Helga Brandt (Karin Dor 1938-2017) is the helicopter pilot/henchwoman of the minor villain Mr. Osato in the 1967 James Bond film, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.
Helga works for Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada), the Japanese industrialist and member of the criminal organization SPECTRE. She is only an assistant who basically does all the hard and dirty tasks, and poses as a smiling and sexy secretary. She is a 28 year-old German woman, has mid-length red hair and a lot of blue eye-liner on her brown eyes. She is serious in her job but also likes to get some pleasure for herself sometimes, given she is a seductive single young woman. However, she always remains very devoted to her bosses, although her person and even her life have no importance to them.
We first see Helga when James Bond (Sean Connery) is posing as Mr. Fisher, the new managing director of Empire Chemical. During this meeting with Mr. Osato, she is wearing a bright orange blouse and white high heels. Mr. Osato introduces her as his secretary, who proceeds to offer Bond a glass of champagne. Osato covertly x-rays Bond's chest which reveals his Walther PPK under his jacket. Osato reprimands him for his nasty smoking habit, to which Helga adds, "Mr. Osato believes in a healthy chest", as she thrusts her breasts out toward him after serving the champagne. Helga proceeds to take notes during the interview. After 007 leaves, Osato orders her to kill him. Not surprised by this order, she calmly uses the phone to arrange a car-load of assassins to intercept Bond outside, but the attempt fails.
Next we see Bond get captured while investigating the Ning-Po, a ship linked to Osato Chemicals, and he is taken aboard and brought to Helga's cabin. There she is waiting on a couch with her sexy legs crossed, and dressed very seductively. She is wearing a black slinky dress that appears more like a slip, with a sheer black semi-see-through shawl. Helga is also smoking a cigarette, proving that she doesn't practice what she preaches.
Helga is an expert torturer, but she apparently wants to have a little bit of pleasure during her job and spares Bond the violent interrogation when she attempts to seduce him. She kisses him and 007 claims that he is an industrial spy. Helga sensually replies that she knows that (not knowing "Fisher" is James Bond) and keeps kissing and caressing him. Bond offers Helga $150,000 to help him escape back to Tokyo. She refuses at first, stating that Osato would have her killed. But being very horny, she cuts his bonds and Bond uses the blade to cut off her spaghetti straps on her dress. The pair have sex there in the ship cabin.
Helga then pretends to be helping him flee in a small Meyers 200 plane, which she pilots. She is wearing a leather flying helmet with goggles, flight jacket and pants. She starts to apply lipstick on her lips while Bond is offering his protection from her bosses. However, she doesn't want to follow him anymore and decides to stay devoted to her employers. Her lipstick is explosive and she drops it to Bond, blocks Bond's arm with a wood plank and uses a parachute to get herself to safety, leaving Bond to die in the crash. She then looks at the crashing plane with satisfaction, from her parachute, persuaded that Bond is going to die and that she has just succeeded her task. Unfortunately for her, Bond is able to break the plank and regain control of the aircraft. He then lands safely and gets out of it before it explodes, unbeknownst to Helga who still thinks she has killed him.
The following day, Brandt is in the operations room of SPECTRE's volcanic launch site, where she assists in the capture of a Soviet spacecraft. She is wearing a red blouse and skirt with purple heels. Blofeld summons Osato and Number 11, which is another name for Helga. They enter his lair, where Blofield immediately reprimands them for failing to recognize and kill Bond. Both of them are perplexed due to the fact that they thought they had been successful in disposing of Bond. Osato then shifts the whole blame to Brandt. Feeling she is going to be punished for the failure, Helga gets very nervous and tries to say it's not her fault but Osato's, but Blofeld reminds that he does not tolerate failure and bids Osato to leave. Blofeld never directly talks to her, and Osato only refers to her by her number, to show how insignificant she is to the organization. Osato is given a second chance, but Helga is going to pay a terrible price for her mistake. She implores Blofeld with her eyes hoping she won't have to endure any punishment, but Blofeld talks to her for the first time by nastily ordering her to leave. The ashamed Helga quickly lower her eyes and follows Osato, looking back to check if Blofeld is going to kill her, but it seems he isn’t. Her heart pounding in her chest, the redhead woman follows Osato across a metal bridge over the piranha pool with a deep breath, her gaze never leaving the other end of the bridge. But Blofeld presses a foot pedal which opens up the section of the bridge that Helga is walking on, her legs trembling as she pleads for mercy. Helga, terrified, slides down into the water with a shriek. Seeing the piranhas converging on her, she screams with horror in her native tongue ("NEIN!!"), knowing she is doomed. She thrashes, her screams piercing the air as the piranhas begin their feast. As she is vainly screaming for Osato’s help, the hungry fishes attack, making short work of the sexy German secretary with their many sharp teeth. Desperate, Helga tried to fight off the creatures, but there are too many, their teeth tearing into her body relentlessly. Paralyzed with fear, the unlucky secretary is devoured alive in seconds, screaming with horrific pain as her pale flesh is stripped to the bones, and all Osato can do is look on in terror as his sexy assistant disappears forever under the violently churning water, knowing the poor girl has just paid with her life for his failure too. The trapdoor then closes, erasing any evidence of Helga's existence. Her cruel punishment serves as a warning for Osato, reminding that even a young and loyal operative can meet her end in the most brutal way possible if she fails in only one of her missions.
Trivia[]
- Helga's death in the film is very similar to that of Stromberg's Assistant , as they were both fed to carnivorous animals. The Assistant was fed to Stromberg's pet shark in the 1977 James Bond film, "The Spy Who Loved Me".
- Karin Dor appeared as Juanita de Cordoba in the 1969 Alfred Hitchcock film "Topaz".
- Karin Dor appeared as the evil scientist Maleva Kerstein in the 1970 Spanish-German horror sci-fi film, "Assignment Terror".
Quotes[]
- "Hello! […] Maybe we can offer you a glass of champaign, Mister Fisher?", while seeing Bond for the first time.
- "Dom Perignon 59. Are you really sure you won't change your mind ?...", while offering champaign to 007 and her boss.
- "Mr Osato believes in a healthy chest", while serving a drink to 007 and intentionaly putting her breasts forward.
- "Goodbye, Mister Fisher!", telling 007 goodbye with a tiny hope she will be able to see him again.
- "Leave him to me now, wait in there. And… shut the door…", while seeing Bond tied on a chair in her cabin and asking to be left alone with him, anticipating a moment of pleasure.
- "I've got you, now!", enjoying herself while having Bond tied in her cabin on the Ning-Po.
- "Who are you working for ?", while interrogating Bond.
- "You are a liar!", answering to Bond’s lies while he says he’s a sailor.
- "You know what this is ? Plastic surgeons call it a dermatome. They use it to slice off skin. I hope you won't force me to use it...", while threatening Bond with a scalpel but flirting with him too.
- "What… ? […] I know that... ! Hmm, hmm…", while sensually kissing Bond, moaning with pleasure and listening him admitting he's a spy.
- "That’s a very nice offer…", while Bond offer her an important amount of money and to fly with him to London.
- "I'm afraid not...", answering Bond's offer to give her money and follow him to London.
- "Osato would kill me!", while explaining Bond the reason of her refusal. Of course, she eventually quickly accepts it, only in order to have sex with him as she always wanted since she saw him the previous day.
- "And, uh… Who do you zuggest ?", with her German accent, while piloting a plane the following day and when Bond tells her she will need protection from SPECTRE.
- "I'm afraid I have another appointment tonight, Mr Fisher! I'm awfully sorry to leave you, but I have to get out!", while trapping Bond in a small plane and leaving him to crash.
- "It was in all the newspaper!", while being summoned by her boss Blofeld that Bond is still alive and trying to deny it.
- "You should have killed him yourself! You had plenty of opportunities!", knowing she's in big trouble and trying to defend herself by involving Osato who just put the whole failure on her shoulders.
- "Aaaaaaaaah… ! OSATO !", while being mercilessly plunged in a piranha tank, terrified and vainly screaming for an impossible help from Osato.
- "NEIIIIIIIIIIN !...", Helga's last words as she painfully dies eaten alive by dozen of piranhas in a few seconds, as a very cruel punishment for her failure to kill Bond. It is very fitting that Helga's last word of her life was in her native German.
Video[]
- Video clip (demise): http://www.mediafire.com/view/ciu16a40t4mhwlz/YouOnlyLiveTwice_KarinDor3.gif
Gallery[]
