Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

Fun little fact that you all probably know already: The opening gun barrel for OHMSS is Bond getting down on one knee before shooting because mawwaige is a bwessed sacwament etc etc.

 

R.I.P. Eunice .

I wonder which other Bond girls have left us .

 

Bond's fight with Nick Nack at the end is eminently surreal. Next time you watch it, think back to Connery's first scene in Dr. No, and wonder how the holy hell a franchise could veer so wildly off course.

 

Similar thing happened to the TV series The Avengers. It started off as a gritty spy show, but by the end it had become a surreal comedy with elements of sci-fi and fantasy. If it weren't for the John Steed character, you wouldn't know it was the same show.

 

And we haven't even gotten to Moonraker yet.

 

Live & Let Die

I enjoy the Blaxploitation elements of this one; it gives this film a weird flavor none of the other Bond films have. But, yes, Moore has arrived, though he isn't particularly dreadful in this one. Who is dreadful? J.W. Pepper, one of the most teeth-grindingly annoying characters in cinematic history. On the whole I just find this one kind of bland really. I'm also not as high on the theme song as most people are, though it's good and all.

002 out 007

The Man With the Golden Gun

Christopher Lee does brilliant work here and he's the main reason to watch the film. I do really love the scene of Lee, Moore & (the dead) Adams at the fight. That's a great monologue by Lee and it has the parallel action of Moore trying to . . . get a device or something? It's been a while since I've seen this one if I'm going to be honest so my memory of plot specifics is patchy. I enjoy the theme song for its kitsch value which is very high. As to the bad things, I find both Nick Nack & Goodhead to be nigh onto intolerable. I mean, Goodhead is supposed to be an intelligent and capable agent, but she's a complete idiot. I think feeling that Nick Nack is not a good character needs no defense. I don't really even want to dignify the shoehorning of Pepper into this movie. The character was already godawful. The decision to put the idiot redneck stereotype in Thailand was a truly gobsmacking mistake.

003 out of 007

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. Live & Let Die
9. Thunderball

Best Opening Title Music

1. James Bond Theme (Dr. No)
2. Opening Titles: James Bond is Back/From Russia With Love/James Bond Theme
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. You Only Live Twice
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. Live & Let Die
7. Goldfinger
8. The Man with the Golden Gun
9. Thunderball
10. Kingston Calypso (Dr. No)

 

I think Goodnight is the worst Bond girl ever . Really - is there anyone else ?

 

Oh, shoot, I was calling her Goodhead, which is the character from Moonraker. Yeah, Goodnight is right up there as one of the worst I'd say, but I still think Christmas Jones edges everybody else out.

 

To start catching up: Live and Let Die is the best Bond movie so far -- at making me shout "The ****?" at my TV.

It's terrible in a truly spectacular way. If DAF was profoundly stupid and inexplicably weird, it was also sluggish and lazy, an indifferent turd that only got any energy from its moments of sheer WTF bizarrity. LALD has a lot of effort put into it. It's not lazy. It's a new Bond, not a hostile Connery cashing in, and that seems to have given it some pep. The problem is that the effort is put into a great big deliberate campfest. The movie is deeply stupid. The first scene is a man being killed by hooking his headphones up to a dynamite plunger and sending a KILLER SOUND at him. And somehow it's all downhill from there. It's totally free from any connection to reality, an aggressively cheesy attempt to deliberately make schlock. Felix Leiter gets to say "Get me a make on a white pimpmobile." Bond wears that powder-blue getup with the open shirt-jacket over a wife-beater that is by far the worst thing Bond has ever worn on film, including the safari suits and Connery's godawful terrycloth romper in Goldfinger. The film makes no attempt to disguise the fact that Tee Hee's hook is just the guy holding an obviously fake hook, and also Tee Hee gets in a ripoff of the train fight with Bond except Bond's in a bathrobe and the fight sucks. There's a spectacularly mediocre boat chase that goes on for thirteen agonizing minutes featuring a redneck racist sheriff caricature that has to be one of the worst characters ever put on film. There's a ludicrous, pointless sequence in which Bond tries to play keepaway with M and his date in his godawful seventies domesticated-bachelor pad. There's a scene where Bond runs across alligators. It's a goddamn cartoon. It's perfect for Moore.

Moore, who's at least still young enough to look the role here (that won't last very long), has no ability to play Bond whatsoever. There's a moment or two where he leans darker and it's nice and all, but it's obviously not Moore's persona at all, even just as of this movie. Moore is still playing the Saint. His Bond is a charming, dapper international playboy, the sort of gentleman adventurer who can get himself out of trouble but is unlikely to ever really hurt anybody. His Bond is not a trained killer, a lethal tool of Her Majesty's government, a deadly spy and assassin who can hold his own in a dangerous world. Nobody would ever mistake Moore's Bond for a dangerous man. It wouldn't be sporting to be dangerous, old chap! Well, he might be dangerous to women; this film certainly has to be the rapiest Bond has ever come off, and that includes the movie where he holds a lesbian down and kisses her until she just can't resist his manly charms any longer. Connery could at least sell that kind of thing; Moore just comes off like a lech.

Every other Bond started out strong. Every other Bond actor's debut film was either his best or second-best movie, and all were good entries. It's Moore alone who debuted with absolute crap, and it set the tone for his whole run. This movie is hot garbage. It's got the great theme song going for it, Jane Seymour, Yaphet Kotto . . . and that's about it. The plane chase that never leaves the ground is creative and decent fun, at least by this movie's standards. But I'd be hard-pressed to think up any real redeeming features. The main thing that keeps it from falling to the absolute bottom of the Bond movie rankings is that it does have that energetic gusto and that constant barrage of hilariously bad crap that keeps it very so-bad-it's-good watchable, unlike most of the bad Bond movies, which trend interminably dull.

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. From Russia with Love
3. Dr. No
4. Goldfinger
5. Thunderball
6. You Only Live Twice
7. Live and Let Die
8. Diamonds Are Forever

 

Well I need not say anything here as Havac has said it all, except he didn't reference Kananga dying by being blown up like a giant balloon.

 

there's no way that boat chase can be considered mediocre . you're drunk .

 

yes it's terrible at best.

 

By the third time they repeated the same “the boats skid across dry land” bit, it was clear they had no other ideas about what to actually do in a boat chase but were stretching it out to nearly a quarter hour anyway.

 

Thanks to @jp-30

https://twitter.com/hashtag/licencetobuild?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^hashtag

 

Caught up with The Man with the Golden Gun.

The car jump is emblematic of the movie: one of the greatest film stunts ever, with a ruinously cheesy slide whistle effect dropped on top of it. TMWTGG doesn't have what it takes to be the greatest anything ever, but it's got the basis of something underneath, unlike the pure camp of most of Moore's run. Scaramanga is a great idea, the deadly assassin who can challenge Bond as a peer, and Christopher Lee is great casting who brings a cold, menacing sophistication to the role. The plot is admirably small-scale, revolving around Scaramanga's threat to Bond and stolen solar energy technology, not an apocalyptic global threat. There's a lot of fantastic location shooting. There's that cold scene of Bond and Scaramanga talking next to their mutual lover's body. There is, in short, plenty here to suggest the possibility of a good, solid Bond thriller in the bones of this film. It's not pure nonsense like LALD.

The problem is that the nonsense just gets airdropped on top of it all, heavily. Scaramanga's ridiculous funhouse, the ending of the film being Bond fighting a midget (while, yet again, wearing a goddamn bathrobe), the return of J.W. Pepper that I refuse to believe anyone asked for, the flying car-plane, the cheap comic relief of Goodnight, the nonsensical karate scene that ends with Bond being rescued by Lieutenant Hip just randomly showing up and then inexplicably driving off without him (I also kind of love the it's-all-the-same attitude that shoves karate and sumo wrestlers into Bangkok) -- the film just insists on dragging itself down. They can't do a Moore movie without trying to turn it into a self-parodic cartoon. There's a scene of Bond grabbing a sumo wrestler by the asscheeks. This right before he gets bopped on the head by a midget dressed up in disguise as an Asian lawn gnome with a trident. All on the estate of a man joke-named Hai Fat. It's just over ten years since the same producers made From Russia with Love. What happened? What are these people doing?

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. From Russia with Love
3. Dr. No
4. Goldfinger
5. Thunderball
6. You Only Live Twice
7. The Man with the Golden Gun
8. Live and Let Die
9. Diamonds Are Forever

 

An efficient takedown should gloss over the infrequent, inconsistent high points in the critiqued piece.

 

It's the second worst moment in the Bond films after the pigeon in Moonraker.

 

Yes, but one of the few that loops back around to being hilariously stupid as opposed to “merely” stupid.

 

I beg a moment's consideration for the scene in the same film where a man is killed by a sound.

 

Well we could do this all day:

 

I still love the way Kananga got it.

It's better than Blofeld's end(s) in DAF and in FYEO

Let's face it. On paper, Bond is a load of BS. The wet dream of an MI desk jockey.

The first few films took themselves seriously enough to indemnify the audience from felling ridiculed somewhat. But that only lasts for so long and, naturally, they began to take themselves less and less seriously.

In the mid eighties they took it too far. No doubt. But there's no proper way to do Bond IMO.

 

The 'sound' was Cilla Black's rendition of Alfie , so yes it's entirely feasible .

 

My God, all it takes is but one screen-shot of DAD to tempt me into giving each of the currently-discussed Moore movies an extra point. They're just such relaxed oddities that you could fall asleep to.

 

This is exactly right. It's right up there with Bond sexually pleasuring Mr. Wint right before tossing him into the air where he explodes and Bond sneaking around in full clown regalia. These things are so awful as to be brilliant.

J.W. Pepper, Jaws falling in love, the pigeon double-take . . . these are the things that are just purely awful.