Octopussy

Title: Octopussy

Year: 1983. The 4^th Bond film to be named after a villain, Octopussy was the undisputed “Worst Bond Movie Name Ever” title holder for over two decades until surrendering the belt in a first round knock-out in 2008. Despite what the title implies, the movie is in fact a PG rated action film and not some strange Human Centipede (2009) like horror-surgery flick. Octopussy? Really? Even Maude Adams, who returned to play the title role, admitted to being embarrassed by her characters moniker, only coming around to the eight-footed feline name after learning “Octopussy and The Living Daylight,” a posthumously published collection of short stories, was a title used by Fleming himself. As if that somehow makes it OK? It’s still a terrible name for a movie. All that said, when I was growing up, this was the film that for me, define Bond. In 1983 I was nine years old and my love affair with film was still in the honeymoon stage. That is to say, every freaking little thing about movies had me mesmerized. Seeing movies in the theater was like a religious experience but most of the flicks I caught at the time were on TV or home video. The arrival of the VCR in my home was a huge event, on par with buying a new cartage for the Atari 2600 or my first day of Kindergarten. Members of my family would take turns picking out the tape for Friday night movie nights and I remember counting down the days until Octopussy arrived on my video store shelf. And by video store, I mean the pharmacy section at the local Path-Mart where we also did our grocery shopping. (Our North Jersey strip-mall didn’t get a proper video store until the mid to late 80’s.) Perhaps because I saw Octopussy at the right time, for better or for worse, whenever I heard the words James Bond, this was the film that immediately came to mind. I had a bunch of images/ scenes burned in my head before rewatching it for this project; the creepy clown death of 009, the saw blade yo-yo slicing a pillow and sending feathers flying into the air, and Bond avoiding certain pain while sliding down a banister. (I played little league. Even as a kid I knew what it meant to get hit in that double O-so-sensitive spot.) But the thing that really stood out as a nine-year-old weren’t the action sequences but the Fabergé egg auction. I’d been to auctions growing up. We spent a lot of time on Cape Cod where on Saturday nights our family would go to the Sandwich Auction House. My folks would walk around and check out old furniture as the guy behind the podium shouted in the stereotypical super-fast-auctioneer-way-of-blending-all-his-words-together. The auction was held in a huge tent next to the auction house, where bidders sat on folding chairs, the items were displayed on a wooden, two-inch high stage, and two dudes would throw sold items onto a hand truck and walk them to the winners car. What I saw in Octopussy was an impossibly posh room, full of beautiful people in evening wear, and an auctioneer who spoke like a Shakespearian actor. But the thing I remember most Fabergé egg. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around it. “What is that?” My parents explained it was a piece of art made many years ago in Russia and it’s part of their national treasure. Russia? The bad guys? If I’m to believe what I’ve seen in films and learned in school, Russia is a place of great poverty where people wait in lines for bread when the Army isn’t kicking in their doors and threatening them at gun point. They don’t let their people do things like make art. It just didn’t jibe. More that Stallone shouting “We all can change!” while wrapped in an American flag, more than Robbin Williams living under a make-up counter in Macy’s, more than Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen yelling “Wolverines!” this scene was a pivotal moment in my understanding of the world. Maybe ALL Russians aren’t that bad. Maybe, just maybe, the world wasn’t all black and white. Yes, I had a political awaking thanks to film named Octopussy. It’s strange what kids pick up and remember.

Film Length: 2 Hours 11 minutes

Bond Actor: Roger Moore. I own everything Bob Dylan ever recorded, even those late 70’s early 80’s “Born again” records. (I love “Changing of the Guard.” Stop rolling your eyes.) You can like Uncle Bob or hate him, it’s all subjective and I’m not here to change anyone’s mind on the Bard, but what I can’t stand is when people dismiss Dylan with the standard, cheep imitation. You know the one; singing in the mumbled, buzzing, nasally thing that has become shorthand for why he sucks. Dylan has been recording for over fifty years (his first full LP came out the same year as Dr. No when he was 19) and he might have, maybe, if your lucky, sounded like the Dana Carvey impression for six songs. But the image stuck, and people who don’t know or care to know much more about him now unfairly see Dylan as that guy. After watching Octopussy this time around, I think this movie unfairly hung a similar albatross around Roger Moore’s neck. Much like I thought of the Bond of Octopussy as the definitive 007, I think most folks think of this movie when they voice the general complaint of Roger being nothing more than a light, ethereal, wise-assed Bond. While that most certainly doesn’t fit the description of Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) it is, I’m afraid, a more than accurate criticism of his performance in Bond 13. In the last film, Bond had a chance to save a baddies life and instead kick him over the side of a cliff. Placed in the same situation in this film, Bond would hand the guy a cigar, light it for him, and step away as the gunpowder filled soggy blew up in the baddies face. Bond would then smirk proudly, chew on a carrot and ask his victim, “ehhhhh, Whats da mater Doc? A little to hot for yahs?” All the hard edges from the previous films have been rounded off. What’s left is a Bond who would be a blast at any cocktail party but he’s not the guy you would ever entrust to save the world. The script does Moore no favors in this department requiring him to drop quips left and right while running from one thrill to the next as if he’s trying to ride every rollercoaster at Six Flags in a single day. “Well that one had its UPS and DOWNS. I wonder if the next ride will be as UPLIFTING?” Moore’s physically present in the action but he’s detached from the outcome and as a result we feel no danger and the entire enterprise feels like a lark. That said, who doesn’t love a good rollercoaster and a laugh. When it comes to thrills and giggles, this film delivers in spades. And besides, it could have been much, much worse. Back in 1973 as a young man of 45 years, Moore singed a five-film deal to become one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world. When For Your Eyes Only (1981) went into the can, Sir Roger was a free agent. Like any good ball player in a contract year, he delivered a strong performance, flirted with the open market and then held out for as much money as he could get. For his part Cubby Broccoli, like any general manager worth his salt, scouted for a younger talent to replace his aging veteran; not only to inject some energy but also to fill the position at a reduced price. Once again, EON producers cast a wide net when searching for James Bond and they got so far as to draft the 4^th007; a tall, dashing, American actor by the name of James Brolin.

Yes, that James Brolin, then best known know as Dr. Steven Kiley on the long running “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and the creepy dad in The Amityville Horror (1979) and today famous for being Mr. Barbra Streisand. To keep my baseball analogy alive, Moore for Brolin would be like Tom “The Franchise” Seaver to Cincinnati for Pat Zachry, Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn, and Dan Norman in the infamous “Midnight Massacre.” The Mets instantly fell to the bottom of the dregs in the National League, attendance at Shea dropped to nil, and all executives involved in the trade were sent packing within two seasons. Brolin as Bond, by the by, came dangerously close to a theater near you. Broccoli flew Brolin to London, took him to the Bond barber for the right haircut, and even drove the American around town to help him find an apartment. (Or “flat” as apartments are called in England as Mr. Brolin would learn.) Thanks to the modern day marketing rule which states “put EVERYTHING we have on a DVD extra and jack up the price,” you, dear Bond fan, can now watch Brolin screen tests in the comfort of your own home. See the American actor doing a romantic scene from From Russia With Love (1963) opposite Maude Adams. Or, watch Brolin dressed in his Bond best engage in a fully choreographed fight with a baddie. I must admit, its not the train wreck I thought it would be. Right off the bat, Brolin doesn’t even attempt a British accent and that’s the right choice. He looks striking in a tux, as Bond needs to, and he handles the physical aspects of the role easily, something that could never be said of Moore. However, when it comes to delivering the dry dialog, Brolin is lost. I know it’s just a screen-test and music and editing would help his cause somewhat but you can see him acting and he has none of the timing that comes so naturally to Moore. (Even in interviews, Moore knows exactly when to cock that eyebrow for maximum effect.) As a study, these screen tests are fascinating and I highly recommend checking them out, but as a reality, I think the Brolin as Bond era would have been a disaster. Thank the movies gods Moore signed on for his 6^th film at the last minute, agreeing to one movie for a reported $4 million and up to 5% of the box-office take. At 54, Moore didn’t disappoint. Yes, in his 13^th movie, Bond becomes almost a caricature of himself; the indestructible superhero spy who’s always quick with a quip and never has a single hair out of place. But when Moore pulls a sword out of a street performers throat or flips off kids that fail to pick-up the hitchhiking 007, only a coldhearted partisan wouldn’t chuckle.

Director: John Glen. In the NFL, a rookie Quarterback is often called on not to lead the offence but to “manage the game.” This is coach speak that translates to keeping the play book super simple. Nothing exotic or tricky where the QB will out think himself or become bogged down with too much information. Just meat and potatoes, time tested plays designed to get the next first down and repeat. The producers and Glen were wise to take a similar approach to For Your Eyes Only for Glens debut in the director’s chair. For his second go around however, the training wheels were off and Glen throws everything he’s got up onto the screen, including the kitchen sink. As you’d expect, some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t, but man it’s exciting to watch. The movie is fast. At one point, Bond is involved in a pedicab chase through the streets of India and a crowd has gathered to watch. They look left to right and back again in unison, as if watching a tennis match. It’s the perfect metaphor for the film audience. As Bond is thrust from one action set piece to the next, we crane our necks to keep up. But this is not a modern slash and burn, shaky cam sense of speed. As he always has, Glen proves himself to be a master at assembling action sequence. I was planning on dissecting one of these scenes, the fight in Octopussy bedroom, but after three pages I realized I’m not teaching Film 101 at the local county college. Lets just say the editing, pacing, and camera angles always keep us in the moment and establish a true sense of space so we feel as if we are able to understand exactly who is where doing what to whom. This is no small thing and it’s such a treat to see action sequences that are not just story boarded but crafted with love and logic. It’s so rare to see this in action films today that the whole thing seems almost quant. Add the fact that as early as 1983 directors knew their movies were going to get killed by pan and scan when converted to the 3 by 4 ratio of home video releases and many filmmakers just gave up trying to use the full screen and proper editing to tell a story. I always think of Armageddon (1998) when it comes to an easy illustration of how not to make an action sequence. I know the movie is crazy old by now but I always return to it because it was the first time I remember literally throwing my hands up while sitting in a theater. I challenge anyone to tell me who is doing what where for the entire finally 1/3 of that film. It’s like a game of 52 pick-up, just throw images at the audience and leave it to them to sort through and make sense of it. That not a movie, it’s an assault on the eyes and brain. But I digress. The point being, Glen cares and even gives Bond fans a bunch of winks and inside jokes. We get a pidgin flying out of a window to startle Bond while he scaling a wall, much like the pidgin did when he was climbing the cliff in the previous film (I saw an interview with Glen at some point where he said he tried to get a shot of a pidgin into all his films, like a trademark akin to Hitchcock appearing in all his films. Something to keep an eye out for going forward.) We get the guy seeing an impossible Bond stunt who then stares at his bottle gag. There are reference to classic Connery moments like the eyeball reflection in Goldfinger (1964), a car on two wheels like Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Octopussy leads a circus of woman performers much like Pussy Galore lead a flying circus of female pilots, (why must women have “pussy” as part of their name to have authority in these films?) and while there is not a fist fight in a sleeping car, we do get a classic and super exciting train battle. Glen even gets meta; when Bond arrives in India, he identifies his contact, disguised as a snake charmer, when he hears the notes to the James Bond Theme played on the flute. “That’s a charming tune.”

Reported Budget: $27,500,000 (estimated) $4 million of which went directly into Moore’s pocket which I suspect EON saw as a bargain considering the 1983 release landscape. At twenty-one years old, Bond was no longer the “A game” in town. I’ve never seen anything to confirm this, but I would wager Broccoli was wise enough to know he wasn’t in the same league as Return of the Jedi (1983). Likewise, he wasn’t going after the same 13-year-old girl audience as Flashdance (1983) (the first Simpson/Bruckheimer mega-production.) However, there was one film hitting theaters that was directly in Broccoli’s crosshairs. It was imperative, from both a business and personal standpoint, that this one particular Warner Bothers release be demolished by Octopussy critically and more importantly at the box-office. While Broccoli was courting Brolin, he had to have known that in order to win this battle, Roger Moore was essential. Cubby needed a familiar face in the role of Bond, since the man who invented Bond for the big screen was once again going to don a hairpiece and play 007. Way back in 1965 Kevin McClory co-produced Thunderball (1965) and somehow, someway got his hands on the rights to make a “sequel” with license to use the Bonds character. EON and UA have always guarded the rights to Bond more tightly then FOX News guards the GOP and Broccoli sued for copyright infringement. This lead to years of legal battles that ended up, among other things, holding up The Spy Who Loved Me for years and sucking up millions in legal fees, almost sinking Broccoli right around the time the was putting more money into Moonraker (1979) than any other Bond film. Finally, by 1983 EON had lost and McClory paid a kings ransom to Sean Connery to reprise the role of James Bond in the aptly titled Never Say Never Again(1983).

Connery agreed, in part to fund his charity but also to stick it to Moore and more importantly Broccoli. For his part, Cubby was seething at the thought of the man he made a star (at least as he saw it) coming back to try to beat him at his own game. The posters for Octopussy declared “Nobody Does Him Better” under Roger Moore’s name, which wouldn’t have worked so well with Brolin’s handle on the marquee. “Nobody Does Him Americaner?” Anyway, in a conflict worthy of it’s own movie, the new and old Bond (the old Bond, who by the by, is three years younger than the new Bond) were set on a collision course that promised to collide in multiplexes in the summer of 1983, forcing the ticket buying public to pick sides, and vote with their hard earned dollar for Moore or Connery. (Ed Note: After completing every “official” release, Blog James Blog will review both Casino Royale (1969) and Never Say Never Again, films I have yet to see and the only two movies that had legal rights to James Bond outside of the EON releases)

Reported Box-office: $57,403,139 (USA) $187,500,000 (Worldwide). Coming in far short of even the domestic take of the #1 Return of the Jedi ($252 million), Octopussy landed softly between WarGames and Sudden Impact for a healthy #6 in the year end rankings. The decision to play up Moore’s assists, the never-let-them-see-you-sweet suave coupled with a wit dryer than his martini, and to play down his liabilities, being a tough guy like Connery, paid off. Moore’s younger rival, who’s Never Say Never Again was delayed and didn’t hit screens until October, came in at #14 with a $55,432,841 hall in the US and $138,000,000 worldwide. And with that, the victorious Moore drew his mighty katana and decapitated Connery who promptly vanished … only to return to 1536 AD Scotland where he once again suffer the effects of the Quickening.

Theme Song: “All Time High” performed by Rita Coolidge because “Octopussy” is a tough monkey to wrench into lyrics in the pre-Snoop Dogg daze. The tune, in my expert critical analyses, is WLITE-FM crap.

Opening Titles: We cut out of the opening action sequence and into the credits with two hands coming together to create a wipe. I feel like this method has been used to open the credits in the past few pictures. I could very easily pop in the DVD’s to confirm this nagging suspicion but I am in fact, a very lazy man. Outside of the handclap these silhouetted naked ladies have a fresh feel to them; think less secret service and more Victoria Secret. Lasers are employed not to threaten Bond’s most precious body part but to highlight said body parts on the babes. Near the end of the sequence, a reclining woman shoots a gun. A single laser beam slowly comes out of the barrel and travels down her body until it hits her naked belly, stops, and spreads out to projected “007” in laser light. The wife and I both starting cracking up because it looked just like the gun was doing something that starts with “e-jac” and ends with “u-late.” Are we both perverts reading too much into this image? Considering the lyric “I’m in so deep and so are you” is heard while this happens, I think not. Octopussy indeed.

Opening Action Sequence: The horse’s tail in the first shot. As soon as I saw the horse’s tail with the red band around it the entire open flashed back. Most Bond opens are mini-movies but there is nothing mini about this one. It’s a little longer than past opens and could be a complete three act film on it’s own. Act I opens with Bond and a girl who puts the finishing touch, a mustache, on his disguise. It’s a nice piece of fore shadowing since Bond will employ many disguises in the film. In this case, Bond becomes the Cuban General Toro. (I think they are in Cuba, this is never confirmed.) As Toro, Bond works his way into a hanger where many planes with big missiles are housed. Bond salutes/karate chops a guard before he is caught planting a bomb by his doppelganger. “So, you’re a Toro too.” The bomb is disarmed, Bond is taken prisoner, and his lady friend, in the stands watching a horse show, watches as 007 is hauled away in a jeep. End of Act I. Why is there an equestrian event happening in spiting distance of this top secrete military hanger? Shut-up and watch the movie kid. Act II, our hero tied up in the back of jeep, surrounded by men with guns. Escape is impossible, but what is that? Here comes the lady driving a convertible with a horse trailer hitched to it. A convertible sports car with a trailer hitch you ask and I again ask you to lay off any and all questions regarding horses, OK? The lady pulls up next to the jeep, shows a little leg, and catches the eye of the two men charged with guarding Bond. A quick move by our hero and the two guys are up in the air, their parachutes having been deployed and pulling them off the back of the jeep. Safely in the car with the lady Bond then forces the jeep off the road and into a chicken coop. I found it interesting that Bond let all four of these men live, perhaps out of respect for fellow oglers of woman. Bond kisses his rescuer, telling her “Ill see you in Miami” which I assume is coded “spy speak” for we will fornicate when I get to Florida. End Act II. Having been rescued, Act III is about completing the mission that was foiled so long ago back in Act I. The horse’s ass in the trailer rises and out shoots Bond in a single-seat spitfire of plane known in aviation circles as the Acrostar BD-5. As soon as Bond is airborne he sees a heat-seeking missile in his “objects are closer than they appear” rearview mirror. Three years before Maverick, Goose and the Ice Man would rip-up the friendly skies with F-16’s (not to mention melt hearts with karaoke renditions of Righteous Brothers tunes) Bond was flying under bridges and over clouds in simply breathtaking aerial shots as the missile bears down on him. This would cause panic in a mere mortal but Bond sees an opportunity to turn sidewinders into lemon-aid. That is, after all, why he gets paid the homerun money. In a stunning move that makes the helicopter-in-the-warehouse trick from the last film look like amateur hour, Bond barnstorms the hanger and bursts out the back door, sending the missile into his original target to kill two birds with one stone; he evaded the missile while destroying the original target. As the building explodes in an incredible ball of flame behind him, Bond flies off into the sunset, and scene, But wait, a coda! The jet is low on fuel. Bond makes an emergence landing on country road and comes to a stop directly in front of a gas station. Setting the humorous light-hearted tone for the rest of film, Moore waits a beat, looks at the attendant, and smirks. “Filler up please.” This high octane set piece, by far the most jam packed and, one would assume, expensive Bond open, was actually scripted for Moonraker. However, it had to be shelved due to lack of funds, partly because of the big bucks space station set at the end of the film but also because the money originally set aside for the sequence ended up going to legal bills to pay for the battle with Kevin McClory. It’s ironic (don’t you think?) that just like Bond got a twofer in his escape/competition of the mission with his single barnstorm move, the barnstorm open was implemented by EON to take on whatever McClory came up with to open his Bond film after being shelved four years earlier because of McCloy’s film.

Bond’s Mission: The film starts off with incredible intrigue. A truly creepy looking clown is running for his life from two puffy sleeved knife throwing twins who would go on to have a career as leaders of Cobras elite Crimson Guard. Tomax and Xamot manage to get a knife in the clown’s back yet the clown survives long enough to get away. In a crazy Jason Voorhees POV camera we see the clown break into the English embassy, smash through a window, and drop a Fabergé egg at the feet of an ambassador and his shrieking wife. This, we learn in the next scene, was 009’s dying act. It’s also the last time this film will make a lick of sense. Is Octopussy about smuggling jewels? Or is about unilateral disarmament? Is it about destroying a hanger of planes in Cuba? Or a circus comprised of runaway women which doubles as a team of ninjas? Is it about a rogue Russian general teaming up with an Indian prince to ignite the fuse for World War III? Or is it about Bond suffering an extensile crisis, unable to come to terms with the suicide of Professor Smyth, a disgraced former colleague whose suicide, it should be noted, was the direct result of Bonds actions? It’s about all of those things and none of those things. Except the crises bit, it’s not at all about that. Bond barely flutters an eyelash upon learning Smyth was Octopussy’s father before he proceeds to bed the dead man’s daughter in a rather aggressive manner. What this movie is really about is putting Bond in impossible circumstances, and then watching him get out. Whether bidding too high on the Fabergé egg at Sotheby’s or dragging too low under a moving train, Bond will always live to fight another day, have a quip to bridge the few seconds until his next adventure, and always look absolutely stunning while doing so. In that way, this film is kind of the movie poster version of the Bond ideal; the indestructible hero always in tux, in danger but never IN DANGER, and so unflappable that no near death experience can’t be dismissed with a well-timed one-liner.

Villain’s Name: Part of the reason Octopussy’s plot goes in eight different directions is a screenplay which forms an unholy marriage between two Fleming short stories, “Octopussy” (the Prof. Smyth stuff) and “The Property of a Lady” (The Sotheby’s auction/ Fabergé egg stuff). For Your Eyes Only also mixed and matched Fleming source material but had greater success when it came to keeping the story organic. One of the most obvious outcomes of the mashing of missions is we are left with three main villains, all of who are pressuring separate goals. To keep it simple, let’s call them the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is Octopussy. “Bring him to me” she orders when she first hears Bond’s name so she can tell 007 face to face how she admires him for his role in her father’s suicide or something. She followed old dad in the family business, smuggling, and has diversified into shipping, hotels, carnivals and circus. Speaking of the old man, Octopussy was saddled with her terrible moniker by her father, much like Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.” Talk about daddy issues. The bad is Kamal Khan, an Indian Prince in the classic Bond villain mode. He’s intelligent, a snappy dresser, lives in a palace and invites Bond to dinner so he can explain everything he’s about to do. Also like so many of his brethren, he makes the mistake of first regarding Bond as a nuisance only to become increasingly unglued when it becomes apparent that Bond is the Energizer Bunny. The ugly is General Orlov, the Russian equivalent of Brig. Gen. Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove (1964). There’s a fantastic scene in the Russian war room where the doves, lead by General “socialism is to be achieved peaceably” Gogol squares off with the Hawks lead by Orlov. Orlov froths at the mouth while drawing huge red arrows across a European map he must have lifted from Hitler’s bunker while promising “total victory in five days against any possible defense scenario.” The words are spat out a syllable at a time as he not only chews the scenery, he vomits it back out and dances a jig on the remains. When his plan for world donation is shot down by the “old men who lack vision” he retunes to his chair to sulk like a three year-old who was told to go to bed without dessert. That is, until he decides to take things into his own hands Whaaa-haaaa ha ha ha ha! Orlov is by far the most fun and over the top Bond villain in some time and I wish he had a larger role. The fact the he and Bond only have one fleeting scene together is tragedy.

Villain Actor: The immortal Maud Adams who in the role of Octopussy becomes the only actress to be a Bond girl twice, but much more importantly and prestigious, she is the first on Blog James Blog to be listed in both the “Villain’s Name” and the “Bond Girl” category. So she’s got that going for her, which is nice. Kamal Khan is played by Louis Jourdan. Christopher Lee’s Francisco Scaramanga AKA the man with the golden gun was supposed to be the bad Bond but Jourdan takes the cake. He is super suave, delivers the one-liners with perfect time, and he maybe the only person in the world who can say “Octopussy” and make it sound cool. He would be a perfect Moore succor, as opposed to, oh I don’t know, James Brolin. General Orlov is Steven Berkoff, an incredibly intelligent man who’s résumé includes playwright and appearances in not only A Clockwork Orange (1971) but somehow, someway also Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) AKA “They drew first blood again for the second time Colonel. They drew second blood first.” As we said above, his cartoon Russian villain is a highlight of the film.

Villain’s Plot: The Hermitage in St. Petersburg is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. Orlov has been ripping off state treasures from the joint for some time and replacing the artifacts with skillfully crafted forgeries. He plans on employing Octopussy to smuggle the jewels out of the country and into free Germany. Despite all of the above taking place off-screen, it somehow drives the first three quarters of the film and is never properly explained. It is not until page 90 that we understand the General’s real plan, a plan that by-the-by has absolutely nothing to do with any of the above. Orlov has secretly teamed up with Indian Prince Kamal Khan to hide a nuclear bomb on a train headed for a US Army base. The idea is to blow the thing up hoping the US and Russia will blame each other, WWIII will begin in earnest, and Orlov’s hawkish policies will win the day. Khan, by-the-by, has zero motive to start the catastrophic war outside of making off with a few jewels, which (A) he sure as hell doesn’t need, he could by anything he wants at auction and (B) may or may not be fake in the first place. More on that later. In the meantime, the train with nuke is owned by Octopussy and transports her traveling circus from town to town; in this case, starting in the town of Karl Marx Stadtt bound for a US Army encampment in West Germany. The question of how a known smuggler could drive a train, one filled with animals, circus performers, and a big-ass canon, onto a US base on foreign soil when originating in East Germany is … hold the phone. Is the name of the town really Karl Marx Stadtt? Is there such a place, really, in this world called Karl Marx Stadtt? Does Rupert Murdoch know about this? I’m sorry, hold on. I need to look this up. In the meantime enjoy Johnny Cash live from San Quentin performing “A Boy Named Sue”

Well holy shit and shove me in it, what do you know? According the Wikipedia “the Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt, also known as Bezirk Chemnitz, was a district (Bezirk) of East Germany. The administrative seat and the main town was Karl-Marx-Stadtt, renamed Chemnitz after the reunification of Germany.” This is truly amazing. Forget naming streets after people, let’s rename neighborhoods. The Upper East Side could be Woody Allen Stadtt and the Lower East Side could by Joey Ramone Stadtt. West Hollywood really should be Groucho Marx Stadtt. The possibilities are endless.

Villain’s Lair: Two of the three baddies get their own Indian palaces, neither of which would look out of place sitting next to the Bellagio on Las Vegas Boulevard. The pool at Octopussy’s floating palace has more hot chicks lounging around it than Rehab the Hard Rock on a Friday night. The spacious rooms, the floor to ceiling windows, the endless balconies and the perfectly appointed furnishings and are all out of a storybook but are also grounded in reality as many of the sets in the past few Bonds have been. She also has a bitchin private train car that comes complete with a masseuse. Kamal has the Monsoon Palace which sits high above the city and is equally impressive, thought the talent level in the female department is far below the high standard set in the house across town. Orlov on the other hand seems to never be out of his uniform and exists only in war rooms and shady underground forger workshops.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: All Orlov needs is his own sneering mug and sweaty bald cranium with a distinct spot on it to show he means business. When his entire head begins to glow red, well, it would be best to slowly, carefully, proceed toward the door backwards as to not take your eye of the man. While Orlov is all apocalyptic hell fire, Kamal is cool as a cucumber, at least externally. He hunts tiger from elephant back and when the situation calls for it, British secrete service agents. When said agent escapes, Kamal’s internal angry threatens to boil over, but he never lets them see him sweet. “Mr. Bond is indeed of a very rare breed, soon to be made extinct.”

Badassness of Villain: For badassnessness we will focus on Kamal since General Orlov is more in the “Bat-shit crazy” mold than badass and Octopussy just needs some time on the couch to get over her daddy issues. Kamal, on the other hand, is a guy who rolls around town with a “Khan 1” license plate. He owns a slave ship and used women to man the oars. He makes guards escort him to his vault and then kills them so they won’t know where it is. Being raised a Prince he is accustomed to getting what he wants, like soufflé served at the optimal temperature for consumption. But above all, this is a son of royalty who has known nothing but privilege his entire existence and simply does …not….lose. Take his hunting trip; an entire village armed to the teeth against one tiger… what’s the book in Vegas on that one? He’s not above cheating at backgammon or using his considerable wealth to outbid all comers at Sotheby’s; not so much so he can own the object as to simply avoid being beat. This is a guy who has never suffered even a minor defeat, so when Bond shows up and starts pissing on his ice cream, he’s not quite sure how to hand it. Kamel first encounters 007 at the auction where he views the Englishman’s attempt to outbid him as rather rude. When Bond later calls him out for gambling with load dice, the Prince becomes rather miffed. By the time Kamal is cock-block by a martini shipping Bond in Octopussy bedroom a synapse can audibly be heard blowing in the deep reaches of the villain’s brain. The next thing you know he’s sitting Octopussy next to the hidden ticking time atom bomb. A bit harsh perhaps, but revenge is a dish best served nuclear.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: All the asides in this film are thinner than one dimensional and distinguishable from other characters thanks to (a) a signature uniform and (b) a signature action. We’ve got the evil knife tossing twins Tomax and Xamot AKA Mischka and Grischka who loomed very large in my memory of this film but in reality spend very little time on screen. These two use more hairspray than any Bond girl and work for … I don’t know exactly. They do a blind folded knife throwing act in Octopussy’s circus, they dutifully kill 009 but they take orders from both Kamal and Orlov so it’s unclear who wanted the agent offed in the first place. Gobinda on the other hand is firmly in Kamal’s corner. The physical heavy to Kamal’s intellectual baddie, he’s kind of a turban sporting Jaws who’s able to crush dice with his bare hands and has expert balance whether navigating the exterior of a speeding train or a spinning plane. For her part Octopussy surrounds herself with nothing but woman, “runaway’s mostly,” and trains them in the ancient arts of smuggling, circus acrobatics, and sieging Indian Palaces like an Orc army at Helms Deep. This bevy of beauties dress in form fitting red jumpsuits reminiscent of Dr. Suisse’s Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Bond Girl Actress: Octopussy is played by Maud Adams who is the only Bond girl to get a curtain call. In The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) Adam’s Andrea Anders was the adult in the room opposite the empty headed Goodnight. Here, she plays a similar role as a woman who is sexy in her experience. She’s worldly, classy, and goes about her business as a professional while also enjoying the fringe benefits, much like Bond himself. The other woman this time is one of her circus asides, Kristina Wayborn. As Magda, she is a hard headed woman who plays the seduction game more expertly and professionally than most Bond women.

Bond Girl’s Name: Octopussy and Magda, like Cher and Madonna, need but one name. (After all, what would be an apt surname of Octopussy? Smyth just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard.) Octopussy, like Blofeld before her, has her face hidden when we first encounter her. However, unlike the bald baddie she is beautiful and prefers her pets to be more exotic than a lap cat, opting for a deadly, purple and gold octopus. Being an astute businesswoman, she knows a good thing when she sees it and attempts to hire Bond away from the organization she still blames for her fathers death. Bond, of course, can not be bought and she takes the rejection harshly. Magda first sees Bond at the auction, rejects his advances at a casino bar, but then turns up at his hotel. Bond, dressed for a four star meal as always, enters his hotel and is approached by the maitre d’. “Your table is ready.” “I didn’t reserve one…” “Your guest is waiting.” When Bond approached the table, he finds Magda who thanks to some unfortunate framing appears to have her breast resting in two water glasses. When Bond sits down he does not engage in the typical song and dance but cuts right to the nut. “What does Kamal want?” “The egg or your life.” At this very moment, both parties know they will be sleeping together later in the evening, and that by morning the egg will be in Kamal’s hands. The rest is simply going through the motions but what the hell, we’re here, the moonlight is beautiful, and the wine aint so bad either. I really enjoyed how Moore and Wayborn handled this scene, the unspoken understand was broadcast expertly. One more note about these ladies; other than the panic upon learning a nuclear bomb is 10 second away from going off, neither of these Bond girls is ever in the thankless role of the victim. They kick ass in a fight, stand up to the men, and yes, Octopussy must be saved by Bond in the end, but she never comes across as a damsel in distress. She plays the scene more like a partner that needs to be bailed out this time, and then she will have her partners back the next round. As my Great Uncle King would have said, “I like those gals, they’ve got spunk.”

Bond Girl Sluttiness: Magda and Bond’s horizontal bop is simply foreplay leading up to the dramatic over-the-balcony escape of the Fabergé egg. “In exchange for the Macguffin, you get some good luvin’” There is nothing at all wrong with this, especially in the James Bond universe where two consenting adults often agree to a similar tit for tat. The initial bedding of Octopussy is another matter entirely. Clad only in her bathrobe, Octopussy finds Bond in her bedroom, uninvited. She pours him a drink, lights a cigarette and tells the tale of her father. Next, she puts the sales job on Bond but he’s not buying, refusing to compromise his commitment to King and Country. Octopussy is clearly hurt and offended that after opening up to him so emotionally, he wouldn’t even consider the offer. In her eyes, Bond chose a nation that had a hand in her father’s death over her. She reacts by calling Bond an assassin and slamming the door to the part of  her bedroom containing the bed (remember, it’s a palace) in his face. Any other man would have taken the hint, went down stairs, quietly packed, and found enough money for the bus fare out of town (This being an island, perhaps he would need ferry fare which just sounds weird.) Now, I realize Bond is not just any man and I don’t even necessarily blame him for pursuing Octopussy into the other room. When he enters she is stand next to her bed with her back tuned, misstep number one for Glen and co. When Bond forcibly approached her, garbs her and spins her into him, it’s almost implied that by standing by the bed, in her robe, she is, as they say, asking for it. But she most certainly not. She pushes Bond and rejects him with a forceful “No!” as he tries to silence her protests by shoving his tongue down her throat. We see her fist tighten, and then as the music swells, her grip softens until she finally embrace Bond. The film is trying to tell us all is well now, she’s cool. This is completely irresponsible on the part of the filmmakers; make no mistake, this is a sexual assault. Yes, Bond in the past has aggressively advanced on women who didn’t necessarily welcome him with open arms, hence the MHT. These women put up token protests but it was always done in a context that showed the women considering giving into Bond. More importantly, the ladies acquiesced after being taken over by Bonds charm, not his physical domination. There is nothing charming about his approach or execution here. Juxtaposed to the breezy tone of the rest of the film, this scene stands out as a creepy bit of business that could be presented as exhibit A by critics arguing the case that Bond is card carrying misogynist.

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Bond “What is that?” Magda “That’s my little Octopussy.” They are talking about her tattoo.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: When Bond later encounters Magda he is Kamal’s prisoner.  Gobinda is escorting Bond to his room when they pass Magda’s quarters. Bond cavalierly asks Magda if he can come in for a nightcap. When the door is shut in his face, he turns to Gobinda. “I don’t suppose you would care for a nightcap? No, I guess not.” Moore at his best.

Number of Woman 007 Beds: 2. Magda and Bond go two rounds before she gets all Cirque du Soleil and tumbles her “little Octopussy” tattoo out of Bond’s dreams and into Kamal’s car. This would make it appear as if she was all business but later on when she sees Bond escape the Monsoon Palace, she doesn’t sound the alarm. Bond also has two goes with Octopussy and unlike the creepy first encounter the second is sweet, humors and fits nicely into Bond’s wheelhouse. After jumping out of a plane and nearly tumbling over a cliff Bond is quite understandably beat up. However, in a film that sees Bond never with a hair out of place, much less suffer as much as a scratch, it’s a bit jarring when we see our hero in traction. Octopussy is doting on him when she coos “I wish you weren’t in such a weekend condition” and like Lazarus back from the dead, Bond is instantly alive and kicking off all the medical devices to a squeal of “Oh James!” followed by an even more enthusiastic “Oh James” delivered off camera. That’s right, 007 was cured by the Octopussy. (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I’ve actually shown incredible restraint. Do you know how hard it was to go this far without resorting to such cheep tactics? It’s like jokes about my former representative Anthony Weiner texting photos of his wiener! You would be disappointed if I DIDN’T get puny at some point.)

Number of People 007 Kills: 14 plus a few dozen with two more unconfirmed. The few dozen would be the men we see running around in the hanger moments before the big opening splosion. In a chase scene which involves motorized pedicabs racing though crowed Indian city streets Bond forcibly throws a baddie into a vender. Not sure if he was expired so that would be unconfirmed #1. Later however, he flips another bad guy onto a street performer’s bed of nails (the street performer was not on the bed at the time) for a rather inventive and semi humors demise. Later, during a battle in Octopussy’s  boudoir Bond smashes the octopus tank with a baddie’s face which results in said baddie looking not unlike Kane after his walkabout on LV-427.

Continuing the death by animal theme another baddie becomes crock food. In more conventional action film killings Bond shots three Russian soldiers. What’s unconventional is the manner in which he shoots them. All three of these chaps have automatic machine guns and Bond, alone, has only his trusty PPK. The first guy is felled by a single shot to the head, next is a single shot to the heart, and the last is hit while James is under a train, shooting at a guy who is up a flight a stairs over 100 yards away and bulls-eye! Hey, he’s James freaking Bond. He also takes out four more dudes with a machine gun while sliding down a banister before saving his own two dudes. There is also a moment where he jumps off a car and onto a moving train moments before the car gets launched into the air by a second train and lands on a boat in the river below. Here is where we have a second unconfirmed kill as one of the two anglers in the row boat appears to get clipped by the car. According to the DVD extras the stuntman in the boat was in fact late on his cue and did get hit. They also discus another major stunt injury where a guy hanging off the side of a speeding train got hit by a trackside pole and broke several bones. The first of the knife tossing twins is killed by a canon but not at all in the way you think. Bond pulls a lever so the barrel of the big gun shifts and knocks the guy in the head. Kind of anti-climatic hey? Well, wait to you here about how his brother is killed. No seriously, wait…. OK? You ready? Cool. Bond is being chased though the woods by the alive twin while he’s dressed like the dead twin. When a knife get thrown and stuck in tree just inches from Bonds head the image is clearly meant to reference the chase though the woods that ended with a knife in 009’s back. This is a nifty device and the tension builds. “This is exactly how 009, another skilled agent, was killed. I wonder what 007 will do to avoid the same fate? Oh man, this is going to be good!” The twin finally catches up to Bond and with a few strategically thrown knifes he has Bond nailed to the door of a cabin in the middle of the woods. One more knife and by-by Bond “This is for my brother” declares Xamot right before he throws the final knif … what? He charges Bond for the final stab? Bond makes like a matador and simply steps aside opening the door? The guy runs past him and falls on his face and Bond throws a knife at him? “This is for 009?” How the hell does that work? This is a character that has done nothing, nothing but throw knifes the entire film. Why now, would he choose to stab someone? This would be like Wolverine sucking in his claws and shooting his opponent with a ray gun. It’s completely out of character. Anyway, Bond and Gobinda end up fighting on top of a Lear jet at 25,000 feet. Don’t worry, it makes no sense in the film either. Bond grabs the antenna on top of the plane and pulls it back, lets it go, and smacks Gobinda in the face, sending him hurling into the mountains below. Bond also had the forethought to cut the fuel line while monkeying around out on the plane’s wing so Kamal, the pilot, crashes the plane into the side of a mountain. Action sequences are Glen’s bread and butter and almost every one in this movie is expertly crafted, very exciting, and quite memorable, save one.

Most Outrageous Death/s: I’d like to touch on another movie that came out in 1983. Much like Octopussy, this other movie was part of an extremely popular franchise that had succeeded in creating a vivid world with its own rules inhabited by broadly drawn charters that stood for good or evil. This movie, like Bond, was greeted in the summer by an adoring fan base that was pretty much willing to take the ride to wherever the film went, as long as the movie didn’t (a) ruin the world that they loved or (b) so defy the logic of the world that fans would feel as if filmmakers lost touch with what made the movies great in the first place. For most of the first hour or so of the movie all was right within the world. That was until the films creator, lets just call him George,  showed such contempt for his product and it’s consumers that George felt it was ok for teddy bears who lived in trees to defeat an army (an army, by the way, that was powerful enough to control the known universe) with sling shots and sticks. Sorry, but when a filmmaker does that, all the coolness of a hovering speeder-bike chase scene gets sucked out of the theater and ticket buyers are left with Wicket playing Storm Trooper helmets like congas in Corona Ad. Well, Octopussy’s army of female circus performers overcoming machine gun tooting palace guards by performing a Mary Lou Retton floor routine is just as implausible.

By the time Q and Bond show up in a hot air balloon with the Union Jack painted on it, lets just say the movie got off at the wrong exit and was now lost in Crazytown. Any of the multiple solders taken out during this unnecessary and unentertaining battle could qualify as your most outrageous death.

Miss. Moneypenny: Lois Maxwell, the only actor to appear in every Bond to this point, looks old in Octopussy. I don’t mean this as a negative in the least. We are, all of us, getting older everyday, tis the way of things. What I love about the Moneypenny character is she’s given the tools by filmmakers to age with dignity. I think of casting in today’s actions film where 28 is considered too old. The term Hollywood uses today is “reboot” which really means lets recast this thing with younger, visually appealing (and less experienced therefore cheaper and easier to control) talent. So, good-by Ms. Megan “2-D 2009” Fox and hello Mrs. Rosie “3-D 2011” Huntington-Whiteley who will be replace in Transformers: Lord of Saturn’s Rings (now in Smell-O-Vision 5-D!) by the third runner up on “The Voice.” Glen was skewering this idea of the young hot thing pushing out the old way back in 1983. When Sir Roger, no spring chicken himself, mistakes Moneypenny’s new young assistant for the genuine article he’s embarrassed (a rare Bond emotion) and finds himself backpedaling fiercely. Of course he recovers in splendid fashion, “Dear Moneypenny, there never has been, there never will be anybody but you,” and manages to charm both women, leaving them sighing in his wake. The scene, while played for humor, has some emotional renaissance. Within the cozy confines of Moneypenny’s office, Bond is aloud to be sweet or embarrassed or whatever.

Bond inhabits a cynical world where no one can be trusted and it’s kill or be killed. Only when he is with Moneypenny can 007 be simply James. As for Moneypenny, she treasures these little moments and then demonstrates her eternal generosity by recognizing that once again, her James must leave and be Bond, James Bond for the rest of the world. One more note, for the past two films now (and maybe even more?) Moore has entered Moneypenny’s office with the classic Connery toss of the hat onto the hat rack. Outside of a gorilla mask, Moore is never seen wearing anything upon his head other that a perfectly manicured quaff. Is this Glenn winking at the audience? Does Bond only put the hat on for Moneypenny? Didn’t he leave without grabbing it? If anyone has any answers, forward them along. We at Blog James Blog like to get to the bottom of these things…

M: Robert Brown becomes the second M in the series and will sit behind the desk for the next four films. Like Maude Adams, Brown was in a previous Bond film in another role, appearing in The Spy Who Loved Me as Admiral Hargreaves. For the record, M’s return is to be applauded as we are rid of that twit, Chief of Staff Tanner, who served on an interim bases. Brown plays M relatively straight, with the typically huffing and puffing over the unorthodox methods 007 employee’s, (“What would you have done if you ended up with the highest bid on the egg?”) and then backing down when presented with positive results, (“I would have clamed it was a fake and gotten my money back sir.”) M’s job is to give Bond what he needs and generally stay out of the way and Brown fills that role admirably. He even sneaks in a knowing smirk when he orders Bond to book a flight to New Deli only to learn 007 has tickets in hand. General Gogol (who has become my favorite reoccurring character of the series) returns, this time playing the voice of reason countering General Orlov warmongering. Here we see a Gogol who truly see communism as a force of good in the world, a character that runs counter to everything Americans and Brits were trying to paint Soviet military men as at time. I’m sure he agrees with Orlov that the “west is decant” but you also get the feeling he’s ready to wait NATO out and watch the capitalist empire collapse like Rome before it. (The General may still get his wish.) Later, when Gogol finds the stolen jewels in Orlov’s trunk (which sound like a euphemism for butt-sex but is not,) he is outraged to learn there is a “common thief” who is a “disgrace to the uniform” in his ranks and goes after the man himself. In dramatic fashion, Gogol shoots Orlov dead on the train tracks that transverse the no-mans land between East and West Germany. Orlov, delusional to the last, sees himself as a martyr. “Tomorrow I will be hero of the Soviet Union.” And what’s is Gogol reward for foiling the plot? He is left to handle PR and apologizes for the incident on behalf of the Soviet government. A good soldier to the last.

Q: Q is grumpy, and even the yellow lay Bond presents him with doesn’t cheer the old fellow. He’s pissed because 007 has mislaid his PPK (some kid could pick that up.) Also his rope-coming-out-of-a-basket contraption is not working so well. Better is the “smashing” door and the “latest liquid crystal TV” which provides another opportunity for Glen to turn Bond into a lecherous old man. There is something depressing about watching Bond shed all his suave and zoom a camera in on a woman’s chest as a cranky Q shuffle around. While Glen was extremely kind to Lois Maxwell in her scene, the aging Desmond Llewelyn gets no such consideration. One shot shows a close up of Q’s hands using tweezers to put a microscopic component into the Fabergé egg. While performing the delicate procedure, Llewelyn’s hands shake uncontrollably reminding us of just how much time has passed since we first met him back in From Russia With Love (1963). Do you mean to tell me there wasn’t a grip or extra or anyone around who could lend his hands to the single shot and save the great man his dignity? Things improve as Q once again goes out into the field, this time serving as a lookout for Bond.  During this assignment, Q is lucky to dodge a bullet, or should I say Black n Decker yo-yo, that fell his counterpart. (More on that below) By the end of the film, Q is simply jubilant. He gets to pilot a balloon into the middle of a battle. Bond “I trust you can handle this contraption Q?” Q “It goes on hot air.” Bond “Oh, then you can.” And then when the balloon lands, Q is surround by Octopussy’s harem and even gets a little flirting time for good measure. See, it’s not just Bond who has all the fun.

List of Gadgets: The horse’s ass gadget maybe a perfect metaphor for the film at large. It’s 100% unexpected and super exciting the first time you see it but it also serves no real purpose outside of the action sequence and it kind of looses it’s magic if you give it a second thought. Why are they having an equestrian event on a military base housing these important weapons, which are in full view of the spectators? How did Bond drive a plane past the security? Where the hell are we anyway, Cuba? What, you thought perhaps I mean the horse’s ass was a metaphor in another way? Yah, that might work too. The bomb Bond plants on the plane in this sequence is hidden in a briefcase which brought back warm fuzzy memories of the very first gadget, the brief case in Form Russia With Love. – Back to this movie, now pay attention 007. This little thing is not only a microphone but it’s also a homing device. It’s goes into the egg like so and you can use the very 1983 blips on your watch to follow the egg. – Like an Easter egg hunt hey Q? – Really, 007. Now twist the top of this pen and an acid that can dissolve all metals will be released. So, say you’ve been captured by an Indian Prince who locks you up in a room at his palace and guard outside has fallen asleep. You can use this to melt away the bars on the window and climb out. – The pen I mightier than the swo… – Yes yes, now the pen also has an ear piece you can use to listen to the microphone in the egg, kind of like another project I have in prototype form called a ‘Bluetooth headset.’ Its works just fine but it’s ugly as sin. I simply will not have our agents going out into the field looking like an alien from Star Trek. I mean really, anyone with one of those things hanging out of their head would just look like a complete jackass. – The bugged egg actually serves as a nice plot device to get around what Ebert calls the “talking villain syndrome” which I’m sure he coined with Bond villains in mind. Now, instead of the villain explaining everything over a bottle of Dom, Bond gets to hear the plan while hiding in the next room; that is until Magda uses her hair dryer and disrupts the signal.

Women, you know what I’m saying? In addition to the watch that tracks the egg Bond also has a LCD TV watch, good for spying from a balloon or zooming in on women’s breasts. The film also gives a nice little nod to the seagull hat Connery used as cover when swimming in Goldfinger. When Moore swims up to the floating palace for his nighttime raid he is hidden in the mouth of a plastic alligator. All the above stuff is cool but the most impressive gadget of the entire series is debuted in Octopussy; the green screen. This nifty doohickey allows AARP member Moore to out fly missiles and leap out of airplanes with a single bound. Which got me to thinking about what technology did not exists in 1983. Much of this movie was shot on location in India, which was not the tech capital it is today. Telephones were not common (no cell phones yet kids) so PAs had to run back into town to find a phone to talk to the suits back in London. And then, if something did need to be delivered from the UK it was at the very least a 20 hour flight away. On the DVD extras we get peaks of rewrites being done in the jungle on typewriters that had to be carried in. It’s truly incredible when you put these “in the field” challenges next to the Will Smith hubbub this summer. For those not in the know, half of population of my beloved Queens is pissed at Mr. Smith for taking up 4 city blocks with his mansion of a trailer for days at time while shooting Men In Black III. Not the movie making part of the production, but just his trailer shutdown neighborhoods where local business had to be closed and people couldn’t get to their homes. Now think about Bond producers hunched over typewriters in the middle of the jungle. (By the by, how close are we to a full-on Will Smith backlash? Six months away?)

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: At one point Bond is stabbed only to be saved by a wad of cash in his pocket that he won playing Backgammon “Thank God for hard currency.” While our hero was unhurt the same could no be said for his suit jacket which was fixed up by one of Q’s people. He also “mislaid” that PPK. All things considered, the British tax payer got off fairly ease on this adventure.

Other Property Destroyed: Foreign property is another matter. There is the hanger and the millions of dollars of weaponry inside. He also ran some of those (Cuban?) jeeps and motorcycles off the road. A fight in Octopussy’s room sees a fish tank being destroyed by Bond as well as some other furniture but the real damage in this battle is done by the saw blade yo-yo. When I was kid and I dreamed of walking the dog or going around the world with deadly results. Octopussy’s pillow becomes a cloud of feathers when the saw slices the spot where her hard lay just seconds before. A table is cut in two and doors sliced to pieces. Outside of Oddjobs bowler this thing might be my favorite villain weapon yet. Anyway, Bond beaks some windows and generally destroys the Monsoon Palace near the end of the film, including taking a marble decoration off the end of a banister in a quick thinking moment of self preservation. Finally, in a singular impressive move Bond manages to ram a car head first into a train, which sends the car flying of a bridge and smashing into a boat below in an incredible 3 for 1.

Felix Leiter: Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please direct your attention to your program. For tonight’s performance the part of Felix Leiter will be played by Vijay who is played by Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj joins us while on break from the pro tennis circuit for this, his first appearance film. Producers use the casting stunt as another opportunity to get meta. Vijay’s character, Vijay, is an agent who’s cover is working as a tennis pro at Kamal’s private club “What have you learned so far?” Bond asks, “Well, my back hand has improved.” He even assaults a baddie by whacking him with a racket. Compare to Felix “the wet blanket” Leiter, Vijay is the life of the party. When he and Bond are being chased James announces, “I think we have company.” “No problem” Vijay responds “this is a company car.” In fact, “no problem” is Vijay’s mantra. If Bond asked for the moon Vijay would smile, say “No Problem” and promptly go about getting the moon. He’s a perfect sidekick to Bond and the two function almost like partners in a buddy-cop film. However, this is a partnership not meant to last. Poor old Vijay was taking over watchman duties from Q when he is grabbed and restrained by three men. A fourth, none other than Kamal’s right hand Gobinda, appears above him, staring down with those piercing eyes. Even worse for Vijay, he’s yielding the deadly saw blade yo-yo. A quick flick of the wrist, a horrible “snicked” sound, and a quick cut to birds flying out of a tree and we know that Vijay is no more. Game, set, match.

Best One Liners/Quips: This films chuck full of ‘em. “No ma’am, I’m with the economy tour,” “Having problems keeping it up Q,” “You better stick this back yourself” and even a perfectly time “umffff” when Bond is hiding in a body bag hoping to pass as a cadaver. But my favorite has to be when Bond comes across a tiger in jungle. The thing jumps out in front of Bond causing even the great 007 much concern. The look on Moore’s face is a perfect blend of fear, of shock, of annoyance, and of what the hell do I do next. Bond squares to the giant cat and though clinched teeth his hisses “SITTTTTTT – A!” and the tiger promptly obeys.

Bond Cars: Bond doesn’t get a car in this go around but chases ensue on trains, planes, and automobiles. The automobile is General Orlov’s car but the coolest chases uses the motorcycle rickshaws. Keep an eye out for a guy on a bicycle who almost gets run over during this chase, he was not an extra, but a resident of the town that haplessly peddled onto the set and almost got killed.

Bond Timepiece: Mercifully, the watch is a gadget with a tracker so the digital nature is forgiven … barley. It’s another Seiko but this one has a sold band and enough esoteric buttons to give it some girth and make it appear substantial. Later on in the film Bond ends up with the LCD TV watch. One of the best gags in the film features Bond hiding in an ape suit while in a train car with some baddies discussing how much time to put on the nuclear time bomb. When Kamal announces, “it is now 11:45” the gorilla in the room instinctually looks to his wrist.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Even in his advanced years, Moore looks wonderful in a tux, even if it’s a white one accessorized with a yellow flower lay. Bond also finds himself dressed as a Cuban General, a carnival knife thrower, a clown, a gorilla and a dead guy in a body bag. Another stray observation, for some reason Bond hasn’t had a smoke in the past few films. However, there are several shoots of Moore on the DVD extra puffing away on his beloved cigars when not in character. 1983 is well before the current hysteria that holds anyone lighting up on camera responsible for the destruction of the youth of America. So I wonder why the choice was made to have Bond butt out? Again, if anyone knows, let us know. I for one think Bond deserves an occasionally smoke with this drink. And besides, we all know smoking makes you cooler.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 3. Bond’s evening with Magda starts with champagne pool side and ends with “a loving cup” in bed. When 007 breaks into Octopussy’s room she shakes and serves a martini before Bond even makes the request.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: When two or more people are knocked out at my poker game, the backgammon board quickly makes an appearance and calls of “I double you” can be heard. I tell this story not to paint my friends and myself as degenerate gamblers but to say I appreciate the gamesmanship behind proper use of the doubling cube (as well as the extra bucks it can net.) Well, Jimmy B’s moves at the backgammon board in Octopussy rank as some of the best we have seen Bond make in a gambling den. Proudly following the tradition started by Connery in Diamonds Are Forever, Moore puts on the white tux when it’s time to carouse the casino floor. Our hero finds Kamal playing with the Major, who at present has the upper hand and giddily announces “you’ll have a job beating that.” “I feel lucky” the slippery Kamal counters “shall we double?” The Major takes half a beat, thinks his opponent mad, and agrees to 20,000 rubies. Kamal promptly hits his sixes to win the game. “It’s all in the wrist” he announces not knowing Bond spotted him introducing dirty dice into the game. “Shall we have another go?” “Yes” the Major replies “you luck has got to run out sometime.” (It should also be noted the Major is into Kamal for 200,000 rubies.) In short order the Major has once again backed Kamal into a corner and once again the prince wants to make it interesting, this time to the tune of 100,000 rubies. The Major feels his testicles crawl back into his inguinal canal and forfeits the game. “I can’t accept, not with your luck.” “I would have taken that double myself” Bond announces in one of his better introductions to a villain. Kamal, in black, arches his eyebrow and gestures to the empty seat across the table. “Why don’t you take the Majors position Mister ….” “Bond, James Bond. Thank you I’d be delighted” say Moore with a shit-eaten grin on his face screaming Ohhhhhh, you are going down BITCH! Game on. Have I mentioned I love when Bond gambles? Right, so the hero in white, the villain in black, the villain thinking he’s got this thing cinched with his loaded dice and the hero well aware the villain is cheating. Sitting back in his chair looking like a man who knows he can’t lose, Kamal casually rolls his double six. “It’s not such a good double to accept after all.” Bond does a little Hollywooding and swallows hard before picking up the betting cube to double. Kamal, not quite believing someone could be such a rube accepts. “You can only win with a double six. The stake is 200,000 rubies, do you have the cash?” Everything leading up this moment has been coming up Kamal, so when Bond places the very same Fabergé egg that Kamal had won at auction on the table as collateral, well… it’s the Gillette game changer and everyone in the room knows it. Kamal, for his part, keeps his poker face completely intact. “Play Mr. Bond, you need a great deal of luck to get out of this” states the cocky Kamal in a drastic overplay of his hand. Bond, who was shaking his own tumbler and about to roll dramatically stops and looks around until focusing on Kamal. “Luck? Well then I shall use player’s privilege and use your lucky dice.” And with that he grabs Kamal’s tumbler. The two lock eyes as Bond starts his roll. “It’s all in the wrist” Bond says without a hint of sarcasm and rolls. While never breaking eye contact with Kamal to look at the dice Bond announces “double sixes, fancy that, 200,000 rubies.” By this time half the population of India has gathered around the table so Kamal has no chose but to pay the man. He gestures for his checkbook when Bond pipes up “I prefer cash.” “Spend the money quickly Mr. Bond” and with that the gauntlet has been thrown down. As Bond leaves the table he passes the giggling Major and declares “It’s not really in the wrist you know.” A complete and utter take down on all fronts; never has there been such a decimation of an opponent. Any other man who received such a shellacking would slink home, crawl into a bottle of Jim Beam, and never go within 10 miles of a casino for the rest of his life. Kamal, however, is arrogant enough to think this is simply a bump in the road and continues to plow ahead like the Titanic in the northern Atlantic.

List of Locations: India. It’s kind of incredible our hero had yet to stamp his passport in this visually rich country; it seems like a no brainer. Well, now that he’s here, it was worth the wait. The majority of the film was shot in around the city of Rajasthan half way between New Deli and Bombay. Founded in 1599 and known to locals as “The Sun Rise City” Rajasthan is possibly the most visually striking location to a Bond film yet. It’s almost like a different film stock was used as everything we see pops is a way that somehow makes everything feel more fantastic but more real at the same time. Much like the last film and The Spy Who Loved Me the locations here are organic and fit into the film as opposed to being simply pretty wallpaper. Also like those two movies, many of the key locations are real, Octopussy’s Floating Palace is just outside town on Lake Pichola. Kamal Khan lair is actually called the Monsoon Palace, so named because it was commissioned to shield the Prince of Mewar from the deadly storms. Built high above the rest of the city to avoid flooding, water still proved to be the palaces demise when transporting H2O up the mountain proved too difficult and the structure was abandon. The other key location in the film is the famed “Checkpoint Charlie” in West Germany. Crews actually shot some footage of the real thing and dressed up the Berlin Wall in free Berlin to look like the Soviet side as armed guards watched from the towers. While the cold war served as the back drop to many a Bond film, this is perhaps the first time we see the physical everyday implications of the conflict, a cities population split in two. In another example of real life politics seeping into Bond’s world, the open was shot at a Royal Air Force field in England. To make the base look like it was located in a Caribbean banana republic, producers shipped in palm trees. According to ledged, when locals saw the tree being imported to the base, they thought England was training her troops for a battle at the Falkland Island.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: You get the feeling that if Bond walked into M’s office and the boss man asked “What do you know about Babe Ruth 007?” Bond would cock his brow and respond “The sultan of swat sir? Born in Baltimore, George Herman Ruth Jr. started his Major League career pitching for the Red Sox where he threw seventeen innings including a Game 1 shutout for an ERA of 1.06 in the 1918 World Series before being sold to the Yankees where the three time MVP shifted to right field and hit .349 while slugging an unheard of .711 in twelve seasons to become what many consider the best to ever play the game. Hence the so called ‘Curse of the Bambino’ which wasn’t broken until Boston swept St. Louis in four on October 27^th 2004. Why do you ask?” Well, that’s what he does in Octopussy but with Fabergé eggs. “Top marks 007!” He also manages to (deep breath) use slight of hand to steel an item from Sotherby’s, balance Spiderman like on the sides of buildings, avoid death while being hunted by an entire village not only from the men but also spiders, crocks, snakes, leaches, lizards and one big tiger, impersonated a dead man, a clown and gorilla, hang Spiderman like on the side of a speeding train, steal a car, break onto an army base, disarm a nuclear bomb, hang Spiderman like on a Lear jet, make love while in traction, and book a flight to Delhi before it is even official he is going. It’s this last thing that truly makes Bond Bond; he is always, without exception, one step ahead of everyone else. This is to say nothing of Bonds every growing list of stuff he can pilot, sail, operate, jockey and drive from point A to point B. In The Man with the Golden Gun we saw Bond

piloting a beachcomber single prop plane. Here, he not only expertly twists and twirls a supersonic jet under bridges, over mountain and through airline hangers, but does so while being pursued by a sidewinder missile. When behind the wheel of a car he leaves doughnuts on cobblestone and when he loose his rubber he rides the rims onto railroad tracks and like Casey Jones, keeps driving that train. He also can ride a horse (I believe the first time we’ve seen this) so expertly that he can catch an airplane.

Final Thoughts: With a new Sean Connery Bond filming opening across the street, Glen, Broccoli and Co. wanted to build the better Bond; film that is. They went back to the Bible of Bond, housed in a climate controlled glass room somewhere in Q’s lab at Pinewood studios, and looked up the first commandment. “When in Doubt, Thou Shall Go BIG!” EON went forth and delivered a Bond film in the year of 1983 with a cast of thousands, set in one of the more exotic locations on all of earth, featuring larger than life, beautiful, broadly drawn characters all on an exciting treasure hunt while simultaneously threatened with a nuclear Apocalypse. Big enough for yah mate? This is a wiz bang adventure in which the plot is not even a second thought; it’s simply nonexistent. What the film is about, if anything, is rushing Jimmy B from one action sequence to the next while never breaking a sweat. Octopussy is in many ways a throwback to the classic Technicolor MGM epics of Hollywood’s golden age only on HGH; Around the World in 80 Minutes. That is to say, Octopussy is certainty the most “fun” Bond film, and the most ridiculous. Yet, I found myself more forgiving of the film than say the dismal (and not really all that fun) You Only Live Twice (1967). Mainly because the amazing production value coupled with quick action and quicker humor creates an inertia that sweeps the audience along; it’s nearly impossible not to just sit back and simply enjoy the ride. But there is also a nagging uneasiness that seeps into the cracks between all the breakneck action. What I didn’t pick-up on as a kid and I can’t ignore as an adult is that there aint very much Bond in this Bond. By going all in on the First Commandment, producers forgot the second, “Thou Shall Protect the ‘Bond Brand’ at All Costs.” Somewhere between filling a slave ship rowed by bikini clad woman and crashing airplanes into the side of mountains producers forgot the most important piece of the “Bond Brand” is Royal Navy Commander James Bond, Agent 007 of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Things like having Bond screech like Tarzan before swinging on vines and arriving with Q via hot air balloon to join the Ewok raid on the Monsoon Palace are sins of bad taste. But other transgressions are much more grave; take the two “things” Bond is chasing, a nuclear bomb and a Fabergé egg. First off, putting both of these objectives in the same film muddies the mission beyond belief. But even taken separately, both are handled terribly. The nuclear bomb is so clumsy shoehorned into the third act that I challenge anyone to explain how it even remotely ties in with the smuggling storyline. By the time the nuke is pulled off the train I simply couldn’t care if it went off or not. Part of the problem is Moore’s blasé performance but I need to hang the failure back on Glen who gives his leading man zero support. Look, no movie, not even one directed by Michael Bay, is cynical enough to nuke a circus tent full of children. Additionally, Bond is forced to run around this circus tent and convince army generals, policemen and poodle juggling acrobats that they are all in grave danger … while dressed as a clown. And by the way, why are we are even at a circus in the first place? The other big object of interest is the Fabergé egg which somehow manages to be even more confusing. At one point Orlov smashes an egg and the microphone Q hid in it falls out. We saw Q hide the microphone in the “real” egg while Kamal was in possession of the “fake” egg. Since Magda stole back the “real” egg, the egg that Bond used to track her and Kamal, it’s now understood that when the microphone falls out, the “real” egg was the one being smashed. Yet for the rest of the film, the movie plays like the “fake” egg was destroyed … kind of. I’m still not sure? Even worse, the egg plot line is just kind of left to die on the vine. This is the thing that got 009 killed and set Bond off on his mission, what the hell happened to it? James Bond would never, ever let a mission go unfinished. Add the unforgivable boarder-line rape and I can’t help but wonder if anyone involved in this film remembers who the hell James Bond is. With Connery breathing down your neck this is not the way to protect the brand boys. Hell, EON even screwed up the name of the next film in the closing credits which announce “Coming Next – From a View to a Kill.” (I know the title most like changed after this movie was finished but stand back man, I’m ranting.) Ultimately, these crimes are all the more frustrating because the banister slide, the saw blade yo-yo and the Indian locations are classic Bond. It all becomes more disheartening when you start thinking about what could have been. The idea of 007 teaming up with Gogol to stop a rouge Russian general hell bent on starting WWIII or Bond navigating the world of high art and smuggling are intriguing ones I would love to see explored, but this film shows little interest in either. Oh well, we will always have a supersonic jet blasting out of a horse’s ass to keep us smiling till the next movie.

Martini ratings:

For Your Eyes Only

Title: For Your Eyes Only

Year: 1981. My nephew Otis is 5. Last Christmas he came up to me with his father’s phone and asked if I knew the game Angry Birds. No, I did not. We sat down on the couch and he explained, “The birds are angry because the pigs took their eggs, now you have to kill the pigs.” Sure enough, when the game started a crudely animated drawing showed various colored birds sitting in a nest, watching a group of green pigs swipe their eggs, making the birds rather angry. No further explanation was needed. Game on! Let’s get the filthy pigs! Thanks to its incredible simplicity, Angry Birds has become one of the biggest video game sensations of this, or any era. In 1981, Hollywood vet Ronald Reagan rode a white horse into the white house. All of his years playing cowboys and Indians on the silver screen taught Reagan that audiences liked things to be easy to understand and straight forward. Between inflation, lines at the gas pump, the Iran Hostage crisis and sky-rocking crime in our once proud cities, America of the late 70’s was complicated, fragmented, and kind of a bummer. Reagan saw an opening. The great communicator went forth to redefine how America felt about itself with a message that had two key ingredients; make em feel good, and keep it simple. While using phrases like “shining city on the hill” and “evil empire,” Reagan invoked the language of movies to suck all the ambiguities and complexities out of this messy world and broke it all down into terms that my five-year old nephew could understand; the good guys wear white, the bad guys wear black, and take a wild guess what side the good old U.S.A. was on. The Soviets were the green pigs, and they were trying to steal the Bald Eagles egg, known as freedom. Game on! On the other side of the pond, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rode a similar wave of conservative nationalism into office and the U.S. and U.K. were once again powerful allies on the front lines of the cold war. The 12^th Bond film fit perfectly into this simple black and white world. Us vs. them. All killer, no filler. Gone were the grand eccentric villains who would deliver monologs about high minded dreams of reinventing the human race. Here, we get the Brits, the Commies, and one amazing race to the finish. If the last couple Bond films were 18 minute prog-rock symphonies by the likes of The Alan Parsons Project, then For Your Eyes Only is a fast, tight Ramones tune. For this flick, I could picture replacing the lion roar that opens all Bond pictures with a shot of dear departed Dee Dee sticking his head through the MGM logo and shouting “1-2-3-4!” Game on.

Film Length: 2 hours 8 minutes. OK, so the first four Ramones records combine clocked in under the running time of this film, but let’s go with the analogy anyway…

Bond Actor: “We haven’t been properly introduced, my name is Bond, James Bond” 007 tells his female companion early in the film to which I say, “Welcome back, where have you been?” After playing Bond stiffer than Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in the previous film, the loose, lovable, funny and fun Roger has returned for what I would wager is his most physically demanding Bond film yet. The Winter Olympic Games don’t have a decathlon but Bond makes a convincing argument to include such an event in future games. In an incredible mid-movie set piece the 54-years-old Moore (OK, OK. Moore’s countless stunt doubles…) kicks off the first ever Nordic 10 sport event starting with the down hill, seamlessly blending into the biathlon, flowed by the ski jump, then on to the Super G with a little X games hot dogging and even some motocross thrown in for good measure, then it’s the bobsled and he finishes the whole thing with a hat-trick on the hockey rink (literally, Bond puts three felled baddies into the back of the net.) In fact, the only thing double O athlete sat out was figure skating, which frankly is for the best; the last thing we want to see is Moore getting all Johnny Weir. But Bond did manage to watch young Bibi triple lutz and Salchow so close enough. These winter sport chase scenes are action packed in a cartoon kind of way and get plenty of laughs but make no mistake, this is by far the most violent of the Moore films to date which dovetails nicely with the punkier, harder boiled approach to Bond. The hand to hand fighting packs a harder punch, a woman witnesses both of her parents murdered in cold blood, and Bond and his lady friend are tortured in an extremely cruel and painfully way. But above all, there is one scene in particular that broadcasts where the folks at EON want the Bond character to go. About ¾ of the way through the film, a baddie is stuck in his car which is balanced on the edge of a cliff a la the bus at the end of The Italian Job (1969). Bond tosses the killers near weightless calling card, a dove lapel pin, through the open window of the car, shifting the balance ever so slightly. The car rocks and it appears as if it may go over the edge. Bond watches, waits a beat, then gives the car a good sold kick to send it hurling down the cliff. The car doesn’t exploded, as cliff diving cars in previous Bond film have, but crashes onto the rocks below as we see the passenger thrown from the auto and splayed out on the rocks. Bond’s reaction? “I guess he had no head for heights.” This is something you might expect from Sean Connery but to see Moore perform such a cruel, cold blooded act is quite shocking. In fact, Moore was against the kick, wanting the pin alone to send the car and its passenger to their doom but producers convinced him otherwise. This business is all the more interesting when you consider how outspoken Moore has been in recent years when it comes to decrying the violent turn Daniel Craig’s Bond films have taken. For my money, the kick works. It fits in the context of the film and considering the baddies sins, Bond is more than justified. Early in the film, Bond and a lovely woman are taking a morning stroll on the beach after a romantic evening together. This idyllic serenity is broken when several dune buggies burst onto the beach and the cliff diving baddie runs over the woman, killing her, while Bond is defenseless to stop it. This ladies death is given even more weight when you consider the opening shot of the film, Tracy Bond’s headstone inscribe with the last words she heard, “We have all the time in the world.” Remember, Bond witnessed her murder as well, and could do nothing save his bride. All of this had to be playing out in Bond’s head when he gave the final satisfactory kick. If I may return to the Ramones for a moment, one of the beautiful things about da bruthads was how they could blend humor and violence, often in the same breath. “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat” is funny the same way Bugs Bunny getting it over on Elmer Fudd is funny. For Your Eyes Only pulls off the same trick; even with Bonds harder edge, Moore’s trademark humor is not lost. In fact, it’s as sharp as ever and Sir Roger is even willing to make himself the butt of the joke. Moore is quoted as saying he felt was getting a “little long in the tooth” at this point and he was “embarrassed” to be on screen with his 23 year old co-star, Lynn-Holly Johnson. So, when she shows up in Bond’s bathtub (this guy has a habit of finding bathing women in his hotel rooms) and jumps into bed, 007 uncharacteristically declines. “Why don’t you get your clothes on and Ill buy you ice-cream.” Again, this is correct. I just can’t see Bond, at any age, hooking up with a girl who skis in a cowboy hat and pink ear muffs.

Director: John Glen. In Roger Ebert’s review of Sudden Impact (1983) he wrote in part

…there comes a moment about halfway through Sudden Impact, the new Dirty Harry movie, when you realize that Harry has achieved some kind of legitimate pop status …. We learned early to cheer when John Wayne shot the bad guys. We cheered when the Cavalry turned up, or the Yanks, or the SWAT Team. What Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies do is very simple. They reduce the screen time between those cheers to the absolute minimum. Sudden Impact is a Dirty Harry movie with only the good parts left in. All the slow stuff, such as character, motivation, atmosphere and plot, has been pared to exactly the minimum necessary to hold together the violence. This movie has been edited with the economy of a 30-second commercial.

I’m sure Ebert had his tongue firmly in cheek when writing about the “boring stuff” but substitute Dirty Harry and Sudden Impact with James Bond and For Your Eyes Only and I think you have John Glen’s mission statement for his first Bond picture as a director. Glen, who edited and directed the second unit, which was responsible for the incredible opening action sequences in the two previous Bond pictures, knew his way around Bond, and he must have been over the moon to get his shot at the helm. George Harrison was a hell of a song writer, but he worked with two dudes who (A) could write a classic in their sleep and (B) had ego issues. So, while Paul and John argued about whose tune would kick-off the next record, George kept his songbook in his back pocket and kept writing. By the time the Beatles called it quits in 1970, Harrison had stockpiled enough songs that his solo debut “All Things Must Pass” was a double record bursting at the seams with one killer track after the next. Once he had his chance, the quite one wanted to get everything out, all at once. This movie has a very similar feel. It’s almost like Glen had a bunch of ideas for action sequences but he couldn’t fit them all into the first 10 minutes of a movie. So, when he finally landed in the drives seat, he strung together every single thing he ever wanted to see Bond do creating a movie that is essentially a two-hour wall-to-wall action sequence. In keeping the plot simple, he crafted a film that is a big old game of capture the flag with Bond movies’ trademark locations as the playing field. For Your Eyes Only gives us everything we love about Bond, but trims the fat so we see a man who is more reliant on his wits and fists than gadgets and tricks. It’s not quite a re-boot per se, but more of a re-imagining. The Bond of this film is less high flying superspy and more like a grizzled international cop.  This Bond gets his hands dirty by teaming up with smugglers on midnight raids; he is not eating cucumber sandwich and pheasant hunting with the villain. It’s a role you could see 1990’s era Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford playing. The upshot; twice during the film I felt like Bond was in real danger, something I haven’t felt since Connery’s heyday. But what Glen should get the biggest props for is pulling of a plot twist that is so simple, yet completely unexpected, because shockingly, it’s never been done in any of the previous 11 Bond films.

Reported Budget: $28,000,000 estimated. For all the credit I just heaped on Glen for his re-framing of our hero, the cold hard numbers necessitated, at least in part, that Bond be pulled back. After going to the stars, short of driving his Lotus to Venus, there was nowhere else for Bond to go but back to earth. The rookie director was told in no uncertain terms that he would not have the open checkbook that lead to the $34,000,000 budget for Moonraker (1979), a film that proved that too much money can be just that, too much money. If you’ve ever seen a movie with the words “Jerry” and “Bruckheimer” side by side in the credits, then you know exactly of what I speak.

Reported Box-office: $54,812,802 (USA) $194,900,000 (Worldwide) Short on both the US and worldwide side of things when compared with Moonraker, but as far as bang for the buck, I’ve got to imagine everyone at EON was pleased. So much so that I suspect a sequel maybe in order, no?

Theme Song: “For Your Eyes Only” performed by Sheena Easton. For the most part this tune is Adult Contemporary crap. I’ll give Easton credit for killing the vocals and part of me dug the very early 80’s subtle key board that launches into a heavy bah daa bad daa faux piano, but lyrics like “maybe I’m an open book because I know your mine (bah daa bad daa) but you don’t need to read between the lines” are simply dreadful. That said, 1981 radio listeners loved the tune which hit #4 in the US and #8 in the UK. Additionally, the folks at the Academy, never known for their ability to find quality in film, much less music, nominated the song for an Oscar. To prove my point about the Academy’s lack of good taste, the winner for “Best Original Song” in 1981 was Arthur for “Best That You Can Do” by Christopher Cross. “If you get caught between the moon and neeeew YORK ciiiiiiiiiiiity ….” Yah, that tune. By comparison “For Your Eyes Only” might as well be “Beat on the Brat.”

Opening Titles: The 1980’s and MTV are inseparable. So it’s appropriate that the first Bond movie of the music video decade is the first, and to my knowledge only, time the performer of the theme song appears in the opening credits. Easton, doing her best to look like Pat Benatar, sings directly to the camera with a strategically folded arm hiding her shirtless chest. Meanwhile, blue, underwater looking silhouettes of women do the normal jumping, tumbling and what have you. I know these sequences are iconic and part of what makes Bond “Bond” but frankly, they are getting a little stale at this point. I’d like to see some variation and no, making the open into an MTV video doesn’t count.

Opening Action Sequence: Loudly declaring this is not your fathers Bond from the get go, Glen uses the opening action sequence to both reference and break from 007’s past. The first shot shows Bond standing at his wives grave for a moment of quite reflection, a moment that is shattered by the sound of helicopter blades and a shouting priest. The padre informs Bond that the office has called, it’s urgent, and a helicopter is incoming to collect him. However, as soon as Bond is in the aircraft the priest’s face turns somber and he gives the sign of the cross to the departing spy. Uhhh oh. And why is Bond separated from the pilot by one of those Plexiglas partitions you find in taxi cabs? And who is the bald fellow cackling to himself? Could it be???? YES, it’s Blofeld. As I’ve said before, I know I saw all these films at one time or another but I only remember bits and pieces and they all kind of blend together in my memory. Since beginning this project I’ve gone through great pains to avoid any kind of looking forward and this is one of the reasons why; I was sincerely thrown for a loop at the sight of Bond’s old nemeses, banged up and confined to a wheelchair, no doubt thanks to that business on the oil tanker a full 10 years ago??? This guy takes longer to come off the DL than Carl Pavano. (You’re welcome Yankee fans.) Oh well, still quite a shock. Blofeld kills his pilot and takes over flying remote control airways as the London skyline becomes Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover, sans the pig.  Bond works his way outside the chopper and around into the cockpit to find wires with the red tape on em. What could those be for? F it, lets cut em. And not a moment to soon. Blofeld has flown the chopper into a warehouse where the chopper blades come with-in inches of hitting the ceiling and walls. The shots of a helicopter flying inside a building are some of the more impressive I’ve seen in film. Not to bore regular readers but this is just one more piece of film making that demonstrates things were better in the good old pre CGI days. There is simply no way anyone can convince me this open would look better/ be more exciting/ carry the same impact if it were done with the aid of CGI. (And don’t get me started on the newest trend in film. Let’s just say that if I’m required to put on additional eyewear to view new Bond flick, I’m official declaring jihad on 3D. I mean, what would they call it, Bond 23D? Oh Jesus, what have I done….) Now in control of the chopper and proving once again that man has yet to create a form of transportation that Bond can’t expertly drive, 007 flies out of the warehouse and chases Blofeld like he’s Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959); that is if Cary Grant were bald, in a neck brace and had a cat on his lap while escaping in a motorized wheelchair which, come to think of it, is one of the few motorized contraption we have yet to see Bond’s skills at maneuvering. In a move that must of had the production crew in stitches, Bond mounts Blofeld’s wheelchair on one of the helicopter skids and flies off. This is one of the cooler and unpredictable turning of the tables I can think of in a movie as Blofeld suddenly goes from a scheming madman to a blathering baby, begging for mercy. Not happening. Jimmy B finally has the opportunity to avenge his wives murder and to do so all our hero needs to do is simply tip the chopper forward. Off slips Blofeld, plummeting into a 20 story smokestack while shouting his final words “Mr. Booooonnnnnnnnddddd…….” And with that one act James not only finally gets the one that always got away but he simultaneously kills of the “old” Bond. It’s the closing of a chapter and Bond can move on, unencumbered. The only loose end to tie up, what happened to Blofeld’s cat?

Bond’s Mission: John Glen knew the visual language of an action sequence IE how to get to the nut of the story using as economical of means as possible. By extension, when the script does require characters to speak, Glen didn’t want Shakespeare; let the folks on screen do enough to let the audience know what’s up and get on with it. As a result we get a plot that is so straight forward as to be almost non-existent. In fact, the dialogue setting up the stakes happens so quickly I must admit I didn’t quite understand who all the players were at points until my second viewing. It’s a problem, but one that could be overlooked since there is so much more going on. Regardless, Bond enters M’s office and is handed an envelope with “For Your Eyes Only” written across the front. Inside are the particulars of “Operation Undertow.” It appears that a secrete British intelligence ship has sunk off the coast of Albania. (A mine, which was captured in a fishing net, did the boat and her crew in. Was this a planed sabotage? Did they just pull up an old mine by mistake? Doesn’t matter.) On board this boat was a dingus called the Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator or A.T.A.C. This thing can send launch orders to all Brits submarines with nuclear warheads; picture the fabled nuke codes the President of the United States carries around with him and you get the idea. Needless to say, if the commies got a hold of this it would be disastrous. “How deep is the water there?” Bond asks about the sunken St. Georges. “Not deep enough.” And the game is afoot. The entire thing is set up with a sinking ship scene (well done) and this bit of business. By comparison, if this were Moonraker, we would get shots of British subs containing warheads and satellites twirling in space as they relay messages to each other and huge military war rooms with panicked general doing whatever it is panicked generals do. Here, not one shot of a military submarine even thought they are central to the plot. We don’t need it. We in fact don’t even really need to know about the subs at all. The Brits need to beat the Russians to the bottom of the ocean to get the McGuffin and Bond is on the case. Hey Ho, Lets Go. In fact, the A.T.A.C. itself is a hysterically low teck prop that looks like a Commodore 64 keyboard.  Even the climax of the film is broken down to its simplest notes. Gone is the need to blow up a space station or a castle or an island or whatever; a need that killed the otherwise nuts and bolts Man with the Golden Gun(1974). In this film we get a mini Mexican standoff on the side of a mountain. It still delivers on the drama and the grandness of Bond but in a much more personal way. We see almost all of the main characters in close-up, with weapons in each other faces.

Perfect, and much more dramatic than running out of an exploding building. This is not to say the tried and true blowing stuff up elements can’t work, as demonstrated in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) which was a big production with a huge budgets that delivered on its promise of big big big. But the bigger something gets, the easier it is to loose control, see Moonraker. Or, in the case of The Man with the Golden Gun, the finally act was shoehorned in because producers felt like they need to blow stuff up and it didn’t fit with the beginning of the film. For Glen’s first time out, EON followed the advice I heard so many times from Prof. Skitko back in school. K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple Stupid.

Villain’s Name: We meet two Greek smugglers, Columbo and Kristatos which sounds like a Mediterranean comedy duo. Bond first encounters Ari Kristatos, his point man in the Greek underworld. Like most Bond contacts of the past, he is an elderly man of taste, low key in appearance but clearly with his finger on the pulse. He is also sponsoring a young figure skating protégé he hopes will win the gold, a noble cause indeed. Bond inquires about an assassin named Emile Leopold Locque (great handle) who has been tied to some murderous goings on surrounding the Commodore 64. Indeed, Kristatos knows him and who he works for, another smuggler named Columbo. Both men are in the same illegal business yes, but unlike Kristatos, Columbo is bad bad bad. What separates these two smugglers? Hows about the information that Columbo deals in “Drugs, white slavery (the worst kind) and contract murder. In the Greek underworld he is known as the dove.” Bond is given this bit of information as he dines in the casino owned by the very man of whom they speak, who also happens to be seated at a table just yards away. We as an audience know Columbo is bad because (A) Bonds contact said so (B) much like Nixon, has he own building bugged, (C) like every bad guy in every Bond he has a huge base of operation (the casino) (D) he is filthy rich to the point where money is no object and finally (F) he stages a fight with his woman in front of Bond so Bond will follow her. Sure as day follows night Bond beds the lady, and the next morning the lady is killed by the white dove assassin Locque and Bond is kidnapped and taken to the office of one Columbo, who is about to explain his diabolical scheme. This is all right out of the Bond bad guy handbook and we as an audience recognize all the signposts thanks to our long history with Jimmy B. For Your Eyes Only is able to take all this history and turn it on its ear. And in a very well acted scene (containing easily the most dialog in the film) this “simple” plot is able to pull a “simple” trick that in a non-Bond film would have been routine but here is a revelation. “What should I do with you?” Columbo asks Bond in perhaps the best accent I’ve heard on film in some time. He then tells Bond the fix is in and that H.M.S.S. has been duped. He, Columbo, is in fact the good guy, Locque works for Kristatos, and God only knows what’s up with that whole white salve thing. Bond must now make a choice; who to believe? This is the stuff of almost all good espionage stories but Bond has never encountered such a situation. Why trust Columbo? After all, he’s got the lair, he’s got lady, and he practically twirls his black mustache when he speaks. He fits the profile of every previous Bond villain and Kristatos on the other hand fits the profile of ever other Bond buddy. As a sign of good faith, the pistachio nut munching Columbo hands Bond his gun, and it is loaded. “Come to the docks with me tonight, I’ll show you.” Like any good gambler, Bond must make a decision based on all the info he’s gathered so far. Perhaps he remembers that Kristatos’ car gave him a ride to the countesses place last night and then lo and behold, come morning the beach is crawling with baddies. Perhaps 007 is also remembering even early in the evening he won a cool million at the Baccarat table by not playing the odds, but playing a hunch and riding a steak of good luck. Armed with this info, not to mention the gun in his hand, 007 correctly figures he is on a rush of good cards and decides to accept Columbo’s drink and invite for the midnight raid. It’s a thrilling change of pace to see Bond use his smarts and not just rely on his gun and gadgets galore. And wouldn’t you know it, Columbo is simply a sweetheart and that Ari Kristatos is not only working with the Soviets but he’s also trying to deflower that skater of his. White slavery indeed.

Villain Actor: Julian Glover. The man who plays Kristatos trained at the National Youth Theatre and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company but what his will always be remembered for is pulling off the Geek Trifecta by appearing in a Bond film (this one), playing General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Walter “Germany just declared war on the Jones boys” Donovan in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Of course, one of those Jones boys was Harrison Ford who was also in The Empire Strikes Back and the other Jones boy was Sean Connery who once played Bond. In fact, when Connery left 007 in 1971 Julian Glover was on the short list to play Bond but lost out to Roger Moore. Another guy who played Bond is Timothy Dalton who appeared in Flash Gordon (1980) in which Dr. Hans Zarkov was played by Julian Glover. In For Your Eyes Only, Julian Glover’s Ari Kristatos puts out a hit on the Countess Lisl who was played by Cassandra Harris. Harris, at the time of filming, was dating one Pierce Brosnan and the two later had a son together. Brosnan, as fate would have it, also played James Bond. But that’s all just nonsense. What I will always remember Julian Glover for is his fine performance as King Gustav in the classic film King Ralph (1991)

Villain’s Plot: Get the dingus. It turns out that despite winning the Kings Medal from England, Kristatos was with the Russians all along. General Gogol openly refers to him as “our usual friend in Greece” so quite frankly, The Queen has some egg on her face. Additionally, Kristatos figures if he can get the British to do his dirty work and take out Columbo, his main competitor in the smuggling racket, all the better. But he didn’t count on Bond! To quote our 43^rd President “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” Well said.

Villain’s Lair: Our villain doesn’t live in a mountain top ski chalet, a seaside mansion with sharks in the pool, a deep-sea oil rig, the penthouse of a Vegas casino, a private island, a dictator’s compound, an underwater hideout, a volcanic crater or a cloaked space station. Where does he live? We never find out. We know he has seaside warehouse he uses to smuggle heroin, but the scale is much more human. After all, this is used to smuggle, so the smaller and less conspicuous the better, no? He also sets up shop in an old cliff-side monetary, as fantastic a lair as any we have seen, but it is in fact real and fits into the plot. Also the rooms inside are on a human scale with real furnishings and a congruous feel; no medieval stone walls that slide open to reveal a 21^st century chemical lab. This is correct in keeping with the more personal tone of the film. Be it in the interest of budget or perhaps in Ken Adams team’s absents, Glen decided to use what was naturally available and write around that. See the fantastic decathlon sequence or the car chase down the side of a mountain. By using “real” natural settings the film itself feels more real and lived in.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: One of the downsides to stripping the plot to its bare bones is little room if left to truly develop characters. While Columbo makes the most of his minimal screen time and fills out into an interesting person, Kristatos really is a blank slate defined only by his actions. But those actions, for the most part, are ruthless and quite badass.

Badassness of Villain: Indeed, he orders a lot of hits, including the cold blooded murder of the Bond girl’s parents, the assassination of Columbo’s lady friend the countess, and he even drops a white dove pin on the dead body of an Italian spy he had wacked to try and set up Columbo. He is also willing to do some dirty work himself, including getting all Tonya Harding and smacking around Bibi, the skater he is sponsoring. However, one move is so vicious it sent me to Wikipedia. Keelhauling is “a form of punishment meted out to sailors at sea.” If by punishment they mean torture resulting in certain death, then yah, I guess you could call it “punishment.” Bond and his lady friend are tied together face to face at the wrists and ankles. They are then tethered to a large boat and thrown over the side to be dragged behind like a water-skier, only minus the skis. As the boat reaches top speeds, the couple not only struggle to keep their head above water but are also raked over sharp corral and dragged like large bait past schools of sharks. After the first run, Kristatos then has the boat turn around and go again, and again. The shots of Bond’s head, underwater, zooming towards rock hard, razor sharp corral made me actually fear for the indestructible 007’s safety. Great filmmaking.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Like the third installment of a superhero trilogy, this flick has more bad guys than the FOX News studios. Blofeld and Kristatos are the top baddies and under them there’s a rogues gallery of second bananas that includes a KGB agent and not one but two deadly assassins. The first is Hector Gonzalez AKA the Hugh Hefner of the underworld. He enjoys wearing a blue banana sling and listening to disco while throwing stacks of money at the beauties who lounge around his pool at his Madrid Playboy Mansion. Truth be told, he looks and lives more like a coke kingpin than an assassin but hey, I’m not here to judge how a man spends his money. He also gets one of the better lines in the film. “007, license to kill or be killed.” And as a bonus, he goes out in spectacular fashion. While in mid-flight off his diving board Gonzalez gets an arrow in the back. His floating dead body empties the pool quicker than the Baby Ruth bar in Caddyshack(1980). Next up is Emile Leopold Locque who is a spitting image of 70’s era Warren Zevon.  We learn from his MI6 file that Locque “Escaped from prison by strangling his psychiatrist.” He also can turn a dune buggy into a deadly weapon and he takes out one of Italy’s elite operatives. Finally, there is the blond KGB baddie known as Kriegler, who is an

Olympic biathlon competitor with anger issues. He gets so pissed at one point he literally lifts a motorcycle over his head and throws it in the direction of a fast escaping Bond. In a related note, the very next day the IOC tested the Russian biathlete for performance enhancing drugs. Results are still pending.

Bond Girl Actress: Carole Bouquet. She read for the role of Dr. Goodhead in Moonraker but landed the better, meatier Bond girl role in this film. A classic beauty, Glen never wastes an opportunity to feature Bouquet’s long flowing hair or striking deep eyes. She became the spokes model for Chanel in the 1990’s when she was well past the sell by date on most ladies who land such gigs. Unlike many Bond girls who disappear after their 007 appearance, Bouquet still works regularly today, mostly in French language roles. Bibi is played by Chicago native Lynn-Holly Johnson who placed 2nd at the 1974 U.S. Figure Skating Championships and does all the skating and trick skiing in the film herself. Not the strongest actress to grace the silver screen, she plays her one note quite well. The scenes between she and Moore a touching and humors, no small thing considering they could very easily have come off as creepy.

Bond Girl’s Name: Melina Havelock gets quite an entrance. We first see the Bond girl in a seaplane which lands and pulls up next to a yacht belonging to her Greek oceanographer parents. They seem to be lovely people who are promptly killed by the seaplane pilot leading to a slightly too dramatic zoom into Melina’s face. She then, “like Elektra,” vows to avenge her parent’s death which puts she and Bond on a crash course to take out the same target. Like many of the heroes of Greek and modern mythology, she becomes define by her weapon of choice. Poseidon has his trident, Capitan America has his shield, Indian Jones has his whip and Ash has his chainsaw hand.

For Melina, it’s a crossbow, a weapon she yields with deadly accuracy, just ask Hector Gonzalez. She also is one hell of a driver, helping Bond escape in a yellow 2CV which is like a shittier Volkswagen Bug.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver organizers stocked the Olympic Village, the area where all the athletes from all over the world are housed, with 100,000 condoms or 14 for every resident. This is another way of saying when you get the best of the best young athletes, all with incredible bodies and physical prowess, and stick them all in a confined area for 17 days…. well, there a whole lot of loven’ going on. Bibi, our Olympic figurer skater is no exception. She apparently has a thing for spies as she was hitting the slopes with KGB agent Kriegler and then shows up naked in Bonds bed. “What would your uncle think?” Bond asks. When Bibi replies “Oh him, he still thinks I’m a virgin” Moore flashes a perfectly timed double take and then does the gentlemanly thing. As for Melina, the Greek avenger has bigger things on her mind than bedding Bond making her perhaps the least amorous Bond girl yet. It isn’t until the very end of the film, once the whole bloody vengeance thing has been settled, that she finally gets down to getting Bond. When she does so, she lets him know he’s going where few, if any, have gone before; “For your eyes only, darling.”

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Bond, having just escorted the countess to her beach bungalow via Kristatos’ limo is about to say goodnight. The Countess counters “I’m a night person. I have champagne and oysters in the fridge. Why don’t you come in for a bite?”

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: The next morning, as the two stroll hand in hand on the beach, the Countess lets Bond know he can take her car back to the hotel. “Well that rather sounds like a dismissal; I was hoping to stay for breakfast.”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: Ahh hook ups in the back of limos that lead to oysters and champagne in the fridge, I remember those days. Of course, what I mean to say is I remember the days of drunken hook-ups in the back of taxi cabs and the midnight snacks of Pabst Blue Ribbon and pizza but on some level I can relate to Mr. Bond. Although the morning after wasn’t so much a saunter on the beach as much as a hung over walk of shame performed while digging in every pocket with the hopes of finding one last token while seeking out the nearest N train stop, but I digress. The only other lady would be Melina making a relatively low count of two. When you consider the movies kicked off with Bond standing at his wives grave, it seems appropriate.

Number of People 007 Kills: When the film opens with Jimmy B offing his long time nemeses in such a spectacular and unexpected way, you’ve got to figure the carnage in this film is going to be on the high side of things. Including good old Blofeld, Bond retires 12. Granted, not that high of a number by Bond standards but he gets mighty creative with some of em. Sure, during a warehouse raid he shoots two dudes, grenades another and violently tosses a forth into the sea. He also flips a dune buggy on top of a guy and throws another off a cliff after said guy tries to cut Bonds climbing line; all pretty standard. On the more creative front, Jimmy B attaches a detonator to the back of a diver’s helmet where he can’t possibly reach it. All the poor bastard can do is flap his arms about like the little brother in A Christmas Story (1983) and then boom. Speaking of boom, when a baddie breaks the window to Bond’s car, the thing instantly explodes in a moment that Glen claims had a 1981 New York City audience rolling in the allies. Auto theft was at an all time high in the city and I’m sure Gotham residents would have loved to have such an option on their cars. As for me, I was thinking what would Bond do if he lost his keys? After sticking a piece of lumber in the spokes of a motorcycle and sending the rider through a window, Bond is kind enough to place flowers on the corpse. To finish off the KGB baddie, Bond combines two of the above techniques; (A) throw the dude through a window after which he roles (B) off the cliff. In another surprise twist, Bond himself doesn’t finish off the head baddie, old man Kristatos. That honor goes to Columbo and his knife throwing skills.

Most Outrageous Death/s: I love zombies, and Zombieland (2009) was a fantastic take on the undead/flesh eating genre. The movie gets laughs out of the idea that anyone who digs zombie films has thought about what they would do when World War Z happens. (In my case, I’ve thought about it perhaps a little too much. Let’s just say I currently have bars over all the windows in my home…) Anyway, our hero in the film is Columbus, who has managed to stay alive during the zombie apocalypse thanks to a list of rules he follows religiously. Rule #1 is cardio. The zombies of Zombieland are the updated 28 Days Later (2002) speedy variety, not the slow shuffling George Romero breed so being able to run long distances is essential and hence, the #1 rule. Whelp, Bond is clearly keeping up on his cardio; check this out. Emile “Werewolves of London” Locque gets in his car and speeds up one of those twisty mountain roads. There is also a stair case that goes up the mountain in a much more direct route than the road but they are, you know, stairs. A lot of em, going up a step mountain. Bond takes off up said stairs and not only catches Locque’s car but PASSES it! Anyone else who got the top of this staircase as quickly would be doubled over and loosing their lunch. Bond on the other hand isn’t even out of breath and is able to stabilize himself to get off a perfect shot at the on coming Locque. The single shot sends Locque and his car to a teetering position on the side of the cliff. Bond then gets to do his dramatic dove pin toss/ kick of the car off the mountain. Cardio indeed.

Miss. Moneypenny:  In a film where Bond has minimal toys, Moneypenny gets a gadget. When we first see Moneypenny she is putting on her face using a make-up kit and mirror hidden in her filing cabinet. Cool. We also see Bond toss his hat onto the hat rack, a first for Moore if I’m not mistaken and another reference to the Connery days. It’s also a little odd considering we never see Bond wearing a cap.

M: Bernard Lee, who died in January of 1981, was too ill to reprise his role as M when the film was shot in 1980. Moneypenny explains M’s absents when she informs Bond that the boss man is out on leave. For this information Bond give her a rose. Bond then goes into M office to find Chief of Staff Bill Tanner sitting at M’s desk. This jerk couldn’t carry M’s luggage, and he sure as shit has no business sitting at the great man’s desk. James Villiers plays Tanner as a smug, pipe puffing, half wit. He’s also a little stiff. With apologies to Ferris Bueller, Chief of Staff Bill Tanner is so uptight that if you put a lump of coal in the guys ass, in two weeks it would be a diamond. When Bond plainly spells out his plan, Tanner responds with a terse “I don’t follow…” and in the same breath chides Bond for “mucking it all up.” He also throws around the threat of “contacting the Prime Minister” like a younger sibling threatens to “go tell mommy.” Speaking of the PM, For Your Eyes Only has one of the stranger endings to a Bond film. There has been a running joke in the past few 007 movies where the very last scene entails Bond somehow being put in touch with all the government big wigs at the precise moment he’s fornicating with the Bond girl. It’s cute and is a nice way for us to leave Bond on the shelf until the next adventure. However, this movie takes the joke one step further when we actually see the PM. Even more bizarre it’s not some fictional PM but then current office holder Margaret Thatcher. (Not the “real” Thatcher, but an actress who is a spitting image.) Thatcher is in the kitchen, preparing a meal when the red phone on her wall rings. It’s Tanner, who patches Bond though. Bond of course is getting down with Melina and puts a talking parrot on the line. (It makes sense in the context of the film) The joke, I guess, is that Margaret Thatcher doesn’t pick up on the fact that she is talking to a bird so when the parrot squawks “give us a kiss” Thatcher blushes and gives an “Ohhh Mr. Bond.” Meanwhile, her husband, who looks like a cross between the old man pervert on the park bench in a Benny Hill sketch and Mr. Rodgers on xanax stands by eating a sandwich. This may have been good satire in 1981 and British audience may have gotten a kick out of it but to me it made not-a-lick of sense and sucked me out of the movie completely. To think of it another way, Bond is England’s #1 export and other than footage of the Beatles, the way that most people outside England see England is through Bond films. I can’t picture a Hollywood action film in 1981 making a Ronald Reagan is senile joke. Maybe somewhere some films did, but in a Bond picture the Thatcher thing is just odd and frankly tone deaf. In other news, we may not have M but we do get his Soviet counterpart General Gogol who just continues to grow on me each film. I really love this guy. Here, we first see him in that mausoleum of an office that was introduced in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). He’s on the phone (the red one, of course) conducting some important state business while flirting with his hot secretary. At the end of the film he takes a helicopter to Greece to personally pick-up the dingus. I cracked up when I noticed he was wearing a red star pin on his lapel in much the same manner that every American politician has been required to wear a flag pin after 9/11. God bless HDTV. Anyway, the smartly dressed General makes the trip all the way to the Greek mountains only to fail in obtaining the prize when Bond throws the Commodore 64 over the cliff. Gogol’s response? Laugh his ass off, nod at Bond, and get back on the chopper, bound for a rendezvous with that secretary no doubt. I love how the character plays again the Stalinesque, tight lipped, humorless Russian military man shown in every other Hollywood flick produced at the time. I vote for good old Gogol for M’s successor, screw that Tanner guy.

Q: “Forgive me father for I have sinned” Bond says when he enter the confessional. “That’s putting it mildly 007” responds the preacher, AKA Q. I live in Astoria Queens, home to the largest population of Greeks outside of Greece and there are several Greek Orthodox churches just blocks from my place. And I must say, while Bond has sported some dodgy disguises in the past, Q’s Greek Orthodox priest is spot on. Despite the small number of gadgets, Q has quite a presence in the film. His lab is chuck full of the typical good stuff like an arm cast that smash like Hulk (that will come in handy,) a umbrella that when rained upon closes and sticks knifes into holders neck (stinging in the rain,) but the coolest new toy is the identigraph. One of the many things that we take for granted now with the World Wide Web and memory clouds and smart phones is that we can get to the information housed in computers anywhere at anytime. In the past, one had to go to the correct terminal to get desired information. I remember being in the library and having to look up the card catalog on one machine, typing on a word processor on a second, and finding articles in periodicals on a third terminal (which used microfiche, which for all you kids who have never had the pleasure, was a total nightmare.) All three of these machines were in the same building but you could only use them for their specific purpose. IE you had to go to the computer that did the task you needed. In movies, this meant the astronauts had to go to a physical HAL in 2001 (1969). Even better for cinematic purpose, people would go into huge rooms with blinking lights to interface with the all powerful computer, like the crew of the Nostromo had to do in Alien (1979) to talk to “mother.” The identigraph is housed in a similar room deep in Q’s lab and is equipped with, for no reason at all except it looks cool, red lighting. There are also racks and racks of data holding devices, in this case, large white spools containing all the information on all the known criminals in the world. Bond and Q go to work on putting together a police sketch of Locque. After what must have been a very long time (Q and Bond both removed their suit jackets, the universal shorthand for burning the midnight oil) the two come up with Locque’s mug shot and file. I liked the identigraph, it was far out enough to be Bond but also close enough to realty that I’m sure police stations of today use a similar (and at this point far more advanced) program to make sketches of wanted suspects.

List of Gadgets: Bond is driving what appears to be the tricked out white Lotus from the previous two films but outside of the thing exploding we see none of its cool features. This was very much intentional Glen says on the DVD extras. The idea was to make Bond reliant on his own wits and in fact the destruction of his car is yet another way to separate this meaner, leaner Bond from his past. The only true gadget is a communication device, not a weapon. In the finally moments of the movie, bond gets a twitter message on his watch which displays the text like the news ticker in Times Square.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: There is the Lotus which Bond didn’t directly destroy but it was blown up while signed out to him. He also dumps the above mentioned watch into the sea, which while it may have been waterproof, I’m sure was never recovered. Then there is the A.T.E.C. that is thrown over the cliff. When the thing hit the rocks it explodes in a way that sounds and looks more like the destruction of the first Death Star than say, a keyboard with three circuit boards inside. But oh it dramatic!

Other Property Destroyed: After the Lotus goes by-by, Bond finds himself in Melina’s yellow 2CV, the joke being Bond has to escape in a car that wouldn’t be fit to compete in a soapbox derby. Hey, speaking of soapbox derbies, have you seen The Raconteurs video for “Steady as she Goes”? It’s awesome.

 

Anyway, Bond goes barreling down the hillside, destroying many a fig grove and likely entire families’ livelihoods in the process. He also crushes the car. A flower shop will also loose some business when it shuts down to fix that front window Bond sends the motorcycle rider through and then there is stain glass window in the monastery. Separate incidences. Bond also causes all kinds of havoc to tables, chairs, and other furniture both while skiing and while brawling in the monastery. Again, separate incidences. And incidentally, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the 2CV’s tape deck … or the Creedence.

Felix Leiter: The CIA sat this one out but the Italians sent their 2^nd best man, Luigi. Things start of with great intrigue when Bond arrives at his hotel. He enters the bathroom and runs hot water in faucet, steaming up the mirror to reveal the meeting place with the Italian spy. Awesome! Low tech but all kinds of cloak and dagger. From there, things go down hill faster that Jack White in a soapbox derby car. When Bond meets the Italian, Luigi promptly hooks 007 up with Kristatos, the man working for the Russians. I mean, with his first move Luigi makes Felix look competent. The Italians do wish they could have sent their #1 man, but Mario was busy saving a princess from an angry monkey. Bond’s true ally in this film is Columbo, played by Topol, who has had perhaps just as interesting life as the Greek smuggler. Topol, which means “Tree of life,” was granted leave from the Israeli army so he could attend the Oscars in Hollywood when he was nominated for his role as Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof(1971). How cool is that?

Columbo reminded me a lot of Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love (1963). Like Bey, Columbo is an older laid back European who has experienced much. You can read his history on his face; world weary and cynical, but able to laugh at the way things repeat themselves, just with different players. This is coupled with a crusty confidence which allows him to cut through the bullshit and get to the nut of the thing. 20 years down the road, I could picture Bond in a similar consultant type role. The semi-retired 007 would live on an estate in the UK somewhere, with a garden and a vineyard. When duty called, he would drive his Bentley into the nearby village, meeting his contacts at the local where he is known to regulars as the guy who lives in the big house on the hill. Only the bartender knows the score, and he never asks Bond to pay for a drink.

Best One Liners/Quips: Bond and Melina have located the sunken St. Georges, the boat that went down with the dingus on board. So deep is the resting place of the boat that divers must use a special mixture of oxygen that will only give them 17 minutes to get in, find the dingus, removes it, and get out. Bond wisely advises Melina that the air is precious so she should only speak “when necessary.” Clearly, one-liners about sharks fall into the category of “when necessary.” When one swims by, Bond quips “I hope he was dining alone.”

Bond Cars: 2 Lotuses, (Lodi?) red and white. I for one couldn’t be happier to see Bond back in a hot set of wheels. However, since the white one blows up before we really get to see Bond in it and the red one is in fact just a floor model in Q’s lab, I’ve sadly got nothing more on the subject. We do however see Bond in a horse drawn carriage, a sub named Neptune (more boats) and in that little yellow 2CV so maybe it’s not the return to Bond cars as the DVD cover promises. Baby steps.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 4 and not a martini, or any vodka for that matter, among the sprits. Bond joins Kristatos for dinner at Columbo’s casino before he knows who’s on what side (After all, <sung> “how was he to know, he was with the Russians too HEY!”) They sit and Bond orders ouzo for his pre dinner cocktail. When in Greece… But when Kristatos, Bond’s host for the evening it should be pointed out, makes a suggestion for the dinner wine, things go sideways. “May I suggest a white Ribolo from Catalonia, my home place?” Bond’s nose wrinkles up just slightly before he attempts to recover. “Well, if you forgive me, I find that a little too scented for my palate … I prefer the Theotaki Aspero.” Boom bitch! That would be like me meeting Bond and suggesting a Brooklyn Lager. “Forgive me, I find it a bit hoppy, I prefer the Yuengling myself.” No wonder Kristatos tries to have Bond killed, you don’t just slam a man’s suggestion for a drink, much less one from the dudes hometown, and get away with it? Shortly after, Bond is kidnapped by Columbo who offers James a whisky. Bond turns him down; a way of showing his distrust for the man and his motives. Columbo sees this as temporary set back “by tomorrow we will be good friends, let us drink to it.” After Bond gets his gun back he decides waiting to tomorrow is not necessary. His trust now completely in Columbo’s corner, he chugs away; ahhhh alcohol and firearms, the source of many a healthy friendship. A much more agreeable drinking partner is the Countess Lisl with whom Bond shares a bottle of bubbly and oysters while the two lounge on the couch.

Bond Timepiece: I’m not even sure what to say here. My dismay with the Bond watches has reached a barley containable anger crossed with a healthy dose of confusion. This is a cat known for his impeccable taste. James Bond settles for nothing short of the best of the best. Look how he pissed on his host’s hometown wine for Christ sakes. I included this “Bond Timepiece” section on Blog James Blog with the hopes of exploring horology and discussing the finer timepieces of the past decades. Instead I get more digital shit. Note to Broccoli, Bond deserves a decent watch; get him one stat. I’m near my wits end with this category.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: With no parachute hidden under his jacket, Bond makes creative use of an umbrella when jump off a rather high wall. He also has some super fancy climbing gear. Most notable, he traded in his Rossignols for Olin Mark VI’s which seem to perform well on not just on the groomed slopes but also in the glades, on a bobsled track, on a picnic table and on a ski jump so yah, nice upgrade.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Skiing and gambling!! What a great debut Mr. Glen! Blog, James Blog salutes you sir. Bond finds himself in Gastouri’s Achillion Palace playing his game of choice, Baccarat. When we join Bond he has the shoe and is going head to head with a portly fellow we know only as “Bunkie.” Bunkie has just lost a stack of titles to Bond that looks to be in the neighborhood of half a million clams. Bunkie’s miffed, but not quite tilting. Enter the woman. The Countess, in her first scene in the film, places herself behind Bunkie’s chair. Bond in the meantime deals. Bunkie looks at his hand and pushes forward five hundred thousand. “Where’s your courage Bunkie?” the Countess taunts. Bond doesn’t miss a beat and wisely chides the meddling woman. “Courage is no match for an unfriendly shoe Countess.” Bunkie, in the meantime, is sweating like Charlie Sheen in a room full of coke and hookers. Unable to resist, he pushes forward an additional five hundred thousand for a healthy one million dollar bet. Bond is showing a Q-5 for a total of 5 out of a possible high score of 9. Now, it’s Kristatos turn to interfere and inform Bond what he surly already knows, “the odd favor standing pat.” Indeed, only and A-4 would improve Bond’s hand while all other cards will weaken it. Bond counters by saying “that is if you play the odds.” He then draws a 4 for the winning hand. The countess promptly splits, leaving Bunkie a million dollars poorer and with just a little bit of vomit in his mouth. Have I mentioned how much I love it when Bond plays cards?

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Let’s talk about skiing. Bond must have been born in bindings because this dude can do it all plus. Say he finds himself on a ski jump with downhill skis? No worries, strap in and bombs away. Have motorcycles with spiked tires and machine guns chasing you? Ski over tables and roofs, and then ski faster. Find a bobsled tube in your way? Make the thing your personal cross-park. Need to knock a gun out of a guys hand because he’s shooting at you while you’re shredding? Do a helicopter and knock the gun out of his hand. Speaking of helicopters, Bond can fly those. He can also drive a zamboni which damn near completes the list of vehicles 007 expertly navigate. Additionally, he can bomb down a mountain in a piece of shit proving it’s not the car, it’s the man behind the wheel. Another notable break from the past in this film is that at no point did Bond light up for a smoke. Clearly this helped when scaling shear cliffs or sprinting up stairs to beat a car to the top of the mountain. I won’t even get into his hand to hand skill as they are a given at this point, but I was quite impressed how he called the Countess out when she let the drink get the better of her ruse. “Me nightie is slipping” she confesses at one point. Without missing a beat Bond adds “and so is your accent countess. Manchester?” “Liverpool.” And the guy still scores. Now that is special abilities displayed.

List of Locations: Glen deserves high marks for delivering an amazing looking movie that not only makes the most of the locations, but manages to incorporate them as part of the film. Everywhere Bond goes feels real and lived in but exotic at the same time, not an easy needle to thread and Glen manages to make it look effortless. Take the sequence where Bond kicks the car over the cliff. At the top of the stairs Bond comes onto the mountain road under a stone bridge and is perfectly framed in the shot reminding me a little of John Wayne standing in the door in The Searchers (1956) in the way a blast of color and natural beauty in the background is framed by the dark, manmade structure in the margins. A few shots later when Bond kicks the car off the cliff, I suspect most directors would have kept the teetering car as the focal point of the shot. Glen however pulls the camera back and places it at an angel so we see the surround country side which gives the cliff context. We feel like we are there and it adds to the power of the moment. There are countless examples like the above; the opening which features the derelict Beckton Gas Works which may or may not be the cover of Pink Floyd Animals but is where Kubrick shot scenes for Full Metal Jacket (1987) is amazing in its scoop. The night raid on the heroin smuggling operation takes place in a seaside shack that I would wager is actually somewhere in Greece. The monastery, a 15^th century structure known as Hagia Triada, actually rests on a “Wild E Coyote” precipice and holds all the mystery and glamour of a typical Bond bad guy hideout but not the goofy hi tech lab room populated by faceless jumpsuit wearing minions. Not to mention the way one gets to the joint, in the film and in real life, is in a basket that ascends into a wooden shack hanging over a cliff. That is freaking cool and Glen makes the most of this unique location. The alpine village is the best “mountain ski town” we’ve seen since On Her Majesties Secrete Service (1969) and all of the skiing and Olympic stuff, shot in the northern Italian town of Cortina d’Ampezzo and the Dolomites mountains which hosted the 1956 Winter Games, is all simply beautiful. The additional locations around the Greek Island of Corfu which also plays stand-in for Spanish locations complete what is one of the better Bond films when it comes to taking the audience on a journey they will not soon forget.

Thoughts on Film: “I’m afraid were being out horse powered” Bond says at one point, something For Your Eyes Only need not concern itself with. What maybe most impressive about this film is how it bends the Bond formula to give us new stuff, but it travels so fast and is so light on its feet, we hardly notice. In addition to the bad guy twist we get a Bond girl who is not a baddie yet sees Bond more as an inconvenience, not a romantic interest. Between Margaret Thatcher with a cupboard that contains “All Brand” cereal to General Gogol laughing off the destruction of a device that could win him the cold war, this maybe the most political Bond yet, but it treats all of it in a light, matter-of-fact way. It’s at points quite silly; Bond learns the location of the much sought after A.T.E.C. from a talking parrot and also quite violent; the sinking of the St. Georges features men screaming and drowning in quite horrific ways. Glen balances all these elements well while giving us some of the best action we’ve had in a Bond film to date. I must admit, I feared the departure of Ken Adams and crew would be felt in a negative way but in fact the opposite is true. And that’s not speaking ill of those guys, they made Bond capital “B” Bond and created the most memorable, iconic images of the franchise. It’s just that like everyone one else, when you do something long enough the ideas get stale and it’s time for new blood. This movie is what I wanted from The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) in terms of stripping Bond down but it reminded me most of another Bond film. From the nuts and blots idea of beating the baddies to the prize, to the tougher Bond thinking on his feet with the minimal gadgets, from the Columbo character to the locations being more natural and the action feeling like part of those locations, I found myself thinking of From Russia With Love (1962) several times while watching. At this point in the Blog James Blog project, I have more films behind me than ahead and I can really see the push/pull pattern these movies are taking on. I kind think of  From Russia With Love and Goldfinger (1964) as the gold standard (They are, after all, the only two movies so far to get the coveted seven martini glass rating.) Not only are they the best Bond movies, together they set off the pattern that has been repeating in one way or another since; the goofiness and gadgetry of Goldfinger was a reaction to offset the seriousness of From Russia With Love. All subsequent films have been some kind of attempt to mix and match what worked in those two very different ideas of what Bond should be. Some entries strike the balance expertly like The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and other end up a jumbled mess like Diamonds Are Forever (1971). And God only knows what they hell anyone was trying to do with You Only Live Twice (1967) but there you go. (The exception up to this point being On Her Majesties Secrete Service (1969) which just feels more and more like it was out of left field the further we go along, and I mean that in the best possible way.) For the first James Bond of the 80’s EON made a decidedly non-1980’s action film and came up with something closer to a gritty 70’s Dirty Harry film, ironic considering 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me provides the roadmap for glossy 80’s action heroes. Look, I love gadgets, I love the huge villain lairs, I love all the big stuff that is Bond, but I also love when the character can still be Bond while we get to see a different side of him. After Moonraker (1979) launched Bond into the wilderness, Glen and company took the reigns and put our beloved hero back on sold footing. For their first film, they put forth a clear vision of how they see James Bond and where they want him to go. While not a classic by any means, For Your Eye Only is a case study in how to keep a character that has been in 12 films in 19 years fresh without alienating long time fans.

Martini ratings:

Moonraker

Title: Moonraker

Year: 1979. In the first year of the Pac Man/Reagan decade (that would be 1981) the Rolling Stones released the cheekily titled album “Sucking in the ‘70’s.” At first glance the title could be seen as an ironic wink to fans; perhaps the lads were hinting in their second decade, the Stones were not as good as they were in their first. Considering the self proclaimed Worlds Greatest Rock and Roll band kicked off the 1970’s with Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out and closed with Some Girls it seems clear Mic, Keef and crew were having a piss. But when you further considerer how the band absorbed reggae, country, punk, gospel, soul, new wave and disco in many of their best 70’s tunes, you can’t help but wonder if perhaps the title refers to the band “sucking in” all the contemporary/hip genre influences of the day and giving them a Stonesy spin. By the time Moonraker landed on the screen, Bond films too had established they can take a genre of the day; be it Kung-Fu or gritty urban crime, and to varying degrees of success, Bondize them. In 1977 when Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) made more money than the GNP of most European countries, Hollywood reexamined the previously sub B-movie genre of Sci-Fi and space became the name of the game. By 1979 movie houses were screening more space flicks than you could shake a Lightsaber at; the still terrifying “Jaws in space” thriller Alien (1979), the clues Disney band-wagoner The Black Hole (1979) and the extremely successful cure for insomnia Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) to name a few. Cubby Broccoli saw gold in them thar stars and chose to sidestep For Your Eyes Only in favor of Flemings 3^rd Bond Book Moonraker. Too bad Broccoli’s attempt to suck in the ‘70’s Sci-Fi craze ended up just plain sucking.

Film Length: 2 hours and 1 minute. For the movie widely known as “the one where Bond goes to space” it’s interesting to note that the film doesn’t blast-off for the stars until it’s clicked past the hour and a half mark.

Bond Actor: Roger Moore. From the get go Moore wisely knew he could never be Sean Connery and decided to put a comic spin on 007. His reasoning was that Bond is silly on its face. Here is a “secret agent” who is known by name to every bar tender, black jack dealer, doorman, valet, matradee and concierge from here to East Jabib. He’s more like the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis ads than a covert member of MI6.

When Scaramanga meets him for the first time in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) the villain speaks of his admiration for the “famous assassin, 007 with his license to kill.” In Moonraker, Bond pays a visit to the man who built the spacecraft, Hugo Drax, who greets the “secret agent” by saying “Mr. Bond, your reputation precedes you.” He then attempts to kill Jimmy-B not 5 minutes later. Some undercover op. When you think about it that way, you can’t help but play Bond as ridiculous, he IS ridiculous. Whatever your opinion of Moore as Bond, you can’t say he was boring or not fun to watch; in his first three films that is. The 4^th Time Around, we are left asking, as did Dylan, “What else you got left?” Jesus the man sleepwalks through this film. He delivers lines that could be classic Moore; (after a nasty fall “James, did you break anything?” “Only my tailor’s heart,”) like Al Gore on Quaaludes. At one point he gets to sport a dirty poncho and hat that makes him look like the Outlaw Josey Wales and he can barley bring himself to stand up straight. According to my research, Moore worked tirelessly behind the scenes giving 388 media interviews to promote the obscenely expensive film. He was also in great pain suffering from kidney stones at the time. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling 100% but that’s why it’s called acting old boy. You get paid the homerun money to bring your A-game. Moonraker is simply not a fun movie (but it has fun moments) and I think a big part of the problem is Moore clearly isn’t having no fun, my baby, no fun. Bond should be rakish, not raked over.

Director: Lewis Gilbert. It’s a shame Moore was not up to the task because Gilbert and his production team have made a beautiful film with at least three classic Bond action sequences One of those takes place on the roof of a gondola. (Gondola as in the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing, not the boats in Venice.) Two cable cars are stopped next to each other a gazillion feet in the air as Bond and Jaws jump between the two while slugging it out. Clearly stuntmen are used but there are no cheats in the scene; they are on location, way up in the air. We always know exactly what is happen and where it’s happening and therefore when Bond ends up dangling over the side, we feel it. Likewise, when James slides down the cable as the gondola bears down behind him we are truly in the moment. When not expertly taking advantage of locations, Gilbert makes the Ken Adams designed sets the star of the show. In watching the DVD extras I was struck by how much pride all these guys took in doing everything for real and not just “fixing it in post” with CGI. One of the many examples, the film calls for six “Moonraker” space shuttles to be launched at once. The real space shuttle didn’t launch until 1981 so no one knew what a shuttle launch would looked like. However, rockets had been launched and we all know a bunch of fire and smoke comes out as they go up. Models were built and phosphorescence combustibles were lit to simulate the fire shooting out of the rocket boosters. However, the smoke vapor trail was absent. Special effects artist did a bunch of experiments and in the end decided to fill the model rockets with table salt and punch several small holes in the bottom. Then they lit the mini models and pulled them upward on strings, the salt falling out the bottom looking just like smoke. I love that kind of shit, and clearly so do the film makers. During the DVD extras, set designer Ken Adams who was responsible for most of the great Bond set going back to the circular room in Dr. No (1962) said Moonraker was very special for him because it was not only his last Bond but “after that one, all the old guys were gone.” As much as Moore taking over as Bond signaled the end of one era for the franchise, I suspect that with a lot of the original behind the scenes creative folks leaving, this film is the end of another chapter. And if memory serves, Bond, like many a 1960’s icon, entered the wilderness in the 80’s. I’m sure that Ken Adams and crew hanging up their spurs had a lot to do that.

Reported Budget: $34,000,000 estimated, a budget that we could say is, ahem, out of this world?!?! Get it? With the space theme and the rockets and the ….. right. For those keeping score, that would be more than the first six Bond films combine. Two years previous the standard in outer space special effects were established by Star Wars with a $13,000,000 price tag and Close Encounters… at $19,500,000. The most expensive film of the era Superman (1978), a movie that was met with widespread protest by members of the Tea Party due to its positive portal of an illegal alien posing as an all American kid, cost a whopping $55,000,000. Moonraker, none-the-less, was a big ticket item, a fact that everyone involved in the film took delight in pointing out whenever possible. Anytime producers, actors, directors, etc. are jazzed to talk about how much money was spent on a film as part of the movies promotion blitz the buyer should beware. Bragging about budget typically means filmmakers made the age old mistake of thinking if a film cost a lot then little things like acting and story aren’t important. In watching the promo material on the DVD extras it’s crystal clear that everyone was hell bent on making the biggest Bond yet. Since 007 had already conquered the mountains, the desert and the sea floor, space truly was the final frontier. I’m reminded of Robert Redford in The Candidate (1972). Redford plays Bill McKay, a lawyer who runs for a California seat in the U.S. senate. The film explores all the ins and outs of campaigning for national office, a process that is a 24 hour a day all consuming job for McKay and his staff. After a tense election night the results come down and McKay has indeed won. As a jubilant celebration erupts around him McKay turns to an aside and asks “What do we do now?” After all the time and money and effort put forward to launch Bond into space, no one knew what to do when he got there.

Reported Box-office: $70,308,099 (USA) $210,308,099 (Worldwide). And with that, skimping on things like plot and performances is justified. The worldwide take was greater than any previous Bond and in fact would not be equaled until GoldenEye (1995) sixteen years later. I must admit, this number shocked me. I kind of always thought of Moonraker as a millstone around Bond’s neck and in rewatching it I realizes it’s not nearly as bad a I remembered, until halfway through the second act that is, when the thing go bounding off the rails. But it also must be said that stuff that most likely worked at the time suffer greatly when viewed with modern eyes. The laser space battle jumps to mind. Why, oh why, did they need to be lasers? Even EON admits without admitting it that the laser gun battle at the climax of the film has aged terribly. There is virtually no talk of the space scenes in all the making of extras and the DVD cover features Bond in his space suit while holding his trusty Walther PPK, not a ray gun. All that said, at the time, Moonraker was a rousing box-office and critical (Ebert gave it three out of four stars) success and proved that Bond could keep up with all the Wookiees, Vulcans and acid bleeding xenomorphs that Hollywood could throw at him.

Theme Song: “Moonraker” performed by Shirley Bassey. Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, and most interestingly Kate Bush were all considered but in the end Shirley Bassey got her third call back for Bond theme duty. Just weeks before the films release Bassey recorded two versions; the slow, flat, mellow rendition heard over the opening credits and the peppier, disco heavy version heard at the close of the film. For my money, they should have just taken GooooldFINGER!, changed it to MooooooooooonRAKER!, and called it a day. Give the people what they want. Below is the disco version and speaking of giving the people what they want, whoever put this video together deserves the YouTube equivalent of an Emmy.

Opening Titles: Kind of flat. The mellow tune doesn’t help. We get the weightless theme illustrated by naked chicks on trampolines and falling bicycles. The biggest standout is the inexplicable and inexcusably terrible edit that gets us out the credits and into M’s office to start the film. It’s so jarring and abrupt it has to be a mistake, yet there it is in a $34 million dollar picture. Perhaps the credit sequence had to be crammed quickly to include the last second addition of the Bassey theme but still, it’s astounding this cut was aloud to stay in the film.

Opening Action Sequence: Prior to the NASA shuttle program all spacecraft were one-and-done deals which would land in the ocean and never fly again. With the state of the art shuttle fleet the U.S. had developed the first “reusable” spaceship. The first shuttle into space was Columbia. Following its April 12, 1981 inaugural flight Columbia would complete 27 missions before disincarnating above Edwards Air Force Base upon reentry on February 1, 2003, an incident that ultimately lead to the demise of the shuttle program. While making non-outer space trips the shuttle was transported from point A to B by “piggybacking” on the back of 747’s. So, the opening shot of Moonraker makes absolutely no scenes what-so-ever; not because it shows a shuttle on top of a Boeing aircraft, but because the aircraft is owned by the British who haven’t launched a weather balloon, much less anything resembling a space shuttle, into space. Also, why are the dudes who steal the space shuttle dressed like Marlon Brando from The Wild One? Turns out, the shuttle was on loan to the Brits for….some reason… and they lost it. Now, Bond needs to find it. We reconnect with our hero on “his last leg” of a mission while he’s trying to get into “mile-high club.” Things turn quickly when the lady pulls a gun and the pilot of the Lear (who’s dressed like the Red Baron) jumps out of the plane. Bond is leaning out the door to watch them fall when Jaws (Where the hell did he come from?) push 007 out. 12 years before Johnny “I am an F…..B…..I AGENT” Utah would jump out of a plane sans parachute to catch up with Bodhi, Bond and Red Baron engage in an unbelievable freefall fight that ends with Bond grabbing the chute and Red Baron (presumably) going splat. But before Bond can catch his breath, Jaws is on him like stink on unbrushed metal teeth. After some more freefall shenanigans, Jaws ends up busting his ripcord, flapping his arms like a bird, and breaking his fall with a circus tent. The big guy emerges from the big top unscratched, upping the ante in the running “indestructible Jaws” joke that was established in the previous film. To add an entry into my continuing “God bless the pre-computer graphics days” campaign I need to point out that John Glenn, the second unit

director put in charge of the pre-credit sequence, story boarded each and every move in the mid-air fights. He then went out to shot one or two shoots/moves per jump with specially designed helmet cams. Stunt and camera men made a total of 88 jumps to put together a sequence that lasts less than one minute on screen. The results are not quite as striking as the ski jump from Spy Who Loved Me (1977) but it’s a fantastic bit of filmmaking that puts us right into Bond world.

Bond’s Mission: Bond is called into M’s office and told of the missing shuttle. 007 decides to start off the investigation by talking to the head of Drax industries, the Los Angeles based company that built the shuttle. And that’s it. Seriously, Bond figures out who the bad guy is in the first scene. He doesn’t know he figures it out until a non-Oddjob Asian manservant/assassin tries to kill him in a G simulator, but yah. From the get go Bond pretty much knows who the bad guy is and where to find him at all times. Bond’s mission then becomes moving from one set piece to the next until he is launched into space.

Villain’s Name: Sir Hugo Drax. “What he doesn’t own he doesn’t want.” This guy is Mike Bloomberg rich. So rich is Mr. Drax that he even purchased the Eiffel Tower but the French government refused to let him take it out of the country. I believe it was something about needed a permit to remove national treasure. Or maybe it’s because he’s a Nazi, a party affiliation the French tend to be touchy about. Besides being a genocidal maniac, the man is rather refined. He plays piano, hunts pheasant on his extensive property, and is always in the company of two countesses or heiresses or princesses. Despite his ridiculously opulent lifestyle Drax seems to enjoy not a cent of his vast fortune. He has all the charm of a bad hair piece. He speaks in the same droll weather discussing world donation or a cucumber sandwich. He stands stick straight with his hands claps behind his back and when he does move, he walks as if a Pringle chip is lodged between his ass cheeks and he’s trying not the break it. And he’s a Nazi.

Villain Actor: Michael Lonsdale. Born in Paris France the bilingual actor appeared in over 100 films, his most recent notable role was in the under appreciated Munich (2005), a film about spies who have license to kill which stared some dude named Daniel Craig. Lonsdale is a distinguished looking older gent with quite a range who had the unfortunate luck of drawing the short straw when it comes to Bond villains. One of the many flaws in Moonraker is Drax is given nothing to do and Lonsdale is left drifting through the film with no anchor. For a series that prides itself on creating interesting baddies, Drax is the weakest Bond villain to date.

Villain’s Plot: So back to that Nazi business. Drax, like Stromberg before him, is interested in creating a new human society. However, given Mr. Stromberg’s family name, I think it’s clear he would take umbrage with Drax’s politics. Where Stromberg was a misguided environmentalist who choice to hunker down on the ocean floor during his genocide, Drax plans on launching a poisonous gas into Earths atmosphere from space. Even thought Drax is a card carrying Nazi and Sarah “Blood Libel” Palin booster, he, like Stomberg, has a soft spot for the furry and feathered creatures of earth. Not pheasants mind you, those are to be shot for sport like grizzles in Alaska, but lab rats, yah, they can live. So the game plan is (deep breath) fill six Drax manufactured space shuttles with the beautiful people of earth, launch “Moonraker” 1 thru 6 simultaneously, fly them to a secret space station, launch 50 globes filled with a poisonous gas extracted from Amazonian orchards that will kill the people while sparing the animals, encircle Earth with these 50 globes creating a “necklace of death,” release said gas into the atmosphere and then hang out till the smoke clears. Once that’s all done Drax will finally return to repopulate the planet with the best and brightest. While Drax is aboard his space station making speeches about this plan Bond and his CIA counterpart crash the party disguised as two of the beautiful people. Bond, who at this point is way to old and whose hair is way to sculpted to be considered even close to qualifying as part of the super race, walks among the youthful beautiful undetected and proceeds to foil the super race plot. From what I understand, the book had Drax pointing a nuke at London but Bond films have gotten to the point where all of mankind must be threatened or the gig is below 007’s pay grade and the job is kicked down to 008. (009 handles U.K. tariff law and parking violations.)

Villain’s Lair: As mentioned above, the sets are the star of show. Over fifty were built for the film taking 220,000 man hours to complete. While the space station is clearly the biggie, the earth bound ones leave a more lasting impression. Drax has several bases of operation, each more impressive than that previous. When Bond first gets to LAX he is picked up by a cleavage baring Drax assistant Corinne Dufour who serves as Bond tour guide while piloting him via helicopter to the “Drax Estates.” Like George Lucas, Drax has obtained a good chunk of California real estate on which to build various spacecraft. Hidden behind the warehouses, labs and runways is Drax’s home, a castle that was brought over from France brick by brick and surrounded by a moat, natch. The grounds are littered with topiary, reflecting pools, and cadets training to become astronauts. Inside are impossibly long hallways that end in impossibly large rooms decorated like museums. The mission-control/ lab facilities look exactly as my 11 year-old self would want a space-aged NASA complex to look like. Drax also owns a glass blowing plant/shop/museum in the heart of Venice. This space is notable for its ability to be multifunctional. One day, a lab straight out of the Bond tradition lies behind a door and the next, an elegant drawing room appears when opening the very same door. I have no idea how Drax did this but I would guess all those beautiful folks he plans to re-people the world with are also talented brick layers and carpenters. Drax also owns some ancient Mayan pyramids but like the Effie tower, he was unable to move them. However, he was able to skirt the local historical preservation society and turn the wonders of the ancient world into a full on mission control complex complete with six launch pads. The entrance to the place is a stone and waterfall fantasy room that looks like the lobby of a Vegas hotel. It’s populated by purple orchids, a python and enough diverse looking ladies to satisfy the role call at the top of Paul’s Boutique. It’s always interesting to see how Bond sets are able to juxtapose the old style with the new. In the Mayan pyramid, a stone wall slides to revile a control room full with so many different shaped and colored television monitors it looks like a huge Mondrian painting. Speaking of multifunctional spaces, at one point Drax places Bond in what at first looks like a boardroom thanks to the round table and several chairs around it. But when the table is sucked into the ground and the ceiling opens up it becomes clear our hero is in fact directly under a rocket; a rocket that is moments from launching and making Bond all kinds of Christy McAuliffe. (What?!?!? Too soon?) Finally, there is the space station itself. The first time we see the floating city it’s slowly reviled by the light of the sun as it rises over the earth in what is by far the best shot of the film. As space stations go it’s pretty awesome although not as fully realized as the floating city in 2001 (1969) or the Death Star. However, when it’s finally destroyed, the twisting and knotting of metal makes for a much more visceral experience than simply blowing the thing up.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: Drax’s overall refinement and taste for the good life is what I think drives the man. He wants the entire world to be just like his hermetically sealed estate. The dumb, poor and ugly are simply in the way. He is an unapologetic elitist who literally wants to kill all those he sees a beneath him. But before he gets around to that he plays his piano, trains his dogs to passively sit in front of raw meat, hunts pheasant and rolls around in his Rolls. My favorite detail; he plays bridge with the British Prime Minister. Which raise the question, who else would play with a billionaire Nazi and the PM of England? Frank Sinatra? Steve Wynn? Yasser Arafat? The Dalai Lama? Charlie Sheen? It would be one hell of a game. But all of this can’t make up for the simple fact that Drax is dumber than a bag of hammers, and like every Nazi, deserves what’s coming to him. Indulge me for a moment. Drax builds the Moonraker space shuttles and has sold one the United States. He has six others back at Lucas Ranch but “something,” we never learn what, goes wrong with one of them. So he steals his spaceship back from the US while it’s on loan to the Brits. He couldn’t build another one? He couldn’t tell NASA his engineers have discovered a flaw in the framis that hooks up to the doohickey and recall the ship? Nope, he steals the bird back pissing-off not only the US but his bridge partner as well. Mistake #2, when Bond shows up at the LA complex, it’s simply a courtesy call to find out more about the shuttle. Drax, perhaps offended because Bond declined his cucumber sandwich, decides to have 007 killed. Obviously, after the attempt on his life, Bond becomes curious and starts to snoop around. If Drax had just let Bond waltz in and out, no one would have been the wiser. (Yes, there was a CIA plant working in his research facility but what good did she do to prevent the hijacking?) Finally, Drax made the mistake of sending an attractive, young, female pilot to pick Bond up at the airport. After the attempt on his life, Bond visits Mrs. Dufour’s boudoir, puts the MHT (See The Spy Who Loved Me) into play and the next thing you know Jimmy B is photographing secrete documents. How did someone so carless get so much money? I bet he sucks at cards too.

Badassness of Villain: Nazis are by definition badass but again, Drax takes no joy in his cleansing of the human race. He just kind of does it, and we never really see any motivation. Take Col. Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009), no he didn’t have the money to pull off killing everyone on the planet but man did he enjoy his work. He took immense satisfaction in picking off enemies of the Reich, one farm house at a time. Anyone can go up to space and push a button to make the world end, it takes a special someone to get in up close and get his hand dirty. Hats off to yah Col. Hans Landa, you would have made a fantastic Bond villain and you’re a credit to Nazi’s everywhere. On the other hand, in the closing credits of Moonraker six actresses are simply credited as “Drax Girl” 1 thru 6. So that’s kind of badass.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Drax’s has a butler, Cavendish, who escorts Bond to the grand room to meet the master of the house but the tea and cucumber sandwiches are served by Chang. Toshirô Suga who was Roger Moore’s personal martial arts trainer played the Asian manservant who like Oddjob before him is a kick ass kung fu dude who grunts, groans, and yells without one word of dialog. His final showdown with Bond happens in a glass factory which is perhaps the most inspired location for a hand to hand battle ever. Glass is shattered as bodies go flying left, right and center until Bond finally sends Chang crashing though a huge Hudsucker Proxy clock and landing in, not on, a grand piano. “Play it again Sam.” With Chang out of the picture Drax’s calls 1-800-Henchman-for-Hire and is happy to hear one Zbigniew Krycsiwiki AKA Jaws is available. “Oh well, if you can get him of course.” So who was Jaws working for in the opening sequence? Anyway, Jaws is in all but one of the best scenes in the film including a truly creepy appearance where he’s dressed as a 9 foot deranged clown at Rio’s famed Carnival celebration. The way he lumbers down the ally, his painted on paper–mâché black clown eyes fixed on his target, is strangely unsettling. As he gets closer, ally cats and drunken revelers appear in the shadows as multi-colored party lights flash on the brick ally walls creating a surreal scene that boards on art. Then, the punch line; Jaws is literally conga lined away by a bunch of dancing drunks before he can finish Bond off. This simple scene is one of the better crafted moments in the Bond canon. The film also brings the “Jaws is indestructible” joke to its absurd conclusion; he crashes through a brick wall while riding full speed in a gondola, (gondola as in the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing, not the boats in Venice,) he drives a boat over the worlds second largest waterfall, he gets a knee to the nuts (an action that is met with an audible metallic clang) and he survives a 100 mile plunge to earth by riding in a section of a destroyed space station. After The Spy Who Loved Me Bond producers received thousands of fan letters all wanting Jaws to return. Many of the letters were from children who really liked Jaws but asked why he had to be bad? So, like the T-1000 converting from a killer to protector between the first two Terminator films, Jaws too switches sides when he figures perhaps a 7’2” metal mouthed maniac wouldn’t quite fit into a Drax’s pure blood utopia. Jaws, getting more depth and emotion that any previous henchman and Drax himself, is even given a love interest. Indeed, the two share the most intimate moment of the film. Jaws and his lady friend find themselves the only two souls left alive on a space station that is about to crash to earth. They share a glance and a smile that shows both are resigned to meet there fate, and are happy they will do so together. Two glasses of champagne are poured to toast the couples last living moments and Jaws speaks for the first and only time. “Well, here’s to us.” Call me a softy if you must but I found it rather touching.

Bond Girl Actress: Lois Chiles. The Houston Texas native was a top model before acting in such A-list films as Coma (1978), Broadcast News (1987), and Say Anything… (1989). She may have been a star if not for a self-imposed three year break to care for an ill family member. While watching Moonraker, she reminded me a lot of Kathleen Turner in both look and voice. (Dose anyone in the history of cinema have a better voice than Kathleen Turner?) Chiles, however, does have her flaws. She is, like everyone in the film save Kiel’s Jaws, rather flat and boring. She also dated Don Henley for a period which clearly illustrates not only poor taste but deep, dark character flaws.

Bond Girl’s Name: Dr. Holly Goodhead. OK, it’s no Pussy Galore but it’s a rather good handle and Lois Chiles herself admitted she digs the fact that she has one of the more obscene Bond girl names. When Bond first meets Goodhead he feels the need to point out she is, in fact, a woman. Perhaps he did this so he could be justified in interrupting her every time she starts a sentence. That is, until near the end of the film when the two find themselves in the cockpit of Moonraker 6 and the NASA trained doctor is the one who knows how to pilot a spaceship. Then Bond shuts up right quick and sits on his hands like a punished child. That’s right you rude ass, let the lady drive. In addition to being a pilot Goodhead is a CIA operative, a fact Bond learns in a fun sequence where every item in her purse from a pen to her lipstick doubles as an implement of destruction. “Standard CIA equipment” Bond tells her which made me giggle thinking about Felix carting around flame thrower perfume in his two-way radio handbag. Goodhead not only gets to avoid putting on a bathing suit but she also gets to wear a dress that just blew the wife away. It’s a conservatively cut number made out of some material that is sheer yet not transparent, shiny yet not reflective and monochrome but several colors at once. I have no idea how it works but watch her walk around Venice and there you have it. On the other hand, the less said about the yellow space outfits she and Bond are forced into while flying the shuttle the better.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: There is very little sensuality and even less fire in this Bond girl which is consistent with the rest of the stuffed suits in this film. When she sleeps with Bond the first time it’s not for pleasure but business; she needs to throw her MI6 counter-part off her scent. Ahhh, but there’s an inner freak in Dr. Goodhead just waiting for the right time to come out. For the climax of the film, Bond and Goodhead pull off a maneuver that neither you, nor I, nor anyone, even those who have covered the Kama Sutra from Adhimani to Yoni has pulled off; the act of weightless whoopee. And with that, Bond and Goodhead become the charter members of the 600 mile high club.

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Corinne Dufour, the babe-o-licious helicopter pilot, informs Bond her “mother gave her a list of things not to do on a first date.” While she reclines back onto her bed she adds “I never learned how to read.”

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “How do you kill 5 hours in Rio if you don’t samba?”

Number of Woman 007 Beds: Three. Sex is odd in this one, outside the final zero G romp, it’s kind of dull and bloodless. It’s treated very much as an obligation. I must pin this back on Moore’s lazy performance. “Well, I’m Bond so I guess I have to bonk yah?” Hey Jimmy, this is not your wife of 10 years, put some pep in your step. Anyway, he nails the illiterate Corinne Dufore after he disarms her “That’s not what I came for” with the MHT. His partner in Rio, Manuela? She bangs, she booms like she’s Ricky Martin Livin La Vita Loca. And then there is Goodhead who lives up to her name on Earth and in space, the latter historic joining recorded for posterity when a live video feed of the shuttle is pumped to White House and Buckingham Palace. This raises the question, who would be more uncomfortable viewing the sexual encounter, Queen Elizabeth II or Jimmy “lust in my heart” Carter?

Number of People 007 Kills: 17 confirmed. After Bond steals the parachute from the free falling Red Baron in the opening sequence there is a long drought in the killing department. Sometime later Bond finds himself pheasant hunting with Mr. Drax. Bond shoots at a bird which flies off on it’s marry way. “You missed Mr. Bond.” “Did I?” asks Bond while handing Drax gun. Meanwhile, an assassin falls out of a distant tree. Bond’s next victim pops out of a coffin floating on a gondola/ hearse hybrid. (Gondola as in the boats in Venice, not the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing.) Bond throws a knife at the dude before he can Bond, and back into the casket he falls. In a nod to the Live and Let Die (1973) double-decker bus decapitation, the coffin is knocked of the top of the boat by a low lying bridge. The next two casualties are thanks to Bond complete carelessness. When exploring Drax’s Venetian glass factory, Bond finds a secrete lab containing lab rats and glass vials fill of …what exactly? Bond finds out while hidden in a side room avoiding two lab coat sporting dudes. In his haste to hide, 007 carelessly left one of the glass vial on a table ledge. The two lab coat dudes die in a matter of seconds after they accidently knock the vial to the floor. The rats are just fine (I know your were concerned.) The next killing is quite intentional, Bond knowing full well that when you toss someone out of a glass face clock 4 stories above the ground that they will die, whether they land in a piano or not. In what at this point is become as predictable as Bonds drink order, we have yet another boat chase with more gun tooting sailors getting blasted into the water. Q outfits Bond with the aquatic equivalent of the Goldfinger Aston Martin which allows 007 to dispose of pursuing boats by releasing mines (three mariners dead) and heat seeking torpedoes (three more). A third boat is sent over the falls killing three more dudes but not Jaws, who walks away with his tie slightly askew. In a much more inventive and humorous homicide Bond sends a baddie who is bound to a stretcher out of the back of an ambulance. This poor guy has to suffer rolling down hill on a cobblestone street before he ends up face first in a British Airways billboard. (By the by, while the ambulance was making it’s way up a beautiful Rio mountain road it past statically place billboards for 7Up, Marlboro, and Seiko….all in English.) Then there is the space battle. Much like the climatic battle in The Spy Who Loved Me this fight features a ton of faceless U.S. solders squaring off with a ton a faceless baddies. Only this time, it’s the Space Marines and the battle happens in weightlessness with ray guns. These elements can work wonderfully in film, Starship Troopers (1997) comes immediately to mind, but they do not work in a Bond film… at all. The idea of a space ray gun battle is so far removed from the Bond universe that the sequence feels like it invaded from a different film, much in the same way the cowboys continue a huge bar room brawl on the set of a musical in Blazing Saddles (1974). Worse, while this battle progress, laser shots flying to and fro, Bond and Goodhead run around doing this and doing that, hardly noticing the battle. Bond doesn’t even take out a single baddie. By Bond not participating in the goings on, it further removes the battle from the over all plot of the film. The last half hour just fails on every level and drags the entire film down like a Challenger landing. (Oh Come on?!?! You giggled a little…) Anyway, Bond finally takes out Drax the same way every boss bad guys is taken out in a Sci-Fi film; by blasting them out the air lock into the far reaches of space. Bond also always needs to kill at least one animal and in this film that would be a venomous snake taken down with a venomous shot.

Most Outrageous Death/s: After Drax finds out that Corinne Dufore not only slept with Bond but lead the spy to the safe containing the secrete plans for the Death Star or something he is none to pleased. He summons her to a dramatic face to face in a huge field on the estate. She shows up via golf cart wearing a white flowing dress. Drax fires her immediately and tells her to hit the road. Head hung low, Dufore turns her back to her former boss and starts to slowly walk back toward the golf cart. But you can tell by the look on her face she knows this walk will end badly. She slowly looks over her shoulder to have her fears confirmed by the sight of Chang making like C. Montgomery Burns and releasing the hounds. Deciding that the golf cart is likely to slow, Dufore elects to flee on foot and into the woods she goes. What follows is a scene out of a werewolf film if it were produced by Merchant Ivory. The woman in white runs though a dreamy forest with sun beams of light raining down on upon her and the pursuing dogs. I swear the film goes into soft focus as the music swells and the cuts between her face, her running, and the frothing dogs become quicker. As she falls, in slow motion, the dogs pounce on her like her dress was made of prime rib, while the camera swoops skyward to the sound of distant church bells. I’m 100% sure the folks at EON did not intend to have audiences doubled over in laughter at this point in the film but that is exactly how the wife and I reacted to the sad lonesome death of Corinne Dufore.

Miss. Moneypenny: As she somehow always manages to do, Moneypenny is once again a bright spot in an otherwise dreary affair. Bond and Moneypenny have a nice little running joke where when 007 enters the office he tells her exactly what he’s been doing. “Why are you late?” “I fell out of airplane.” Later, when he shows up in the Eastwood poncho get up Moneypenny exclaims “James you look like you’ve just fallen off a mountain.” “Funny you should say that. I was on a cable car … never mind.” Good stuff.

M: Bernard Lee has appeared as Admiral Myles Messervy in all eleven bond films; he and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny the only two to do so. Moonraker would be his swan song as Lee died on January 16, 1981. It’s also the film that gives him perhaps the most screen time. His entrance is a classic “good God!” into a phone after learning about the Moonraker hijacking. He then calls Bond and Q to his office to brief them on the situation while a blinking “Most Secrete” sign serves as a helpful visual aid. Later, M makes the trip to Italy with the Prime Minister and Bond to visit Drax’s chemical production lab. Wearing ties and gas masks the three men enter the room to find not a lab but an ornate drawing room. “I’m afraid not being English I don’t always get your sense of humor.” Having been embarrassed in front of his bridge partner the PM apologizes to Drax on the behalf of all of England and orders Bond off the case, effective immediately. M then does exactly what he should; gives Bond two weeks leave and tells him to take a vacation. “I always wanted to go to Rio, Sir.” “I recall you mentioning it 007.” After everything Bond has done for M, he owes him this chance and M knows Bond will not let him down. It’s a touching, trusting moment between these two men who have a two decade history together and it’s a fitting send-off for Lee.

Q: “Balls Q?” “Bolas 007.” Make that exploding bolas being tested in the Q lab along with a mannequin that splits open to reveal a firing machine gun and laser guns that melt the targets dummies head. Again with the lasers. First, by introducing it here it still doesn’t make the ray guns fit in the film later. In fact, in makes everything all more messy as the lasers in Q’s lab melt the targets yet no one in the later battle is melted. Anyway, Q had gone to the cinema on his day off and caught Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976).  He really dug the sleeve sliding gun tracks De Niro constructed and made a similar contraption with dart guns now “issued as standard equipment.” He gives this gizmo to Bond at the initial intelligence briefing in M’s office, a section of the building Q rarely gets to visit. It’s a shame as he always has something to add, perhaps the new M will work to get him into the mix.

List of Gadgets: The dart gun comes with 10 darts; 5 exploding (blue tipped) and 5 doused in a lethal poison which causes death in 30 seconds (red tipped.) Besides the ability to hide the dart gun in ones shirt sleeves the other nifty bit is the trigger. In order to shot the darts, the user just has to think about it and the variations in his pulse sets the gun off. With all apologizes to Jack Black, “Mind Bullets!” This is handy indeed for when Bond is strapped into a G-simulator that goes to 11. I remember seeing this film as a kid and being completely freaked by the sight of Bonds face looking like Frank Black in the “Alec Eiffel” video.

As the red line readout gets longer, the thing gets faster, and Bond gets stretchier. Lucky for Jimmy B the mere thought (and flash frame) of a dart in horses ass … well not a real horses ass, but a painting of a horse, complete with ass, in M’s office, enables Bond to stop the mechanism by breaking it’s speed odometer. When Bond struggles to get his feet after getting out of the contraption the good Doctor Goodhead wrings her hands “I have no idea what went wrong?” I was reminded of the death by spa equipment scene in Thunderball (1965) where essential the same thing happens. Bond should know by now, when a lady asks him to try out X piece of equipment, he should politely decline. The wrist rocket dart dispenser doodad also works in hitting Drax, sending him backwards and out into the vacuum of space. Bond also has a nifty safe cracker that looks like a cigarette case and a spy camera, the lens of which sits in the first “0” of the 007 written across the front. His watch, a Sisko digital job, comes equipped with some kind of explosive fishing line. Sadly, Moonraker also takes part in the increasing annoying tradition of make Bond have at lease one sequence in an absurd mode of transportation. At one point, Bond is relaxing in a gondola (gondola as in the boats in Venice, not the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing) when his gondolier is made to be dead. Bond quickly hops into the drivers set and pushes a button. The slow moving sallow hulled scull instantly becomes a Miami Vice Cigarette boat and Bond is throwing up wakes while the “innocent-bystander-boat-gets-sliced-in-two” gag that was oh so tired when they did in The Man with the Golden Gun is giving an encore. But wait, there’s more. By pushing another button, Bond’s gondola (gondola as in the boats in Venice, not the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing) becomes a hovercraft which climbs steps out of the canal and takes off across the piazza. The silly Italian music kicks in while pigeons and dogs do double-takes and hold the phone? It’s the dude from the beach in The Spy Who Loved Me! And he again does his look at the bottle gag! Why that’s down right fantastic. The scene is still silly and unnecessary but that was nice touch.

Bond Cars: Somewhere on page 17 of Moore’s 007 contract, right next to the paragraph that guarantees he will always be supplied with quality cigars on set, there must be a clause that states Moore will spend at least 10% of his time on camera driving a boat. Form the swamps of the American south to the canals of the Orient to the depths of the ocean and now, the streets of Venice and the falls of Brazil, this dude is always in some kind of water craft. As we mentioned above, the Brazil boat can drop mines, shoot torpedoes and when going over a water fall, can become a hang glider. And why the hell not? Get this man back into a spiffy car already. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the paddleboat chase at the climax of the next movie.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: The other problem with these too tricked out water craft is that I assume they are a one and done deal. I can’t imagine packing the hang glider back into the hull of a boat that just went over a waterfall and I don’t think the gondola (gondola as in the boats in Venice, not the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing) is going to recover from be broken to bits by the inflatable hovercraft bottom.

Other Property Destroyed: Darx’s multimillion dollar G simulator is destroyed by cracking the dashboard, priceless works of art are smashed in the glass factory fracas, the gondola (gondola as in the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing, not the boats in Venice) station is smashed, a billboard is impaled by a downhill speeding gurney and a space station, with 6 space craft docked to it, become the most expensive thing 007 has ever relegated to the trash heap by a magnitude of 10. Finally, in what ranks as one of the more ridiculous moments in a Bond film, Bond and Goodhead destroy three globes containing the poison gas before they are able to enter the earth’s atmosphere. It’s one of those scenes where two actors are sitting in a cockpit, staring at a screen, and can move nothing more than their hands and their mouth. Yet the scene demands that the actors must make the audience feel a building tension and urgency. So the hands move joysticks and push buttons while the mouth is forced to deliver such lines as “I have the three globes on the screen,” “were skipping on the earth atmosphere,” “Its getting hot,” “I can’t hold this course much longer,” “we will break up,” “A few seconds more,” “switching to manual,” “the controls aren’t responding,” “wings are starting to glow,” “hold steady, steady,” and “its entering the earths atmosphere, James this is our last chance.” If the above reads flat, Moore and Chiles manage to make it even more boring if that’s at all possible.

Then, for the icing on the cake, after the third globe is destroyed, it’s off to the back for some zero G gyrations. How did they pull the shuttle up so it didn’t break-up? For all we know, the two could have been burned up while we were watching the closing credits. (What, you want some kind of shuttle Columbia joke? You’re sick!)

Felix Leiter: No Felix since the beautiful and capable Goodhead is on the case. But we do get a quick shot of General Gogal, the head of the KGB. We learn in this brief appearance that the Russian is living a much richer and fuller life than M. As far as I can tell, M is always at work and never had one inkling of a sexual desire. However, when Gogal answers the 3AM phone call and is informed of the pending destruction of the planet, he seems mildly interested. “Keep me informed.” When asked why he is still up at the late hour, the bathrobe clad sexagenarian responds “How can I sleep, nothing but problems, problems.” He then hangs up the phone and rolls over to continue making out with a woman half his age. Man, were we on the wrong side of the cold war or what? Those Ruskies know how to live.

Best One Liners/Quips: When Bond is getting into the G simulator, Goodhead tells him not to worry, “A 70 year old could hand three G’s” In pitch perfect Moore fashion, Bond responds “well the trouble is there’s never a 70 year old around when you need one.” Not only is it funny but its Oh so true; why I must have that thought like, three times a day.

Bond Timepiece: Sisko digital deal. When do we return to the classic time pieces? I hope soon, these pieces of junk are starting to get depressing.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: The master of disguise, for some reason somehow, ends up looking like the Outlaw Josey Wales in one scene. Not much else to report.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 1. This may explain why Moore is so surly, he comes close a few time but only once gets to wrap his lips around a drink. In the open, a bottle of champagne rests untouched in an ice bucket. Later when Bond enters Goodheads hotel room he announces “Bollinger. If its ‘69 you were expect me” but once again never gets to consume. Finally, Bond gets to imbibe in the libations upon arrival at the presidential suite in Rio where he is served and drinks a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, by the mysterious woman who followed him from the airport.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Only one drink and no gambling, no wonder this film is a disappointment.

List of Locations: The closing credits proudly announce that Moonraker was shot on location in Italy, Brazil, Guatemala, U.S.A. and OUTER SPACE! I hate to call Mr. Broccoli’s word in question but something seems a little fishy about at least one of those…. Back in the U.S. Bond arrives at LAX, boards a helicopter, and three minutes later arrives at Vaux-le-Vicomte, the 17^th century chateau located in the green hills of France. The Venice locations look just like you would want Venice locations to look including San Nicolo Benedictine monastery. I really don’t like to look forward in the Bond timeline but when I saw Moore crossing the courtyard here I instantly thought of the Venice scenes in Casino Royal (2006). I’ll have to keep an eye out for that when I get there and see if they are in fact the same thing. The seaside street in Rio makes for an amazing shot and the Sugarloaf gondola (gondola as in the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing, not the boats in Venice) scenes are breathtaking. The Carnival scenes are interesting in that they work as part of the story and not just a colorful backdrop. The Mayan Ruins are impressive but the Iguazu Falls are far more so. The climatic scenes were shot somewhere between here and Mars.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: In this film we get a new skill seemingly every scene. Right off the bat Bond knows Drax built the shuttle and can rundown all his vital stats off the top O his head (not to mention cracking the case before he even started.) Bond has a superhuman scene of smell which comes in handy when he sniffs out an assassin hidden in a tree. After seeing a walkie-talkie purse and a hypodermic pen Bond I.D.’s Goodhead as an agent. He also impresses the good doctor with his knowledge of 14^th century architecture. He expertly wields a glass sword while battling like a bull in a China shop, and then proves he can climb a rope, an activity that I recall as not being all the easy from 7^th grade gym class. Bond can ride a horse like John Wayne and ID orchids like a tenured FTD salesman. Goodhead does most of the piloting of the Moonraker 6 but Bond proves he would be a hell of a Missile Command player by joy-sticking and lasering down the deadly gas globes.

Thoughts on Film: Roger Ebert has always said “it’s not what a film is about, it’s how it’s about it.” Indeed, truer words could not have been spoken about Bond. 007 films, at the nut, are the same story every time. The fun lies in seeing how that same story is told, how the rules are bent but not broken, and how our expectations can be manipulated by the occasional curveball or changeup. For the 11^th film, Cubby Broccoli decided to shot the moon. Shooting the moon, as anyone who has ever played hearts knows, is never easy. 90% of the time you’re going to lose. Even if you’re holding the right cards everything needs to go exactly right and one misstep derails it all. But man, when it works, there is nothing better and you win the whole enchilada in stylish fashion. Neil Diamond’s 1972 live album Hot August Nights maybe pop-cultures ultimate “shoot the moon” victory. Exhibit A, the album cover. I mean holy Jesus in heaven, are you kidding me? And you know what, it’s awesome! Because he owns it. This is not ironic, this is what Neil thinks is the coolest thing in the world and because he believes it so much, it becomes the coolest thing in the world. But can the music deliver on the album covers promise? When you consider this double live record kicks off with a full orchestra playing a “prolog” you would be forgiven for rolling your eye and wondering if perhaps Neil bit off more than he could chew. I mean, this is a Spinal Tap joke and is there a bigger punch-line in Rock and Roll than the recent Hall of Fame, Brooklyn born, Brill building trained singer/song writer? Make fun of him all you want. Got it out of your system? Now, give me 7 and ½ minutes of your time and crank this clip to 11. (Ignore the bad psychedelic visuals, just keep reading)

Yah, that freaking rocks, and so does the rest of the record. What should be preposterous; a double live record, blue sequence jump suit, a string section, Neil Freaking Diamond, works. That is shooting the moon. In The Man with the Golden Gun, when Bond and Pepper pull a full 360 while jumping the river (not the shark) it was eye rolling and bent our good will, but did not break it. In the Spy Who Loved Me, when Bond skied off a cliff, it was fantastic and energy pumping. When the Union Jack sprang out of his pack and the Bond theme kicks in, the moon was shot. Those two over the top moments worked because everything was in place to set them up and because all involved believed in what they were doing. In other words, it’s all about context and commitment. A stronger film may have been able to support Jaws biting through a gondola cable (gondola as in the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing, not the boats in Venice.) However, when you couple that moment with a hover craft gondola (gondola as in the boats in Venice, not the big cable car boxes you ride to the top of hill when skiing.), six space shuttle launching simultaneously (undetected?), a hang glider popping out of a boat and a freaking laser battle in space that has aged worse that three week old boxed wine, it’s a big old swing and a miss ….. by a mile. The screenplay also seems reluctant to commit to the cause. Back to the gondola (that one, not the other one) in Venice. The boat is never set-up to be a British piece of equipment with a MI6 guard/ escort as Bond gondolier. So when the chap is shot and Bond pushes a button to turn the craft into a motorboat, it makes no sense at all. This could have been fixed with one or two little lines. When James got on the boat he could have nodded his head and gave a little line like “Agent Smith.” The gondolier then could responded “good to see you 007, enjoying Venice?” and Bobs your uncle. One sentence on the other hand doesn’t solve the problem of why the hell did Drax thief a ship he could have just as easily have built. Add the further burden Bond films carry when it comes to context. At this point we have 10 previous movies going back to 1962 not to mention the books and the countless Bond imitators. That a lot of history. By this point we as an audience know Bond, so you can’t just stick a ray gun in his hand and expect us buy it. Everyone in the audience didn’t see From Russia With Love but everyone sitting in the theater sure as shit knows Bond isn’t Capitan Kirk. As I said, curveballs and change up are good, but when you pitch a football from the mound, don’t expect the fans to cheer. Perhaps the biggest reason the film can’t support its overblown ideas is Moore doesn’t sell them. Maybe he doesn’t believe in the product but without his trust, the entire thing falls apart around him. While the film has a few inspired old school Bond moments it never comes close to working as a coherent movie and Moonraker ends up being not only one of the lesser Bond entries but the worst Moore film yet. Coming off the wonderful Spy Who Loved Me, the failure is all the more glaring. Moonraker’s biggest sin is for everything that’s going on and all the money spent, its just boring; a word that should never be in the same sentence as James Bond. At the time of its release, Cubby Broccoli boldly announced that Moonraker was “Not science fiction, but science fact.” No, not even remotely close. However, if the goal was simply to make money, than shooting the moon succeeded beyond even Broccoli’s wildest expectations.

Martini ratings:

The Spy Who Loved Me

Title: The Spy Who Loved Me

Year: 1977. In the two and half years since the release of the modestly successful The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) a lot had change in both the world of Bond and beyond presenting a mountain of challenges for the 15 year old franchise. Right off the bat, EON held the rights to Fleming’s novel, “The Spy Who Loved Me,” in name only could not adapt the plot for the big screen. Consequently, the tenth Bond film was the first to be written in complete independence of Fleming’s work. This cut both ways; on one hand producers had complete control of their character for the first time but they were also performing without a net. Additionally, producer Cubby Broccoli was flying solo for the first time (See Reported Budget). With the weight of the multimillion dollar franchise squarely on his shoulders, Broccoli became heavily involved in the scripting process. For inspiration, he turned to the then topical Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), a June 1975 event that saw the American Apollo spacecraft dock with the Soviet Soyuz. During this 52 hour interstellar love-in astronauts representing the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. worked together conducting a series of experiments requiring them to share technology and data. (So much care was taken to not offend that crew members learned the other countries native tongue so no one side would have a perceived advantage.) Needless to say, this thawing in the cold war was unthinkable when Dr. No (1962) hit the screen in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The idea of Bond working side by side with the KGB had limitless possibilities, not the least of which would be the opportunity for Q to get bitchy with the commies, “Now do pay attention Agent Boris.” But politics and story rights weren’t the only factors forcing Bond to switch gears. The film industry was forever changed in the summer of 1975 thanks to a fish movie directed by a 29-year-old wonderboy. Prior to Jaws (1975), films opened in big cities like New York, Chicago, and London where they would run for weeks, months and in some cases years. If the movies meet with success in these cities studios would then slowly wheel them out to secondary and smaller markets until a successful film made it to a theater near you. When Steven Spielberg gave Universal what was essentially a very expensive monster movie (one based on best seller, but still…) the studio was at a loss on how to promote it. Additionally, the timing of the films release, summer, was problematic. Just like television played nothing but re-runs over the warmer months, Hollywood never saw the summer as a way to make money. The standing assumption was people would rather be outside enjoying the weather than sitting in dark movie houses. So, just like studios dump their garbage in January today, the summer was seen as a time to clean house. That was until Universal came up with a marketing plan for Jaws; what if they could literally scare people off the beaches and into the theater? Posters promising “You’ll never go in the water again!” featuring a shark 20 times the size of the swimmer on the surface were hung all over the country. Savvy TV trailers featured terrified hoards stampeding out of the water while John William’s now iconic two note baaaa-dump droned on. When the $8 million dollar picture opened on a then unheard of 409 screens around the country there wasn’t soul who didn’t want to see Jaws the day it came out. They lined up around the block in town after town and by the end of the weekend the film had made $7,061,000. Come Labor Day, Universal’s big fish tale grossed $129,549,000 (in 1975 dollars) more than doubling the $60 million take of the years number two film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Jaws was bigger than a movie, it was a game changer that gave birth to the blockbuster, the summer movie season, and the event picture. For better or for worse (I’m looking at you Mr. Will “July 4^th” Smith,) movies would never be the same again. Both audiences and Hollywood’s expectations of what a big movie was changed dramatically and Bond was force to adapt. In the mid-60’s, 007 was the only game in town. Now, genres that were traditionally B-pictures like monster films and science fiction were big budget Hollywood events that made the last three or so Bond films look quaint in comparison. Truth be told, Bond had been slumping and lazily resting on its reputation for some time. It needed a kick in the ass to force the franchise out of complacently. Two summers after Jaws changed everything, The Spy Who Loved Me met all these challenges head-on and roared into theaters on 7/7/77, natch. Watching it today, The Spy Who Loved Me is a leap forward for Bond and popcorn films in general. Where as the last few 007 pictures felt stuck in the 60’s, this film feels ahead of it’s time. It’s not hard at all to draw a straight line from this 1977 picture to 1980’s action films, the Indian Jones movies in particular. It’s a clockwork, bang-bang, high soaring, romance thriller/ action adventure that screams loud and clear that in this, his 10^th big screen adventure, Bond has grown up.

Film Length: 2 hours 6 minutes

Bond Actor: Roger Moore. When Sir Moore waxes nostalgic about his seven 007 films, he always sights The Spy Who Loved Me as his favorite. From the opening shots of the film it’s easy to see why.  Not only is it immediately evident that the Bond character has grown from a literary creation occasional struggling to find his footing on film to a self assured silver screen hero, Moore himself makes tremendous strides. In his first two trips as the martini swilling superspy (Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun), Moore was playing the notes; in his third go around he hears the music. Indeed, his supporting cast both on and off screen are in top form but Moore carries it all on effortlessly on Bonds broad shoulders. For one thing, the story tighter than some other Bond plots and plays to Moore strengths, perhaps because film makers, free of Fleming’s works, could write specially for their leading man. The script gives Bond more depth with passing references to his Cambridge background, his military rank is brought to the fore and he even gets to command as an officer in Her Majesties Royal Navy. Additionally, there are two very well acted scenes, both with Bond girl Barbara Bach, where Moore provides a window into Bond soul. The first features Bond and the Bach character, Soviet Agent Triple X, meeting at an Egyptian bar. Decked out in A-plus formal wear, the advisories bump into each other while going to see the same man about the same horse and immediately fall into a game of one-upmanship. Bond starts the ball rolling sighting XXX’s real name, rank and drink of choice. “The lady will have a Bacardi on the rocks….” “… and the gentleman with have a vodka martini. Shaken not stirred,” she counters. “Touché.” Triple X starts to list Bond’s file history as he sits passively listening, that is until the unflappable Bond becomes flapped. “Many women, but married only once. Wife killed while….” “Enough.” “Sensitive Mr. Bond?” “About some things” Bond answers with a sharp edge in his voice. And before he can even sip at his drink, he’s done. “I’m afraid I must be going.” This is quite a leap from locking one woman in closet while seducing a second.  The reference to Bond marriage is apt as On Her Majesty’s Secrete Service (1969) was the last time Bond was this human and Moore handles this serious scene with just enough finesse to show the jab hurt, but he doesn’t allow the moment to linger. This is after all a Bond picture, not Sophie’s Choice (1982), and Moore’s trademark humor is used brilliantly. As strong as he is, Moore’s limitations as Bond are sadly also present. While he handless the dialog and double takes with easy his physicality, always a liability, truly hobbles his performance. Moore never hid the fact that he didn’t do his own stunts but here, two a half years removed from his last Bond film, his age is starting to show. Moore hated the way he looked when he ran so most shots of Bond moving at any pace are shot using body-doubles but the third act of this film requires some of the shots to be all Roger. They are not pretty. And while he can be devastatingly handsome, like when he walks among the Egyptian ruins effortlessly wearing a tuxedo, the sex scenes are beginning to get a little creepy. The first shot of Moore in the film features him shirtless, in bed with a woman. “Eeeugh, gross. Old man lips, how could anyone make-out with him?” said the wife as we watched together; not the reaction one wants from the ladies when it comes to Bond.

Director: Lewis Gilbert. As enjoyable as the first two Moore films were, they always felt like the training wheels were on. They were uneven, clumsy and had a stuttery start/stop quality that held the whole thing back. Even the big set pieces had a “Hey, look at this stunt” kind of strung together quality with no real gel outside of Moore’s charm to connect them to the rest of the goings on. Both films, when you boil it down, lacked heart. Like a poorly done horror movie, they were fun to watch, but nothing stuck around to keep you up that night. All of these things; script, pacing, feel, etc., get hung on the trailer door of the director. Guy Hamilton’s Bond movies were the very definition nuts and bolts; shot it, cut it, print it, on to the next shot. I have no idea if that’s how he worked but outside Goldfinger (1964), his films for the most part feel sterile. (As opposed to Terrence Young’s well crafted lived-in classics.) Hamilton was on board to direct The Spy Who Loved Me and had even started preproduction when EON was slapped with a plagiarism suit forcing the courts to put a work stop order on the movie. Everything shut down for months and once the matter was cleared up, Hamilton had moved on. Broccoli wasn’t going to wait around any longer and gave You Only Live Twice (1967) director Lewis Gilbert a call. Considering the mangled mess that film was, my expectations were far from great for this, his second Bond picture. Turns out a lot can change in 10 years and in this case, all of it for the better. In The Man with the Golden Gun, there was an attempt to strip Bond down to his basics which worked well at first but filmmakers lost their nerve in the end and the movie became bloated and convoluted. For 007 10, in some kind of reverse voodoo/addition by subtraction Gilbert pulls of the physics defying feat of making this Bond tighter and more streamlined by blowing it up and making the biggest, slickest, and most ambitious film yet. It all stars with the script which is logical, straight forward, and an absolute hoot. Gilbert goes onto deftly balance the humor and action and choreograph show stopping set pieces. The film is also beautiful to look at. Every woman is drop dead gorgeous and every location is exotically captured. Bottom line, Gilbert infuses this movie with purpose and gives Bond back his soul, something that’s been missing since George Lazenby sported a kilt and took on Telly Savalas. Welcome back 007.

Reported Budget: $14,000,000 estimated. In addition to having to write a story from scratch and the plagiarism suit, the two and half year gap, the longest up to this point between Bond films, was also due to a major management shake up. When EON co-founder Harry Saltzman walked away from Bond after The Man with the Golden Gun the company line was Saltzman simply wanted to work independently on other projects. In reality Harry was broke and owed money all over town. Saltzman reportedly had a passion for food and made several bad investments in the restaurant biz, using his shares in Bond as collateral. When collection letters began to mount Saltzman promptly filed them in the “pay no mind” drawer and continued to eat like it was 1969. When the rubber finally hit the road Saltzman had put not only the franchise but the livelihood of all involved in jeopardy. Films the size of Bond employ hundreds of behind-the-scenes folks and as a result of Harry’s bad management, scores of set builders, costume makers, technicians, writers, extras, and producers were put in limbo. Tensions were extremely high when Saltzman finally sold his share in Bond to his partner of fifteen years for $15 million. Now, all eyes were on Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. Between proving he could run EON on his own, working on an original script, dealing with the several delays in production, and delivering in a new “blockbuster” environment, the pressure on Broccoli was enormous. Add to everything the fact that Bond was no longer the license to print money it once was and you couldn’t blame Broccoli for hedging his bet. Instead, the Astoria Queens native doubled down on double O seven. Not only was $14 million the most expensive Bond yet, Broccoli refused to compromise on a third act story point that could have derailed the entire enterprise. The plot for The Spy Who Loved Me revolved around an oil tanker that could swallow nuclear submarines whole. A major scene was written to take place in the hull of the ship while it was carrying three subs docked side by side. After an exhaustive search, set designers informed Broccoli that nowhere in the world was there a sound stage big enough to accommodate the request. “So build one” the New Yorker responded and the “007 Sound Stage,” the largest in the world at the time, was erected on the back-lot of Pinewood studios. Always the showman, Broccoli made sure Roger Moore, a bevy of beauties, the entire production staff and members of the press were on hand the day the sound-stage opened for business granting the new Bond film exactly the kind of over-the-top publicity Broccoli loved. Continuing with the “bigger is better” mantra, a shoot schedule was announced that called for cameras rolling in a record number of countries including Egypt, Scotland, Sardinia, the Bahamas and Canada. This out of control spending and grandeur while the franchise was at such a critical crossroad could have sunk Bond once and for all. But this perfect storm of circumstances forced everyone involved to bring their A Game and The Spy Who Loved Me reaches heights Bond hadn’t seen in a decade.

Reported Box-office: $46,800,000 (USA) $185,400,000 (Worldwide) The returns in the U.S. put the film at #5 for the year and the worldwide haul was the biggest yet for a Bond film. (Ed. Note, figures are not adjusted for inflation.) Not only did The Spy Who Loved Me hit a homerun at the box-office, it made Bond relevant again with audiences and earned some of the strongest critical notices for 007 in years. Most importantly for fans, it proved that Bond would carry on sans Saltzman, one of the two creative talents who put James Bond on the cinematic map.

Theme Song: “Nobody Does It Better” performed by Carly Simon. Needless to say, the ex-Miss James Taylor is a huge upgrade in talent from the American Idol reject sounding Lulu. The Marvin Hamlisch penned tune is reminiscent of Simons most famous hit, “Your So Vein,” in that it speaks to the arrogance of men, something 007 has in spades. The song was summertime hit reaching # 2 in the US and # 7 in the U.K. As for the video below, it was shot for a 1987 HBO special called “Live from Martha’s Vineyard” which happens to be one of my favorite places in the world. As an added bonus, it features the ever awkward posings of former SNL band leader G. E. Smith and an overly enthusiastic drummer with fantastic facial hair. Enjoy.

Opening Titles: In a return to the good old days the opening credits for The Spy Who Loved Me are inventive and tie back to the movie with an interesting visual motif consisting of guns, naked women, fur hats, and gymnastics. Even though there were references in past films, The Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bond to tackle the Cold War head on and in America in the summer of 1977, nothing shouted “evil socialist commie pig” louder than fur hats and uneven bars. At the 1976 Summer Olympic Game in Montreal a 14-year-old Romanian (as part of the U.S.S.R. team) named Nadia Comaneci earned the first ever perfect “10” in the all around women’s gymnastic competition; a feat so incomprehensible that the official scoreboard had only a single digit in front of the decimal so her score was displayed as a “1.00”.  Comaneci not only became the most famous athlete in the world save Muhammad Ali but the 7 stone 14-year-old struck a might blow to the American psyche. At the time of better dead than red, any victory by the Soviets took on a wider meaning not remotely comprehensible in today’s political climate. So, in addition to goose stepping naked chicks sporting Ushanka military lids the opening credits of The Spy Who Loved Me features woman performing gymnastics on gun barrels that double as a balance beams and uneven bars. The entire thing ends with the music hitting an ear piercing metallic sting that launches us deep into the halls of the Kremlin. Man, I miss the cold war! One more thing Reagan ruined.

Opening Action Sequence: Allow me a geek moment to ask, am I the only one who gets really excited upon hearing the Bond theme and seeing those two white dots walk across a black screen? Another thing I love; any movie where the crew of a submarine casually sits down to have a meal. If you’ve seen three frames of film in your life you know that any second coffee mugs will start hopping around, white lights will switch to red, and a loud voice will come over the PA. “Battle Stations! All personnel to battle stations, this is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill!” The next shots will show dudes jump thought doors, sliding down ladders, reading multiple radar screens and printouts, cranking various knobs and pulling several levers until we focus in on the captain who will order “down scope!” After peering into the periscope and spinning it a full 360 degrees the captain will then see something, unseen by the audience and crew, that tells him the whole story. He will then take a slow step back with a gob smacked look on his face and declare “Good God…” Well The Spy Who Loved Me hits every single one of those notes in the first 20 seconds. Now, what’s going to happen next? According to “Submarine Movie Law II” the film must cut to some guy sitting behind a desk. You will immediately know this man is important because (A) he will be wearing a uniform with all kinds of metals pinned to his chest, (B) his desk will be in a room that has all kinds of activity going on like other guys looking at maps and carrying clipboards, and (C) he will have two phones on his desk and when he hears a ring he will answer … the red one! While this is going on at MI6 the very same thing is happening over at the KGB. However, because they are pinko socialist New York Times subscribes the office is empty, austere, imposing, and EVIL! The Russian important guy also has the standard white phone and red phone on his desk, but what the hell is up with the two-toned badge phone? See! You can never trust those shifty Riskies. Turns out both the UK and the USSR have had subs disappear from the middle of the ocean and both sides put their best man on the job. The KGB calls up Agent Triple X who is WHAAAAAA? A woman! Did not see that one coming. M on the other hand tracks down Bond who is on assignment in the Austrian Alps. Cut to James in bed with some Nordic floozy when duty calls. Jimmy B hops out of bed, pulls on his goggles, clicks into his Rossignols, and skis out the door. The only thing that excites me more than Bond gambling is Bond skiing. Hot damn, what an open! This movie is going to rock. Anyway, the chick who Bond was entertaining works for the Russians (of course) and James immediately has four baddies on his tail. An exciting but brief chase sees Bond navigate a crevasse and take out one of the bad guys with a ski poll projectile that appears to start a fire in the man’s chest. Bond is making good time and putting a fair amount of distance between himself and the other three pursuers when it suddenly becomes clear he’s going to run out of road.

And here, dear reader, is where the open moves from merely exciting into the sublime. In one uninterrupted shot we see Bond ski off a cliff and soar into an absolute void. We watch him, not much larger than a speck, drift in complete silence for what feels like 10 seconds when suddenly a parachute with a huge Union Jack painted on it pops out as the Bond theme kicks in. Not only is this the most exciting pre-credit action sequence to date, but it must be pointed out that stuntman Rick Sylvester did the jump for real off Mt. Asgard. The mountain is on a northern Canadian island the size of Germany and features a shear cliff that drops 3,900 ft into the sea. Sylvester and a camera crew held up in a cabin on the island for four days waiting for weather conditions and the wind speeds to be just right. When it was, they had a small window and only one shot to make it work so several cameras were quickly set-up to capture the stunt. In one of those happy accidents that becomes film lore, every camera but one lost the skier as he jumped. As a result we are treated to a majestic uncut single shot of the jump that I would bet good money had 1977 audiences standing in the theater and cheering out loud.

Bond’s Mission: So, if those dirty, naked, goose stepping, fuzzy hat wearing, perfect split and tumble performing commies didn’t hijack the British boat then who did? And oh, by the by, did we mention the British sub has sixteen missiles and nuclear warheads aboard? But you knew that thanks to article three of “Submarine Movie Law.” MI6 obtains intel indicating someone has discovered a way to track subs even when they are submerged. Perhaps that’s a good place to start. Lucky for the freedom loving Brits, a man in Cairo is willing to sell information about this technology and who has it to the highest bidder. The freedom hating Russians get the same tip and both Bond and Triple X are dispatched to Egypt to track this man down and make hivm taaalk.

Villain’s Name: Karl Stromberg, who contrary to popular belief is not a member of Hans Gruber’s band of Nakatomi Plaza robbers. He is, in fact, a shipping magnate who describes himself as “somewhat of a recluse” in the understatement of the year. Like Donald “The Donald” Trump he doesn’t shake hands and like Steve Zissou he lives the life aquatic. He’s one of those rich people that can afford to be eccentric and bend the world to his whim; in Stromberg’s case that means never living a submersible mid-ocean fortress that looks not unlike the stage of David Bowies Glass Spider Tour. He is also into tracking and kidnapping nuclear subs, but to what end?

Villain Actor: Curt Jurgens is described in his IMDb bio as “one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century.” Indeed from his motion picture debut in 1935 to his death in 1982 he acted in over 100 movies and directed five. The five times divorced actor become an international star after staring opposite Brigitte Bardot in … And God Created Woman (1956). In a nice little Bond link he appeared in The Longest Day (1962), Sean Connery’s first major film. The German native was often cast as a Nazi in Hollywood WWII war films; an irony considering he spent time in a concentration camp for “political unreliables” thanks to his outspokenness against the Third Reich. On the DVD extras for The Spy Who Loved Me Moore expresses awe for Jurgens and his ability to not only speak but also act in four languages.

Villain’s Plot: Stromberg paid two eggheads to come up with the sub tracking device so he could snatch some nukes, point em at New York and Moscow, and cackle in a large room with a big globe as the centerpiece while an underling counts down to Armageddon. But before you accuse him of being a poor man’s Blofeld, consider his motive is not petty extortion but to “changing the face of history.” His grand idea is to cause a nuclear holocaust on the surface of Earth and create a new civilization under the sea, under the sea, where darling it’s better, down where it’s wetter, take it from Karl. Why can he just live down there and let the people topside do their thing? Because we land dwellers are polluting his seaweed paradise and for this he will make us pay! This little plan balances Mr. Stromberg somewhere between a billionaire agoraphobia with a God complex and the president of Greenpeace.

Villain’s Lair: Stromberg’s underwater lair, which he calls Atlantis, is quite the sight. When the film first introduces Stromberg he is sitting on one end of a very, very, very long dinner table; the kind you only see in the movies. His lady friend seated waaaaaaay at the other end. Since the man doesn’t like to be touched this is the first time one of these super long supper tables makes a lick of sense. At one point Stromberg pushes a button and the beautiful paintings on the wall drop in unison to reveal the room is in fact under water and now surfacing. Again the structure looks like the stage of the Glass Spider Tour (for those born after Reagan was inaugurated the current U2 360 stage would be a good reference.) This massive black round edged submersible seems to be able to pop in and out of the water without anyone noticing, good news for the eco-terrorist. The interiors are impressive in that unique Bond way where modern technological utility and classic old-world decor occupy the same space seamlessly. He also owns the sub swallowing tanker which is so big than not only can three subs sit side by side by side in the hull but Stromberg travels from bow to stern on a monorail. This monorail is no flimsy affair. Unlike Seattle’s single railed train it actually goes somewhere and if this the shit hits the fan, the single-car train can be shot out of the hull and transform into a 450 horsepower speedboat. The tanker also features the most sophisticated tracking system know to man; a huge yellow glowing globe which can map out the precise trajectory of two nuclear missiles simultaneously. I know right now your thinking “Big deal, my iPhone can do that with a dead battery” but this is 1977 my dear child and the term GPS had yet to be even dreamt up so show a little respect. Man, no wonder they say never trust anyone under thirty.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: The man is as brilliant and as rich as that creepy Napster kid played by Justin Timberlake, and almost as evil. He is also paranoid enough to trust no one and secludes himself in his underwater city. In fact, since he, unlike Blofeld, never broadcasts his targets or even his intentions, he would of 10,000% gotten away with his plan except for one little loose end, a woman. Women have long been Bond’s kryptonite, getting him into far more trouble than they could possible be worth and Stromberg too is undone by blond bimbo. It is she, the lady at the other end of the very, very long dinner table, who wanted to make some scratch on the side and sold the submarine tracking info to a mustachioed Egyptian named Aziz Fekkesh. (Is there a cooler name on the planet than Aziz Fekkesh? Don’t even try, the answer is no, there is not.) In turn, Fekkesh and his employer Max Kalba put the word out they will sell the info to the highest bidder which prompts Bond and Triple X to come calling and now we are back to where we walked in. It is the calm and coolness, with just the right bit of cruelty, with which Stromberg deals with this lady that is our villain’s coolest trait.

Badassness of Villain: Agent Triple X describes Stromberg as “One of the principal capitalist exploiters of the West.” As we are still drowning in the wake of Enron, AIG, Lehman Brothers and the bankruptcy of Blockbuster Video we all know just how much havoc Stromberg, one of the richest men in the world, can cause. What makes him truly badass, and a great free market man to boot, is his complete lack of emotional involvement in his decision making. Outside of fish, this dude cares not for a thing. When he discovers his lady friend has sold his info out from under him, he calmly asks her to leave to room, implying he is about to rub out the two eggheads who invented the tracking system. When she gets into the elevator to leave, Stromberg pushes a button and the floor of the elevator drops out, sending the girl sliding down a tube and into a shark tank. Its not the feed his woman to the sharks, standard Bond villain behavior by this point, but the head game of making someone feel safe, like they got away with something, and then Blammo! that makes him truly badass. The two eggheads, having witnessed this, must now themselves get onto the very same elevator to leave. They are understandable uneasy but get off Atlantis without incident and once they are airborne in Stromberg’s helicopter they allow themselves a congratulatory handshake. Once more, Stromberg is toying with people’s minds as he yanks the carpet out from underneath the eggheads by pushing another button and blowing up the chopper. So badass is he that he didn’t even think about his pilot. Principal capitalist exploiter of the West indeed.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: We meet Stromberg’s two henchmen early on; a broad, bald, WWE looking fellow named Sandor and the silent metal mouthed Jaws. Jaws is played by Richard Kiel who was first noticed by audiences in the Burt Reynolds vehicle The Longest Yard (1974). (Why is it that Burt Reynolds keeps coming up in these entries lately? He’s the Kevin Bacon of 70’s cinema.) For this role, Kiel was required fill his mouth with large prosthetic teeth that not only rendered him unable to speak but also caused the actor great pain, which explains why Jaws constantly has the look of man who needs to find a restroom in the next thirty seconds. In fact, so great was the pain that Kiel couldn’t keep the teeth in his mouth for more that thirty seconds and would rip them out as soon as someone yelled “cut.” The sacrifice was worth it as Jaws is one of the most memorable and popular Bond baddies and even returns in the next film. I remember really digging him as a kid but I didn’t remember the shear size of the man. There are several fight scenes between Bond and Jaws that almost take on a comic quality as the 7’2” Kline completely dwarfs Moore who at 6’1” is not a small man. At one point Jaws is strangling Bond and his hands are bigger than 007s head. But I don’t feel bad for our hero. This is clearly Jimmy B getting a bit of karmic payback for beating up on a midget at the end of the last film. I also didn’t remember Jaws was a zombie or vampire or something that compels him to kill his victims by moving… in… very… slowly… to… bite… their… necks. Why? His hands are just as capable as his teeth. He used his huge mitts to rip apart a moving van (which is to say a van that is moving, not a truck that brings your stuff from your old house to your new.) Jaws can also use his choppers to chew through a padlock and deflect bullets but my favorite Jaws quality is his indestructibleness; throw him off a moving train, crush him with blocks from a pyramid, or force his car off the road, over a cliff, and into the roof of a farm cottage and Jaws will get up, brush the dirt off his shoulders, adjust his tie, grunt, and go about his business. In addition to Jaws and Sandor, Stromberg employees hundreds of red jumpsuit clad flunkeys which is a good thing because when they get into a massive gun fight with the blue jump suited British Navy they are able to tell who is on their side and who is not. They also have black berets which serve no function but look spiffy. These men guard Stromberg’s tanker as well as Atlantis which was conveniently built on the sea floor right where the underwater battle from Thunderball (1965) took place. Consequently, these guys can simply swim over and pluck the single man submarine sleds left on behind by Emilio Largo’s felled scuba army. Sadly for them, and much to our heroes delight, Stromberg’s people use the equipment with the same amount of success.

Bond Girl Actress: Barbara “Mrs. Ringo” Bach. The “Queen of the B-Movies” was born in Queens to a New York City cop and became a model in her late teens. She met Augusto Gregorini at fashion show in the city and moved with him to Italy were the two were married despite that fact she could have been his daughter. These things seem to be somewhat more acceptable in Italy. After appearing in Bond she went on to star in such classics as Screamers (1979), Jaguar Lives! (1979), Alligator (1979) and Caveman (1981) where she met Ringo Starr. The moon hit her eye like a big pizza pie and Gregorini was dumped like yesterday’s pasta fazool. On April 27, 1981 Bach joined Linda, Patti and Yoko to become the forth and final member of the Beatles Wives Club. (Heather Mills never happened, do you understand? Never happened.) Truth be told, she is not the best actresses in the world but somehow her cool, detached, Euro-chick, Nico vibe works well opposite Moore’s suave smart-assed Bond. She also benefits from having what is so far the most well rounded Bond girl role of the Moore era. She is, after all, a spy and the KGB answer to Bond so she gets to avoid some of the Bond girl traps. The two make an interesting pair, reminding me of Ilsa and Victor Laszlo navigating the nightclubs of Africa, where selling and buying of information on the black market is the main business. (No, not really, but I try.) In addition to the exchange described in the Bond Actor section, Moore and Bach have another emotionally demanding scene (OK, emotionally demanding for a Bond film) where a casual moment turns on dime after Bach’s character learns Bond killed her lover on the slopes of Austria. “Did you kill him?” she asks cueing Moore to deliver one of the longer monologs in Bond history. “When someone is after you on skis at 40 MPH trying to put a bullet in your head, you don’t always remember a face. In our business Anya people get killed, we both know that. So did he, it was either him or me. The answer to the question is yes, I did kill him.” And with that, the Rocky IV (1985) ideal that hinges on the philosophy of “Hey, if both our cultures enjoy a good old fashion fight, and who doesn’t love violence, then maybe I can change… and you can change … AND WE ALL CAN CHANGE!” was crushed thanks to a personal beef. “When the mission is over, I will kill you.” And with that, matters of the heart trump matters of the state.

Bond Girl’s Name: Agent XXX or Triple X, or Major Anya Amasova to her comrades. I think the name is intended as some kind of cheeky double entendre but for the life of me I’m not sure what the joke is. Anywho, Triple X is indeed an officer in the Russian army and a highly trained KGB agent but that still doesn’t spare her from Bond girl rule four which clearly states “you must, at some point, wear a bikini.” In this case it is a fetching number with straps that go in a cross pattern above her chest forming an X. Maybe that’s where her name comes from? Regardless, Triple X is not much help in a fight but she proves to be a very sharp agent who cracks the clues to discover Stromberg is the man behind the sub hijacking plot. And like any good agent, she is not above using her sexuality to get what she wants.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: To track down the baddie, England must get in bed, literally, with the Soviets. But this is a delicate dance, with may twists and turns. Before these two sexy globetrotting superspies team up, they are competing parties, both after the microfilm containing the sub-trackers information. By the by, something cinematic was lost when computers became capable of talking to one another in such a seamless manner. Sure, the internet is neat but don’t you get nostalgic for the days when secret data files needed to be delivered by hand? We no longer have movies where our hero must smuggle microfilms and the like through Egypt while being chased by a beautiful girl. Thanks to advances in technology we now get a guy staring at a computer screen mumbling to himself “Come on…come on… load God Damn it!” while we watch a graphic of a bar slowly filling up to “100% Downloaded.” That just sucks. Anyway, Triple X and Bond both end up on a boat bound for Cairo. Bond has the microfilm and Triple X wants it. Having studied up on 007 she knows if she bats her eyes he will be putty in her hands. After a little playful smooching Triple X reaches for her cigarettes. When Bond goes to light the smoke for the lady she blows some poison gas into his face making him instantly pass out. This is a nifty trick that made me wish we could meet the Soviet Q. I picture him in a hidden lab somewhere, perhaps at Chernobyl where the Kremlin cooked up the nuclear disaster as a cover story. (True, the Chernobyl meltdown didn’t happen until 1986 but go with me on this.) He would have a monocle, of course, and a Rollie Fingers mustache which he would twirl between his thumb and index finger while cackling madly as he invents schemes to once and for all take down the West. “I have a fool proof plan to poison every American man, woman and child! Ve will call dem “Big Mac’s.” De will look like tasty hamburger but de will contain no meat what-so-ever! Only deadly chemical. And de Americans will buy dem for 99 cents a piece! De love a bargain. And wit no health care to save dem de will all gets fat and die, and den we will go to Disney World! Hahahahaha.” For the most part, Triple X is the female Bond when it comes to sex. We first see her in bed, she uses romantic encounters to get her job done, and a fringe benefit of the job is notching multiple romantic encounters. One more thing about the lady, I don’t know if it was she or a body double but we are treated to a brief shot of the Major taking a shower, the most nudity in a Bond film to date.

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: “This is what we do in Siberia, but not how we do it.” I have no clue what that even means but it sound dirty.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “What a magnificent craft, such hansom lines.” He was talking about a boat. Wink wink.

Number of Woman 007 Beds: 3 ladies. Doing what he can to warm the cold war, one spy at time, we first see Bond bedding an Arian beauty in the Austrian Alps. It’s a cozy little scene in a mountain top chalet until M puts up the bat signal. “Tell 007 to pull out immediately!” “But James, I need you” the woman pleads as Bond bounds into action “So does England” and, apparently, the women of Egypt. Bond arrives via camel to a tent in the middle of the desert, a tent that is both bigger and more luxurious than my apartment. After catching up with his old Cambridge chum who has installed himself as the local sultan Bond is off the find Fekkesh. That is until he is offered a bed which includes a member of Cambridge buddies harem to keep him warm. “When one is in Egypt, one should delve deeply into its treasures.” It’d be rude not to. The courting of Triple X is a bit more complicated. When Bond first puts the moves on the Russian agent she gasses him with the trick cigarette. Apparently she was just using Bond to get the microfilm. Dirty deceitful commie! Bond would never pull a stunt like that. After the two team up there is little time for hanky –panky until they find themselves in adjoining sleeping cabins on a train traveling from Cairo to the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia. Please consider that one more time, traveling by train, from Cairo, to an island. Regardless, Jimmy B puts on his best moves only to end up sulking alone in his own compartment after Triple X declines to join him for a night cap. But violence = 007 + XXX. Jaws, hiding in the lady’s closet, is about to get all vampire like on the Triple X’s neck when our dashing Englishman comes to the rescue. As thanks for saving her life, Triple X gives herself to Bond which brings me to our hero’s alleged intelligence. How many times is Bond going to end up getting attacked in train sleeping cars before he gets the hint? Isn’t getting to the point where he should put on a helmet and arm himself with brass knuckles whenever traveling by rail? It all works out in the end and Bond makes a powerful enemy of Ringo Starr after sleeping with his wife. (Bond vs. Ringo, now that’s a fight I would love to see!) Bond and Triple X also bump uglies in an escape sub and as has become tradition, are rudely interrupted by well intended but poorly timed would be rescuers.

Number of People 007 Kills: 19 confirmed kills plus a whole bunch. Americans, for whatever reason, often think of sex and violence in film (and other arts) as somehow making that film “more adult” or “mature.” Well, based on that idea, Bond grew up big time in the 10^th movie by stacking up the largest body count to this point. We kick things off with the ski pole shooting of Triple X’s squeeze, complete with the mysterious fire igniting in his jacket at the point he was shot. The second Bond kill inspired me to come up with the “magic hickey theory” or MHT. Bond enters Fekkesh’s office looking for Fekkesh (I will never tire of typing that name) and comes across Fekkesh’s secretary. “He is not in right now Mr. Bond. Can I get you anything while you wait, and I do mean, anything…” Jimmy B leans in and starts to kiss the lady on the neck when she suddenly panics and warns Bond he is about to be shot. Bond repays the ladies generosity by spinning her body so she takes the three bullets intended for him. This struck me as all sorts of wrong. Didn’t she know it was a set up to shot Bond? Isn’t that why she offered herself to him in the first place, to otherwise occupy his attention so he could be taken out? So why did she warn him? The only possible reason is love. Thanks to that kiss 007 landed on her neck she instantly feel under his spell. Hence the MHT, no woman can resist Bond once pecked on the neck. The theory is once again proven when Bond turns Triple X. After the mission ends the Russian makes good on her threat to avenge her boyfriends death. She pulls a gun and Bond moves in for the clavicle kiss. Once smooched, she quickly forgets the whole shooting things and moves right into the whole smushing thing. The MHT strikes again. Back to killing, the dude who shot at Bond when he used the lady as a human shield was the not-Jaws-Stromberg-flunky Sandor. The baddie and Bond engage in some rooftop fist-a-cuffs that ends with Sandor dangling off the edge of the building, only Bond’s grip on his tie keeping him from falling. Bond lets his grip slip once he learns the location of Fekkesh and Sandor is no more. Number 4 is a chicken feather coated motorcyclist who Bond run off the road and over a cliff, “All those feathers and he still can’t fly.” Numbers 5,6,7 are passengers in a car that goes over the same cliff and through the roof of a home. Jaws, the fourth passenger of the car, walks away with his tie slightly askew. A lovely helicopter pilot who works for Stromberg is blown up courtesy of Bond’s sea to air missile launched from his submarine car. The sub-car also torpedoes a Thunderball dude and kills another SCUBA diver in the first ever underwater hit and run. During the climatic battle Bond takes out two of Stromberg’s red shirts with one harpoon, two more a done in by Bonds machine gun fire and a grenade takes out a jeep containing three dudes. One other dude is somehow set on fire. Meanwhile, Bond navigates the chaotic machine gun fire without a fear, thanks to a technique that was expertly demonstrated in the fantastic film OSS 177 – Lost in Rio (2009). Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath or OSS 177, the French 007, perfected this technique which requires the agent to raise his hand slight above his head, as if shielding his eyes from the sun. The agent then runs while slightly hunched over with his head slightly cocked to the side while wearing a concerned, but not panicked, expression. Try it the next time a bunch of dudes are shooting at you and if the cinema is to be believed, you will not get shot. Kill number 19 is Stromberg himself. Near the films climax, Carl hosts a grand dinner for Bond following the time honored tradition of Bond baddies.   Stromberg is seated at one end of the very, very, very long table and Bond at the other. After some back and forth Stromberg has had enough of 007 and reached for his concealed gun. The gun hangs under the table, just above Stromberg’s lap. It’s barrel is pointing into a very, very, very long tub which extends under the entire length of the very, very, very long table and ends at Bonds lap. Stromberg pulls the trigger and Bond bails out of the way a split second before his crotch is turned to mush. Bond then takes his gun, places the barrel in the tube, and squeezes off his own round which strikes the less nibble Stromberg seated at the other end of the very, very, very long tube. Bond puts two more bullets in the felled bad guy just to make sure Stromberg knows 007 is very, very, very unhappy. This is the best lead villain death in some time and I found it rather satisfying. In addition to the above, Bond also took out an untold number of other bad guys. He blows up the taker which still had a bunch of dudes on it and he retargets the nukes headed for New York and Moscow to take out two subs. These are nukes so there is no doubt that’s two boat loads of people are dead. But I also wonder what other ships were nearby and therefore vaporized? Oh well, lets not dwell on it to long, Bond certainty didn’t.

Most Outrageous Death/s: When Jaws finds himself in the shark tank he panics not a bit. He simply swims over to one of the deadly animals and takes a chomp out of its dorsal fin, killing the sea creature in a classic case of man bites shark.

Miss. Moneypenny: It may have been three years of downtime between the Bond films but that doesn’t mean Lois Maxwell, or Miss Moneypenny for that matter, was cooling her heels at some exotic getaway waiting for Cubby Broccoli to call. No, she was hard at work and in 1975 a film was released in Asia called Bons baisers de Hong Kong or From Hong Kong with Love. Bernard Lee also shows up in the IMDB credits as M for this until recently unknown to me film. Needless to say I will be watching this at some point and a post will shortly follow. But my immediate question is how did Lee and Maxwell pull this off without getting sued to shit by Broccoli who is famous for guarding the Bond brand like Tom Cruise guards his sexuality? Back to The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond enters a pyramid that is serving as MI6’s base of operation in Egypt and tosses his jacket onto the rack. Ahh, take the Connery! It’s never fully explained how Bond knew to go to this location. I can overlook that detail and assume he got a message on his lame digital watch. However, what I find much harder to swallow is when Moneypenny opens the door to the inner office and Bond is confronted with a dirty red sitting where M ought to be. The man doesn’t even blink? Some spy. Wouldn’t he draw his gun and shoot quicker than Han Solo firing at Darth Vader on Cloud City? Moneypenny, always looking out for Bond’s best interest even has the foresight to book Bond and Triple X in separate hotel rooms. This is clearly done for budgeting purposes. I mean, what happens once the mission is over and the cold war goes back to biz as usual? Can she invoice The Kremlin for half a hotel bill? No, better to have separate checks and keep everything above board. Always thinking that Moneypenny.

M: M has some fantastic banter with his “opposite number” General Gogol. Gogol was played by Walter Gotell who, for those keeping score, also played SPECTRE henchman Morzeny in From Russia with Love (1963). These two are so chummy you would think they have a standing weekly golf date. I guess being the head of a powerful nation’s secret service is a small club so these dudes find companionship when they can. What is truly fantastic is in the beginning of the film where we get to see both of these men briefing their #1 agent. Both sit behind impressive desks in two offices that couldn’t be more different. M’s is cluttered from bow to stern with bookshelves, paintings, and piles of crap on his desk. Many of the appointment are dark wood and he sits in a cozy corner makes him look like a grandfather about to tell the kids a bedtime story. Gogol on the other hand works in room that has all the warmth of a mausoleum. His desk is in the dead middle of a huge room that consists of nothing but gray stone columns and a single wooden chair. You see how those Russians operate? Aren’t you happy you’re on England’s side?

Q: The gadget guru has a massive presents in The Spy Who Loved Me to which I say, right on! We first see him in analyst mode where he deduces how the subs are being tracked in a matter of seconds. “Heat signature, they can follow her wake.” We next meet him in the pyramid where he has constructed his entire lab. Witnessing Q testing stuff is one of the treats of Bond films and here we see a tea tray capable of decapitation, a hookah that can put a bullet in your brain and an ottoman which will turn your twig and berries into bangers and mash. So, with all this super secret testing going on, how in the hell is the #1 Russian spy and the head of the KGB allowed to waltz though without a care in the world? It’s inconceivable I tells yah! Q also sends Bond a Jet Ski hydrofoil which, like the Little Nellie package from You Only Live Twice, serves the sole purpose of getting Bond on a ridiculous looking and wholly impractical form of motorized transport.

List of Gadgets: This maybe the most gadget heavy film yet and we get two rather good ones before the opening credits even role. OK one good one, the Brother P-touch watch that interrupts Bonds bonking seems kind of pointless. I mean, can’t M just IM him? The ski pole rifle on the other hand is quite inspired and would come in very handy when dealing with long lift lines. Bond has a cool portable shadowbox that enables him to view microfilm which comes in quite handy. The Reds even get in on the act with that trick cigarette Triple X uses to gas Bond. And then, there’s the car…

Bond Cars: White Lotus Esprit. In addition to Jaws, the thing I remember from my childhood is the car. While not as classic or as cool at the Goldfinger Aston Martin, this puppy is rock-star. Q delivers it personally and considering Bond just arrived via horse and buggy, he’s quite happy to receive the new set of wheels. “Now pay attention 007. I want you to take great care of this equipment. There are one or two special accessories …” “Q have I ever let you down?” “Frequently.” Those special accessories included the now familiar trick of shooting stuff out from under the license plate, this time mud and cement. It’s not until Bond jumps the car off the side of a pier and hits the water that we learn what this puppy can do. In a sequence that would make Transformers trilogy director Michel Bay drool we see the cars tires get sucked under the chassis, the wheel wells cover up and fins grow out of the body. While in submarine mode this nifty vehicle can launch torpedoes, surface to air missiles, black ink and mines. In the wonderful pre-CGI days these effects had to be done for real and Bond producers used a total of six of the 75 hand built Lotus made in 1977 to pull of all the required shots and angles. One of the cars was even modified to become an actual functioning submarine. The Lotus is also the star of one of the funnier moments in the Bond canon. After blowing up half the reef Bond drives the car out of the ocean, on to a beach, and hands a sunbather a fish. One of the beachgoers does the classic take a drink, look up to see something unbelievable (in the case, the car emerging from the sea,) and then looks back at the bottle with that “what the hell is in this drink?” look. It’s an oldie but a goodie and gets me every time. The other vehicle Bond finds himself in is a decidedly unsexy van which Jaws proceeds to rip apart…by hand… while Triple X is driving it. Yep, Bond films can get silly.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: We never see if the Lotus makes it back to Q intact but it did spring a leak or two. Then there is the small matter of the American and Russian subs Bond nukes but since he did so to save New York and Moscow, I think all will be forgiven.

Other Property Destroyed: Like the death count, this is a long list indeed. In no particular order 007 manages to knock a motorcycle off the road, explode a mattress delivery truck, reduce yet another train sleeping car to rubble, send a four door auto over a cliff and through the roof of a modest cabin, blow up a helicopter, grenade a jeep, sink an oil tanker, trash and abandon the van that jaws ripped apart and topple some scaffolding at an Egyptian dig sight which most likely had survived for thousands of years prior. Bonds reaction? “Egyptian builders.”

Felix Leiter: No Felix. I guess the CIA just couldn’t bring themselves to work hand in hand with those lefty Soviets. Perhaps they feared the Tea Party backlash. Either way Felix sat this one out, opting instead to hang at the local Mickey D’s and gobble down Big Macs.

Best One Liners/Quips: Bond and Triple X escape the sinking Atlantis in a sub that pierces the surface of the water in a way that is not at all phallic or is meant to be. After sorting the matter of Triple X wanting to kill Bond (MHT), the two get down to getting down. Conveniently this is an escape sub made for two that comes equipped with chilled champagne, a circular Wilt Chamberlain bed and frilly curtains that close over a porthole with the push of a button, good for keeping prying eye form looking in. However, Bond didn’t attended to the last detail because, after all, they’re in the middle of the ocean. But as we discussed above, the Navy will always rescue 007 mid-coitus. Still, Bond and Triple X are stunned when they look up to see M, General Gogol, Q and half the Navy gawking. “Double O 7! What do you think your doing?” “Keeping the British end up sir,” and with that, the frilly curtains on the window close and a Bob Fosse musical breaks out. As the camera pulls away and the credits roll we hear an all boys choir, I imagine all dressed as navy men, break into a show tune rendition of “Nobody Does it Better.” It’s one of the most jarring endings to film I can remember. But yah, the quote is really funny.

Bond Timepiece: The Moore films have been slacking on this front and it’s rather disappointing when all we get is a cheapo digital Seiko with a Bloomberg ticker-tape dispenser built in.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Nothing really notable other than to say that both Bond and Triple X strike fantastic images while wandering the Egyptian desert in formal eveningwear; she in a gorgeous cocktail dress, he in his tux.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 3, but Bond often had to abandon his glass when duty called. He is first offered a vodka martini by his harem hosting Cambridge buddy but he declines. Triple X later buys him the same and he sucks it down with some zeal, even getting up for another. Sadly, he never makes it back to the bar. We assume 007 and XXX share some champagne in the hotel as an empty bottle can be seen in a bucket of ice while she gets all “you killed my boyfriend.” (I hate when chick do that.) Bond pours some more bubbly on the train but that 7’2” man in the closet ruins everything. Finally, Bond raids Stromberg’s liquor cabinet on the escape sub prompting 007 to admit his respect for the then recently departed baddie. “Anyone who drinks Dom Perignon ‘52 can’t be all bad.” Maybe you should have thought of that before you shot him three times, hey James?

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Bond doesn’t sit at the felt in this adventure but that doesn’t mean his poker skills don’t come into play. Consider the following tense scene that takes place on board a U.S. Navel vessel. Its right after Bond saves the world from the nukes and he walks into the captain’s quarters. Capitan “James, I’m under orders from the Pentagon, destroy Atlantis ASAP.” Bond “What does that mean?” “Battle stations in five minutes.” “Torpedoes?” “Yes.” “Anya (That’s Triple X to you and I) is over there.” “I know James. I’m sorry.” “I have to get her off!” “How?” “The equipment Q sent me, I need an hour.” “That comes from the top!” says the captain, referring to his orders to destroy the underwater base ASAP. Bond pleads “40 minutes!” “Your going to get me court marshaled … one hour” WTF? He asked for an hour and was told no freaking way in the world dude. Then he asks for 40 minutes and get the hour? Is that some kind of Jedi mind trick? I would hate to play cards with this guy, he could talk you off your pocket rockets while showing his seven-duce off-suit.

List of Locations: We visit the Sahara desert, snow topped mountains and underwater wonderland all in the first twenty minutes. The Spy Who Loved Me makes better use of location and gives a sense of “we are really there” better than any Bond since On Her Majesties Secrete Service. Appropriate since we start off in the Alps with a skiing scene, all of which was shot in Austria except for the final ski jump off the cliff which was shot on Mt. Asgard in Canada. One of the simpler but visually most memorable scene features Bond and a British intelligence man walking on the shore or a river with a bustling Navel base in the background. Somehow, EON got access to a real British Navel base on a Scottish river for these brief scenes. The Egyptian locations, from the colorful desert tents to the Giza Plateau, home to the pyramids and the Sphinx, to the roof of an Egyptian art museum, to three different Luxor temples are all stunning. The car chase with the exploding trucks and helicopters was shot in Sardinia and the underwater stuff was done in the same Nassau location as all the Thunderball water sequences. In addition, every hotel room and lobby, every office, and every other set is perfectly shot and intergraded into the film creating an organic feel for where all this stuff is happening.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: Before Sean White was even a red headed twinkle in his papa’s eye Sir Roger Moore … OK, Moore’s stunt double, was the king of the powder. Bond flips, skis backwards, shoots, jumps off a cliff and deploys a parachute for his grand finally and has not a X-Games medal to show for it. From the snowy peaks to the arid desert where Bond displays his skills speaking fluent Egyptian and camel jockeying. I know camel jockey has been adopted by racists and is now used in a derogatory sense but in this film Bond, sporting a handsome headpiece, proves adept at riding a camel. Not easy to do and I think it’s time that we, the folks who admire this skill of jockeying a camel, take the term back. While Bond is posing as a marine biologist Stromberg becomes suspicious and points out a fish for 007 to identify. Jimmy B not only lists the creature’s attributes as “beautiful but deadly” but calls the spices its proper Latin name. While being escorted around Atlantis Bond comes across a model of the sub swallowing ship and can instantly see that something about the bow is not quite right. Bond is many things, but when it comes to improvising disguises he could us some help. When the U.S. sub is captured by Stromberg the entire crew assembles topside. Bond doesn’t want Triple X to be singled out so he comes up with a plan to disguises her as one of the crew. Ignoring her Russian uniform, which is decorated with a ton of medals, her longer that regulation length hair, and her shapely body Bond decides that by throwing a hat on her head she should fit right with the assembled doughboys. Needless to say, she is apprehended. But this is all bush league stuff that anyone could pick up in the first six months at spy school. Playing with nuclear weapons, now that’s the skill you want on your résumé. Sure, Bond needs the manual, which of course is sitting next to the targeting system, to reprogram the trajectory of the nukes but when it comes to disarming a nuclear warhead, no instructions needed. Bond finds the missile and disassembles it while a dozen chatty U.S sailors crowd him. In order to render the weapon harmless, Bond must remove the detonator. This is a delicate operation in which the detonator must be pulled out of the device while not hitting the casing or boom. While Bond is steadying his hand and his nerve these American dill-holes keep flapping their gums and heckling him “Are you sure you know what you’re doing James?” First off, that’s Commander Bond to you and second, shut the hell up! Despite these yapping nincompoops Bond manages to disarm the bomb without incident.

Thoughts on Film: Despite all the obstacles that stood in the way of The Spy Who Loved Me’s success, the film is a triumphant return to form that very well may have saved the franchise. It was a do or die moment and not since 007’s mid-60’s heyday has a Bond picture delivered on it promise. Gone are the shaggy edges and blotted excess and what is left is a big, polished, slick, glossy blockbuster. In my book, polished and glossy are typically bad terms when it comes to describing movies because they represent the opposite of the 1970’s style grit I love. (Think 1970’s Scorsese, Ford Coppola, Lumet, Carpenter, De Palma, Ashby, etc.) However, the slick, professional approach works wonderfully for James Bond and instead of detracting it serves to elevate the character and the story. Like a well made pop tune, there is a geniuses in it’s accessibly and once it gets in your head, you can’t stop whistling. The further I go into the world of Bond, the more it strikes me how singular On Her Majesty Secret Service is in the series. That film was the most personal for Bond and by far the darkest (and one of my favorites despite some short comings.) It’s fascinating and it works wonderfully as a stand alone but I’m not so sure the tone and even storyline for that matter would have been sustainable. We don’t want Bond to be a brooding Jason Borne; we want him to be skiing off cliffs with a Union Jack parachute. EON was wise to move away from the feel of OHMSS but they also lost their way trying to rediscover what made Bond click. The first two Moore films, and the last two Connery films, had great moments, but the pacing was always off, and they were feather light; all surface with no substance. But their biggest sin, none of them were close to being as much fun as early Bond movies or The Spy Who Loved Me. Well crafted is the best way to describe this film, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s impeccable paced with a pitch-perfect tone that carries the film which rarely sinks into cheese (Jaws ripping up the van is a bit much.) This film is Bond growing up as a screen presence and proving he could have weight without going “dark” (No drug smuggling like Live and Let Die or Bond smacking women around like The Man with the Golden Gun. Also, not a complete reboot like Casino Royal (2006) where Bond does go dark.) So why in 1977, after a decade of struggles, does Bond rediscover his stride? I think its several factors, not the least of which is being free of the yolk that was the Fleming novels. Hamilton vacating the directors chair provides a huge jolt of energy. And probably most important is Broccoli knowing everything was on the line, and delivering in spades. Even the third act, which has been a huge problem as of late, works extremely well and wraps up the movie in a satisfying way. Also very important, the locations sing in a way they haven’t in some time. We feel like we are in the desert with Bond, and never once did I doubt we were on the oceans floor, unlike say, the volcano in You Only Live Twice which always looked like a film set. I feel I may have graded the first two Moore films on a curve, allowing my warm fuzzy nostalgia of growing up with him as my Bond to cover up some short comings, but not so with this movie. This is Moore’s Goldfinger, a gadget heavy, well balanced, pitch perfect blend of humor and outrageous action that remains grounded right up to the very end when a Monty Python sounding show tune kicks in. The Spy Who Loved Me is a line drawn in the Egyptian sand and represents the high water mark for 70’s Bond films. Interestingly, the final card to flash on the screen during the closing credits says “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.” Knowing what movie comes next, I wonder what happened? Perhaps The Spy Who Loved Me set the bar too high, and EON felt that only way to top it was to travel to the stars.

Martini ratings:

The Man with the Golden Gun

Title: The Man with the Golden Gun

Year: 1974. In their eight years of recording, the Beatles released thirteen albums. If you ask anyone; just walk up to a person on the street or call up your dad; anyone, to name six Beatles records, two or three are almost always going to come up and the remaining records will be an unpredictable assortment. But I would bet a months pay that no one, absolutely no one, in naming six Beatles records off the top of their head will name The Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Guaranteed. Why? The Fool on the Hill, I Am the Walrus, Hello Goodbye, Strawberry Fields Forever, All You Need is Love, Penny Lane and two of the better deep cuts in the Beatles catalog, Blue Jay Way and Baby You’re a Rich Man are all from the Mystery Tour album. When you think about those tunes, this record should be a classic. Yet it’s all but ignored. Is it because it was attached to a terrible film of the same name? Or because it came out between Sgt. Pepper and The White Album? Maybe it’s the incomprehensible cover art? Or is it something a little deeper? Yes, all the tunes listed above are undisputed classics but they don’t quite gel as a record. Could it be because when you go to the shelf to grab a Beatles record, you would rather spend you’re time listing to Revolver or Abby Road? I really don’t know but fair or not, The Magical Mystery Tour is the forgotten Beatles record and The Man with the Golden Gun is The Magical Mystery Tour of the Bond films. When’s the last time you thought of this film when thinking about Bond? I fell in love with Bond watching the films on Saturday afternoons on PIX Channel 11 and I just assumed I’d caught them all at one point or another. But when I was watching The Man with the Golden Gun for this project, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen it. Elements were familiar and I’m sure I caught a bit of it here or there but I truly don’t think I ever saw the movie from top to bottom till just now. How is that possible? Why is that the case? The ninth Bond film has a big time actor for a villain, stars the only Bond girl to ever return in a future films, has elements that are lifted for familiar Austin Powers gags, and most importantly, it hits all the right notes that make 007 films great. But like Staten Island, The Man with the Golden Gun (TMWTGG) is the part of Bond Town no one visits, mostly because everyone forgets it even exists in the first place. So the question becomes, is this movie a long lost gem or is it forgotten because it’s simply not that memorable?

Film Length: 2 Hours 5 Minutes

Bond Actor: Rodger Moore. After rereading my Live and Let Die (1973) post I now realize it plays like a big apology for/defense of Moore as Bond. Let’s pause a moment and state for the record that of the three actors to play 007 up to this point, I feel Connery is by far the best and the sample size is too small for Lazenby. That said, I truly think Moore gets a bum rap. I was born the year this film came out and for better of worse, when I was growing up Moore was the only Bond I knew. I would hate it when Channel 11 would play the “old” Bond movies with that “other guy.” Who was that guy? Not James Bond. Most of time I didn’t even bother to watch; I’ve got Star Wars guys to play with, don’t waste my time. As much as I may have over-praised Moore in Live and Let Die, the truth is he’s actually better in this film. More self-assured and steady in the role, Roger is able to live inside the character and give him new angles. Connery was a soccer hooligan who would never walk away from a fight and we loved him for it. But at times it got quite ridiculous, like when he took on an army of ninjas in You Only Live Twice (1967). Unlike Connery, Moore didn’t have the three day ninja training and his karate skills are no match for the masters of a martial arts school he finds himself taken to in TMWTGG. After watching a “training” sword duel that ends with one of the students dead, Moore surmises he maybe in trouble. So, when he is called to the floor he gives the master of the school a slight head nod as opposed to the honorable bow, indicating he has little respect for the formality of things. Sure enough, when his adversary bows to him, Moore’s Bond cheats and attacks prematurely. After knocking the unsuspecting dude flat, Bond THEN bows to the teacher. None to happy, the master calls his star pupil who does a number on Bond, who escapes a sever beat-down by literally jumping out the window. When a dozen black belts give pursuit Bond finds himself rescued by Lieutenant Hip of the local police department and his two nieces; school girls trained in kung fu. Moore simply sits back and watches his three new pals kick ass. The scene immediately brings to mind the famous market place confrontation in the first Indian Jones film where the overmatched archeologist shoots the master swordsman. It got huge laughs and is fondly remembered because it rings true but at the same time is completely unexpected. Movie audiences are programmed to expect big drawn out fight sequences and we certainly don’t expect out hero to take such a cheep shot. But if we found ourselves in Indy’s or Bond’s shoes, we 100% would have done the same thing. This is the opposite of Connery, who would have battled every last bad guy. However, it’s still Bond, but a Bond as Moore imagines him. Will Moore’s Bond ever compete with the Connery 007 of the 1963-65 glory days? Of course not. But after the last two flat Connery films, Moore’s take is a welcome change and a much needed injection of life into the character.

Director: Guy Hamilton. The mostly nuts and bolts director delivers a totally serviceable film with a few flourishes pushing it a step above Live and Let Die. Right off the bat, the locations here are more exotic than the last film and are therefore more exciting. One example, the shots of Honk Kong harbor and the rusty hull of the half sunken Queen Elizabeth are simple and beautiful. More importantly, the body of water and skeleton ship serve not just as a background but are integrated into the plot. At one point, Bond and the man with the gun that is gold are on two ships that literally pass in the night, neither aware the other is doing so. In an inspired choice, the abandon Queen Elizabeth doubles as MI6’s secrete headquarters situated “with the Chinese fleet on one side and the Americans on the other. Down here is the only place in Hong Kong you can’t be bugged.” All of the rooms in the ship are on a 30 degree slant and feature makeshift platforms that support furniture and walkways to create one of the most fun, original, and best looking Bond sets to date.

Reported Budget: $13,000,000 estimated, nearly double Live and Let Die’s $7 million, a clear vote of confidence in Moore. Or perhaps it’s the most expensive Bond to date because Harry Saltzman wanted to go out with a bang. Nine films after forming EON with partner Cubby Broccoli, Saltzman sold off his share leaving Broccoli as the man in charge of Bond. Saltzman went on to produce only two more movies, neither of which was successful or remembered. All Broccoli did was pilot the ever expanding Bond juggernaut until it became the biggest and most successful franchise of all time. I’m very curious to watch the next few films with Saltzman’s departure in mind to see if there is any discernable change in the movies.

Reported Box-office: $20,972,000 (USA) $97,600,000 (Worldwide) Ouch. Perhaps this is why Saltzman jumped ship? The weak box-office for TMWTGG dovetails nicely with the idea of the film being forgotten, maybe no one saw it in the first place. This number is even more disappointing when considering the film cost $4 million more than the most expensive previous Bond. It’s also a dramatic slip from the $126,000,000 worldwide haul of Live and Let Die just a year earlier. The drop-off is curious, TMWTGG isn’t anywhere near as drastic of a “reboot” as Moore’s debut, but screenwriters still labored to embrace trends of the day. In 1974, Bruce Lee was one of the biggest stars on the planet and indeed, everyone was Kung Fu Fighting. The Jamaican location of the novel, the last Fleming wrote, was abandon in favor of Asia so the film could be infused with a martial arts storyline. The plot was also tweaked to include the then topical energy crises of 1973.  But in America at least, the long lines at the gas pump were seen as a symptom of a larger issue, the idea that for the first time since the end of WWII, America as a country was sliding backwards. The cold war was in full force and the reds took the lead when the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam and conceded to the communist north. At the same time, Watergate tested The Constitution and the very fabric of our government, not to mention our moral standing in the world. Viewed through this dark cloud TMWTGG is about as relevant as a typewriter factory in 2010. Surely theater goers were watching films like The Conversion, Chinatown, and The Godfather II (all 1974), dark tales reflecting the lost of faith in the American dream. Perhaps this is why this Bond bombed and is forgotten? But one look at the top grossing films of ’74 shoots that theory to hell. Three disaster flicks, Towering Inferno (#1), Earthquake (#4), and Airport 1975 (#6) as well as two of the best comedies ever made Blazing Saddles (#2) and Young Frankenstein (#3) (both Mel Brooks) were tops at the box-office. Clearly people were getting enough bad news from the papers and went to the movies for escapism, something Bond films offer in spades. So why didn’t Bond fare better than #9? One final box-office note, the #10 movie of 1974 was Murder on the Orient Express staring a truck load of A-listers including one Sean Connery.

Theme Song: “The Man with the Golden Gun” performed by Lulu. Lulu is Scottish which got to me thinking, what other bands/ performers do I know from Scotland? After thumbing both my mental rolodex and my record collection I came up with exactly zero. Lulu’s performance is … ahem, lacking. The vocals come off like a poor imitation of Shirley Bassey’s bombast but the fourth rate song penned by John Barry is the real problem. The lyrics play like a MI6 dossier of the films title character. “He has a powerful weapon; he charges a million a shot; an assassin second to none; the man with the golden gun!” and “When you want to get rid of someone; the man with the golden gun; will get it done” and so on. The song is just terrible and trying to shoehorn the films title in helps no one. Add the bizarre little bridge which sounds like it was flown in from another tune and this is simply the worst … Bond theme …. ever.

Opening Titles: I’m sure a ton of work went into putting the opening titles together so I hate to dismiss them out of hand but just like the theme song they are pedestrian and flat. The multicolored woman projected onto wavy water not only has no coherent connection to the film but is outright boring. In fact, the only reaction I had during the credit role was one of extreme disappointment and mild shock when I saw “Clifton James as Sheriff J.W. Pepper” come across the screen. Ugh, not him again. 

Opening Action Sequence: Holy Jesus! Is that a midget in tuxedo carrying a silver tray containing a lone bottle of Tabasco sauce? Is that cave full of cowboys from a western, gangsters from probation era Chicago and a stuffed raven with a gun in its mouth?  Does that silver-haired dude have a third nipple?  Did I put in a David Lynch film by mistake? This opening sequence is completely bat shit nuts! The Man with the Golden Gun starts on a rock lined beach where a woman gets up from her chair to dry a tri-nippled man as he emerges from the sea. (Ursula Andress he is not) However, this now dry guy is more interested in the Champaign, Guinness and raw oysters just presented by his miniature manservant than this beauty draped around his legs. A second man, inappropriately attired in a black hat and a three piece suit, appears out of nowhere and remains unseen by the three nippled swimmer. The midget waves the hat man into a cliff cave home and into a room with a bar, a carnival style shooting gallery and a gym. The midget then disappears to a control room from where he sets the funhouse in motion. Mirrors turn, lights blink and floors give way throwing the hat guy into a mild panic. The midget’s master, the three nipple guy from the beach, is then called in and a one way shootout ensues. See, the nipple guy, who owns the house, is being tricked and taunted via a loud speaker by his miniature employee. The hat guy is shooting at the three nipple guy who is unarmed. The midget has locked the gun cabinet and has hidden a second gun, a gun by the by that is gold. Meanwhile, amusement park haunted house figures pop out funhouse style from various locations to add to confusion and prompting the hat guy to shoot at anything that moves. Finally, after sliding down some trick stairs, the nipple guy retrieves his golden gun and hits the hat guy square between the eyes with a single shot. The midget then comes out and is not chewed out for setting up his master, but praised. It turns out the nipple dude is the Man with the Golden Gun, the assassin second to none that we will learn all about in the theme song. This carnival on acid nightmare is set up to keep the killer on his toes and it quickly becomes clear what he’s training for. A Madame Tussauds waxworks Bond pops out from behind a wall and the golden gun man shoots all four fingers of Jimmy B’s right hand. Bond is the ultimate adversary, and golden gun must be forever sharpen his skills and be at the ready if he is to face 007. The use of mazes in a training exercise that ends with the injury of a faux Bond immediately brings to mind From Russia With Love’s (1963) open. And like that classic pre-credit sequence, this open plays as a great teaser, throwing us right into the action while raising a ton of questions.

Bond’s Mission: When M hands Bond a golden bullet with his number on it, literally, its game on. Marked for death, Bond is immediately placed on sabbatical. With his new found free time, Bond carries out the first mission in which he is the very thing at stake. This time, it’s personal and Bond treats it as such. The mission is simple; who is the man with the golden gun and who paid the $1 million to have Bond offed? Since no photos of the man with the golden gun exist and his address not listed on his Facebook page, Bond follows his only lead to Beirut where 002 was taken out while in the arms of belly dancer. The man with the golden gun is the lone suspect but he was never confirmed as the kiiler because the bullet was never found. Since this was a double O killed while on assignment, one assumes the investagtion into finding the killer and tracking down the bullet was thorough. Alas, MI6 came up empty. Bond on the other hand finds the golden projectile in .04 seconds and recovers it from the navel of the last person to see 002 alive.

Villain Actor: Christopher Lee. As Ian Fleming cousin and frequent golf partner, Lee was quite familiar with the world of Bond. In fact, Fleming wanted Lee to play Dr. No in the first film but it never came to pass. By 1974, the once and future Hollywood go to bad guy jumped at the chance to be a Bond villain as he was looking to get out of his vampire rut. Believe it or not, before Twilight or even Buffy Hollywood made movies about the blood sucking undead, the most famous being Count Dracula. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s Lee was famous for playing Bram Stoker’s Transvainain bat boy in several features but he also appeared in films about Frankenstein (as the creature), The Mummy (as the Mummy), and Jekyll and Hyde (as Paul Allen, co-creator of Microsoft). By the 80’s Lee found himself languishing almost exclusive in low budget horror films and made for TV movies. He kicked off the 90’s with an enjoyable turn in one of the most underrated and twisted sequels ever made, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and by the end of the decade he was rescued from C movie jail by Tim Burton. Lee once again hit the big time when he was cast as Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. But a year later his parole from bargain-basement schlock was revoked by George Lucas who cast him as Count Dooku. Count Dooku, it must be noted, is nothing like Count Dracula despite Lucas’ winking attempt to use the similar names as some kind of attempt at humor.

Villain’s Name: Francisco Scaramanga AKA the man with the golden gun. Scaramanga is given a rich back story that includes a childhood in the circus, a stint as a killer for the KGB, and now a freelance gun for hire that charges a cool million a hit. (This is 1974, when a million dollars actually meant something.) Lee further added texture to Scaramanga playing him as the dark side of Bond. In Scaramanga’s eyes, Bond and he are equals plying the same trade; they both kill for a living, they just collect their paychecks from different people. A scene with a weapons maker in Moroccan marketplace hammers this idea home. Q determines the golden bullet that did 002 in was made by Lazar, a Portages weapons maker of great skill. When Bond comes calling Lazar welcomes 007 with open arms calling the superspies visit “an unexpected honor.” Working the gun biz, he is aware of Bond’s exploits and to craft a weapon for such a proficient shooter would be a career highlight. He too, sees no difference between Bond and Scaramanga, nor does he see a conflict in interest by doing business with both. After all, he never tells any of his clients who any of his other customers are; honor among thieves and all that. Bond, of course, immediately take offence to any such suggestion, turns a gun on Lazar and demands information about Scaramanga. The gun makers reaction lets us know that none of his other clients have pulled such a stunt confirming that Bond can be as much of a thug as the guys he chasing, sometime more so if the situation calls for it. The idea of Bond setting out to capture his cloak and dagger evil twin is so tasty I was nearly giddy with the prospect. And for the first half to two thirds of the film, The Man with the Golden Gun delivers on this promise. It’s a crime the producers and screenwriters didn’t trust this concept to carry the film and had to gum up the works in a third act riddled with Bond clichés. For the first bit of the film, Scaramanga is the most compelling and complex Bond villain up to this point.

Villain’s Plot: At first, it’s quite straight forward. Kill Bond. Everything comes to a head one night in Hong Kong. The night air is thick with tension as Bond crosses the street in front of the Bottoms Up club while an unseen Scaramanga keeps him locked in the sights of his golden pistol. (Why would one shoot from a snipers position with a pistol?) Things become even more mysterious when a shot rings out and a second man, not Bond, falls to the pavement dead. Scaramanga had a clean shot, how did he miss? Turns out, Bond was not the target and the man that was shot was Bond’s last assignment, the one he was taken off of thanks to the contract on his head. This is a fantastic twist, further enhanced by the idea that Scaramanga considers himself an artist and Bonds assassination would be his “masterpiece.” To gun him down the street would be a disservice to then both. However, this compelling story is pretty much abandon when it turns out that Scaramanga, the worlds greatest assassin who gets a million a hit and own his own freaking island paradise, wants to try his hand at running the electric company. He strives to be a clean energy mogul at that, and steals a 95% effect solar panel known as the Solex Agitator. (The dude he shot outside the Bottoms Up was the gizmos inventor.) Like the words companionate and conservative, green energy tycoon and deadly assassin somehow seem incongruence and completely at odds with one another. This is not exactly a diabolical “take over the world” scheme, yet the film treats it as such.

Villain’s Lair: “Welcome to my island Mr. Bond.”  Scaramanga does indeed have one badass pad. His island rests in Chinese waters and the Red Army works as his doorman, informing him whenever anyone is approaching by air or by sea. His beach front home is nestled into the sides of cliff-mountains that resemble upside down bowling pins. His home contains the funhouse training rooms and a 1/3 size kitchen where the midget manservant cooks meals. And docked in the deep water is a wooden “Junk” ship, one of those Asian sailboats that only exist in storybooks. It of course has all the modern amenities and a full on wine cellar. The other cool evil base belongs to Hai Fat, the Chinese millionaire and energy mogul who paid to have the inventor of the Solex taken out. He too has a fascination with 3 ring circus chic and litters his otherwise pristine grounds with war like garden gnomes and life size sumo wrestler statues. Fat also owns the karate school but you know, if you’ve seen one one-thousand year old Chinese karate school, you’ve seen em all. The feature that makes this one stand out is the footbridge going over a small river, good for throwing guys off of.

Villain’s Coolest Accessory/ Trait: He is a master marksman able to uncork a champagne bottle from 75 yards with a single shot. He also, much to my delight, has a telltale deformity, a superfluous papilla or a third nipple. Apparently it’s a sign of sexual prowess and rumor has it Mark Wahlberg sports one. However, his publicist is not returning my calls so I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of Marky Marks third nip. No rumors here a BlogJamesBlog, only the cold hard facts. This is after all the internet, we have standards to live up to.

Badassness of Villain: Third nipple aside, the dude is a capital “K” creep when you get him in the bedroom with the ladies. He has a bizarre fetish with his golden gun which he’s been known to rub the barrel of along the face of his lady friend as she lay in bed. She is freaked out by this bizarre foreplay but what can one do when a loaded phallic symbol is dragging across ones lips? The gold gun dose in fact lead to her end when Scaramanga bumps her off for having relations with Bond. He justifies this murder by telling Bond “A mistress can not serve two masters.” 007, not at all shaken up by the dead woman next to him, seems to agree and offers the lady killer a peanut. Throw in Scaramanga’s fantastic back story, the fact that he lives on an island protected by the world biggest army, and he is perhaps the best assassin in the world and is all adds up to the man with the golden gun being one bad mother father.

Villain’s Asides/ Henchmen: Nick Nack, played by the 3’9” Parisian painter Herve Villechaize who went on to international stardom playing Tattoo (“Da Plane, Da Plane!”) opposite Ricardo Montalban on the inexplicably popular television show “Fantasy Island.”  Scaramanga’s miniature manservant is almost as badass and sadistic as his master. Nick Nack giggles with delight as he pits his boss against armed opponents in the house of mirrors. He disguises himself as a sea creature from hell and is only seconds away from killing Bond with King Netptune’s pitchfork before Hai Fat stops him. (Something about not wanting a dead body in his garden.) When forced to fight hand to hand, he’s like a snarling Gremlin, kicking, biting and grabbing anything nearby that can be used as a weapon. Yes, for the climax of the film, Roger Moore as James Bond gets into a fight with a midget. It’s much nastier that it sounds as Nick Nack, armed with a wine rack full of bottles, does considerable damage. That is until Bond shuts him into a suitcase and hangs him in a wicker cage from a ships mast. Did I mention The Man with the Golden Gun can be quite silly?

Bond Girl Actress: Maud Adams has the distinction of being the only Bond girl to be so dubbed in two films and when watcher her in this, her first, it’s not hard to see why. (Ed, Note: yes yes, she also has a cameo in A View to a Kill (1985). Got it, moving on.) Elegant, beautiful in a much more adult way that some previous Bond woman, and classy even while throwing herself at Bond, she has enough going on to understand why Scaramanga would trust her and why Bond would be weary. In other words, she is the opposite of Britt Ekland, the blond haired, blue eye Swede who was married to Peter Sellers, had an affair with Rod Stewart, and bragged about her nights with Warren Beatty. She apparently appeared in some films as well.

Bond Girl’s Name: Britt Ekland’s Mary Goodnight is everything that is wrong with Bond girls rolled up in one package. Bond himself can’t even pretend to give her an ounce of respect and the truth is, she deserves less. Bond first encounters Goodnight when her convertible blocks his pursuit of Maud Adams’ Andrea Anders much to 007 annoyance. Indeed, for the rest of the film Goodnight serves as an obstacle for James to overcome. She falls into the hands of the enemy moments after being entrusted with the golden solar gizmo. She proves to be a complete ass when she nearly gets Bond fried by triggering a laser with her ass. Every time the alleged “fellow agent” showed up I found myself wishing Al Pacino’s character from Glengarry GlenRoss (1992) was on hand. “You are here to help us! Not to f**k us up!” If Goodnight is (bad) comedy then Andrea Anders is most certainly tragedy. She is also one tough cookie. Bond has a habit of walking into hotel rooms to find women bathing, but never has one been armed. “Water pistol?” Bond proceeds to knock to gun out of the bathing beauties hand and smack her around a bit putting Anders in a tight spot. It was she, not Scaramanga, who sent the golden bullet to Bond. She knew 007 would track the assassin down and her hopes were once he found her, a prisoner in Scaramanga’s gilded cage, she would be rescued. But after taking a beating at Bond’s hand, Anders is left wondering if she is about to leave one abusive killer for another. Scaramanga and Bond are again proven to be opposite sides of the same coin and they view the woman between them as nothing but a pawn. Anders sad story reaches its inevitable conclusion when she turns up dead seated next to both men while they continue their egotistical and deadly game. The Bond girls in TMWTGG stand as the embodiment of the two competing tones of the film. Andres is the complex and nuanced story that could have been and Goodnight is the muddled shallow movie that won out in the end.

Bond Girl Sluttiness: The entire plot of the film is set off by an Andrea Anders international booty call, with a (golden) bullet. She offers herself to 007 hoping he will rescue her from Scaramanga but Bond is in fact “just using her you see darling” as he explains to Goodnight. All he cares about is finding Scaramanga and yes, the golden solar McGuffin. But you can’t blame Anders, she got in with the wrong guy and hoped Bond was her ticket out. She is simply playing the hand she’s been dealt. Goodnight on the other hand doesn’t know is she’s coming or going, which is appropriate given her characters IQ is 007.

Bond’s Best Pick-up Line: “Mrs. Anders. I almost didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

Bond Girls Best Pick-up Line: Since there were no real stand-outs the winner is a putdown line delivered by Goodnight. She and Bond sit at a table drinking wine, “Phuyuck, with the complements,” while being entertained by a dozen showroom dancers, natch. (By the by, is that Scaramanga’s boat in the background?) Bond starts to work his magic, “There is really nothing for us to do tonight … OR IS THERE?” Goodnight responds by telling her colleague she refuses to be a notch in his bedpost and a plaything with which he is simply killing time. As she delivers this putdown the crowd in the restaurant applauds, presumable because the dancers finished the number but none-the-less, it was a perfectly timed ovation. For a moment even I was taken aback. “Good for you sister, don’t take any gruff from that swine!” All the goodwill vanished in the very next scene.

Number of Woman 007 Beds: 2, Goodnight and Anders. And now, one of the more awkward scenes I’ve ever witnessed. The set-up is pure Bond and at first, it works on that level. It’s also quite funny, at first. Right after Goodnight turns Bond down she shows up in his hotel room wearing short teddy. Bond simply gestures toward the bed and Goodnight jumps right in. The two are just getting started when someone is heard tampering with the lock on the door. Bond throws the sheets over Goodnight and intercepts Anders breaking and entering. The two sit on the bed next to the lump which Bond convincingly dismisses as “the old pillow trick.” Anders throws herself at Bond who accepts the advances but first, she must leave to slip into something more comfortable. Has anyone, moments away from getting naked anyway, left the room to “slip into something more comfortable?” et, it happens in movies all the time. Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people. Anyway, Bond quickly shoves Goodnight into the closet and gets down the business with Anders, who returns wearing something more comfortable. The idea of the horn-dog agent successfully juggling two women in the same room is a good one and it’s correctly treated lightly and with humor. Cut to Bond smoking a stogie and sporting a blue terrycloth robe as he liberates Goodnight from the closet after two hours. She is rather pissed. Might I add, rightfully so. To ease her fury Bond half heartedly explains “I was just using her you see darling. Your turn will come.” How many ways is this wrong? Bond then looks confused as to why Goodnight would storm out, but only for a moment. This also doesn’t stop the two from getting it on twice later in the film, bookending the midget flight. “Oh James” cooes this twit who was treated poorly throughout the entire film but still dutifully shows up when her turn has come. Told you she doesn’t deserve any respect, she can’t even respect herself. The behavior also speaks rather poorly of our hero.

Number of People 007 Kills: 1. This single kill must be intentional to show no, Bond is not like Scaramanga. The man with the golden gun on the other hand eliminates Anders, Hai Fat, the Solex guy and the guy in the hat from the top of the film. Bond none-the-less dishes out his share of bumps and bruises and shoots a gun at Lazars crotch (everything remains intact). For the climax of the film, Bond finds himself in the same funhouse world where the hat guy was murdered. But Bond is smarter than the average hat guy and once again evens the score by changing the game, this time literally jumping off the field of play to hide in the rafters. Nick Nack can’t see him in the cameras and Scaramanga is equally stymied. Bond then pulls of a quick change switch-a-roo and stands in for his fingerless target practice double. By the time the worlds greatest assassin gets wise, it’s too late and Scaramanga is taken out with a single bullet to the chest. This is a fitting end and a final example of Bond using deception to tilt the game back into his favor.

Most Outrageous Death/s: Another possible reason for the low body count is that Scaramanga doesn’t employ a small army of faceless minions that typically serve as bullet fodder for Bond. In fact, outside of Nick Nack the only other employee is a jumpsuit sporting Reggie Jackson lookalike who runs the solar power plant on the island. He is also a creep who leers at Goodnight and her small bikini a little too long. Goodnight does Bond’s dirty work for him by tossing the dude into one of the liquid nitrogen cooling tanks. What makes this death outrageous is a conveniently posted sign that clearly tells everyone not to do that, throw people into the tank that is. See, his 98.6 F body temp raises the temperature of the gazillion gallon vat of liquid nitrogen enough that the entire island explodes. Even in Bonds world, this is beyond all reason.

Miss. Moneypenny: After turning up in the field the last few outings, Moneypenny is back in her office off M’s. She sets Bond on the path to tracking down Scaramanga by informing him where 002 was when he was killed and who he was with at the time. Bond “You’re better than a computer.” Moneypenny “In so many ways.”

M: I missed M’s office and I was glad to see its return. Although he is home M is as grumpy as ever. “What do you know about Scaramanga 007?” Bond, better than a computer in so many ways, rattles off the man with the golden gun’s vital statics and is then handed the golden bullet “It’s even got my number on it. But who would pay $1 million to have me killed?” “Jealous husbands, humiliated chefs, outraged tailors, the list is endless” M huff back in his delightfully fun curmudgeon mode. M then kicks Bond off the solar doohickey case and tells him to go on sabbatical, essentially an order to sit around and wait to get shot. I found this a rather heartless reaction from the old man until Bond caught on and asked “What if I found him first sir, that would change things?” “Dramatically” M responds with a small smile. M couldn’t order his agent to go after Scaramanga because it has nothing to do with state business, but as a freelancer, Bond can do what he has to do. Good show M! Bond returns the favor when it becomes clear he will need to enter Red China to get Scaramanga and the solar thingamajig. “If the PM were to get word of this he would hang me from a yardarm,” M grouses. “Officially you won’t know at thing about it, sir.”

Q: Thankfully, Q makes a triumphant return and as a bonus, we find ourselves in Q’s lab for the first time since I can’t remember. (Ed note: OK, I can remember, Goldfinger (1964). You’re welcome.) The gadget guru is not at all concerned with the wall crushing missile tests being conducted in the background. Q is to busy performing ballistics analyses on the bullet Bond recovered in Beirut. In a role reversal it is Bond who is short and temperamental with Q and on one level the frustration is understandable. Q and his egg-head partner conclude the bullet is a .42 caliber, a caliber that is not standard for any gun manufacture and therefore must come from a unique, custom built firearm. The lab coat sporting duo tell Bond this development makes the bullet “impossible to trace.” Que Pasa? Wouldn’t a one of a kind bullet that can only be shot from a one of kind gun make tracing the bullet a dream? Find that one unique gun and then you have 100% confirmation what gun shot the bullet and who owns it, no? Any who, egg-head and Q figure out the bullet was crafted by a Portuguese chap named Lazar who lives Macao about 17 seconds after declaring the bullet “untraceable.” PS, I love characters like Lazar, the underground black market guys who channel in shady waters with elusive parties regardless of what “side” is paying. These seem exactly like the kind of “glamorous” individuals who would fit squarely into Bond’s world and I wish 007 came across more of them.

List of Gadgets: Despite Q’s return the film is quite flimsy on the gadget front. Bond does make a custom order for Q to craft him a nipple he can affix to his chest so he can pass as the tri-titted Scaramanga.

Gadgets/British Government Property Bond Destroys: Once Bond has infiltrated Hai Fat’s palace the faux nipple indeed becomes a superfluous papilla and is unceremoniously tossed into a ditch on the side of the road. I feel this ingenious bit of Q craftsmanship deserves a better fate. Perhaps it could end up in the “20^th Century Spy Museum” or be sold off at auction to make up for budget short falls. Bond also manages to get a seaplane blown-up. This is a little more than a monetary concern considering it was destroyed while Bond was operating without M’s “official” knowledge inside China’s boarders. How M explains the missing plane to PM is never addressed. Perhaps we will learn what smooth talk M used to avoid being hung from a yardarm in the next film?

Other Property Destroyed: The belly dancer’s dressing room is trashed when Bond fends off three thugs. Mirrors are cracked, chairs are smashed, and bottles containing perfume are spilled and broken. The cabin in Scaramang’s boat is trashed when Bond fends off Nick Nack. Mirrors are cracked, chairs are smashed, and bottles containing wine are spilled and broken. Lazar will need to make a trip to the tailor thanks to a well placed bullet-hole in the crotch of his trousers. Then there is the collateral damage that occurs during a second act foot/boat/car/car plane chase. The boat chase is slightly reminiscent of the boat chase in the previous film, perhaps due to the appearance of one racist loud mouthed Louisiana sheriff who happens to be vacationing in Asia. Bond causes general confusion on the canal prior to splitting the baddies boat in two. Then there is the car chase that once again somehow has Sheriff J.W. Pepper smack dab in the middle. Roadside stands are put out of business (unless they have insurance covering crazy 70’s movie car chases) and cop cars pile up in the wake of our speeding secret agent.  What was it about the 1970’s and the love of car chases/smash ups? Entire films like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) (with Jackie Gleason playing the J.W. Pepper role) and television shows like “The Dukes of Hazard” (featuring three J.W. Pepper characters) were based on 20 car pile-ups that people walked away from with nary a scratch. Perhaps because 70’s cars had such hefty mass, weight and girth they were just more fun to smash up? (Ed Note: For my money, The Blues Brothers (1980) features one of the best car chases and police car pile-ups ever captured on film.) Finally, Bond blows up Scaramanga’s island because it’s written somewhere in the Magna Carter that Bond films are required to end with an island exploding.

Best One Liners/Quips: After the fight in her dressing room, the belly dancer looks down to discover her navel jewelry, IE the golden bullet, has disappeared. When she screams “I’ve lost my charm!” Bond, who swallowed the bullet during the fight, cracks his jaw and adjusts his tie just so and responds “not from where I’m standing.” The idea that Bond could deliver this after such a physical fight it quite funny and Moore’s timing is perfect.

Bond Cars: Red AMC Hornet X. The American Motors Company, which was bought out by Chrysler in 1985, spent considerable money on product placement in this film. The company’s logo is prominently displayed on screen in several times and I saw the letters AMC in my sleep after watching this movie. It is while driving this AMC car with Pepper riding shotgun that Bond finds himself on the wrong side of a river with nothing more than a broken bridge on the shoreline. I was prepared for the upcoming auto jump but I was not at all prepared for the car, an AMC Hornet, to rotate 360 degrees in a corkscrew trans-river leap. Picture a spiral fired off by John Elway circa 1989 but only with a car, an AMC Hornet to be exact, and you get the idea. And like the crocodile hop from the last film, this stunt was actually done for real. In the 1970’s audiences didn’t just go to the movies for their car wreck jollies. Demolition derbies were extremely popular as were “auto stunt shows.” These grew out of vogue when the much more sophisticated “Monster truck rallies” of the 1980’s came along but in 1974 a paying audience of 20 thousand or so packed the Huston Astrodome to see the 360 degree AMC car jump performed live. I’m a 36 year-old jaded New Yorker and I shit you not when I say I was thrilled and taken 100% by surprise by the “car go spin in air” trick in the film. It’s a go for broke moment that shouldn’t work but does. At some point in the making of the film I picture a PA running up to producers after hearing about the Astrodome stunt for his brother-in-law. “Boss! Why jump a car over a river when we jump a car over a river AND MAKE IT SPIN!” “Yah, that’s sounds great kid, lets do it! Get AMC on the phone! Maybe we can get them to pay for it!” This is a very slippery slope; just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should. The advent of digital effects has given rise to a terrible mindset that says “Hey, we can do anything!”

This is a toolbox that many a filmmaker can not be trusted to use wisely. For stuntmen to pull of the spiral creek jump, every measurement had to be 100% precise or the AMC car and stuntman would go boom. In order for the stunt to work in the context of the movie, all measurements have to be likewise or the stunt will go boom. The actors, the writers, the producers and editors must pull off the silly and unbelievable with the correct mix of tone, set up, humor, music, pacing, and execution or all bets are off. Case in point, not five minutes after the thrilling corkscrew jump, performed by an AMC car, Nick Nack and Scaramanga get away from Bond. They do so by disappearing into a barn, pushing two buttons, and emerging from the barn to revel their car has been converted into an airplane. They then simply takeoff into the wild blue yonder as everyone else stands around gawking. As if things couldn’t get hokier, Goodnight, who is in the trunk of the car-plane, declares “I think they have stopped” and crowbars open the boot to find herself looking down on the Asian country side. It’s too much and it proves to be a fatal misstep that derails any good will that existed previously. We all know at the end of the day Bond is an inherently ridiculous character who finds himself in equally impossible situations that we all know he will negotiate with easy and look great doing so. We are willing to suspend our disbelief in exchange for the promise of an entertaining, well told story. Just don’t go too far into crazytown. When the car plane flew away my wife turned to me and said “when did we get to the land of make believe?” She was 100% right, obviously the entire thing is make believe but within the films own rules and context it worked, until a car turned into a plan, and then it didn’t. I return once again to the immortal words of Spinal Taps David St. Hubbins “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” Ed. Note: This section of BlogJamesBlog was brought to you by American Motor Company, out of business since 1985.

Felix Leiter: No Felix, but Bond does have an American law enforcement partner; one Sheriff J.W. Pepper who (I guess) was such a popular character in the previous movie that EON had no choice but to bring him back. I avoided talking about him as much as I could in the Live and Let Die entry, just assuming I could forget about him. Now that he’s back, in an expanded role none-the-less, I guess we need to acknowledge him. Truth is, I want to like him. There are parts of the character that are great, like his overt racism for starters. If a fat vacationing southern cop calling the locals “pointed headed pajama wearing morons” isn’t a perfect send up of the ugly American abroad, I don’t know what is. I love that he always yelling about “getting the commies” and I love that he is the exact opposite of Bond. But for some reason, he just rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps because he’s such an exaggerated one dimensional cartoon. He just never fits in with anything going on around him. It’s almost like his character wandered in from another film and everything comes to a screeching halt when he’s on screen. That said, I still laughed when, while being handcuffed by the Chinese police, Pepper yelled “I’m going get the FBI on your ass, the CIA, God damn it, I’m going to get Henry Kissinger!” That’s humor.

Bond Timepiece: Rolex Submariner, but not the tricked out model from the last movie. Still, the watch looks good and tells time.

Other Notable Bond Accessories: Bond’s Walther PPK might not have the flash of the Golden Gun, but it gets the job done and serves 007 quite well.

Number of Drinks 007 Consumes: 3. After smacking Andrea Anders around a bit Bond proves he’s not such a bad guy by opening a bottle of Champaign. During his last trip to the Orient, Bond was all kinds of pissed off by the “Siamese Vodka” he was forced to drink. This go around he’s equally displeased when the house buys him a bottle of Phuyuck wine. He continues to bitch about it even when he gets back to his hotel room which I found to be quite endearing. Much later when 007 flies onto Scaramanga’s island, Nick Nack fails to note the “De plane, De plane” is coming but he does offer Bond a bottle of Dom. Sadly, Bond never gets around to drinking it. However, Scaramanga does honor the Bond villain tradition that started with Dr. No by serving 007 a top notch meal complete with drink, in this case some vino. Bond declares the wine is “Excellent, and slightly reminiscent of a ’34 Mouton” prompting Scaramanga to scribble a note to order some more for the cellar. It appears he also shares Bonds taste for finer booze.

Bond’s Gambling Winnings: Every good Bond film should have at least on location that makes you say “I want to go there!” The Floating Palace Casino in Macao is that place in TMWTGG. I have no clue what game was being played but it involved mahjong tiles and players gathered around not only the table but hanging over rails a flight above. These players had bets and winnings delivered via a network of hanging baskets that zipped to and fro in an elegant dance. Bond is in the gambling den tailing Mrs. Anders and he jumps up from the table as soon as she leaves. He doesn’t appear to grab any money and if he did I have no clue how much.

List of Locations: In addition to the fantastic casino, Hamilton does a far better job of capturing The Far East than Lewis Gilbert did in You Only Live Twice. The market streets in Hong Kong and Macao have the perfect blend of the familiar and exotic. The karate school and Hai Fat’s palace are in the story book looking ancient city of Thailand and couldn’t be more perfect. A lot of water front real estate is featured in this film and as we discussed above, Hong Kong Harbor is used to maximum effect. Scaramanga’s hideout is so fantastic it’s hard to believe the location is real but it is. Shot on the then remote islands of Khow-Ping-Kan in the sea near Phuket, Thailand, the location is now a popular tourist sight and is named “James Bond Island.” Even the throwaway scenes in Beirut (which I’m sure were shot on a back lot in England) feel real and not like a set. Then there is the obligatory big industrial underground set that the bad guys always have and always looks terrible. This one, like all the warehouse size sets from the previous films, looks like it was put together with rejected erecter set parts. The solar energy complex is need by Scaramanga because…… he clams to power his island by I suspect a few panels on the top of one of those rock cliffs would do the trick. Nope, the reason an assassin has this monstrosity of a power plant is so it can blow up at the end. Guy Hamilton says as much on the DVD extras. There is this feeling among the production team that Bond must destroy a huge industrial complex at the climax of the films. Why? I have no problems with Bond blowing stuff up when it’s part of the story but we never see this room, nay, zip code of the island until late in the third act. In look and feel the room is completely incongruous with the funhouse/cave house vibe created by the rest of the joint. And not to beat a dead horse but I must again ask, why in the hell does Scaramanga care about becoming a solar energy CEO in the first place? Rather than allowing the action to unfold in the world around it we are left with Bond and a girl in a bikini running away from exploding barrels and falling girders. Disappointing.

Bonds Special Abilities Displayed: One of the hallmarks of true intelligence is being smart enough to know when you don’t know something, and then asking the right questions. While escaping the Kung Fu students Bond jumps on a little outboard motorboat and takes off down the canal. The boat however begins to sputter and slowdown to a near stop with the Kung Fu boat fast approaching. A little boy swims up to Bonds craft, jumps in, and start trying to sell him a wooden elephant for 40 bucks. Still monkeying with the motor, Bond turns to the kid and in a my kingdom for a horse moment offers “20 thousand if you know how to make this boat go faster.” Quicker than you can say “Richard the 3^rd” the kid flips a switch, the boat takes off like a rocket, and the kid has his hand out. “20 thousand!” Bond, shocked he’s moving again, simply tossed the kid overboard, “I’ll have to owe you.” At the top of the film Bond is able to recall Scaramanga’s dossier off the top of his head. Bond also picked up a course in solar engineering 101 somewhere along the way as he is able to bark orders to Goodnight about what buttons to push and levers to pull on a control panel that runs the entire power plant. He’s clearly a skilled shot; he just missed Lazar (on purpose) and bulls-eye’s Scaramanga. And then there is the flip over the water in his hot little red car. (An AMC I believe…) Finally, for the first time, Bond pilots a plane. This is one of the last vehicles by my count that he had yet to drive (no spaceships yet but I suspect that will be remedied soon with Mookraker looming on the horizon) and it’s kind of a big deal to learn Bond is pilot. The film treats it as a given when we cut, and there is Bond, calmly sitting in the cockpit of a seaplane as it brushes the tops of trees and fly between two rock-face cliffs. He is flying this low, you see, so he can get to Scaramanga’s island without being detected on radar. I am no pilot and I’ve never been in the military but this whole flying under the radar thing never held much water with me. I mean, does flying under the radar really work? It’s a given in film that it does. It’s kind of like a guy pulling out a credit card to open a locked door. We as an audience never question it. Ahhh, OK, fly under the radar, got it. But if it is that easy then why have radar in the first place? Why not just take a boat if radar somehow doesn’t work near the surface of the earth? Anyway, Bond is an ace pilot who not only lands the seaplane perfectly but is able to beach it earning a perfect 10 for style points.

Thoughts on Film: The Man with the Golden Gun is an enjoyable but ultimately frustrating film. It introduces and plays around with potentially wonderful ideas that no one involved in making the movie seemed at all concerned with exploring in any real depth. Like all veterans with a history of success, when producers found themselves in unknown territory they quickly returned to the old playbook. “Hell, it worked so many times in the past…” The idea of Bond going after the ying to his yang thanks to a price being put on his head is just fantastic. Scaramanga and Bond could have matched wits in a game of cat and mouse but the Goodnight character, the J.W. Pepper return, the entire solar energy angle, and several other plot devices are shoehorned in so producers feel like they are making a capital “B” Bond Film. Why does the villain need to be hell bent on world domination? The fact that he can kill anyone, anywhere at any time, including Bond, is not enough? Apparently not, there is the need to go BIG! And in doing so, the film is reduced to a cliché rescue mission; Bond must save the girl and the dingus. I understand 100% that part of why we love Bond is because he is big, bold, and loud, but he doesn’t have to be, and the beginning of this film proves it. Very few albums in rock and roll are bigger than Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, The Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The Wild, The Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle. Those records put Bruce on the map and he was known at the leader of a huge arena filling band. But that didn’t stop the poet laureate of New Jersey from releasing Nebraska, a demo he recorded alone on a four track that he carried around for two weeks in his back pocket before he realized he was sitting (literally) on a classic. Even thought Springsteen was famous for Phil Specteresk Walls of Sound, he trusted his music could be just as powerful without Clarence, Max, and Little Steve. And that is why he’s the Boss, he trusts his instincts. Broccoli, Saltzman, and Hamilton should have trusted in the story and their character here, and audiences would have happily followed. But they gave up on Bond, and fell back on Bond formulas. Which brings us back to where we walked in, is The Man with the Golden Gun a long lost forgotten masterpiece? No, like Magical Mystery Tour, it’s got amazing elements and limitless potential, but ultimately the movie never comes together. It could have been one of the greats for sure, on par with the character driven From Russia With Love, but ultimately to much noise gums up the works and the finally act doesn’t gel with the promise, tone, or even the story set up in the first two. That said, TMWTGG is worth revisiting. Even at the end, as Moore is steering the ship away from the exploding island, he gives the fireball behind him a sideways glance and allows himself a subtitle smile. He’s in on the joke, and I’m sure it’s a lot of fun to make a living running around in front of movie cameras as shit blows up. For parts of this movie, we share in the fun as well.

Martini ratings: