Every Bond Movie Pre-Title Scene Ranked - Worst To Best

In some ways, the cold open of For Your Eyes Only is the perfect encapsulation of the film’s jarringly uneven tone throughout, but that doesn’t make it any better.

What begins in solemn profundity as 007 visits the grave of his late wife quickly takes a turn for the insane. The helicopter purportedly taking Bond to headquarters is revealed to be under the remote guidance of a cackling, wheelchair-clad figure that we’re supposed to infer is none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Of course, he was unable to be explicitly named as such, as by this time the Bond producers no longer owned the rights to SPECTRE, and by extension the Blofeld character. Thus, unwelcome real-world legal intrusions were to blame for the absurd proceeds as Bond takes control of the chopper and pats “Blofeld” on the head before dropping him down a chimney. “Keep your hair on!”

It was a deliberate statement on the part of the producers that Blofeld was no longer needed, with the James Bond films leaving that era of the past far behind. Frankly though, Bond’s most iconic nemesis deserved a better end than this wholly out of place segment.

Best moment: Viewers aren’t sure whether to laugh or cry as “Blofeld” pleads for his life with a bizarre offer: “I’ll buy you a delicatessen! In stainless steel!” Surely a contender for the strangest line of dialogue in all of the films.