20 Things You Didn’t Know About You Only Live Twice (1967)
2. “I Must Congratulate You, Gentlemen, Upon Your Superb Equipment.”
In Ian Fleming’s 1964 novel, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, posing as Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, lives in a coastal Japanese castle surrounded by a “garden of death”, complete with a piranha pool, which becomes a hotspot for suicides, much to the embarrassment of the Japanese authorities.
Tiger Tanaka suggests that, if James Bond kills Shatterhand, he will share intelligence with the British Secret Service, unintentionally giving Bond the opportunity to avenge his murdered wife, Tracy.
During location scouting, it became clear that the feudal Japanese had never built coastal castles due to the risk of typhoons. Overflying Shinmoedake on the island of Kyūshū, Lewis Gilbert was inspired to build Blofeld’s secret rocket base inside an extinct volcano.
Cubby Broccoli was interested in the idea and Ken Adam estimated that it would cost $1 million to build - almost the entire budget of Dr. No. 379 sketches later, Adam constructed the volcano on the backlot at Pinewood Studios, where it could be seen from three miles away.
The soundstage incorporated more steel than London's Hilton Hotel, taking 700 metric tons of structural steel; 200 miles of tubular steel; 200 metric tons of plaster; 500,000 tubular couplings; 8,000 railway ties, and over 250,000 square yards of canvas.
Comprising an opening crater roof, working monorail, moving helicopter pad, and a partially-functioning version of Blofeld’s interceptor rocket, Bird 1, the volcano ultimately cost just over $1 million.