Spy Sandwich.

James Bond 007 and his female Russian counterpart, Agent XXX, are ordered to join forces to stop a megalomaniac sinking civilization beneath the sea. But is it naïve of M and KGB not to know that when England and Russia end up in bed together – they really end up in bed together?

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is Roger Moore’s 3^rd Bond movie (from Ian Fleming’s 10^th Bond novel, publ. 1962), and we can see how Moore’s fans might have come to regard him as “better than Connery” with this third solid actioner (despite the odd hiccup of the “Talking Not Shooting” trope in all three adventures).

The cold open is breathtaking (except for the rear projections) as henchmen ski-chase Bond down a mountain. There are so many good practical skiing shots, you’d think the closeup shots of Bond with absurd rear projection backgrounds tilting at comical angles would reduce the excitement of the chase, but I guess audiences of the day were inured to these necessary evils. The efx are a scant improvement on the ski effects in HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (from eight years ago – illustrating how slowly early efx were improving), but suddenly none of it matters – as Bond skis directly off a cliff! Stuntman Rick Sylvester in an unbroken take, in imperceptible slomo, glides off the lip of the mountain, detaching his skis and then freefalling for an eternity before deploying a parachute emblazoned with the Union Jack!

Connery never opened with anything this exhilarating!

Sylvester was paid a record $30,000 for the stunt, off the El Capitan in Yosemite, California, and was credited as the first ever ski BASE jump (Building Antenna Span or Earth).

Add to this stomach-turning fall into space, one of the best, most poignant songs of the series, Carly Simon crooning sensually, Nobody Does It Better (the first Bond theme song titled differently from its film).

British and Russian nuclear submarines have gone missing. In England, M (Bernard Lee) puts his top agent on it – James Bond, alerted via a Dymo-type readout from his watch (very quaint). In Russia, the KGB leader also gets his top agent on it: we intrude on a guy and girl making love; the man answers a call for a mission, as ‘70’s sexism kicks in and audiences of the day take it for granted HE is the “top agent.” But he leaves and SHE takes a secret call – it is she who is Agent XXX (Barbara Bach, pre-Ringo Starr).

(Note: Walter Gotell, who plays KGB General Anatol Gogol here, appeared in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE as a henchman. This is his first of 6 appearances as Gogol; his last would be THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. Seven Bond films total – that’s as much as Connery and Moore!)

Richard Kiel as Jaws: Dental Plans Gone Wild.

Somewhere under the ocean, we meet Stromberg (Curt Jurgens, THE LONGEST DAY) in his lair called Atlantis, that looks like a WAR OF THE WORLDS Tripod Fighting Machine when it rises above the waves. He commissions his giant henchman named Jaws (Richard Kiel) to recover micro-film of a submarine tracking device. We have achieved McGuffin, ladies and gentlemen! (The unkillable Jaws would become a beloved villain of the Bond franchise, also appearing in the next entry, MOONRAKER, and being redeemed there. I think it’s because we all recognized that – apart from his 7’2” killer – the real life Kiel looked like he found it hard to walk or run comfortably; maybe he was at peace with himself, but his gigantism seemed more of a hindrance than a boon. We empathized with the guy as a fellow human, not as a Bond villain, and I’m sure no fans had any qualms about him finding true love onboard the Moonraker.)

So begins the quest for 007 and XXX to each find the tracking device.

To Egypt, chasing down info on missing submarines, with Polaris missiles onboard. (Developed by the U.S. specifically to be launched from submarines, the Polaris missile was THE British nuclear deterrent by the mid ‘70s; a creamy cultural tie-in.) And we marvel at the location shooting – besides the exotic locations in Italy, Canada and Scotland, the most exotic location of all – Egypt. There’s nothing like being there – on the enigmatic Giza Plateau, with those Ancient Alien super-generators in the background ([whisper] the pyramids).

It is here that Bond meets Anya/Agent XXX (Bach, cheekbones carved from the same undying rock of the pharaoh’s tombs, nipples so close to the edge of those tantalizing plunging necklines). Conversant with each others’ resumes, he knows her drink and she knows his; she reels off his history, about being married only once — he stops her — a painful topic, as it happened to the OTHER guy…

They both want the McGuffin. But Jaws gets it first. Biting his victims like some steel-jawed vampire.

Pursued to the great Great Hypostyle Hall in Karnak, Jaws loses Bond and Anya amongst those monolith columns. Again, just being in the real places stirs the blood in our temples (didja see what I did there – ha!). This Bond adventure, like the temples it visits, is feeling as solid as stone. Then – Abu Simbel Temple, the four statues of Ramses II guarding the entrance – with MI6 headquarters underneath! Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) onscreen for less than a minute.

The LAWRENCE OF ARABIA theme as Bond and Anya trudge across desert sands. (How are they allowed to use this music? And why do they use it? Wouldn’t it behoove you as a brand to stick to your own themes?)

This is the first time Bond has been paired with another equally proficient agent. Yes, there was Agent Goodnight (Britt Ekland) in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, but she was eye candy. Anya is Bond’s equal at tactics, research and self-defense. They even bond as two professionals drawn to each other’s expertise. So we feel their urgency when they’re on a train, on either side of the door separating their cabins, wondering like teenagers when the other will give in to their urges and barge in.

Jaws attacks. Which brings them into the same cabin and into the same consoling bed. Tending wounds, emotional or physical, was always about sex…

Carolyn Munro: As the Millennials say, I just can’t—

Funny old Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is a big part of the story, appearing at many points with gadgets and information. He’s the Bond series Plot Convenience pudding bear. He brings Bond the Lotus Esprit car, loaded with the usual Bond accoutrement. Anya greets Q with his rarely-mentioned name, “Good morning, Major Boothroyd.” Because she’s a spy. She knows his name (as Chris Cornell would sing three decades hence).

Posing as husband and wife, Bond and Anya visit Stromberg in Atlantis, whom they deduce is responsible for the sub disappearances. Stromberg’s assistant meets them. And we are floored by an even sexier version of Barbara Bach – Carolyn Munro (AT THE EARTH’S CORE)!!! Such fecund lubricity, such salivating eroticism! Almost canceling out Jane Seymour as the hottest Bond babe! However there’s one thing that Jane has that Carolyn lacks – innocence! Jane is the precious virgin love-bucket, while Carolyn’s bikini body simply screams out in urgency for my naked flesh! I can’t even concentrate anymore. What was I talking about?

Stromberg is a Blofeld-Lite and cannot capture the menace of even the least menacing Blofeld, Charles Gray. For probing into his affairs, he orders Bond and Anya killed. (What would their paparazzi name be: Bondanya? Banya? Anyond? Or 007XXX? Triple X7?)  A great helicopter chase of the Lotus; great only because Caroline Munro is flying the helicopter in a bikini.

Some of the action music (by composer Marvin Hamlisch) sounds like LIVE AND LET DIE; he uses that same technique of xylophone on top of accent notes.

The Lotus dives off a pier into the ocean – and transforms into a slick little submarine. In keeping with the theme of the nuclear subs, from below the surface, it launches a tiny Polaris missile at Caroline’s helicopter – and that’s just wrong.

Just when we think her role has been relegated to saying, “James!” every two minutes to warn Bond of danger, Anya presses buttons on the Lotus, launching missiles at pursuers. He asks, “How did you know about that?” “I stole the blueprints of this car 2 years ago!”

As we’re considering the bronzed smooth Anya the perfect spy soulmate for the flighty Bond, she discovers it was Bond who killed her husband recently (on that ski slope). All their bonding seems wasted as she vows vengeance. Bond mitigates angrily, “In this job we all know that any of us can get killed! He knew that too! Yes, I killed him!” She replies coldly, “When the mission is over, I am going to kill you.” I kinda wished the filmmakers followed through with this gritty, tragic plotline, making them mortal enemies after bosom buddies, with Bond having another great love that he himself would have to kill. What a great Greek-Shakespearean tragedy! Instead, we all know Bond’s musk cannot be resisted and the inherent sexism will flop Anya back into his arms.

The finale onboard Stromberg’s giant ship, where Bondanya discovers Strom is a different kind of megalomaniac – he doesn’t want to blackmail New York and Moscow with missiles – he wants to annihilate them and create his own undersea kingdom.

James Bond on a future-boat.

Bond really slides into his role of Commander Bond here, leading the charge of the British and Russian captives, within the massive indoor sets of Stromberg’s ship, with shooting, screaming and Pretty Orange Explosions aplenty. After they escape Stromberg’s ship in their sub, they blow it up for screenplay closure.

Bond uses a jet-ski to speed to Atlantis to rescue Ringo’s love interest. (The Jet Ski was domesticated in the early ‘70s, so I’m presuming the filmmakers throw it into the plot because it’s a relatively new gadget – but the waterscooter design was around since the ‘50s, so is Bond behind the curve here?)

In the last battle – Jaws again! Bond uses a giant magnet (the type used to pick up cars in the junkyard, that happens to be in Stromberg’s shark pool room for no apparent reason) to pick up Jaws by the jaws and throw him to the sharks – Jaws against Jaws!

Ends with 007 jawing XXX.

As with many Bond writers, Christopher Wood (novelist turned screenwriter, in his first Bond film) and Richard Maibaum adapt an Ian Fleming title to the screen, not using any plot elements from Fleming’s novel. Lewis Gilbert‘s direction seems classier than his last Bond (Connery in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE).

SPY WHO LOVED ME is one of the better Bond entries and I’m wondering whether that’s because of the potent mix of writer and director. Throughout the Bond series, I’ve tried to make sense of the inconsistent quality of the various films by examining the teaming of directors and writers. I thought I pinpointed Richard Maibaum as a writer who brought The Stupid consistently – and then he co-wrote (with Kevin McClory) the lean THUNDERBALL with director Terence Young. Meaning Young might have reined in Maibaum’s Stupid – and then we see they were both onboard the idiotic FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (so – maybe it was McClory who did the reining?). In SPY WHO LOVED ME we see the primary writer Wood might be reigning in Maibaum’s Stupid – and then Wood’s next screenplay, MOONRAKER, outdoes all of Maibaum’s Stupid in one fell swoop – with this director Lewis Gilbert! Meaning the same team that brought us this good film also brought us the next dumb film!

It doesn’t make sense – UNLESS – we surmise that the Bond series producer Cubby Broccoli was simply churning out this cash-cow product and any “good” entries were simply flukes? Sorry, Bond fans, you don’t want to imagine the godfather of a series you hold dear was a mercenary who never cared for his own product’s quality, or your intelligence, taste or enjoyment, but if you do an objective examination, with pie charts, Venn diagrams and those wall displays with the pins and photos and connecting lines, you’ll see the horrible truth. These men were a meat factory. And you were the cows…

No spy ever loved you.

END

Moonraper.

007. In space!

It’s not as epic, or even as amusing, as it sounds. Matter of fact, MOONRAKER, once the highest-grossing of the Bond franchise, is probably the worst James Bond movie ever. This whole enterprise reminds me of KISS.

When disco was stomping the charts in the late ’70s, KISS – ever the commercialists – jumped the night fever bandwagon and released a couple of albums that pandered to the swivel-hipsters – Dynasty and Unmasked. So too, James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli must have watched as STAR WARS (1977) and STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE (1979) opened up new filmic horizons, desperate to cash in on the space craze with his own brand. Since author Ian Fleming had written no actual space stories featuring his James Bond character, Broccoli decided to rape Fleming’s novel of the same name (his 3^rd James Bond story, published in 1955), in which a nuclear missile was named Moonraker.

Like the KISS experiment, MOONRAKER worked for its time, but is now looked upon as goofy. Roger Moore – in this 11th Bond film (and Moore’s 4th as Bond) – is still Dressed To Kill but Tears Are Falling if this is the best the franchise can do. (And look at the poster: It’s meant to be motion blur, but doesn’t Moore look like he’s wearing Ace Frehley boots?)

A Space Shuttle called Moonraker is stolen and Bond is commissioned to find it, uncovering a plot by a billionaire named Drax (the expressionless Michael Lonsdale) who wants to create his own Dynasty of perfect humans.

Writer Christopher Wood doesn’t so much craft a story as create a series of fine messes that Bond must get out of, with no thought to logic, continuity, motivation or plot. And we must presume director Lewis Gilbert to be mildly retarded to advocate such scatterbrained screenwriting. (Note this is the same team who brought us the previous sturdy Bond adventure THE SPY WHO LOVED ME.)

What else can we make of a movie made up of scenes with no connecting fabric and no thought to retaining tone (Bond goes from a slapstick gondola chase to a toxic lab, to a karate chop alley; he falls from a cable car, escapes an ambulance and then is a high plains drifter with the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN theme running under him)? It’s not like all the globe-trotting and disparate backdrops cohere into a tense thriller or unveil a greater revelation. They’re to distract you from the vapidity of the movie.

The first scenes are stock Bond: Bernard Lee as M, Desmond Llewelyn as Q and Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, who is getting way too old to flirt with. As soon as the mission starts, the film falls Into The Void.

Bond visits Drax’s Space Shuttle site in California, beds the chopper pilot (Corinne Clery, THE STORY OF O), whose bedchambers are somehow right next door to Drax’s safe containing secret documents, which Bond cracks, taking pics of the documents with his camera labeled “007” (because he’s a secret agent of course, who doesn’t want anyone to know he’s 007 – unless they find his camera). We expect a certain amount of ludicrousness in a James Bond movie, but stupidity within stupidity becomes intolerable. Bad acting and non-acting doesn’t help. Look at the reactions of people to intense situations: Bond escapes a centrifuge, disoriented, and the female scientist comes to his aid with a half-hearted, “Let me help you,” and a fishwife’s hand on his arm; or when Bond is hanging off a cable car and the same woman says with the fervor of a person reading the phone book, “Hang on, James.”

That woman with the barely-conscious delivery is a – snigger – CIA agent posing as a NASA scientist, with a sensible Bond-girl name, Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles, whose acting talent is in inverse proportion to her looks. And her looks are stunning). Bond treats her with the requisite condescension and misogyny a female in any Bond movie deserves.

Drax orders his assassin Chang (Toshiro Suga) to kill Bond, yet Chang seems to be taking the exact opposite approach, appearing like Cato from THE PINK PANTHER movies at the most inopportune times, getting his ass kicked by Bond and proactively NOT killing him. By this I mean, I’m pretty sure guns were invented at the time of this story’s setting – yet Chang uses bokken, a centrifuge, glassware and intense staring. No one thinks to just shoot the bothersome secret agent when he’s standing right in front of them with his hands up.

Roger Moore is so damnably full of himself with his snappy comebacks that Tom Cruise called from the future and wanted his smug back. Every chick he comes across, he comes across. It gets annoying after awhile.

Seven-foot tall Richard Kiel reprises his role as the steel-toothed assassin Jaws (from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, but you better have seen that film or his pseudo-comedic appearance here makes no sense at all). His battle with Bond atop a cable car brings the movie up to the energy level of a toothpaste commercial.

Cuke raker.

After Bond and his chick fall to the grass from the cable car, ambulance interns appear, knock them out and tie them to cots in the back of a speeding ambulance. My question: Why does this ambulance sequence even exist? Firstly, it presumes these bad guys (sent by Drax, we’re guessing) knew where Bond was going to land – over the miles of cable car line; it also presumes Jaws failed in his mission to kill Bond. If the cable car was a murder attempt, why don’t the ambulance guys finish the job? Where are they speeding? To Drax? For more exposition dialogue on his diabolical plots, while complaining that Bond “refuses to die”? We’ll never know, because Bond and the guard grapple and fall out the back of the ambulance, which just drives off. With neck-snapping suddenness, Bond is riding a horse in a serape to his bosses in– where are we now? Who cares?! Moore must have made such an impression with that boat chase in LIVE AND LET DIE that they put him in a second boat chase in this movie… where he fires a torpedo at an enemy speedboat – and the guys inside the boat – not the boat – blow up when the torpedo hits. Show us how much you care, filmmakers!

After every passive-aggressive unsuccessful attempt on Bond’s life, Drax would complain to Bond how unsportsmanlike he is for not dying – while Drax’s armed guards stand around with machine guns that they never think to use.

Bond hang-glides into a rainforest. He follows a woman into a Mayan pyramid, where a flock of women wearing no bras look at him blandly. Then an anaconda puppet attacks him, which he stabs. Then Drax appears, complains to Bond once again how hard it is to kill him, while more knobs stand near Drax NOT pulling the triggers of their – Love Guuuuns.

By now we’ve forgotten this movie had anything to do with space. Drax shows what a 2000 Man he is by unveiling his command center, with six shuttles in liftoff countdowns, while he attempts yet another passive-aggressive demise for Bond. Which Bond escapes, then commandeering a shuttle to follow Drax on his Rocket Ride.

At the 1:33:00 mark, the feature piece of this movie, the Moonraker Space Shuttles and the space station where Drax plans to be God Of Thunder. Where the filmmakers display their zero knowledge of space shuttles, orbital dynamics, zero-g, lasers, manned maneuvering units, and kindergarten physics. Roger Ebert loved the scene where the gravity was nullified and hundreds of people floated into the air. But EVERYTHING in these space scenes is so painfully incorrect, it’s impossible to believe these filmmakers lived in the era of real life space shuttles. Then again, morons lived during all eras in history.

Last sequence is a laugh-a-minute attempt at suspense as Bond’s shuttle chases down 3 toxic probes into the atmosphere. No Sonic Boom as Goodhead says the Shuttle is “skipping off the Earth’s atmosphere” (which means it’s at too shallow an angle for re-entry), in the next instant, telling us she’s “coming in too steeply.” You can’t have Two Sides Of The Coin, woman!

As with most Bond adventures, movie ends with Bond and a chick in a prurient embrace, with his agency breaking in on him Calling Dr. Love.

END