Dolby but there’s no official documentation everywhere. In the end all the main release prints for Spy were seemingly mono and now that mix is the rare version. It graced all early video releases, but the LD was pan n scan and time compressed. I tracked down the old CBS Fox VHS tape and it’s mono. The mix in LCRS is quite impressive for the time if a bit limited. On that LD it’s a little noisy in spots but a healthy listen with a very faint trace of dialog panning in some spots. They’ve since remixed it a number of times as 5.1 for later releases. Spy is rumored to have gotten some 70mm blowups but it’s still unconfirmed.
Moonraker was the first in Dolby Stereo and the mix is pretty good though John Barry reportedly hated how his score was treated and felt they didn’t go far enough with the technology. As with Spy it is thought there might have been some blowups made. Eventually the 2.0 was remixed into 5.1 but the purist in me feels that with both films and the ones to follow that the 5.1 loses something from the original.
For Your Eyes Only has a nice and robust 2.0 Dolby Stereo track.
Octopussy was Dolby Stereo 35mm and is the one film confirmed to have 70mm blowups from this period though not many. It was likely done to compete with the rival Never Say Never Again released the same year which did have 70mm blowups made. While Octopussy is the much better film the one category where there is no contest in terms of a winner is the sound design. OP has a very good surround track for 1983 whereas NSNA is at times almost like glorified mono. It’s very pitiful which is a shame.
A View to a Kill has a very nice and warm 2.0 Dolby Stereo track with very impressive low end that can be felt in the pretitles and title sequence.
The Living Daylights has an even better 2.0 Dolby Stereo track that is I think one of the best of the era.
Licence to Kill while being a production fraught with issues and cutbacks did not skimp on the final sound mix and has a very impressive mix that was the first of the series to be released in Dolby SR. It manages to hold its own in a year that had Last Crusade, Batman and Glory.
I think some of the Brosnan era films had some SDDS showings but I never did get to experience SDDS growing up.
Goldeneye was the first of the digital sound era and had at least Dolby SR 2.0, SR-d 5.1 ac3 and DTS 5.1. The noticeable difference on the video side is that the Dolby mixes both have a very heavy bass boost to them that some have felt it must’ve been a mistake. This bass heavy track made it to the initial DVDs but was later remixed. I jokingly call it the “Goldeneye club mix” and it’s a fun listen that I presume must have been done theatrically to differentiate the Dolby from the DTS. However the DTS Laserdisc beats it with an even more refined powerful listen that has better detail without the heavy bass. The Blu-ray hdma track comes close but I still think the DTS LD audio is the best home experience.
Tomorrow Never Dies is the lone late film that did get a 70mm blowup but this I think was only shown in Europe once or twice. I rave about GE’s sound above but TND is a sonic powerhouse and still one of the best mixes ever done in my opinion. The Dolby and DTS home editions sound identical this time with DTS having greater range. The DTS Laserdisc again is the best home experience but all versions sound good. I still remember this film sounding great in the theater to this very day.
The World Is Not Enough is a more intimate film so the sound doesn’t get quite as bombastic. Every revisit though I come away feeling disappointed with the mix and while it was the first to be released in Dolby EX the extra center rear info is just kinda there and the mix doesn’t do anything with it.
Die Another Day is a film everyone likes to complain about but you can’t complain about the wonderfully aggressive sound mix. This film sounded huge on the opening week in a very big new hall running DTS and almost as good the other times I saw it in a smaller hall in Dolby. The mix is quite booming and still sounds good in home theaters to this day. It did has Dolby EX and the first DVD included a DTS ES track which I presume would have been on the prints. The info is matrixed in so it’s still there on the Blu-ray 5.1 hdma.
I think the IB prints were through at least DAF in the US but probably continued in the UK a little longer. The constant reissues were running original prints over and over until there was nothing left before striking new prints if any as far as I understand it. (Sadly almost all of the theatrical reissues happened before my lifetime so I’ve only been able to see some of the first 16 Bonds properly on the big screen a few times)
In my own researches into the films in both their exhibition and video histories I’ve come across some mentions and musings of possible magnetic stereo runs for some of the films in addition to the handful of titles never confirmed of having 70mm blowups.
For magnetic prints it is thought they could have been mono or stereo on certain titles for any of the first nine films. I think Dr. No is out because it was a low budget production, and likely FRWL as well. It’s possible on Goldfinger but I think unlikely. The one cool note about GF is that the 003 bomb timer did make it into certain prints which seem to be the initial December 1964 UK prints and by the time of the 1965 US and other territory releases the Harry Saltzman 007 timer idea had been inserted.
Thunderball is the really confusing one. TB was excessively rushed to theaters and barely made its already pushed back Christmas 1965 date. Peter Hunt was editing like mad and had to get the four hour rough cut down which meant most of the second act was drastically hacked down. Eventually the film was released in scope 35mm mono but you’d think such a big event would have had a blowup version. (Cubby Broccoli apparently didn’t like the roadshow system.) What did happen was that two distinct audio mixes appeared with dialog and music differences. For years I’ve tried to figure out why this is and what happened. At first I thought perhaps one was an abandoned 70mm mix but my best guess is like GF above that there was a second mix done later for the US and other country releases that had the differences and the first was used in the UK. On video all we ever had was a mono track that ends with a Thunderball instrumental. Eventually for the big CAV 1995 anniversary Laserdisc boxset someone at MGM wanted to do the film in stereo and they pulled some stems. They then inserted John Barry’s score in full stereo around the mono mix and turned it into a ProLogic affair which was later bumped to 5.1 and is still on disc today. The interesting thing is whatever source they pulled was this second mix with differences and ends in the original 1962 James Bond theme. Since this was MGM/UA in Los Angeles I assume it must be a master of what I think is the US mix. The older mono from prior video releases then went unheard for years until it resurfaced on the latest editions as a secondary track labelled “original mono”.
You Only Live Twice is the one rumored to have an unconfirmed 70mm blowup possibly only played in Japan. Freddie Young reportedly with Lewis Gilbert asked to use Super Panavision 70 to better shoot the massive volcano set but was refused by EON. Their budget mindedness is why mono upheld for so long and why I found the rumors of mag runs so surprising.
OHMSS is the tipping point. I first read I think on the home theater forum somewhere about possibly the 70’s films having mag stereo runs and that was it. Then when reading John Glen’s autobiography “For My Eyes Only” he details having to tear apart and install new sound equipment for the OHMSS premiere because it had been mixed in magnetic stereo and the venue was apparently only rigged for mono-and this was days before the premiere!
Diamonds Are Forever has a good mono mix already so I’d love to hear a stereo mix if it exists.
Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun are the two films where I’m convinced if any were done in mag stereo it would be these. They already display a very healthy increase in fidelity and dynamics and are so good they almost sound stereo in places but remain mono. On LALD I would buy a magnetic run being done since you had both the Wings title song and George Martin doing the score. Then they would have likely repeated the practice for the next film. Another fun fact is that on the earlier video releases of Golden Gun where they went with a 1.33 opening up of the 1.85 frame the source is a print with cues and the sound is an okay mono. But when they finally did it letterboxed on Laserdisc in 1994 (the last to finally be letterboxed on video) while the source element was the same (this time matted) the sound is suddenly MASSIVELY improved and while still mono is so full bodied you’d swear it was stereo.
Realizing this it’s likely these were perhaps magnetic mono runs. The only other note I have is the rumors of the LALD title song existing in some sort of quad mix. The score did get released as a quad 8 track which I’d love to find someday. Some have said in the (otherwise atrocious 5.1 remix) they tried to make the song sound like the quad mix in the title sequence.
The first officially to have anything other than mono was The Spy Who Loved Me but it has no Dolby credit as that was first used on Moonraker two years later. However, Spy turned up with a four channel LCRS surround encoded mix for the first time on the 1991 letterbox Laserdisc release. I’m pretty sure what happened was that a four track (perhaps magnetic?) mix was done for premiere engagements but that it wasn’t Dolby since it was after Star is Born ’76 but before Star Wars took the world by storm and made Dolby famous. It’s possible it could have been Dolby but there’s no official documentation everywhere. In the end all the main release prints for Spy were seemingly mono and now that mix is the rare version. It graced all early video releases, but the LD was pan n scan and time compressed. I tracked down the old CBS Fox VHS tape and it’s mono. The mix in LCRS is quite impressive for the time if a bit limited. On that LD it’s a little noisy in spots but a healthy listen with a very faint trace of dialog panning in some spots. They’ve since remixed it a number of times as 5.1 for later releases. Spy is rumored to have gotten some 70mm blowups but it’s still unconfirmed.
Moonraker was the first in Dolby Stereo and the mix is pretty good though John Barry reportedly hated how his score was treated and felt they didn’t go far enough with the technology. As with Spy it is thought there might have been some blowups made. Eventually the 2.0 was remixed into 5.1 but the purist in me feels that with both films and the ones to follow that the 5.1 loses something from the original.
For Your Eyes Only has a nice and robust 2.0 Dolby Stereo track.
Octopussy was Dolby Stereo 35mm and is the one film confirmed to have 70mm blowups from this period though not many. It was likely done to compete with the rival Never Say Never Again released the same year which did have 70mm blowups made. While Octopussy is the much better film the one category where there is no contest in terms of a winner is the sound design. OP has a very good surround track for 1983 whereas NSNA is at times almost like glorified mono. It’s very pitiful which is a shame.
A View to a Kill has a very nice and warm 2.0 Dolby Stereo track with very impressive low end that can be felt in the pretitles and title sequence.
The Living Daylights has an even better 2.0 Dolby Stereo track that is I think one of the best of the era.
Licence to Kill while being a production fraught with issues and cutbacks did not skimp on the final sound mix and has a very impressive mix that was the first of the series to be released in Dolby SR. It manages to hold its own in a year that had Last Crusade, Batman and Glory.
I think some of the Brosnan era films had some SDDS showings but I never did get to experience SDDS growing up.
Goldeneye was the first of the digital sound era and had at least Dolby SR 2.0, SR-d 5.1 ac3 and DTS 5.1. The noticeable difference on the video side is that the Dolby mixes both have a very heavy bass boost to them that some have felt it must’ve been a mistake. This bass heavy track made it to the initial DVDs but was later remixed. I jokingly call it the “Goldeneye club mix” and it’s a fun listen that I presume must have been done theatrically to differentiate the Dolby from the DTS. However the DTS Laserdisc beats it with an even more refined powerful listen that has better detail without the heavy bass. The Blu-ray hdma track comes close but I still think the DTS LD audio is the best home experience.
Tomorrow Never Dies is the lone late film that did get a 70mm blowup but this I think was only shown in Europe once or twice. I rave about GE’s sound above but TND is a sonic powerhouse and still one of the best mixes ever done in my opinion. The Dolby and DTS home editions sound identical this time with DTS having greater range. The DTS Laserdisc again is the best home experience but all versions sound good. I still remember this film sounding great in the theater to this very day.
The World Is Not Enough is a more intimate film so the sound doesn’t get quite as bombastic. Every revisit though I come away feeling disappointed with the mix and while it was the first to be released in Dolby EX the extra center rear info is just kinda there and the mix doesn’t do anything with it.
Die Another Day is a film everyone likes to complain about but you can’t complain about the wonderfully aggressive sound mix. This film sounded huge on the opening week in a very big new hall running DTS and almost as good the other times I saw it in a smaller hall in Dolby. The mix is quite booming and still sounds good in home theaters to this day. It did has Dolby EX and the first DVD included a DTS ES track which I presume would have been on the prints. The info is matrixed in so it’s still there on the Blu-ray 5.1 hdma.
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