Spectre do know when he turns up yet have forgotten by their briefing with Blofeld.
That seems like a script rewrite that let things drop.
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… although, again judging from reality, good employees are hard to find, and Spectre has not a great track record for success, probably due to people who are just dumb thugs, enjoying to kill and terrify others without any real qualification. They almost could, you know, work for, you know…
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She’s just taking after her boss. Blofeld met Bond in YOLT and then didn’t recognize him when they met face to face again in the next film. Competence, and apparently a decent memory as well, are not prerequisites for working for, or leading, SPECTRE.
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Give her a break, the guy in the obit photo wore a naval uniform while Mr Fisher wears a business suit. Hardly any resemblance at all.
If Helga believes everything she reads in the newspapers, she’ll believe anything anyone else tells her, too. Mr Fisher plainly states he’s interested in manufacturing monosodium glutamate. Now why would a Britsh agent want to do that? I tell you it’s the perfect disguise.
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Exactly. And Superman would not wear glasses either!
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Everything about Helga is kind of slopper - from her goofy “what do you think is in the cupboard?” look, to the unbelievably inept way she thinks she’s trapping Bond in the plane, to everything at the volcano (has there ever been less of a suprise than the bridge-trap?). To be fair, the Austin Powers send-up of YOLT Spectre is actually less stupid and arguably more efficient than the “real” thing. From Pleaseace Blofeld on down it’s kind of slopper - all volcano-style but no-brains.
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Well, she has to work with what Spectre is supplying her with.
“… and then we have a thing that can trap a man in his seat!”
Helga: “Oh, great, what is it made of? Steel?”
“No. It´s… wood!”
Helga: “Oh, haha, I thought you just said wood.”
“It is wood. And very thin.”
Helga: “But… won’t that be broken quite… um… easily?”
“Nobody thought about that. And the seat is already built in, so - no changing possible anymore.”
Helga: “Okay, but-”
“Work with what you have, sweetie. If not, you can sleep with the fishes.”
Helga: “What kind of fish?”
“Their teeth are not made of wood, believe me.”
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“So how does it work?”
“The plank slides in across Bond’s lap the full width of the plane, trapping both his hands so he can’t wriggle free.”
“Okay, but if a wooden plank is wide enough to extend the full width of the interior, wouldn’t it have to be sticking out of the fuselage until I’m ready to push the button?”
“Yes, but he won’t notice if you don’t show him that side of the plane, will he? The plank is on the left side and the door he enters is on the right. Duh.”
“Wait, how do I keep the board from trapping me, as well?”
“Idiot, it only works in the rear seat. You’ll be up front flying the plane.”
“But how do I convince him to sit in the rear seat when there’s an empty one up front beside me? He’ll probably want to make conversation.”
“Do I have to do everything? You’ll think of something if you know what’s good for you.”
“Alright, I’ll work on it. But suppose both his hands aren’t down in his lap when I push the button? Then one or both of them might not be pinned under the plank.”
“I begin to tire of your negativity, Number 11. Just do as you’re told. And to make doubly sure he’s taken off guard, be sure to drop a flash bomb before you deploy the plank.”
“With me still in the plane? Isn’t that dangerous? And what if the flash bomb makes him throw his hands up, away from his lap?”
“That’s it! Hans! Take Number 11 and…”
“Okay, okay! I’m going!”
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September 8.
The Crazy World of Mr Saxby.
Who works for whom and what do they know?
The two chaps and Marie/Irma in the pre-credits - nothing to do with the diamond smuggling, might not be SPECTRE although Marie/Irma has the closest connect to Blofeld - Blofeld associates.
The mud doctors and the doubles - direct Blofeld hires. SPECTRE appears to be dead, though. No connection with the smuggling plot, side-issue.
Dr Tynan, Joe, helicopter pilot, Mrs Whistler - diamond smugglers, nothing to do with Blofeld. Probably unaware of the Willard Whyte angle.
Wint & Kidd - until the cruise ship, could easily be taken as working for Willard Whyte. They hang around in and under The Whyte House. Unclear why they actually launch a murderous attack at the end, other than script demands. They do not evidently have any stake in Blofeld’s real scheme and never engage with Blofeld. Bond never learns their names. They never learn Bond’s. They could have left well alone. They do have a lot of independent agency in the film but the momentum is the permanent closing of the smuggling pipeline. By the end, there’s no motivation?
Slumber and Tree - must have engaged with Wint & Kidd at some point in order to stage their attempted cremation of Bond although, later on, Tree appears not to know Wint & Kidd. Mess. Could still believe they are working for Whyte.
Three Daft Thugs - God knows.
Metz - appears to be happy to work for “WW” but obviously ends up being a reluctant stooge for Blofeld. Clearly believes for most of the film he works for Whyte, though.
Bambi & Thumper - obviously don’t work for Whyte as he is their prisoner. Perhaps the most direct line reports to Blofeld. Probably SPECTRE, or what’s left of it. Unclear why they can’t be ordered to kill Whyte, rather than…
Saxby. Right. Must know Whyte is a prisoner rather than in The Whyte House given his final attack on Whyte. Working back from that, when Bond pretends to be Saxby, Blofeld addresses him in Blofeld-voice when ordering Whyte’s death. And yet earlier, Blofeld addresses him in Whyte-voice (why?), during the private call from Saxby’s office when Saxby identifies “Peter Franks”. Blofeld, seeing Bond on screens, does nothing to inform him to the contrary. This doesn’t make sense. Saxby appears to have some authority over Wint & Kidd, which is odd, but odder still is…
…Saxby reassures the pit boss that Mr Franks’ credit is good, having seen the Slumber Inc. envelope with the fake £50,000 in it. About a minute prior to this, it’s shown he knows the diamonds were fake so knows all about the incident at the crematorium. There’s no indication that Saxby fixes the craps game to give “Franks” his winnings, so why does he say this?
Is this…
- Proper
- Slopper
0
voters
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“Burt Saxby?!? Tell him he’s fired.”
The only reason i voted Proper. Never fails to make me laugh.
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It’s a dog’s breakfast, the entire Spectre scheme, Blofeld’s corporate decisions, the shooting script. 
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Just reading what is all so confusing and incoherent by itself makes me wonder whether I ever really paid close attention to this Bond film.
Or any Bond film.
Maybe I am the perfect audience: sit me down, I watch, I enjoy, I don’t follow but that’s okay - here comes Bond! Yay!
But I am very interested in what Mr.WintKidd has to say about these script problems unless they were caused by production changes.
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DAF erm, erm……slopper??? Or maybe, erm, erm, erm, proper? I don’t really know. Can I just say, “kind of funny, makes me laugh”???
And with all seriousness, that’s my answer. As in DAF isn’t intentionally made to be anything - just to feel a certain way. It’s obviously not supposed to hang together in any sort of Fleming-plotted-inspired way; and it clearly doesn’t want to be “daft-but-take-itself-seriously” in a YOLT/Dahl way. So like many a (Bond) film, it only has to feel like it makes sense in a very meta just-for-this-second type way..
Its slopper, but intentionally so (or just couldn’t care less as here comes another funny line about Van Cleef and Arpels), and so is therefore proper.
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And still, rewrites and rewrites, writers, script doctors… and all the time and money spent on it, when in the end it just gets mixed together in order to have some pizzazz… or at least pizzas?
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DAF is perfect so there can’t be any flaws in it, let alone real errors. 
Although… Blofeld thinks he talked to Saxby, but it realy was Bond with that wacky voice-mimicking device from Q. But why is Saxby than later there at the safehouse trying to shoot Whyte? Blofeld never spoke to him?!
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He probably only said: cuckoo!
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Jim, it amazes me how you keep coming up with enough topics to fill a month of Sideswipes, what, twice a year? And here just in the lead-up to your actual question, you’ve tossed off enough DAF plot points to fill about a week’s worth of “proper or slopper” posers.
In terms of motivations or internal logic, it very much feels like every character in DAF does what they do solely because they know they’re in a Bond movie and it’s their job to do that thing. Do even Wint and Kidd know or care who they work for? Do they work for anyone? Does it matter? Likewise Bambi and Thumper; they’re there because the script says they need to be. Does Bond kill the faux Blofeld in the PTS out of revenge or just because that’s the sort of thing he’s expected to do?
Saxby vouches for “Peter Franks’” credit because Mankiewicz put those words in his mouth. That’s all we’ll ever get in the way of explanation. To the extent I’m interested in the character at all, it’s because he’s played by Bruce Cabot, who by this point has fallen nearly as far as his primate co-star in King Kong and who as an Errol Flynn partisan I can enjoy watching get shot up by the Feds.
Once again I find myself unable to vote, but only because the scene is technically “Proper” within the larger context of a film that is itself willfully and gleefully “Slopper.”
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Wouldn’t Saxby want to be on Franks’ good side until the real diamonds are recovered?
Isn’t it Saxby who calls Tiffany, and tells her to hurry over to Bond’s hotel room?
Hasn’t Saxby toiled for years under the oppressive hand of Willard Whyte, and now with Blofeld in charge, finally has the freedom and autonomy to be his own man?
Hasn’t he salivated for years over the thought of killing Whyte?
Weren’t he and Morton Slumber lovers at one time (they even vacationed with Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd), and though the relationship cooled, don’t they remain friends and colleagues?
Didn’t Saxby introduce Bambi to Thumper?
Can anything ever, in any way, be slopper about DAF?
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And, by definition, to be gleefully slopper is to be proper.
Beautifully put.
The sheriff declares “I got you now.” But he doesn’t, since proper and slopper are forever trading places in the quantum reality of DAF. Sometime an electron is a wave, and sometimes a particle. And sometimes a car is tilted on its right tires, and sometimes on its left set. It is all the same.
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