Revenge is best served Bond…

James Bond goes rogue, on a vendetta to destroy the man who tried to kill his best friend.

LICENSE TO KILL cold opens with a gag copied by Christopher Nolan himself in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)! On the fly, James Bond hooks a biplane’s tail to a helicopter to drag it into custody, nose-down ass-up! Exactly like Bane would hook a smaller plane’s tail to a larger plane 23 years later! Nolan has confessed to the homage.

Timothy Dalton returns as Bond for his second and final adventure, bigger, bolder and Bonder, in one of the best-crafted 007 films ever! (As a youngster, I completely missed the Dalton era, but now I’m annoyed that circumstances precluded Dalton making more Bond films. So sad how fate screwed him. From his two excellent entries, it is no surprise he would be chosen as the second-best Bond (behind Connery) in a recent 2020 poll.)

I grew up on the paperbacks in high school and Dalton is by far the closest, physically and emotionally, to Bond in the books. A manic depressive loner, cynical about class and money, but with a few shreds of decency left…
— Daniel Schaeffer, YouTube.

This is a Bond that ran out of shits to give before the opening credits.
— Clear Critique, YouTube.

Bond and his CIA buddy Felix Leiter (David Hedison) are on their way to Felix’s wedding when a CIA chopper intercepts them with news they are picking up a wanted drug lord, Sanchez (Robert Davi – he was Agent Johnson in DIE HARD 1988… And in the CIA chopper is Grand L. Bush – he was in DIE HARD too, as Agent Johnson – The Other One!) In his tux, Felix answers the call of duty, with James tagging along.

Just before the CIA land, Sanchez is busting his loopy girlfriend with a lover, cutting out the guy’s heart (gruesome!), and then putting her across his knee for a lashing (hot!). Talisa Soto plays Sanchez’s girl Lupe, with a dull, unchanging expression on her unibrow throughout; one of those women terrorized by her man, who stays by his side sycophantically. Which makes her complicit in his crimes, and it’s anyone’s guess why MI6 and CIA don’t drag her in to testify against Sanchez. (Maybe it’s the ingrained misogyny; you see, when Lupe asserts, “He doesn’t tell me anything,” they just let her off the hook, because – why would a man tell a woman his plans? They take it for granted she is not involved or aware because – woman! Misogyny working against justice!) And with Talisa being such a blunt non-actor, completely NOT in the moment, we feel nothing for her predicament, even though we are meant to empathize with her later turning over a new leaf and falling for Bond.

With Dalton doing most of his own stunts, after he hooks Sanchez’s plane to his helicopter, he and Felix parachute to the wedding. How much more MAN can be squeezed into this Bond?! And – emulating the bridal dress tail – they walk into the church with their chutes trailing behind them… romantic!…

And thankfully – no more New Romantics! After Duran Duran and A-ha pandered to younger listeners, it’s back to the orchestral impact of a powerful Bond song, Gladys Knight ripping into License To Kill, with big, major-third intervals, copied directly from the GOLDFINGER soundtrack, conjuring that epic spy élan, arranged by rock conductor Michael Kamen. (The outro song, If You Asked Me To, is performed by Patti La Belle. Two great vocalists bookending the film, only adding to Dalton’s luster.)

After Sanchez walks, with the aid of CIA traitor Everett McGill as Killifer (well, the name sez it all, don’t it?), he returns with his right-hand man Dario (Benicio Del Toro, so young and angular, you could sharpen your knife on his face) to kill Felix and his new wife Della (Priscilla Barnes; she replaced Suzanne Sommers in THREE’S COMPANY.)

As soon as Q invents cellphones, Bouvier and Bond can’t resist texting each other.

Sanchez feeds Felix to a shark, which Felix somehow survives! (If a shark that size gets on top of you like that, it’s gonna take the whole bottom half of your body! After all the sharks Richard Maibaum has written into Bond adventures, you’d think he knows how they work by now.) Whereas Della is dead after what we presume is a gang rape. (Since when have penises been more lethal than sharks? And she still has all her lingerie on!) Bond finds Felix and Della, and is rabid to make Sanchez pay, even though his boss M (Robert Brown) orders him onto another case, correctly stating Felix is CIA business. Bond refuses the order – M revokes his license to kill! And Bond Spock-chops his way outa the base, M watching him flee, with a whispered wish, “God help you, Commander…”

Hedison is the first person to reprise the role of Felix, first appearing with Moore in 1973’s LIVE AND LET DIE. It would have made sense and been more compelling had he returned for this film’s predecessor with Dalton, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (I guess scheduling forced John Terry into the role as Felix), so the filmmakers are tasked with establishing that Felix is enough of a bro for Bond to go rogue for, so they create a strong emotional connection by making Bond Felix’s best man. At the wedding, Felix and Della gift Bond a cigarette lighter, with Felix alluding to Bond’s former wife, for more connectivity.

Like any spy who goes rogue, Bond can still do whatever he wants, travel wherever he needs, kill whomever he wishes, and acquire any spy gadgets necessary – like, how’d he get that snazzy manta ray suit to infiltrate Sanchez’s sub?! Musta been Q (Desmond Llewelyn in a meatier role than usual), who aids Bond throughout (explosive clock, camera gun, palm recognition, laser x-ray camera… manta ray suit?). Excited to be in the field, Q should be risking his own blacklisting by MI6 for helping 007, but there seems to be zero stakes for both these guys in being without Queen and country. License to Kill. Or not. Makes no diff. Q is told to leave many times by James, “You’re not a field agent” (maybe to drive home that he shouldn’t be aiding James illegally), but Q sulks and Bond lets him hang around. But dammit, MI6 should make Q a field agent after all the time he’s spent in the field babying Bond!

There is sadly minimal screentime for Caroline Bliss, the most beautiful Moneypenny to ever grace the Bond secretary desk. My heart aches.

Credit where it’s due to director John Glen (his 5^th Bond) and writer Maibaum (his 13^th Bond), for both going out big on LICENSE, their last involvement with the franchise. I’ve spat my share of insults at Maibaum, but in LICENSE, he pays off his usual non-sequitur foreshadowing elegantly: Killifer is eaten in the same shark tank where they threw Felix (owned by Anthony Zerbe, who recently tried to kill KISS with his impostors), and Sanchez is ultimately dispatched with the lighter that Felix gifted Bond.

Carey Lowell is the Bond Girl, Pam Bouvier, one of Felix’s informants who aids Bond; schoolgirl beauty and womanly allure, even though her eyes point in two different directions. A strong, independent army pilot, who can take care of herself in combat, a very cool partner for Bond, nonetheless relegated to posing as Bond’s “executive secretary” to infiltrate Sanchez at his Mexican base. In the spirit of women’s lib, she asks, “Why can’t YOU be MY executive secretary?” Well, south of the border, it’s a man’s world, hon!

Bond offers his services to Sanchez, posing as a British government defector – to destroy his enemy from within. Meanwhile, other undercover operations are closing in on Sanchez (led by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) – and Bond is getting in their way, so they kidnap him, with intent to return him to London. While he is tied to a table, Sanchez attacks – and “rescues” Bond inadvertently, who looks like a fellow bad guy being interrogated by these CIA narcs.

Bond frames a Sanchez flunky for stealing money from Sanchez. Sanchez inflates the flunky until he explodes in a pressure tank washer with all the stolen money. The best line – when a henchman asks Sanchez about the bloodied cash in the washer with the body, “What about the money?” Sanchez: “Launder it.”

There are CDs for their computers, rather than floppy disks, and James proves himself adept at working one of those green-text monsters – which is more than I can say for 5 years later – Pierce’s GOLDENEYE, where the attitude toward computers has changed to that of a feminine role.

It all boils down to Sanchez’s heroin smuggling, which someone really detests, as Bond just stabs blindly at heroin packets, spurting them everywhere underwater. Henchies cut his air hose, and he spearguns the pontoon of a seaplane and water-skis outa there barefoot!  Onboard the plane, more stabbing at money packets, bashing his assailants with bags of money that go scattering over the ocean; it’s like he’s in the thrall of destroying drugs for Christ or something…

Speaking of religious fanatics, Wayne Newton is a dirty-old-evangelical called “Professor Joe” conning old republiKKKans out of their life savings, and laundering Sanchez’s money.

An exciting finale that reminds us of DUEL as we see plane against semi-trailer, semis impacting like a game of marbles, Bond tilting a semi and driving it on its edge, rocket launchers and Pretty Orange Explosions.

For some reason, undeserving Lupe tries to end up with James, declaring her love for him in front of Bouvier (Q shaking his head, knowing he’ll get sloppy seconds no matter the outcome), then immediately turning to a Mexican dignitary when Bond romantically dives into a pool to pull Bouvier into his watery embrace. Guess he prefers the lazy-eye to the unibrow…

END

Bringing the sexy back.

James Bond 007 is back, with a savage demeanor, a rocket-shooting car, a KGB plot, an illegal arms deal, a beautiful blonde, an even more beautiful secretary, and a double double-cross. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS takes its title from Ian Fleming’s 14^th book and final collection of Bond short stories published in 1966, Octopussy and The Living Daylights. A new opening gunbarrel sequence; the rifling is now tinted gunmetal blue, and a new Bond dynamically fires on us—

new bond: dalton, timothy dalton

39-year-old Briton Timothy Dalton was approached to be Bond way back ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE in 1969, but felt he was too young at the time (around 23) – and he only came onboard for this movie because Pierce Brosnan was fucked over by the producers of his TV series REMINGTON STEELE who, overjoyed that Pierce was chosen to play Bond, decided to squeeze more STEELE episodes out of him to cash in on his higher profile.

But Bond producer Cubby Broccoli said Fuck You to the STEELE producers and hired Dalton instead.

After Dalton turned down the 1969 offer, he busied himself with TV movies and TV series, and in a way, it’s fortunate that he never hit big with any of them, or this second opportunity may not have arisen.

Dalton signed for three Bond films, but after this film’s sequel, LICENSE TO KILL, legal issues between Cubby Broccoli’s EON Productions and United Artists held up production of the third film for nearly 5 years; by the time the court battles ended, Dalton had lost the taste for Bond, and let his contract expire, never to renew it.

“Wait, Mr. Dalton – I’m not the gunbarrel sequence—I’m your spotlight operat—agh!”

Timothy Dalton was truly the precursor to Daniel Craig. The hawk eyes, the dashing figure, the lean towards cruel action rather than suave quipping (although he does get his fair share of quite humorous quipping in), and he brings a welcome upgrade in energy to Moore’s doddering, e.g. that scene where Dalton guns down a man from an opera balcony and then turns like a striking cobra to shoot at the spotlight suddenly aimed at him, looking like he’s doing the gunbarrel opening sequence for real. Also, Dalton did most of his stunts, really putting his back and blood into Bond.

Cold open. Head of MI6, M (Robert Brown) sends three double-oh agents on a mock parachute mission, all clad in black Archer turtlenecks. After two double-ohs are killed by a guy who looks like young Anthony Hopkins, Bond finds himself smack in a real mission, on the roof of a truck barreling down a cliff-edge road, being shot at through the roof. And we suddenly realize how integral soundtrack is to the Bond series (or, I presume, any branded franchise), because when Connery was infiltrating the castle in the opening for NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, there were no Bond themes allowed in that production, so it felt surreal, “non-Bond”; but here, with Dalton battling Hannibal Lecter with the Bond Theme backing him – well, how could he lose?! Though we’ve never met this Bond before, we immediately identify with him, due to soundtrack alone. We feel more of a kinship with Dalton in his 1^st film than Connery in his 7^th!

Truck goes off cliff with dead Hannibal and live Bond in it – he deploys a parachute, which starts to burn; nonchalantly, Bond lands on a yacht in the bay, pleasantly surprising the bikini babe onboard, who was just on the phone, craving man-meat. What are the odds?! Bond snatches her giant cellphone to call HQ, introduces himself to her offhandedly as “Bond, James Bond,” and tells HQ he’ll be there in an hour [woman holds out a champagne glass]… “Make that two hours.” Ha! I love this Bond!

And with that terse quip, Dalton’s ownership of the character is complete. Throughout this movie, he proves time and again why many hardcore Fleming fans consider him The Best Bond.

The limp disco of A-ha’s The Living Daylights opens the film. It’s of apiece with Duran Duran’s View To A Kill; the 80’s day-glo dance era spawning thin synth-based plop like this. After their gargantua 1985 hit Take On Me, this would probably be the only other time the Western world would hear this Norwegian one-hit wonder. There is an outro song as well, “If There Was A Man,” performed by The Pretenders.

The plot (written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson) is intriguing and well-constructed: After a plot by a Russian defector is proven to be a scam to entice the British to assassinate the Russian KGB leader, the KGB teams with Bond to uncover arms and drug deals by the defector and an ex-patriot American general.

Bond aids a Russian defector (Jeroen Krabbe as Koskov) to get a secret list to MI6, that targets British agents for assassination, including Bond. Koskov says the list is sanctioned by KGB Russian leader Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies), but Bond has his doubts about the list, especially when Koskov is snatched back by the KGB hours afterward.

Without warning, the new Miss Moneypenny comes onscreen, and without warning, I come on screen. Glowing, luscious, bespectacled blondette, the absolutely delectable 26-year-old Caroline Bliss (in name and nature), spars coquettishly with the handsome new Bond, rekindling that sensual thrill that sparks so naturally between two young, hot people, rather than us being forced to watch Moore and Maxwell spar like our grandparents. Lois Maxwell, though a classical beauty when young, overstayed her post as Miss Moneypenny, through three Bonds, from DR. NO (1962, when she was 35, still looking like an aunty) to A VIEW TO A KILL (at 58, looking like an uncle).

Unfortunately for Bliss (and the male world populace), she was also an indirect victim of Broccoli’s legal Bond battle; by the time pre-production was ready to start on the next film, she had aged five years – and that’s way too long for a woman in the movies to be a sex object. Just ask Lois Maxwell.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) seems content as a pig in shit designing man-eating couches and ghetto blasters (that really blast ghettoes); his role is expanded past weapons quartermaster, basically doing any task that keeps him onscreen as an agent, the producers realizing his comedic utility at last. The main gadgets are a key-fob explosive that reacts to whistling, and a tricked-out Aston Martin, with so many weapons, I lost count. (A tech who tricked out the Lotus Esprit in SPY WHO LOVED ME once remarked that with the mechanics required to include this many devices in a car, you wouldn’t have space for the engine.)

While helping Koskov escape a sniper, Bond (using a techno sniper rifle bigger than anything Connery or Moore ever used) defies orders to kill the sniper, because a) he can tell she is no professional, so wings her gun instead (“Whoever she was, I must have scared the living daylights out of her!”), and b) she’s the cellist he just noticed playing in the opera house, and c) she’s hot. Bond makes contact with her, and discovers she is Koskov’s girlfriend, Kara (Maryam d’Abo)! Then why was she sniping at Koskov?!

Plots within plots, as Kara relates how Koskov himself set her up to snipe at him, with dummy bullets. Then why did Koskov employ Bond and MI6 to kill his sniper?…

Bond poses as a friend of Koskov’s, empowered to take her to him. A strange dynamic develops, as Bond and Kara roll through a montage usually played to denote a couple growing closer to banging (on the run, visiting a fair, bodies touching innocently, meaningless laughter) – but she believes she’s on the way to her boyfriend, so why is SHE getting so chummy, like a schoolgirl in love?

Bond even gets a little p-whipped by Kara, maintaining they should NOT go back for her cello – CUT TO: the wahp-wahp-wahp moment of waiting outside her apartment while she retrieves her cello. (Maryam does a good job miming the instrument, with a noticeable vibrato. As a violinist once told me, “Try and get a string player NOT to use vibrato.” It’s such an inbuilt mechanism that it’s easy to spot actors who are miming, because they usually can’t or don’t do it, but Maryam pulls it off. There is even a pure Bond-ian use of the cello case in a chase scene, used to escape henchmen by sitting in it and sliding down the snowy hill.)

Bond’s gentlemanly interaction with Kara differentiates Dalton as the guy who did, in fact, read the Fleming source material diligently – and applied it – making his Bond more human than caricature, so whereas Connery and Moore would have already banged Kara, this Bond is sincerely trying to get a lead on Koskov by Friend-Zoning himself, and later cautiously falling for Kara like any Cary Grant or Hugh Grant. If the screenwriters are playing it this way, it can only mean Koskov is gonna end up dead or treacherous, so that these two can bonk in good conscience.

Sure enough, we discover Koskov poolside, kissing and groping many chicks at once – the lame filmic device that informs us he’s a Villain. No decent man would kiss and grope this many chicks – at once… forgetting that the hero of this series is as big a cad as this villain. Also, Koskov arranged for MI6 to kill his “sniper” because he wanted Kara out of the way! So now it’s only a matter of time before Kara applies her tremolo guilt-free to Bond’s skin flute.

Set around Tangier and Eastern bloc countries, the plot unveils Koskov in cahoots with ex-pat American general Whitaker (Joe Don Baker, as repulsive as fried butter), who supports dictators, tyrants and Confederates, neck-deep in arms deals, drug deals and fried butter. Whitaker’s number one hitman is a Nordic chiseled blond named Necros (Andreas Wisniewski), whose oomph-Bond-gimmick is exploding milk bottles, who totally looks like that blond terrorist in DIE HARD… Waitaminute–he IS! Next year, he would be killed by John McClane, who would write on his sweater, “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.”

Bond discovers that Pushkin knows nothing of the double-oh assassination plot – it’s a set up by Whitaker to get Pushkin killed by MI6. Thus the two Cold War enemies – Britain and the KGB – team up to smoke out the Even Badder Villains, the fried butter general, the womanizing perve and the Die Hard milkman.

Virginia Hey appears as Pushkin’s girlfriend – one of the most striking Australian beauties (she was the Warrior Woman in ROAD WARRIOR), unfortunately with no lines – but who needs lines with side-boob like that?!

John Terry plays a new Felix Leiter, Bond’s CIA pal, who is after the same villains. (I’ve totally lost count of Felixes – why couldn’t they ever get an actor to reprise the role?!) And Walter Gotell squeezes in a cameo as Russian General Gogol during the final minutes…

Virginia Hey’s nakedness causes man-battle.

Bond publicly shoots Pushkin as a ploy to smoke out Whitaker’s plot. When Bond is captured by Whitaker, there is actually a compelling reason not to kill him: Whitaker, always the opportunist, wants to score points with the Russian authorities by turning Bond over to them for murdering their leader.

The jail scene is more intense than it needs to be, as the sadist Russian jailer-bear buries himself in the role, looking like he’s really going to beat Timothy Dalton to death and rape Maryam d’Abo. Escaping the jail, Bond and Kara also free another entertaining prisoner – the great Art Malik as Mujahideen freedom fighter, Shah, who is a big man in his village, elbows deep in opium deals with Whitaker.

Shah helps Bond bring down Whitaker, after Bond explains that his opium deals end up funding more weapons for the Soviets. This was back in the day when the Mujahideen were still considered America’s pals (America supplying them with arms to beat back the Soviets; in 1998’s RAMBO III, the Muja rode by Johnny Rambo’s side).

On the opium transport plane, Bond sets a bomb timer for 10 minutes, which takes the whole third act to explode. And later, when Bond finds he and Kara’s only escape is to liftoff in the plane, he doesn’t RUSH back to the bomb like a man who set a 10-minute timer at least 20 minutes ago – he saunters back – only to be accosted by Die Hard out of nowhere after we thought he was dead. (See? It runs in his family!) Why Bond doesn’t scream at him, “I am trying to defuse a bomb, you idiot!” is beyond me.

Plane runs out of fuel, glides into a mountain, as Bond and Kara dive into a Jeep and roll out the back cargo bay. (Should the plane really make such a big Pretty Orange Explosion when it crashes? I mean, the thing IS empty!)

Separating himself from previous Bonds, Dalton’s final prurient encounter is with Kara in a private room, no chance of being discovered by MI6 or Q; a more “romantic” ending, not a stray bang. It’s the second-best debut film of any Bond (ceding first place to Daniel Craig’s perfectly formed arse in CASINO ROYALE).

The same team responsible for the shoddy A VIEW TO A KILL made this exciting film. Maybe it was action man Dalton that inspired Glen, Maibaum and Wilson to bat their A-game – or maybe it was something else… Albert R. Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara, was brought onboard as executive producer (taking this role in every successive Bond production to this day). I believe with this passing of the torch from Cubby to Barbara, her input enabled us to cleanly delineate the “cartoonish” Bond films from the tonally realistic ones, and this movie, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, is that dividing line. Yes, there will always be fan service callbacks to the old Connery and Moore flummery (Brosnan para-sailing a wave, harking back to Moore snowboarding a cowabunga chase scene; or Craig in a plane chopped smaller and smaller, like Moore in a car chopped smaller and smaller; or Halle Berry tied to a table with lasers threatening her, like Connery tied to a table with a laser inching toward his nuts) but the overall tenor of the New Generation Bonds (Dalton, Brosnan, Craig) has been one of hyper-world fiction rather than schoolboy tall tales.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS grossed more than Moore’s last two Bond films – $191 mil worldwide (the 4^th most successful Bond film at time of release), which also means it grossed more than many of Connery’s Bond films! Not bad for a guy who said he didn’t want to take over from Sean Connery way back in ‘69 because “Sean was far too good.”

Seeing those grosses must have scared the living daylights out of Roger and Sean.

END

All the buds together, one last time: Lois Maxwell, Roger Moore, Desmond Llewelyn, and even Patrick Macnee, the Watson to Moore’s Holmes.

A View To A Stuntman.

57-year-old Roger Moore finally ages out of the Bond franchise, in his seventh and final fling as James Bond 007 in A VIEW TO A KILL, a movie that could easily win the prize for The Stuntman Most Looking Not Like The Star.

The title is from the Ian Fleming short story From a View To A Kill (published in the 1960 collection For Your Eyes Only), but does not follow the Fleming plot, rather, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson somehow plagiarize Lex Luthor’s plan in SUPERMAN (1978) to destroy a land mass in California by detonating the San Andreas fault. In this instance, the villain wants to sink Silicon Valley and corner the market on microchips. The plot of GOLDFINGER also comes to mind (cornering the market on gold by making all the gold in Fort Knox un-usable).

With rudimentary computers of the day not yet mass-produced for domestic use, the filmmakers would not realize how childish their plot was: entrepreneur Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) aims to end Silicon Valley’s dominion over microchip manufacture and distribution, cutting a deal with heads of world industry that HE would be the sole microchip maven. It’s a scene not unlike GOLDFINGER, where a diorama rises from below (showing San Francisco’s Silicon Valley) and all Zorin’s guests are amazed like the bad actors they are. But the grand plan reads as ridiculous to us modernaires, because we know Silicon Valley is only an inventor’s paradise, and drowning all the property and people there will not guarantee you become the only marketer/distributor of that tech, as that tech is promulgated around the world. Even back then, designs and distribution companies for that tech would not have all been crowded together in that one space, but in numerous physical locations around the globe. [smh] – those olden days people…

Another cold open involving skiing, with James Bond (Moore) being chased by soldiers; magnificent stunts and stupid rear projections, then, as Bond snowboards down a cliff like a total boss brah, cue the Beach Boys’ California Girls – a moment just as cringey as Pierce Brosnan para-sailing that wave more than a decade hence…

Bond rendezvouses with a submarine captained by a stunningly beautiful blonde (Mary Stavin). And bangs her.

Into opening credits and the feeble Duran Duran song, View To A Kill, the only Bond song to reach #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts, illustrating the population’s execrable taste in music. Duran’s bassist John Taylor reportedly asked producer Albert Broccoli at a party, “When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?” Well, there was already Wings, Carly Simon, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Nancy Sinatra; I mean really, the arrogance of this new romantic unformed child – putting himself above Wings?! So we assume Duran got the job, with their synthesizer orchestra stabs and Simon Le Bon’s out-of-tune yodeling, because Broccoli once again couldn’t get someone decent…

To Paris, Bond’s spy agency MI6 tailing Zorin, all attending a festive horse race – secretary Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), weapons expert Q (Desmond Llewelyn), leader M (Robert Brown) and Bond. In a pink outfit way too youthful for her advanced years, Maxwell, who thought she was going to be replaced with the Egyptian-eyed hotness from the last film, manages to hang on to Moneypenny until this film, Moore’s swansong, being told by Broccoli that this was her definite last; she harbored designs on being promoted to M – but it’s a man’s world. (A female M is a decade away, in Brosnan’s GOLDENEYE.)

Q’s only featured invention is a small radio-controlled spycam robot, that would only come into play as the last gag in the film.

STRANGE IRONIES ON MOORE’S AGE:

• Moore inadvertently added to his failing looks by having a facelift between the last film and this one – one would think this could only be an improvement, but the procedure made his eyes bulge out like a sitcom actor and his already furrowed face digress toward Humphrey Bogart’s, i.e. the underside of a running shoe.
• In 1985, Moore’s age of 57 was regarded as too old for an action star, in this film that was up against Stallone’s RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and ROCKY IV, two movies from a guy who was 39, and who would continue being an action star well into his 70s.

MORE COINCIDENCES:

• This was Dolph Lundgren’s first film (as a nameless henchman). His second film – was ROCKY IV as Drago!

The gang meet Tibbet (Patrick Macnee, from SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK 1976, where he played Watson to Moore’s Holmes); there is a fun undercover interplay between them, as Bond makes Tibbet perform menial tasks as his “personal attaché.”

He’s either the ugliest man in the world or the scariest woman in the world – Grace Jones is Zorin’s right hand man—uh, woman?—uh, assassin, called May Day. Bond tails him/her up the Eiffel Tower, where s/he jumps off the top with a parachute (reminding us of Franz Reichelt, the inventor who tested his parachute design in 1912 from the first platform of the Tower – and died trying). Bond tails May’s parachute in a car that keeps being chopped smaller and smaller.

Bond infiltrates Zorin’s horse show under an alias, James St. John Smythe, for which there is a running gag about the pronunciation of “St. John” (pronounced as “sin-jin”) – but I gotta ask, and maybe this is cultural ignorance on my part: What is it with Britain’s ass-over-tit pronunciation of Saint John?! 1994’s FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL also has a whole bit dedicated to this gag. WHY is “sin-jin” the correct way? And if it is, WHY aren’t British people aware of it? Long discussion, another time…) No matter the alias, Zorin blows Bond’s cover almost immediately with his new-fangled device called a computer, exhibiting a futuristic function which would actually turn to reality soon – facial recognition technology. (Apparently the real life CIA were so impressed, they got to work to make it a reality after seeing this film.) Of course, knowing there’s a spy spying on you doesn’t prompt a Bond Villain to simply shoot the spy in the head, and we must suffer through a drawn-out series of misadventures of Zorin trying to make Bond die as circuitously as possible.

After a silly steeplechase where all the other jockeys/henchmen try to kill Bond via horseback, Zorin reveals he knows who Bond is, to which Bond gives that same hubristic warning that if he doesn’t report back to base, his agency will retaliate. Zorin has the creamiest retort, that every Bond Villain should have used since DR. NO: “If you’re the best they have, they’ll more likely try to cover up your embarrassing incompetence.”

Oooo, what a burn, Zorin! Pwned!

Walter Gotell is shoehorned into the plot, reprising his Russian General Gogol, who threatens Zorin, “No one ever leaves the KGB!” There is some kind of “enhanced steroids” sub-plot and Gogol intimates Zorin might be a “creation” of the KGB; it’s all apiece with Zorin’s horses being able to run faster and jump higher, and May Day is also alluded to as enhanced. This thread goes nowhere. Otherwise, why couldn’t Zorin defeat Bond easily in hand-to-hand during the climax, or hold his own weight to stop himself from falling off the bridge? Well, Bond writers are notoriously inconsistent…

Tanya Roberts (the last CHARLIE’S ANGEL, and Playboy Bunny October 1982) is geologist [snigger] Stacey Sutton, ten times more luscious than the opener blonde. That’s why she can totally play a geologist. Her acting chops are inversely proportionate to her blondeness. Zorin has offered her money for her land, but she won’t sell due to reasons given during bad line-reads. Bond’s stuntman helps her drive off Zorin’s goons, then Bond doesn’t sleep with her.

As per Moore’s autobiography (My Word Is My Bond, 2008), he felt there was no onscreen or real-life chemistry between he and Roberts (he was older than her mother!), and I guess director John Glen felt that way too, as Bond is kept pretty hands-off the goods, except for a badly-staged fire rescue where, for some strange reason, Stacey loses the use of her legs, and Bond must carry her down the fire engine’s ladder (all we can think is: this poor old man’s stuntman!); and then the last scene, where we see them very briefly in a shower through Q’s spycam. For some reason, there’s an idiotic chase scene where Bond and Stacey escape arrest by stealing a fire engine and Bond goes climbing unnecessarily out on the speeding engine’s ladder because someone musta told John Glen you could squeeze comedy out of that predicament.

In his book, Moore also revealed a dislike of Grace Jones. Nonetheless, to escape being found out, Bond finds he must bang May Day, and if you think that’s gross, imdb Trivia reports that during the mock fight scene between May and Zorin, a freeze frame will reveal a snatch of Grace Jones’ pubic hair. (I promised myself I wouldn’t hurl.)

Bond and Stacey infiltrate Zorin’s mine through the cunning use of stealing miner’s uniforms – luckily, Stacey found one with a snug pearbottom fit. Zorin proves his insanity by arbitrarily machine-gunning all these workers who have planted the charges to blow the tectonic plates for him. (Moore was against this scene, as it took the “fun” out of Bond movies and replaced it with real clinical psychopathy.) May turns against Zorin when he buries her also in the mine, “I thought that creep loved me!” She allies with Bond and goes out in a poignant sacrifice.

Zorin kidnaps Stacey and escapes in a zeppelin, and heads toward the climax at the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course, the villain HAS to kidnap the damsel in distress otherwise how would we involve all three principals in the final scene? The iconic fight on the cables, reproduced in the movie poster. This is when process shots work best, as static shots – as we see the San Francisco Bay stretching out under Bond and Zorin.

Ultimately, it’s an inauspicious end to Moore’s run as James Bond; as Bond and Stacey soap each other up, we can almost hear Q as he spies their final shower shot, “Oh, grow up, double-oh seven!” He did, Q. He did.

END

Eight times the vagina.

James Bond was this close to being James Brolin.

After five films as Bond, Roger Moore was ready to quit, he himself feeling that his age was becoming an untenable factor in the action-packed life of his playboy spy. After Moore’s previous film, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s EON Productions went hunting for another Bond – and found one! Mr. Streisand.

But suddenly – Connery!

Sean Connery was contracted to do a Bond film outside the auspices of EON, another filmic adaptation of THUNDERBALL called NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN. So at the last moment, the 55-year-old Moore was cajoled into signing back on as Bond, probably saying he’d never say never again. And OCTOPUSSY, the 13^th Bond film, becomes the 6^th Bond film for Moore (from Ian Fleming’s 1966 short story collection, Octopussy And The Living Daylights). The film’s slogan would be “Nobody does him better,” a sly wink to this movie’s competition with the original Bond, and a callback to Carly Simon’s nostalgic song.

Bond investigates a smuggling ring in India and the screenplay somehow gets tangled up in geopolitical espionage between Russia and America. Plot within plots, but I can’t honestly say it’s an elegant or smart screenplay. Regular Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum just lets the story tumble into itself, keeping Bond in action scenes that occasionally come somewhere near the plot, while two other writers flank him (George MacDonald Fraser and Michael G. Wilson), whom I presume were there to keep him from straying too far into Stupid; I imagine them sitting cross-armed on either side of Maibaum while he typed away timidly.

Michael G. Wilson: administrator extraordinaire.

Michael G. Wilson starts his rise to prominence with this film (as a producer), but he has been sneaking around the outskirts of Bond like a spy since GOLDFINGER, where he was the 3^rd assistant director, working his way around and through the franchise in various administrative jobs, until he became executive producer on MOONRAKER and retained that post on every single James Bond movie made by EON Productions since, and screenplaying five! Any wonder? He’s the son of producer Cubby Broccoli’s wife, Dana, and her previous husband Lewis Wilson, making him Cubby’s stepson. Nepotish much?

The opening mini-plane scene is an exciting little vignette, but I can’t figure why it even exists. To clarify, many Bond movies open with a stunt-driven vignette unrelated to the movie’s main plot, but they usually make sense within their own little mini-plot. But in this senseless scene: Bond tries to blow up a Cuban prototype plane, fails, is captured and escorted off-base on an open flatbed truck, unrestrained in any way; escapes, flies this mini-plane back toward the base with no weapons on it. Was he banking on the Cubans to fire a heat-seeking missile at him so that he could lead it into the prototype’s hangar? Maibaum must’ve written this scene while those two goons were having lunch.

Opening titles, over a well-constructed ballad called All Time High, with insipid vocals by Rita Coolidge, undermining the song’s potential. I’m speculating the composers (John Barry and Tim Rice) and the producers crafted Coolidge’s lackluster vocalization based on Bond’s age. Maybe they didn’t want to misrepresent the aging Bond with a powerful vocal? (Think about how Daniel Craig’s first Bond is represented, with the scalding power of Chris Cornell; or consider how Moore’s first Bond was introduced – with the crunch of McCartney’s voodoo power chords.) All Time High could have been one of the great Bond songs with the talent of Donna Summer or Gladys Knight behind it – or bring back Carly Simon! That would have been a great tie-in with the slogan!

A new M (Robert Brown) sends Bond on a mission to investigate a stolen Faberge Egg. It has something to do with national security because Agent 009 was killed with the Egg.

The trail leads to India, where we see the Taj Mahal immediately (kinda like how you can see the Eiffel Tower no matter where you stand in France). With Egg as McGuffin (Egg McMuffin?), Bond tails art dealer Kamal Khan (played by French actor Louis Jourdan, and I honestly can’t tell whether he’s playing an Indian badly with that accent, or whether they’ve “darkened” his skin to make him look Indian.) I guess he thinks pronouncing it “Mr. Bund,” is a good stab at a Hindi accent.

Bond makes contact with the MI6 Agent in India, Vijay (played by real life tennis star Vijay Amritraj in his first movie role). Disguised as a snake charmer, to get Bond’s attention, Vijay plays the Bond Theme. A little meta; I mean, that’s the theme for the movie series, not Bond’s life! How did Bond recognize it? Has he seen those Sean Connery movies where he plays a spy?

Khan’s men, led by Gobinda (the imposing Kabir Bedi), try to kill Bond immediately, just for an action sequence, making use of all the local color in the Indian market – a bed of nails, a sword swallower, hot coal walkers – climaxing in a mini-cab chase through crowded streets. Vijay uses a tennis racket (yeh, right?) to ward off assailants, and every time he hits someone with it, even with glancing blows, we hear the sweet-spot tennis ball foley. This is the first bit of comedic idiocy that’s meant to be a laff-riot.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is the real comedic punch of this movie, not just doing his usual cameo as weapons expert but participating as a field agent throughout the movie, bringing his cantankerous disdain to Bond’s adolescent behavior, telling Vijay, “Don’t let him teach you any of his bad habits!” It’s almost like he’s writing these sarcastic jabs himself. Q even gets to rescue a bevy of women – and reap the rewards – the old dog!

Now compare Q growing into his role (with Llewelyn at the advanced age of 69), while Moneypenny (56-year-old Lois Maxwell) was being phased out, her striking young assistant, Penelope Smallbone, catching Bond’s eye. Bond makes a few age-ist innuendos, and Maxwell can’t seem to hide her distaste, either onscreen or in interviews, for this obvious ploy to overhaul her auntiness. I’m surprised Maxwell lasted this long! She looked like Bond’s aunty in her very first appearance in DR. NO. What can I say? That’s how evolution plays men and women: past breeding age, women lose their attractiveness, while men can breed into their 60s and 70s, so retain their good looks and attraction. Am I wrong? One word: Sean Fucking Connery.

The picture says it all: Lois Maxwell was none too happy that a pretty new face was being primed to replace her. She’s so mad she’s turning from an aunt into an uncle.

And OCTOPUSSY seems intent on winnowing out the unattractive; it definitely holds the Bond record for the most beautiful women in the supporting cast – the female Octopussy cult. Eight times the pussy content of other Bond films. When they’re not acting as a strike force or rowing team, they’re all lounging around a pool scantily-clad.

And it’s India, so of course, there are mostly white women.

The body most beautiful belongs to flame-haired Kristina Wayborn as Magda, Khan’s main woman, whom Bond cannot seduce, due to her loyalty to Khan – and then she sleeps with him when Khan tells her to steal back the Egg from Bond, for which Khan spent 500,000 rupees at an auction (about $4.75 in US dollars). I’m thinking there are other ways to steal an Egg, but you do you, gurl. Magda sports a tiny blue-ringed octopus tattoo, telling Bond, “That’s my octopussy.” What’s that supposed to mean? Well, when she escapes off the balcony, unraveling her sari to reveal a shockingly slim torso you envision wrapping your palms around, we understand: it means she can take eight guys at once— okay, come on! Surely the producers explored every schoolboy innuendo that a movie named OCTOPUSSY would invoke – and then named it OCTOPUSSY anyway. I’m probably the 10-millionth schoolboy to think these thoughts. How did they get past the censors anyway, who are more dirty-minded than we are? Were we being primed all along, with Honey Ryder, Plenty O’Toole, Dr. Goodhead and Pussy Galore?

Lording over the cult as Octopussy herself is Melania Trump lookalike Maud Adams, in her second appearance as a Bond Girl; she was Scaramanga’s kept woman in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 1973 – now, she’s the Boss. She brings a strong demeanor to differentiate from her past subjugation, but an overall tepid acting performance that reeks of the screenwriter not knowing how to impart information except through clunky exposition dialogue.

When Bond confronts Octopussy (by simply walking into her room on a heavily-guarded Women-Only island), she reveals she is grateful to Bond for allowing her criminal father an honorable way out – suicide – rather than facing prison. It’s a story out of nowhere, about a character we’ve just learned about, applied to elicit sympathy for this female felon. It was actually the original plot of the book, which Maibaum, as usual, paid no attention to, using the book’s plot as backstory simply to get Octopussy in bed with Bond.

As she feeds her pet octopus, she tells Bond her father loved octopi and his pet name for her was Octopussy. Hon, that doesn’t explain anything, matter of fact, it raises even more questions! Either your dad was naïve in the interactions of men and women, or he was banging you– oh, I get it now! Here’s the thread: Maud Adams looks like Melania, and Dumbo Donald has sex with his daughter. Got it! They knew back then.

Octo strolls with Bond trying to recruit him for her organization, then gets mad when he declines. Bond grabs her and kisses her in anger – it’s all very rapey and molesty but she seems to enjoy it after the first NoMeansNo. I think because it reminds her of her father.

Khan intrudes, hardly surprised to find Bond in Octo’s chambers, and calling her “Otte-PIS-sy” in that excellent Hindi accent, asking her permission to kill Bond (“–dude, I’m right here!”). Khan is the second man she says No to that night.

In all Bond movies, the villains tell their henchmen, “Kill Bond!” only to have the henchies bring Bond back alive to the villain, for more talking not shooting. Well, Octo specifically tells Khan ‘Do NOT kill Bond!’ and then what does he do? Actively tries to kill Bond, including hiring a guy with the oomph-Bond-gimmick of a yo-yo buzzsaw, where he would drop this saw on his targets from a higher balcony – meaning that he’s relying on the good graces of his victims to have higher balconies when he comes to kill them.

Why are you going to all this trouble to contravene your boss’s orders?

The most extravagant murder attempt is surely Khan and Gobinda on elephants hunting Bond. As sad as it is to see these magnificent beasts enslaved to carry fools around, it IS cool to see them tracking through the jungle; adds a unique flavor to this Bond adventure. A tiger puppet attacks Bond, intercut with a real tiger. Bond gives it the “Sit-T!” command (a piss-take on Barbara Woodhouse’s famous dog-training methodology). The other idiocy that’s meant to be a laff-riot is here, as Bond swings through the trees emitting a Ron Ely Tarzan yell. Those other two writers musta been on break again.

Like whiplash, we are in Berlin. Walter Gotell reprises his role as Russian General Gogol, at odds with conquest-crazy General Orlov (the ice-savage Steven Berkoff, whose forehead lump would become famous in this decade for appearing in BEVERLY HILLS COP and RAMBO II back to back after this film).

Orlov and Khan are smuggling jewels via Octopussy’s circus (because Octopussy owns a traveling circus out of nowhere for this third act). And then Orlov plants a bomb, which Bond deduces is set to blow up an American army base in Berlin, triggering worldwide disarmament because when it is found the bomb was not an attack via a missile, the world would attribute it to a malfunction and disarm globally, thereby allowing Orlov to march across the borders of any country and conquer them…

Which 9-year-old wrote this again? You’d have to be under drinking age to think that the world would disarm after an unidentified bomb explodes. Just like the world stopped running oil pipelines after that one oil spill in 1974, right?

Gary Oldman, method acting as Gary Oldman and Gary Oldman.

There are twin knife-throwers, Mishka and Grishka (David and Tony Meyer), who look oddly like young Gary Oldman, who are the equivalent of talking-not-shooting with knives, by throwing knives to pin Bond’s sleeves to the wall, instead of just aiming for his heart, lungs and neck from the get-go.

In the spirit of the circus act that Bond was becoming, he gets to disguise himself inside a crocodile suit, inside a gorilla suit and as a clown. And then drive a Merc along train tracks in pursuit of the train that Octopussy rides, now as a B-character in her own movie, because the Russian bomb plot has taken up all the air in the vagina.

Hanging onto the outside of the train, Bond taps on Octopussy’s window, while she’s getting a nude massage. Khan walks in, as unconcerned as you please, sees someone at the window and shoots. Octopussy wraps herself in a sheet, asking, “Did you see who it was?” instead of, “Ever heard of KNOCKING, pervert? I was getting a massage!”— Oh sorry, I keep forgetting: Melania is used to Dumbo Donald just barging in on naked women.

Bond defuses the bomb – like Sean couldn’t in GOLDFINGER. They learned from Bond’s mistakes of the past, not to make him look like a bitch.

Bond leaps onto the side of Khan’s plane! Tom Cruise, eat your heart out! Granted, that’s not Roger Moore riding the outside of this twin-prop plane, but that’s definitely the stuntman in all these death-defying exterior practical shots. Coincidentally, and ironically, the stuntguy looks like Tom Cruise!

Director John Glen is responsible for OCTOPUSSY’s overall lack of luster; he is responsible for calling a wrap to scenes where he definitely hasn’t captured the best performances. Yes, I know – budget and filmstock and light and unions, etc. but when a celebrated actor like Louie Jourdan is crashing a plane and his last yell, “Nooo!” doesn’t sound like a man going to his death, but rather, a man realizing his gym membership is cancelled, there’s a systemic problem, starting and ending with the person responsible for getting the shots and drawing out the best from his actors. You could get away with the flamboyant stunts and the Tarzan yells and the sexism and quipping if the film itself was not a patchwork of uneven performances glued together with plotholes.

It became known as The Battle of The Bonds. OCTOPUSSY out-grossed NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN at the box office. Proving one thing: You can’t lose with eight times the pussy.

END

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