Happy New Year!

I do like New Year's Eve, and not just because of the splendid excuse it presents for a party. Time is always slipping away around us, continuously grinding the granite of our lives into a fine sand that is instantly lost on the wind. Rightly, we don't pay this much attention - we'd go mad if we did - but we all do notice at some point, astonished by how the decades have carved us into bizarre and unexpected shapes. New Year's Eve allows us to acknowledge the process, but it doesn't require us to get maudlin about it, offering instead the worthy and time-honoured alternative of revelling in the moment itself, blissfully distracted from our mortality by family, friends and booze.

This only works if we're all distracted at once which is why we mark the time together. Except that we don't. It's already 2012 in Australia as I type this, just before noon in the USA. My compatriots will be singing Auld Lang Syne six hours before the time-shifted Times Square celebrations get replayed on Texas televisions. This rolling wave of time, the blurring of midnight across the world also helps though, easing us through the transition. For some Time isn't so much relative as entirely arbitrary: Samoa has flipped itself into the future, for example, and we will continue with our newest tradition - popping corks twice, once with Big Ben for GMT and then again at midnight, local time. As I say, if nothing else, it's a splendid excuse for a party.

Thanks for reading the blog over the past year - your attention and comments have all been much appreciated. I hope you have/are having a wonderful evening and I wish you all a very Happy New Year, whenever it begins for you.

For Your Ears Only

Whilst we're on the subject of James Bond, you should go and listen to BBC Radio's adaptation of Goldfinger. It's available for the next four days, until New Year's Eve, and you can listen for free from anywhere in the world.

It's a straight retelling of the book, starring Toby Stephens as Bond, Ian McKellen as Goldfinger, and Rosamund Pike as Pussy Galore. Tidied up into ninety minutes, it's clean and unadulterated and as a result it's a refreshing change after watching all these films. It does a good job of evoking the Bond of the novels. Although Stephen's voice does sometimes seem a little too high and lacking the right amount of gritted resolve to be Bond, Pike spins Galore into a Southern glamour-puss with a sultry, breathy accent.

Worth a listen.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Oh look, it's Christmas! All Bond films are traditional festive TV fare, of course, but this is the Christmas Bond and, for better or worse, it's one of many distinctive elements that mark out On Her Majesty's Secret Service as different.

For the last time until Casino Royale, one of Ian Fleming's stories is told on screen. Saltzman and Broccoli had been trying to produce OHMSS since 1964. It was due to be the next movie after Goldfinger, but the legal wrangles over Thunderball displaced it. They wanted to make it instead of YOLT, but it was the wrong time of year for the required snowy mountain locations. Postponed again, it finally made it to the screen in 1969 with unknown model-turned-actor George Lazenby debuting as the new 007 and the ghost of Sean Connery lingering unhelpfully in the background.

The received wisdom is, I suppose, that if he had been available instead of Lazenby, this would be far and away the best Bond film of them all. But I'm not so sure. No, it's not the greatest movie and Lazenby was never going to win any Oscars. And yes, the weird newness of it all discombobulated audiences of the time who thought they knew what to expect from silly old James Bond.

But that's exactly the point. The brilliance of this is that we see the brutish invulnerability of Connery transformed - as much by the excellent story as by the casting - into something else, surprising and unthinkable. I simply can't imagine Connery making this film because I'm not altogether sure he'd have been able to provide what was needed. Maybe, if it had gone ahead in '65, he might have been still sufficiently interested to up his game, but I can't see the '67 version being at all bothered. Either way, his Bond is seemingly pathologically incapable of tenderness and without that OHMSS would be sunk. I firmly believe that for this film, we got the Bond we needed.

When I was very little, five years old, I played James Bond at school with two friends in the playground. Of course, we all wanted to be 007 and so the solution was that one of us would be Sean Connery, one Roger Moore and the other George Lazenby and we'd play all together in one meta team-up. And yes, we argued who would be who, because Sean was best, Roger was okay and nobody wanted to be George. It was playground common sense.

Just one example of how Lazenby and his performance in OHMSS have been unfairly maligned. But the truth is that he is engaging and convincing, albeit within a limited range. Like Craig, he is a beefcake Bond, but he also has a young man's body, full of (occasionally nervous) energy. He fidgets in M's office. He swings his arms when he walks. He throws everything into his punches and kicks in an extravagant and flamboyant fighting style, as if he's not quite in control of himself. It may be difficult to believe the man's a ninja, but he's definitely James Bond. Behind the wheel, in the casino, fighting or drinking, he cuts the mustard. The scene where he faces up to Blofeld is a perfect example. It's not much of a stretch, acting-wise - just "you'll never get away with this" stuff - but that's James Bond sat there, chin out, defiant, resolute, bloody but unbowed.

And even better, he presents emotions and expressions that we haven't seen before. Connery's Bond is a bit of a bastard and I never got the impression he was capable of any act that wasn't self-serving. With Lazenby, Bond becomes a (sort of) gentleman, exhibiting compassion, kindness and honesty. He dries Tracy's tears. He turns down Draco's £1,000,000 dowry by quoting the Bible ("her price is far above rubies"). Most poignantly of all, he flings Moneypenny his hat (instead of a bouquet) at the wedding. She clasps it and they share a single lingering glance. It's beautiful. But swap George for Sean and it would have been an entirely one-sided moment and all the worse for it.

This new Bond is also capable of doubt, anxiety and even fear. On the run from SPECTRE's thugs he tries to lose himself in a crowd of Christmas revellers, dejected, cold, alone and cornered. The perfect opportunity for the future Mrs Bond to show that she is deserving of him, magically skating into view to mount a rescue. This is the point when Bond falls in love, surely? As they run to her car she directs him with the command "Near-side door!" No woman in the series has spoken like that before and I reckon he melts right there.

Yes, Tracy - played by Diana Rigg - is something else. Almost, but not quite a one-off (the series will play with similar scenarios later), she is complete in a way that none of the previous women we've seen so far have been allowed to be. Rider was strong but child-like. Tania, an adoring patsy. Pussy Galore was good at her job but too cold. Fiona Volpe was sexy, deadly and independent, but only because she was a baddy. Kissy and Aki were capable, but demure and reserved. Tracy is given special dispensation by the Bond Universe to be sexy, reckless, fearless, capable, intelligent and even a little bit dangerous. She's also allowed her own opinions and a feisty independence that she looks set to maintain in marriage if the conversation with her father after the ceremony is any guide. She is Bond's match and the love story, although disjointed, is completely believable.

It helps that Rigg - unlike nearly all her predecessors - was both an established actor rather (than a beauty queen) and not redubbed. In more ways than one, Tracy is the first Bond woman to have her own voice.

The other guest stars are good too. Gabrielle Ferzetti is excellent as Tracy's father, the gangster boss Marc-Ange Draco. Charismatic, funny, stylish he's the best and most likeable man Bond's run into since poor Kerim Bey in FRWL. And it always surprised me, post-Kojak, that Telly Savalas should pop up as Blofeld, but he makes a good job of it: there's a chill unctuous menace behind the sophistication. These characters are convincing and effective because it's the emotional decisions they make that drive the story. Yes, there's some notional biological warfare plot, but it's almost entirely redundant. Blofeld's real motivation is his search for legitimacy, the idea being that his past crimes can be absolved and that he can be accepted into polite society as a Polish count. That he chooses to try and achieve this by holding global food-production to ransom is what makes him a super-villain of course: a permanent outsider, face pressed against the window of civilisation, the bully who wants to play but can't understand why the other children always cry and run away. For a James Bond film this is practically Ibsen.

Everyone else is also trying to plug the gaps in their incomplete lives. Draco is a concerned parent, determined not to helplessly stand by and watch his daughter's self-destruction. Bond and Tracy, perhaps, don't know what it is they're missing until they find each other. Even Moneypenny has a hole that can only be filled by one man.     

Most shockingly of all we meet, for the first time, an ordinary person. Amongst the harem of beautiful guinea pigs in Blofeld's mountain laboratory is curly-haired Ruby Bartlet, a chicken farmer's daughter from Morecombe Bay, Lancashire. Her accent is quite the most exotic thing to appear in the series so far but she's so normal, it's as if she's wandered in off the set of Coronation Street. It's a little thing, but it's a sign of how Britain has changed during the Sixties and a welcome and refreshing blast of modern life.

There's another welcome change here too as, for once, Bond's legendary effect on women is justified by the context: a group of suggestible young women have been locked up in a mountain lodge for months with only Frau Bunt for company when in walks young, buff George Lazenby in a kilt. I think they can be forgiven for having their heads turned, even if he is pretending to be a tweedy old bookworm.

Yes, there's an odd decision. Why take your new Bond and subsume him inside a different character all together for half an hour? I have to say I was surprised to discover that it is only thirty minutes that Bond has to pretend to be Sir Hillary Bray, Sable Basilisk of the College of Arms, for in my memory this sequence seemed to take up half the film. I think the problem is that Peter Hunt, the director, felt he had to dub over Lazenby's lines as Bond/Bray, replacing his voice with that of George Baker (Inspector Wexford to you) who plays the real Bray. It distances the new Bond from us at a time when we need to be getting more familiar with him.

As soon as his cover is blown, things really go up a gear with a terrific set of action sequences that play to Lazenby's strengths as a physical Bond. Firstly a tense escape via the gear wheels of a cable car winch, then a blistering night time ski-chase backed by John Barry's incredible OHMSS theme, this passage is a highlight of the series. 

It's not, though, for that that OHMSS is remembered. This is 'the one where his wife dies'. Tracy's death is shown just as it appears in the book, but the original plan was not to have it in the movie. If Lazenby had stayed on - and, contracted for seven films, he would have done had he not become disenchanted with being James Bond - then the plan was to have Tracy killed at the beginning of his second film. When Lazenby announced part-way through filming that he had had enough, the decision was taken to stick to the book's ending.

But it didn't go down well. Such is the shock of the drive-by killing in the last few minutes that it elbows aside details like James Bond getting married, or being played by George Lazenby. Audiences could cope with a new Bond. They were prepared to see him fall in love. But they didn't like the downbeat ending and there were boos at some showings. It was seen as a transgression that could not be tolerated in a James Bond film.

In Fleming's books, Tracy's death marks for Bond the beginning of an inexorable break down and he slowly unravels over the course of the remaining novels. It's a shame in some ways because the later books suffer as a result, struggling under the weight of it all. But at least, as a series, these stories are dramatically coherent and characters evolve over time with some degree of realism. This option wasn't available to the film series - without Lazenby around to develop his character and once the audience's reaction to OHMSS had been absorbed, the producers had no choice but to turn away from the continuing drama. Tracy's death is scandalously dealt with in the opening minutes of DAF with a few right hooks and a mouse trap but the emotional consequences for Bond don't even reach beyond the end credits of OHMSS. As soon as George Lazenby's Bond fades from the scene, it's somehow over and done with.

Until Casino Royale and Daniel Craig, I think it's fair to say that OHMSS was seen as a dead end in the Bond franchise. Lazenby gets the blame for this, and I'm sure most people assume he was dropped or fired for being mistakenly cast. He wasn't (and if you don't believe me, look here to see who else was considered). But without him, the emotional weight and impact of the film couldn't be sustained. Despite the odd grimace by Moore or Brosnan, the rest of the series is inoculated from the trauma because Tracy's death becomes something that only affects Lazenby's Bond as if, in his one-off appearance, he took an emotional bullet on behalf of all the others. And because we never see him again, it's impossible not to conclude that Lazenby's Bond, like Fleming's, never recovered which is why Roger Moore had to come back and avenge it for him.

Yes, Roger Moore. He may look and sound like a tubby middle-aged Scotsman, but DAF is really the first Roger Moore Bond film - they just hadn't cast him yet. In a panic, the producers wrenched things back to what the public demanded and for most of the next eighteen years both Bond and his films would be light-hearted, flippant and louche.

OHMSS, pushed to one side, became the experiment that no one wanted to mention. But not only is it one of the very best Bond films, it's also the template for the utterly brilliant modern Bond we have in the Craig films.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: The introduction of the new 007 is carefully done and with some style - right up until Lazenby sticks his dimpled jaw through the fourth wall and reminds us there used to be some other James Bond. 

Theme: Many hold this to be Barry's best Bond score but his OHMSS theme is definitely completely brilliant: a throbbing muscular instrumental over which Binder has dumped some angular purple spatchcocked graphics.  

Deaths: 28. In fact no one dies at all for the first, what, hour and a half?  

Memorable Deaths: Two henchmen fall off the precipice. Another goes into the snow-grinding-whatever-it-is machine. Oh, and Mrs Tracy Bond is shot in the head. Spoilers!  

Licence to Kill: 5. He's trying to cut down.

Exploding Helicopters: 0. But this isn't about exploding helicopters.

Shags: 3. Although for the first time we see him get it on with the same woman twice in one film which makes me realise I'm counting sexual partners not acts. 

Crimes Against Women: Bond smacks Tracy across the face. It must be love. Caddishly, he re-uses the same shtick on Ruby Bartlet as he does on Catherine Schell. There are some patronising 'Good girl!'s to Tracy as she saves his ass, but he does mean it kindly.

Casual Racism: Each of Blofeld's patients comes from a different country and is allergic to something horribly stereotypical - hence the Chinese woman eats nothing but rice; the African, bananas; the Indian, naan bread. 

Out of Time: Bond's safe-cracking photocopier is perhaps the most cumbersome spy gadget ever. Everything is very 1969 with garish décor in the hotel and some far out fashion.

Fashion Disasters: George can get away with a lot (the kilt and the tweeds for example - and he totally rocks a cardigan somehow) but the brown and orange golf suit is horrible. And what the hell does Blofeld think he's up to in tight leggings and skull cap? He looks like Rumpelstiltskin. 

Eh?: Just the one thing: how the hell does Blofeld not recognise Bond the minute he walks in? Or did YOLT not really happen?  

Worst Line: Lazenby should never have been given lines like "Hmm, Royal Beluga. North of the Caspian." because they make him sound like someone trying to be James Bond. Worse still, he's talking to himself, so it sounds as if he's trying to make himself think he's James Bond. And then there's "This never happened to the other fella." Again, thanks for drawing my attention to the fact that you are not James Bond.

Best Line: Moneypenny's convinced though. Bond asks her, "what would I do without you?" "My problem," she replies, "is that you never do anything with me..." And Marc-Ange Draco gets lots of good lines, the best of which is his mild exhortation to 007: "Do not kill me, Mr Bond. At least, not until we've had a drink." Bond gets several saucy asides which, surprisingly, are pretty funny and not cringe-worthy. I'll leave you to remember/find them yourself because it'd take too long to set them up.

Worst Bond Moment: If you don't think George can handle the romantic scenes then it'll be all of those. For me, it's when he starts declaiming to M on lepidoptery. He bothered to master all these useless subjects and never learned to defuse nuclear bombs? (He'll have remedied this before TSWLM, don't worry.) And let's not mention Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? shall we?

Best Bond Moment: The first ski-chase is one of the all time great Bond moments. If you don't cry when Bond throws his hat, bouquet-style, to Moneypenny at the wedding then you are a monster.  

Overall: Tender, poignant, romantic, heart-breaking. Exhilarating music and chases, raw and visceral fights,  beautiful, beguiling women and a charismatic villain. This is excellent.


James Bond Will Return: ... in Diamonds Are Forever. But not like this.

You Only Live Twice

I used to play badminton with a man who claimed that a shot from this film - a helicopter-mounted track of Connery running across the rooftops of Kobe docks whilst fighting off a string of Japanese henchmen - was the definitive Bond moment of the 1960s. It says something that the least ridiculous part of that is that I once used to play badminton.

It's total nonsense of course but then that's not entirely inappropriate when considering You Only Live Twice. It's a series of disconnected and preposterous set pieces that seem to have been thrown together with the deliberate intention of breaking the Bond formula, but which only succeeds in  reinforcing the idea in the audience's mind that this is what a Bond film is. It's as if the producers have taken Connery's decision to leave the series as an apocalyptic calamity, like the Fall of Rome or something, and are just running around screaming: "Volcanos! Ninjas! The Space Race! Gyrocopters! Kill James Bond! Marry James Bond! Make him Japanese! DROP A CAR IN THE SEA FOR NO GOOD REASON!!!"

To be fair to them, they did have to manufacture their own narrative for the first time. The film is completely unrecognisable compared with its source novel. Partly it's because the book's story would make an even more ridiculous movie than we have already, and partly it's because Roald Dahl - with no scriptwriting experience, but a personal friend of Fleming - was given six weeks to come up with a script. The producers stipulated he had to stick to 'the girl formula' that appeared in Thunderball (early ally woman, bad woman, main woman), but that apart from that, he could write what he liked. Dahl also mentioned that the director, Lewis Gilbert, was happy to shoot the script exactly as it was written (unlike most directors, apparently). Dahl seems to have been praising Gilbert for respecting him as a writer, but I can't help but think that perhaps some additional scrutiny from the director might have helped. So, we have a lead actor who couldn't care less, producers who fear the sky is falling on their heads, an untried writer, and a director who's slapping the words on screen like wallpaper. Throw in the fact that the first edit ran to three hours and it begins to sound like perhaps the film we ended up with could have been a lot worse.

There is a sense of hysteria about it all. It's evident in, for example, the manic hyperbole of the promotional material. M even tells Bond "This is the Big One, 007," as if the imminent adventure was a prize marlin or something. The intention is to whip us into a frenzy of anticipation - but sadly everything about the film feels merely bloated and ridiculous.

Yes, Bond films do need to be larger than life. This isn't John le Carré. But the fantasy only works if it feels plausible, if the resulting silliness is (like the plots of Goldfinger or Thunderball) an eventuality that is only many logical if unexpected steps removed from the world we recognise. It is also depends on us believing in the man in the middle of it. The fantastic and grotesque are supposed to be what makes Bond shrug off his ennui and come alive. But of course, here Bond couldn't care less and is happy to let the whole mad circus dance around him.

Connery is poor in this. Dull and unconvincing. There's no real sense of the intense, cat-like man we saw in FRWL, and just two years on from Thunderball, he's looking distinctly flabby. (You can say what you like about the superannuated Moore of AVTAK, but Bond has never been in worse shape than he is here in Japan.) He'd clearly rather be somewhere else entirely and this shows in every scene: the eyes are dead, devoid of sparkle.

Not much else sparkles either. Tiger Tanaka is no Kerim Bey. Helga Brandt is certainly no Fiona Volpe. M, Moneypenny and Q all good give value in their usual cameos but that should hardly be the highpoint of the first hour. Donald Pleasance makes for a rather ungainly, bullish Blofeld, lacking the cultivation of No, or Goldfinger. But having said that, is there a good Blofeld? I'll come back to that one day.

But for now, let's just run through what is good about YOLT - it'll be quicker.

The space sequences are, I think, astonishingly good. It's not quite 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the effects, the model shots, the curvature of the Earth are all brilliantly done and, when combined with John Barry's excellent music, the overall quality of these scenes is very high.

Lost amongst the confusion of the Tokyo section is a great, if meaningless, fight between Bond and a henchman in Osato's office - it's fast, violent and well choreographed and I'd never really noticed it before.

And Little Nellie is good too. I was all geared up to pour scorn on the little gyrocopter, but the dog-fight is nicely done, excellently shot and choppily edited to maximum effect, really showing off the gyro's supposed manoeuvrability. 

And there's the small matter of HUNDREDS of NINJAS attacking a LAIR hidden inside a VOLCANO. This is is the one thing everybody remembers about YOLT and rightly so. I've been praising Ken Adam and his set design throughout these films, but the inside of the volcano lair is unsurpassed. It's gargantuan, cost more to build than DRNO's total budget and is amazing. The conceit of it is brilliant - a false caldera lake hides a vast subterranean base complete with monorails (at least two), helipad, rocket launch pad, luxury apartments and piranha pool -  but the execution is something else. Obvious model shots of, say, a helicopter landing turn out to be done for real, with tiny people in the distant background. I've literally no idea how they did the space capsule landing - again, it must be a model shot - but who knows? Either way, it's genius.

So obviously you drop hundreds of ninjas through the roof and have a MASSIVE battle. It doesn't matter that it's silly, ridiculous, or utterly the most over-the-top thing in any Bond film (remind me of this when I watch Moonraker): it is GLORIOUS. I showed this to my eight year old and as the shadowy figures approached the crater he felt compelled to speak. "Wait," he said. "Those guys are ALL ninjas?" I nodded. "Whoa," he breathed, "this is going to be COOL." And you just can't argue with that.

Starting out in DRNO as a rather dull (and cheap) tropical murder mystery, the series has changed incredibly during these five films. For example, all trace of British insecurity is long gone by YOLT in which (thanks to Bond) the UK is able to neatly side-step a SPECTRE-manufactured World War III that the USA and USSR seem too stupid to be able to avoid themselves. 007's world is now one where Britain, and British espionage is revered and feared and, although it is tacitly admitted that the US has the money and the hardware, the implication is that they wouldn't know what to do with it unless James Bond was on hand to save the day. The fame of Bond is now part of his character, as is his omniscience: he's become the world-famous know-it-all who so readily lends himself to pastiche. This would matter less if it wasn't for the fact that Connery consistently plays 007 without any sense of vulnerability whatsoever. There's the very rare grimace of doubt that fleetingly creases his features in the earlier films, but in YOLT, the most disconcerted he gets is when he can only find Siamese vodka in a drinks cabinet. He can be charming, yes. He is undoubtedly a highly attractive man. But he's emotionally inert, with only the occasional angry or sadistic flourish instead of actual character traits.

If it's to maintain any long term interest, the series is going to have to take some risks and show us what's underneath the glib veneer. It's time to rip open the black tie armour and show us the man's beaten, broken heart. Yes, it's time for Casino Royale! Well, one day...

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Lovely space-murder opening, some geopolitical scene-setting and then somebody pretends to machine gun 007 in a Hong Kong brothel. It's functional and the whizz-bang pizazz of Goldfinger seems to be a one-off so far. We'll have to wait for TSWLM before the 'set-piece' PCS becomes a staple, believe it or not.

Theme: This is one of Barry's best scores and it's a great theme song too. Maurice Binder has read the script so it's naked Japanese women and lots of hot throbbing lava oozing everywhere. 

Deaths: 80. That's a record so far. There can't be any ninjas left in Japan after all that. 

Memorable Deaths: The astronaut who gets his lifeline severed. And there are two piranha-related fatalities.  

Licence to Kill: 13 - assuming that the security guard whom Bond shoots in the stomach outside Osato Industries would receive medical attention and survive.

Exploding Helicopters: 4! Excellent helicopter exploderising from Little Nellie. Mind you, as a percentage of the total number of helicopters in YOLT, this is not high. They are everywhere in countless numbers.

Shags: 3. I'd have counted the Chinese woman from the PCS but Bond tells Moneypenny he'd have needed another five minutes to find out if he liked her, so obviously that's a no.

Crimes Against Women: Hmm, well Bond seems to be going all Pinkerton on us when his Japanese nuptials take place. Later on it's revealed that he gave a false name to the priest, but let's face it, like this Bond would have counted it as a real wedding anyway. He's happy to demand his conjugal rights from his co-worker but doesn't rape her when she declines so that's a step in the right direction. Kissy, the Japanese secret agent in question, has "a face like a pig" according to her boss. Tough Annual Review there. Otherwise Bond doesn't so much force himself upon the women of Japan as wait for them to meekly offer to bathe him. And the two agents, Aki and Kissy, get the best treatment of any Bond women to date - they're shown to be efficient operatives, capable of (gasp!) resisting Bond until the mission is accomplished.

Casual Racism: Well, James Bond is given plastic surgery to make him look Japanese. It's pretty crass. I'm not an expert on Sixties Japan but I reckon it is possible that it was a country with both ultra-modern cities and strong cultural traditions as shown here.

Out of Time: Bond pilots Little Nellie with a cine camera stuck to his helmet.

Fashion Disasters: Flabby Sean in ninja pyjamas. Or in spats. Or dressed as a fisherman. Or as a construction worker. But Sean does get away with the Royal Navy uniform (even the hat!), so well done him. Other Bonds won't (See TND). Why does Blofeld wear that horrible beige suit? It's not a Nehru jacket though, let's nix that one straight away.

Eh?: Basically, everything but.. How can China afford to pay SPECTRE to mount its own space programme? In fact, it's a space programme with reusable capsules that swallow other capsules, based inside a dormant volcano - could they have spent any more money? Why does SPECTRE bother to capture the US and USSR craft? They don't need them. Surely it would be cheaper and easier to infiltrate the American and Soviet space programmes and sabotage the missions? >> When they launch their final mission, they paint CCCP on their own SPECTRE ship - is this the crucial evidence the Americans need? How're they going to see it? >> The Japanese security service apparently employs a helicopter with a magnet to execute enemies of the state by picking up their car and dropping them in the sea. >> How do the RAF, or whoever, know to drop the life rafts for the swimming ninjas? Don't tell me ninjas show up on radar. 

Worst Line: "Is my little girl hot and ready?" (Bond is, thankfully, referring to Little Nellie). 007 declares that saki should be correctly served at a temperature of 98.4°F. What a bore. Tiger points out that Bond's masseuse is "very sexiful". But there's all sorts of dire macho innuendo in that bath scene which is worse. Ernst Stavro Blofeld holds up a picture of a Walther PPK: "Only one man we know uses this kind of gun!" Which is just unbelievably stupid. 

Best Line: Oh dear, very poor showing here. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel, but Blofeld's shrugged non-apology "Extortion is my business," is as good as it gets.

Worst Bond Moment: Dressed up as a Japanese fisherman? Flummoxed by culture shock during a Sumo bout? Mouthing off about his 'first' from 'Cambridge' in 'Oriental Languages'? (I'm dubious, can you tell?) The whole movie?

Best Bond Moment: Do you know what? It's probably the shot where he's running across the roof of Kobe docks fighting all the sailors. But that doesn't make it the defining Bond moment of the '60s, okay? 

Overall: Too much, but with flashes of genius behind the scenes. We'll be here again, with Moonraker and DAD: costly, extravagant messes that go too far but allow the series to go back to basics: OHMSS, FYEO and Casino Royale. Having said that, I'm looking at this through jaded eyes. As a kid, this was AMAZING and the ninja/volcano lair battle surely is the greatest Bond climax ever. Either way, for good or ill, this is the movie Bond cutting free of the baggage of the novels and letting rip. The next obstacle will be to prove the series can survive without Sean 'SEAN CONNERY IS JAMES BOND' Connery.

James Bond Will Return: Well, of course, he doesn't return. This is the last James Bond film because Sean 'SEAN CONNERY IS JAMES BOND' Connery isn't coming back. No, not in Never Say Never Again. Not even, I might argue, in DAF. But it does say, on screen: "James Bond will be back On Her Majesty's Secret Service" so I guess they have some other chap lined up. Good luck to him.

Bonus Fact!: Goldfinger is the only one of the six Connery films where he doesn't wind up in a boat at the end, and even then he's on a tiny little island. For Moore it's true four times out of seven, five if you count the Space Shuttle as a ship. But of all the other Bonds, it's only Lazenby who finishes up inside any form of transportation, and that's a car.

Thunderball

Four films in, I'm coming to the heretical conclusion that I really don't like Sean Connery's Bond very much. Mind you, as of Thunderball, I don't think Sean Connery likes Sean Connery's Bond any more either.

He's clearly getting fed up. His accent, which started off as polished RP in DRNO and began to slide during Goldfinger, is now one notch from where it'll be in The Hunt for Red October. It's suggestive of an actor who is as much anxious about being subsumed as he is unwilling to make the effort.

But then, there's not much acting to be done in a movie where so much takes place underwater. And Connery could, perhaps, be forgiven for beginning to feel like merchandise: for most of the film he's almost naked, either draped in a tiny towel at the health spa or running around in tiny shorts in the Bahamas. Forget Daniel Craig, this is the third film out of four in which Connery's had his top off (three films, (co)incidentally all directed by Terence Young). No wonder he felt like a piece of meat.

Of course, as the male lead, the business of being consumed by the audience, by the films, is a gradual process and one that is only finally beginning to tell upon him. In the meantime, the series has been chewing up women at a much faster rate. We get three more here. Molly Peters plays Patricia Fearing, a nurse at Shrublands - we'll come back to her in Crimes Against Women. The female lead is Domino Derval, played by former Miss France Claudine Auger. She's certainly Bond's type: beautiful, demure, submissive and dull, with a tragic yet endearing vulnerability. In other words, she is almost a carbon copy of Honey and Tatiana. She's redubbed by the same voice actor too so the three of them even sound the same.

But if, to paraphrase Pussy Galore, we haven't yet met a real woman in the series, Thunderball does at last provide. Thank goodness for Fiona Volpe. Okay, perhaps real is the wrong word. The SPECTRE assassin and first 'evil' Bond woman is as much a ludicrous caricature as the good ones have been. The difference is that because she is 'bad', she can do and say and be things that would be beyond the pale for a 'good' woman according to the society of the time. You know, things like be funny. Or have desires. Or act independently. Against a backdrop of bikini-clad Stepford Wives, Volpe is breath of fresh air. A breath of smouldering, purring, murdering fresh air.

Now, all Bond women are beautiful. Yes, even the one with the cello. But Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi, is something else. Flame haired and equipped with a magnificent pair of lips that swell and snarl and pout as she fizzes her way around the Bahamas, she is playful, dastardly and utterly gorgeous. If you're reading this, there is a good chance that you have in your head, at some level or other of your consciousness, no matter how sketchy, a ranked list of Bond women. Scrub out the name at the top. You can keep your Stacey Suttons, your Melina Havelocks, your (God help you) Christmas Jones and Jinxes. Fiona Volpe is the best.

She's certainly the best thing in Thunderball. She has all the best lines for one thing. Early on, her pilot lover has to go to work. "I might not be in the mood later," he warns her. Volpe's nostrils flare. "D'you wanna bet?" she shoots back.

It's her scenes with Bond where she really offers something we haven't seen before. After having had her way with him (and for once it is that way round) she castigates him. "You made a shocking mess of my hair, you sadistic brute!" In a reverse of the situation with Ms Taro in DRNO, it turns out that she has been stalling 007 with sex. At last the tables are turned. When her thugs arrive, the charade is dropped and Bond and Volpe can have a frank exchange of views: "Vanity, Mr Bond? Something you know so much about," she snarks. The conversation in fact serves as some sort of antidote to a lot of the nonsense we've had to put up with before now.

"But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman, and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and turns to the side of right and virtue... But not this one!"

It isn't an apology for the treatment of Pussy Galore, but there is an implicit criticism there, I think. At the very least, Volpe exists to subvert the audience's expectations and reduce 007 to more mortal dimensions. Never again will Bond's magic penis save the world, and it's all thanks to her.

Oh and somewhere behind her feather boa there is some story about nuclear weapons or something. I wasn't really concentrating. Suffice to say that there's another UK propaganda subtext to proceedings. The horrifying scenario is that NATO is being held to ransom by a ruthless gang who have stolen two atomic bombs. So we get a procession of unflappable British men with grey hair (a mixture of RAF officers, civil servants, M and the Foreign Secretary) whose upper lips never unstiffen, even when all seems lost. Keep Calm and Carry On, indeed, but there's more to it than that. These patrician gentlemen will quietly sort it out behind the scenes. There's no press, no public disclosure, nothing, in short, for us to worry our little heads about. It's a very old-fashioned, British take upon a nuclear crisis, set in sumptuous Whitehall chambers with geo-political maps hidden behind the tapestries.

Needless to say that Britain is very much supported by her junior ally, the United States of Somewhere or Other, who obligingly furnishes MI6 with those incidental niceties like troops, warships and so on. So welcome back Felix Leiter of the CIA, Baldrick to Bond's Blackadder, who hangs around being helpful and earnest, not so much second fiddle to 007 as a kazoo in Ray-Bans.

This is the problem with Leiter; he cannot ever be allowed equal billing lest the audience discover that the USA is actually a richer and more powerful nation than the UK. Fleming dealt with this by feeding him to the sharks in Live and Let Die so that afterwards he was hampered by a false leg and a hook for a hand (hence LTK), but in the films he's just varying degrees of useless. Although David Hedison did better than most (LALD, LTK), it's the current version, played by Jeffrey Wright in Casino Royale and QOS, that offers the most compelling interpretation of the relationship. He is the spy-bureaucrat, operating within the machinery of the CIA and, occasionally, able to try and throw 007 a line. It works nicely, with plenty of opportunity for murk. Having said all that, the best Bond/Leiter paring is, of course, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare. Oh yes it is.

The underwater sequences are impressive, but they do go on and totally dominate the last half hour. The climatic battle goes on forever, but presumably there was considerable pressure, after Goldfinger, to up the ante. What we end up with then is full of sex, sun, sharks and seawater, but the story is weak given the potential of the subject matter. If it is beginning to feel like Bond-by-numbers, don't be too surprised: this one was, literally, written by a committee.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: It's no Goldfinger, but hidden away inside this dull grey PCS is a rather tasty fight. And a stupid jet-pack stunt that a) doesn't fit at all, jarring horribly with the grey French aesthetic, and b) looks stupid because the stuntman insisted on wearing a helmet. As we know, Connery can't wear hats without looking like an idiot. The helmet is so much worse.

Theme: It could have been, should have been Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but we get Tom Jones belting out the improbable lyrics of Thunderball instead. Maurice Binder's back at the vision mixing desk so it's naked ladies and phallic spear-guns all the way.

Deaths: Tricky, thanks to another confusingly edited and protracted battle. It's about 49. Probably slightly higher considering there must be some people on the Disco Volante when it explodes.

Memorable Deaths: Vargas gets the point. Henchmen get thrown to the sharks. Fiona Volpe somehow gets a bullet in the back on the dance floor thanks to a 007 switcheroo. Most memorable is the SPECTRE agent that Blofeld electrocutes in his chair at the board meeting. Can you imagine Boardroom Bingo as a SPECTRE employee? Japanese fighting fish? Tick.. Electrocution? Tick.. White cat? Tick..

Licence to Kill: 16 (if you count Volpe, which I have). Most of these are during the big battle.

Exploding Helicopters: None. There is a helicopter but, inexplicably, it doesn't explode. A plane does crash though. Depressingly, this is what I wrote for Goldfinger as well.

Shags: 3. A new record. For the first time he hits the unholy trinity: early shag, evil shag, good shag. Presumably he did Paula and the French agent from the PCS too, knowing him...

Crimes Against Women: Plenty, not least of which is blackmailing nurse Patricia Fearing into having sex with him. After several unwanted advances and some general harassment (treated as fun and games by the film of course), she's worried he'll get her into trouble for something that he knows isn't her fault. "My silence could have a price," he suggests. "Oh no," she replies, but he moves in nonetheless. Surprisingly, the current Wikipedia entry for this character states that she "is not unwilling" which tells you a lot about the sort of people that edit these articles. Knowing her brother is dead, Bond shags Domino before telling her the news - of course, otherwise she might not have been in the mood, right? When he first meets her, 007 tries this charming chat up line: "Most girls just paddle about. You swim like a man."

Casual Racism: The vulnerable underbelly of NATO's nuclear weapons security is a corrupt Italian. All the baddies are foreign, apart from one SPECTRE board member. 

Out of Time: Well the whole nuclear anxiety thing is very Sixties, but the thing that dates it most, sadly, for us is the disbelief that SPECTRE are happy to hold the world to ransom so discretely. Surely modern audiences would expect them to fly the first bomb straight into a major city and then start issuing demands?

Fashion Disasters: Largo, in double-breasted yachting blazer, bare chest and wet-suit leggings looks like he's about to star in a very strange Richard III. Bond's helmet we've mentioned, but there's yet another hat as well. Were they trying to save on wigs? Q's Hawaiian shirt is presumably intentionally horrible.

Eh?: Two major plot holes: why chase after Derval's sister? And how does she know Largo? Both reduce themselves to this: why should Largo bring the sister of the man he is murdering on his top secret mission? >> Why does Count Lippe's room at the spa have his name on a brass plaque on the door? >> Why does a traction machine need a lethal setting? >> Despite the global nuclear emergency Bond apparently has the time and inclination to change suits between the 00-Section briefing and his individual meeting with M. >> When Bond arrives in Nassau, he immediately locates Domino swimming in the sea. >> During the final grapple on the bridge of the Disco Volante, whilst the ship is out of control and careering improbably between rocks, one of Largo's men appears to bring a tray of champagne up the stairs. Is this mid-fight refreshment? >> Why do the SPECTRE agents all wear over-sized rings that establish their affiliation? >> Does the US Coast Guard normally operate in the Bahamas? >> Finally, one thing that isn't as weird as it looks: Bond and Domino are rescued at the end by an aeroplane that plucks them from a life-raft on a rope and pulls them into the sky. Stupidly, this is a real extraction technique.  

Worst Line: Lots of very clunky dialogue, but Largo gets the worst of it. It seems as if the script is at pains to point out that lots of things are happening underwater. Presumably we might not notice the evidence of our own eyes. So Largo barks: "Open the underwater hatch!" and "Turn on the underwater lights!", the second one twice. Bond's quips are already groan-worthy. "Some people really burn you up on the roads these days." 

Best Line: But his silent quips are lovely character touches - he mockingly throws lilies over the body of a dispatched enemy and, sneaking out of a suspect's hospital room, pops back to steal a grape from his fruit bowl. His response to news of a global terror alert: "Someone's probably lost a dog." Volpe pursues 007 to a club where she finds him hiding on the dance floor with a holidaymaker. Icily, she asks to cut in. "You should have told me your wife was here," the young tourist reproaches him mournfully. Best of all is the look between Volpe and Bond. It's an entire unspoken conversation, him cornered, trying to be disarmingly charming, to resist; her smouldering, victorious, hungry.

Worst Bond Moment: Small beer this time, but he does look like a wazzock with that helmet on.

Best Bond Moment: All the stuff with the sharks is pretty cool, to be honest. There's a nice moment of improvisation from Bond as he escapes from a car with a bottle of rum and a lighter. But the best moment is another bit of silent interplay between 007 and Volpe. She's hiding in his hotel room, having a bath, pretending that she thinks it is her room, and pretends to be affronted when he walks in on her. "Aren't you in the wrong room, Mr Bond?" she asks. "Not from where I'm standing," he dead-pans. Casually glancing down at her naked body, she changes tack. "Since you are here, would you mind giving me something to put on?" Bond, thoughtfully steps into the room, bends down and, without taking his eyes off her, picks up and offers her a pair of shoes. 

Overall: It's the underwater one that isn't FYEO. Lots of sharks and diving masks and spear guns. It looks colossally expensive compared with the first four films, and it remains one of the highest grossing of all the Bond films. In fact, allowing for inflation, Thunderball would be on a par with a Harry Potter movie today. The producers have found themselves in charge of a runaway train full of money - but their star is restless and the public wants even more. How on Earth are they going to top this?

James Bond Will Return: Oooh, it doesn't say anything. Legend has it that the caption did read "James Bond will return in On Her Majesty's Secret Service" but that the credits were curtailed to remove this once the decision was made to make You Only Live Twice instead. Now you're imagining that, aren't you. Yeah, me too.

Thanksgiving

I think it's fair to say that I am still not fully engaged in American life. Partly this is inertia on my part - I miss a lot of British things and enjoy trying to cling to them. But it is also that there is so much to learn. Not having grown up here means there's stuff I'll never get. I'll never have a college football team, or a home state. I'll never vote for a President. And there are so many traditions, customs and holidays that I haven't grown up with and probably won't ever truly understand.

And that's fine. I prefer Remembrance Sunday to Veterans' Day. I'd rather celebrate the 5th of November than July 4th.

But if I ever do go back to the UK, I would like try and take Thanksgiving back with me. It's a brilliant holiday and one which I can fully endorse. It's simple and easy, just good food and loved ones, and it serves as a legitimate starting gun for Christmas. Of course, I don't have an unruly feuding extended family that I have to cater for, so I'm guessing that some Thanksgivings are less fun and more complicated than others. I'm also aware that we aren't doing it quite properly. Although we can manage a green bean casserole, one of many delicious side dishes that differentiate Texan Thanksgiving from British Christmas dinner, we'll not be deep-frying a turkey and I won't be passing up on roast potatoes or parsnips.

But this is surely the glorious thing about Thanksgiving - it transcends America because at the core is a universal idea. I don't give two hoots for the Pilgrim Fathers, but I do have plenty to be grateful for. We all do, of course. I'm grateful for my incredibly hard-working wife and my indefatigable children. I'm grateful for my amazing family and friends. The giants of my life: my parents, my siblings, my school, university and other friends I've left behind in Britain. But also the new friends and new family I've found here in America, all startling and unlooked for, but heartbreakingly generous and welcoming. I'm grateful to be able to sit outside in my shirt sleeves in November. I'm grateful for the restorative powers of tea, toast and Marmite that are gently pushing the edges of a mighty hangover from my brain. And I'm grateful that this day exists: a day to remember how lucky and loved I am; a day to give thanks.

Goldfinger

And then - BAM! - it was the Sixties.

There are many reasons why Bond's antics will forever carry the smirk of a middle-aged man behaving like a schoolboy. Most of them you know, instinctively. But it's telling that the films have all those neat contemporary pop-culture references. The stolen Goya in DRNO, the Margaret and Dennis cameo in FYEO - it's the old codger trying to seem up-to-date, but always being slightly behind the curve. Despite the series' popularity, it's rarely a trend setter and almost always (with the exception of Andress' bikini) a follower of fashion.

1964's Goldfinger marks the point where we start to see the Sixties on screen, just as LALD (1973) is the first Seventies Bond and AVTAK (1985 - not Moore's age at the time) is the first of the Eighties. Here things are hotting up. We get the gleaming white skyline of Miami Beach instead of old Istanbul. Out goes the pre-war Bentley (which, to be fair, looked horrifically old-fashioned in FRWL) and in comes the modern Aston Martin DB5. Whilst Bond's attaché case could have been issued by the S.O.E., now Q's loading 007 up with homing devices and GPS on microfiche. Let's not forget that the baddies are au courant as well, with nerve gas, lasers and dirty bombs up their sleeves. 

Barfly.

Everything about Goldfinger is bigger, brighter and shinier than its predecessors. The pre-credits sequence is as cool as Bond ever gets, like a mini movie all of its own. In five minutes 007 goes through a wide repertoire: frogman, saboteur, tuxedoed barfly, lover, fighter, killer. The sequence pauses to deliver the first and superlative quip and then, immaculately, Bond closes the door on the scene - a perfect piece of punctuation that allows the opening bars of the theme to crash into our ears. It's almost a shame the rest of the film has to exist because those few minutes are not only the best of Goldfinger but, arguably, of the entire series. 

So what of the rest? I'm not wrong, am I, in assuming that this is widely considered to be the definitive, the archetypal Bond film? Presumably, this is as good as it gets? Well, for me, what is good here is excellent; but there are also some truly terrible aspects and these are irredeemable. In terms of its reputation, I'd agree that this is the film that cements the Bond formula, this is the one where the production team nail it. Ken Adam is back and his set design continues to be stunning. He was refused access to the real Fort Knox vault and had to pull one from his imagination; given that, it is a marvellous set - both credible and fantastic. John Barry's music improves dramatically on FRWL: muscular and martial in the action scenes, sweepingly scenic during, for example, 007's leisurely pursuit through the Swiss Alps, occasionally playful (the Kentucky Bluegrass) and, in the case of Oddjob's chiming leitmotif, chillingly sinister. The theme is spectacular, of course, thanks to Shirley Bassey's bravura delivery, but it's married with great visuals too. Again it's Robert Brownjohn, not Maurice Binder, in charge of the credits and again there is a simple and brilliantly effective idea: scenes from the film are played over the golden skin of a model, but this is hardly the soft porn we'll put up with in later years. It's rather witty, in fact, and no more so when a golf ball is seemingly putted up the woman's arm and sinks into her cleavage.

There's plenty of wit in the script too and some lovely performances. Fröbe is excellent as Goldfinger (albeit dubbed, of course), both charming and ogreish. See how he physically twitches when he sees the gold in the vault. Honor Blackman does what she can with the little she's given, but the script actively works against her having any sort of character. More on that later. Of the guest stars, it's Harold Sakata as Oddjob who steals the show. He has no lines (other than 'Ah-ah') and is in only a few scenes, but his implacable henchmen is a joy. His smile is delightful, part Buddha, part imp. Watch him grin as Bond smashes a steel bar across his face or, most brilliantly, the way his expression changes as 007 finds the steel-edged hat during their final fight. Suddenly he is wary, his eyes narrow, his chin drops - then Bond throws and misses and the most beautiful smile spreads across Oddjob's face, like the sun coming out.

Other aspects of the formula are being perfected here. Q gets his own Branch and, brilliantly, a personality as well. The Aston Martin DB5 becomes the first Bond car (not to mention the most iconic). The golf match between Bond and Goldfinger is merely the first of many penis-measuring contests that 007 will inevitably win. Connery's Bond is clearly enjoying himself much more here, although it is at the expense of everyone else, and under the veneer of sophistication lurks much that is dark and unpleasant. If it's part of Connery's performance then it's impressive acting. Familiar elements turn up and do their stuff. There's a new Felix Leiter, albeit one utterly without charisma, but M gets a welcome extended outing, taking Bond to the Bank of England for dinner and a lecture. Unfortunately, it's 007 holding forth on brandy but at least here his expertise is still merely that of the connoisseur - soon he'll be an insufferable know-it-all on all manner of subjects.

At least Moneypenny is able to put him in his place - seizing his hat and flinging it casually onto the stand during their 'customary byplay'. Goodness knows somebody needs to cool him down because Bond's machismo is unpleasantly rampant here. Throughout the film 007 is repellently sexist. It starts with him sending his latest blonde, Dink, off with a slap on the arse and the caveman growl "Man talk," so he can gossip with Leiter. Just a few minutes later he's invading the personal space of a hotel maid to snatch a key from her skirt. She stands there aghast. "You're very sweet," he says by way of, what, apology? explanation? - it sounds just as threatening as it is patronising.

And then, finally, shockingly, there is Pussy Galore and this is where it all falls down.

Let's get this bit over and done with. You may disagree with my interpretation of events but, as far as I'm concerned, Bond rapes Ms Galore. Oh, yes he does. He propositions her in the hay barn. She refuses. Four times. Four times she verbally indicates that she is unwilling. Then there's a physical struggle (that she initiates) during which he overpowers her. Yes, cultural standards shift over time, yes this is escapist, silly James Bond but, frankly, who cares? If it was Silvio Berlusconi doing this instead of James Bond, you wouldn't hesitate for a moment to call it what it is, or to smash him in the balls with a cricket bat.

What makes this worse is that the entire film hinges on this rape. In the book, Bond passes a message to the CIA warning them of the attack. The film deviates and gives this role to Pussy Galore, but crucially she does this because Bond has made her swap sides. And how did he do that? By raping her. Furthermore, Bond does nothing during the attack on Fort Knox but kill Oddjob and stare hopelessly at a nuclear bomb - it's the US Army that fight off the Communists and disarm the device. So 007's only contribution to the successful defence of the world economy is to rape a woman so that she magically becomes a goody. That's how he beats Goldfinger. It's all fairly horrible.

But there's another layer to this, left over from the book and it's worth a look at that I think because only so much can be hinted at on screen. She's a real gangster in the book, American and - explicitly - a 'Lesbian' [sic]. Bond is disgusted to notice that Tilly Masterson, pale would-be assassin of Goldfinger, is enamoured of her.

Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits - barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them. 

I suppose in his defence I should point out that Fleming was born in 1908; his opinions could have been even more conservative. At least in the novel Bond doesn't force himself on Galore. She just happens to be around at the end of the book. She still switches sides, but it's suggested that she's just made a pragmatic gangster's decision to throw in her lot with 007. But once Goldfinger's playing his golden harp, Bond orders her into bed and "she did as she was told, like an obedient child."

He said, "They told me you only liked women."
She said, "I never met a man before." The toughness came back into her voice. "I'm from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it's a girl who can run faster than her brother. In my case I couldn't run as fast as my uncle. I was twelve. That's not so good, James. You ought to be able to guess that."

So that's all right then. There's no such thing as an actual lesbian - it's just a confusion created by bad men and which can be cured by good men. Hooray for men! Ugh.

But when you watch the film with this back story playing underneath it all then the whole thing becomes even more disturbing. This is the film where James Bond saves the day by raping a bad lesbian so that she becomes a good compliant heterosexual. The icing on the cake? Bond's explanatory quip when Leiter asks him why she alerted the CIA: "I must have appealed to her maternal instincts."

What a guy.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Seagull? No it's James Bond! Grappling hook, over the wall. Kick the guard. Find the switch. Inside, squeeze the toothpaste. Set the charges. Outside. Drop. Undo top, stick fresh carnation in button hole. Into the bar. Girl does a shimmy. Light fag. Look at Rolex. KABOOM! Look suspiciously unfazed by explosion as everyone else goes crazy. Heroin-flavoured bananas. Up to the room. Girl's in the bath. Get her out. Kiss her. OUCH! Hang up gun. Kiss her again. There's something in her eye.. A capungo! Spin, thwack, odd twisty leg move, knock him into the bath. He's reaching for the gun! Flick electric - is it a heater? - into the bath. FIZZLE! Retrieve gun. Replace jacket. Glance at naked girl in towel regaining consciousness on the floor and groaning. Say "Shocking. Positively shocking." Close door. Cue Shirley. Bloody brilliant.

Theme: It's Goldfinger. It's Shirley Bassey. It's a bit of a belter.

Deaths: Well, I make it 58. But there must be load more at the battle at Fort Knox. Probably. Doesn't help when footage is reused though.

Memorable Deaths [new category!]: Plenty. Capungo in the bath. Shirley Eaton covered in gold paint. Oddjob blows a fuse. Goldfinger out the window.  

Licence to Kill: 7. Two of which are electrocutions. This means he is left flailing about for a second electric death quip once he's offed Oddjob. He doesn't come up with anything good.

Exploding Helicopters: None. There is a helicopter but, inexplicably, it doesn't explode. A plane does crash though.

Shags: 2. Yes, there's the dancing girl, and Dink, but we don't know he shagged them. He incontrovertibly goes all the way with Shirley Eaton and, for the record, she seems to be very keen on the idea too.

Crimes Against Women: An actual crime this time. Don't worry, they'll go all meta and subvert it in the next film so it's all okay. (For what it's worth, Mei-Lei could probably get him for harassment too.)

Casual Racism: The Communists' uniforms. (It's never explicitly stated if they are Chinese, like Mr Ling, or Korean, like Oddjob.) 

Out of Time: Amazingly, 007 has maps of the whole of Europe on his homing device. That's a lot of microfiche for 1964 but as a gadget it's rather less remarkable given our gee-whiz GPS sat-navs. The nuclear device is ENORMOUS. The brown overcoats the Q technicians wear suggest Mr Bennett the caretaker from Take Hart. Bond flies to Switzerland from Southend-on-Sea. There's glamorous.

Fashion Disasters: Hahahaha. That's me laughing at Bond's blue terry one-piece romper suit. It's terrible. Connery is persevering unsuccessfully with the hat idea but the golf hat is one of the better ones. Leiter wears a terrible hat too. The Flying Circus pilots have very, er, pointy flight-suits.

Eh?: Oh good grief, why tell the gangsters your plan if you've just gathered them there to kill them? Why let Solo leave, if you're about to gas all the others anyway? It's a waste of petrol to drive him to the junk yard, let alone all the effort of extracting the gold from the crushed up car. >> How on Earth, did Felix drill the entire town around Fort Knox to fall over at the right time? It's sixty thousand people, isn't it? Did he call a Town Hall meeting? >> What is Bond trying to do to the capungo's leg during the fight in the pre-credit sequence? Twist it off? >> Felix's office improbably overlooks the White House. >> The flight crew of the plane that Goldfinger hi-jacks are shown violently struggling against their bonds - but a few minutes later when they are discovered by Leiter et al, they are all unconscious, as if they struggled themselves to sleep, like tiny swaddled babies. >> Most infuriatingly, Bond is on the verge of escaping from Goldfinger's foundry when he is confronted with a little old lady with a machine gun, so he swerves about and drives back into the complex and is caught. Just run her over, FFS! Perhaps she reminds him of May? 

Worst Line: Almost anything said by the hoodlums. They bleat like new born lambs, seemingly confused by everything around them: "What's with that trick pool table!", "Hey, what is this? A merry-go-round?" and "What's that map doing there?" are three of their hysterical cries for help.  None of this can compete with "MAN TALK," or Bond's bid for Fuddy-Duddy of the Year, 1964: "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!" Actually worse than all this is the breathless, little-girlish "Ooh!" Pussy Galore gives as Bond knocks her on her back once again before the final credits roll.

Best Line: "Shocking. Positively shocking." It's the best Bond quip ever but, sadly, that means it's responsible for all the dreadful ones to come. There's also: "Manners, Oddjob. I thought you always took your hat off to a lady?" from Bond and the incomparable "I never joke about my work, 007," from an already exasperated Q. And don't forget that Mr Solo had a pressing engagement...

Worst Bond Moment: Other than YOU KNOW WHAT? Helplessly staring at the innards of a nuclear bomb? Standing around in that terry one-piece? Here it is:

Best Bond Moment: I've mentioned the pre-credit sequence already possibly? The way he breaks out of his cell at the ranch is pretty neat too.

Overall: Our mundane reality of spies and scandals has been left behind and from now on it's all going to be fantastic(al). Every thing's done so confidently that it's easy to miss the things they get wrong, perhaps. I don't know. This is exciting, bold, beautiful and witty. More importantly, it's cynically and successfully aimed at the American market. From now on 007 is a global commodity, but the world may not be enough...

James Bond Will Return: It says:

THE END

OF
'GOLDFINGER'

BUT
JAMES BOND
WILL BE BACK

IN
'THUNDERBALL'

and they're not wrong.

From Russia With Love

It has the same writers, the same director, the same star, but FRWL is a huge improvement on DRNO. What makes it better? The swagger, the confidence that could only be occasionally glimpsed in the first film is here in spades. In other words this is, from beginning to end, a James Bond movie. Both Connery and Bond are much more comfortable, and the latter is transformed from a cold British policeman into a suave international spy.

Yes, unusually for the series, this film actually places Bond in the world of international espionage, complete with encryption machines, dead letter drops, proxies and coded password exchanges. Despite the seeming realism of the film, Bond is already a spy with both a global reputation and a nemesis in the shape of the cat-stroking (but as yet unnamed) head of SPECTRE.

It's this singular deviation from the source material (in the book, the operation against Bond is pure SMERSH) that provides the fantastic edge to FRWL but, whereas in DRNO the fantasy lifted us out of the boredom, here it threatens to spoil what is actually a taut East/West spy thriller. As with DRNO, real world concerns are present. SPECTRE's plan is to create a scandal that would embarrass MI6 by filming 007 having sex with a female KGB agent. It's remarkable enough that this film could be released just weeks after Lord Denning's report into the Profumo affair - but remember the original novel was written in 1957, six years earlier. Unlike DRNO, the subject of British security weaknesses is handled much more confidently here. 'They' (SMERSH/SPECTRE/whoever) want to attack us because we are a threat, we are strong - that's the message here. And it is very clear and very deliberate that the baddies are keen to target a particular agent too: James Bond. Already the character has become associated with ideas of British prestige and security and his on screen victories therefore become all the more important.

The early scenes include a chess match, now a clichéd metaphor for the Cold War, between Soviet and US pawns – Czechoslovakia and Canada respectively. (On the scoreboard, incidentally, the players are billed as “Czechoslovakia Kronsteen” and “Canada MacAdams” which would make pretty great names themselves. Might steal that.) If we could ignore SPECTRE then the remainder of the plot would be a murky continuation of that chess game, but immediately we are dragged to ‘SPECTRE Island’ which is seemingly a terrorist training camp adapted for a Japanese game show. It is a silly place where training means letting everyone loose together in a confined space with flame throwers, machine guns and swords: a preposterous mêlée through which VIP tours coolly pick their way. It's like something from Monty Python. There's more SPECTRE silliness later on but until then Fleming's book asserts itself and we get the straight, if colourful, spy film we might have expected.

Other than a slight stumble when Grant calls Bond "oh-oh-seven" (c.f. WOTAN's "Doctor Who is required!") this is really coming together now. The legendary Desmond Llewellyn makes his début as Q and brings with him the first bona fide gadget of the series: an attaché briefcase loaded with guns, knives, tear gas and gold sovereigns. We have the all-out pitched battle at the gypsy encampment and, joy of joys, the brilliant fight between Bond and Robert Shaw's Red Grant on board the Orient Express. It's a brutal crashing battle in a tiny space and, almost certainly, the best fight scene in the series.

Grant himself is the best thing in this movie, something the director, Terence Young, seemed to notice as the character wasn't supposed to appear in the first half of the film and had to be hastily added into the scenes in Turkey. Throughout FRWL he is a brooding and ominous presence: from the opening teaser sequence (another Bond staple appearing for the first time) to that fight, he lurks and prowls, shadowing Bond like a jungle cat. Here, in only the second film, we are offered Grant as an 'anti-Bond', a reflection: identically dressed, but blond, he is an equal and an opposite, capable of offing our hero. Shaw, given little to say, is brilliant, physically powerful, able to dominate a scene even when he's hiding in the background. My favourite moment is when the train stops at Belgrade. Bond gets off to search for his contact and wanders along the platform. Grant appears in the window of the carriage behind him and silently follows, effortlessly melting away every time 007 turns his head. It's excellently done and the real achievement is to provide a menace which seems more powerful than Bond. The only weird thing is just how much he reminds me of, er, Daniel Craig...

As for the rest of the cast, well, Lotte Lenya (as Colonel Klebb) is great, but she's in this a lot less than I remembered. Still, she gets her own fight scene and has the wonderful shoes with the hidden blade - surely the most memorable movie footwear since Dorothy's ruby slippers. Daniela Bianchi plays Tatiana, the unworldly KGB cipher clerk duped by SPECTRE into seducing Bond. Like Ursula Andress before her, her English was deemed poor enough to have her dubbed over by another actress, but her performance is strong despite that, bringing a convincing naive vulnerability - hang on, that's just the same as last time. Oh well. Tatiana does have a sweet girlish quality - practising her (fake) married name, trying on dresses - but this sort of demure pliable Bond woman is going to get boring quickly.

Another source of charm is Pedro Armendáriz as Kerim Bey, MI6's man in Station T, Turkey. The character is the perfect foil for Connery's Bond: smooth, reliable, tough and with an old fashioned view of gender relations. Still, it's hard not to be fond of the man and his family spy network. It's a lovely performance by Armendáriz, astonishingly so given that he was in tremendous pain throughout, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The condition worsened during filming and Armendáriz was sent to hospital. He did not return to the set and committed suicide before his scenes could be completed.

As Bond leaves the Orient Express, so the film abandons Fleming's story and sets off across country. There's a so-so North by Northwest pastiche and then the full force of Blofeld's sinister organisation is unleashed, giving us... the SPECTRE Regatta. Perhaps this was thrilling in 1963. It's not impossible. But I doubt it. Poor Walter Gotell (who'll reappear later in the series as a KGB chief) has to take command of this jolly flotilla whilst commentating through a megaphone. It all comes across a bit Balamory. The boats are named SPECTRE 1, 2 and 3 for one thing so as bullets splash into the water we hear commands like "A little to your left, SPECTRE number three! Keep right, SPECTRE number two!" as if he was the guy in charge of the pedalos on the boating lake. He also gets to tell off one of his henchmen for firing too accurately. "We don't want to hit them!" Oh no, why would you want to do that? It's all very genteel.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: The job here is to sum up in the first third of the novel in three minutes. Basically, people are plotting to take revenge on James Bond. It says something about the success of DRNO that we are immediately supposed to care about the threat to this James Bond fellow.

Theme: It's another vague medley, and the organ arrangement of the FRWL theme makes this sound like a variety show. And yes, we have semi-naked women wibbling and wobbling between the credits but this is not Maurice Binder, kids. This is Robert Brownjohn. You knows it.

Deaths: A whopping 25. That's a 278% increase on DRNO. It could be higher as well (but see below). 12 are killed during the fight at the gypsy camp alone.

Licence to Kill: At least 9, 5 of which are dispatched during the big fight. There are various woundings that might have proved fatal had the camera stayed on the victim longer. For example, Bond pushes a flaming cart into three men during the gypsy/Bulgarian battle, but they don't drop to the floor and could conceivably get away relatively unharmed. Similarly, during the boat chase at the end, there is certainly 1 fatality, but the fate of approximately 9 other men is not revealed. Let's be generous.

Exploding Helicopters: 1. The first, hopefully, of many.

Shags: 1. Although it is hinted that Bond has been 'given' the pair of gypsy girls for the night, when we next see them they are still fully (and elaborately) dressed so I'm not counting them.

Crimes Against Women: Unforgivably, Bond hits Tatiana across the face. He's cross about Kerim's death but even so, there's not much at stake to justify smacking her about. He also attacks Rosa Klebb with a chair, but that's rather more understandable as she has got very pointy shoes on. The belly dance is hardly offensive, but the cat-fight that follows is entirely gratuitous: half-naked women fighting to the death over a man that they will cook and sew for?

Casual Racism: Minor officials get a bad press here: the clerk in the Soviet embassy is pig-headed; the conductor on the Orient Express is corrupt. The Bulgars are Soviet patsies. The gypsies are wild and rough but they're hospitable and happy to fight on Bond's side.

Out of Time: This whole movie was made dated. Aside from Bond's pager and the odd topical news reference (all that Piccadilly stuff we no longer get) this could be the '50s or even earlier. It oozes old world charm. (Incidentally this might be a factor: Ken Adam was unavailable, working on Dr. Strangelove, so FRWL lacks his bold modern stylings.)

Fashion Disasters: The Bulgar spy is preposterously conspicuous in his beret and thick spectacles, like something from 'Allo 'Allo. The problem might be Soviet bloc opticians though because Klebb's are made from jam jars. Connery can't wear hats, it just looks silly. But the ship captain's hat he wears (with his Saville Row suit at one point) is terrible. 

Eh?: Bond leaves the shower running when Tatania sneaks into his room. For ages. >> Tatiana arranges to meet Bond at the Hagia Sophia and is shown walking through Istanbul to get there - except that in almost every shot, the Hagia Sophia is clearly seen over her shoulder, even the one where she is seen going inside. I don't think there are two of them are there? Also she asks a policeman directions on how to get to the enormous pointy mosque on the hill dominating the city.

Worst Line: SPECTRE's Admiral of the Fleet speaks nothing but tosh, of which "Ahoy Mr Bond!" is probably the nadir. His mysterious boss spouts "Twelve seconds. One day we must develop a faster acting venom." Bond says "Ciao" again.

Best Line: No real zingers. The secret code ("Have you got a match?" "I use a lighter.." and so forth) is fondly remembered by men of a certain age.

Worst Bond Moment: Use of the exciting and dynamic James Bond theme merely exacerbates the utter dullness of a scene where 007, yawn, examines his hotel room for bugs. 

Best Bond Moment: Connery gives Bond lots of clever little characterizations, telling darts of the eyes and so forth, but the most wonderful touch comes after the climactic fight with Red Grant: exhausted but victorious, Bond coolly leans against the door and straightens his tie even as he's catching his breath. 

Overall: This is the moment of harmony, where Fleming's book and the film series are perfectly balanced. As a result we end up with a confident and stylish Cold War spy drama. But this isn't sustainable. The films need the exotic, the excess to keep going and, from now on, things will begin to get brasher and bolder.

James Bond Will Return: Here, argh, is what it says (just imagine wobbly home movie footage of Venice in the background):

THE END.

NOT QUITE THE END.

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

IN THE NEXT IAN FLEMING THRILLER

GOLDFINGER

Hmm. Could be snappier perhaps?

Dr No

Odd, this one, and not only because it's number one.

It's a real mixture, almost literally a game of two halves, with the first hour spent sleuthing around Jamaica and the second infiltrating and destroying No's base, Crab Key.

It's a mixture in other ways too. Key elements of the franchise (the gun barrel sequence, the Bond theme, M, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter, even Q - sort of) are introduced, but a lot of this feels very unfamiliar and, well, lacklustre, as if the ingredients have been added but aren't coming to the boil.

There's a lack of confidence about it all and it's revealed in the scene early on in M's office. We get not one but two references to 'the American CIA', whatever that is, and then M namechecks his own organisation: on screen, Bernard Lee's mouth shapes to say 'MI6', but the line is dubbed, so we hear it as 'MI7'. The script, the production and by extension the whole series is unsure of where it stands, where the boundaries are and what to do with them. There's a telling trace of insecurity later on as well. In Jamaica, Bond inspects the secret radio set of a murdered agent; the policeman on the scene says that it was on when they found it but they couldn't get through to London on it.

"And it'll stay dead," growls Connery, as if hyping up the germ-killing power of a toilet bleach. "All frequencies are changed immediately security's broken."

It doesn't feel like an insight into the murky business of espionage so much as an attempt to paper over the cracks. In the real world, the stock of British Intelligence was at an all time low, still embroiled as it was in the unfolding Cambridge Spy Ring revelations. Bond's hollow insistence that MI6 (or 7) is inviolable sounds like mere bravado at best and establishment propaganda at worst.

It doesn't help that the Bond we have come to know is missing almost completely for that first hour. 007 is little more than a plodding detective, looking for clues, interviewing suspects ("You're just a stupid policeman," No mocks him). He goes about it in a cold bullying way as well, almost entirely charmless. There's none of the humour that we've come to associate with the character and there's little sense of his appetites either. When Sylvia Trench comes on to him in the casino, he's utterly nonchalant, seemingly to the point of disinterest so that Bond appears not coolly aloof, but bored by the prospect of an assignation. It could be that this is Bond suffering from ennui in between missions, like Sherlock Holmes without a case, and this is a feature of the books. But surely then once M has given him a mission, shouldn't Bond come to life? He doesn't. It's not until much later that he appears to revivify.

'Bond. James Bond.'

But there are two moments in the first half where the curtain slips open and reveals the Bond we know.

Firstly, the famous introductory moment (left). It's just a mere second or two but it's alchemy. Somehow they nailed it right there: the pan up from the cards as he lights the cigarette - the theme seeps in, wreathed about the man like the casino smoke and then the slightly drawled delivery. It's incredibly effective and would be perfect but for Connery's eyes: deep brown and too warm, not the icy blue we're used to today - surely the smallest of quibbles.

Secondly, there is the tarantula scene and it's here that the mundane police plot begins to move aside for more fantastic elements. It's presaged by the scene where Dr No gives Dent, his minion, the arachnid in question: here Ken Adam gives us his first wonderful Bond set - a grey room, just two walls and a ceiling with circular skylight criss-crossed by metal bars, casting a web of shadows. It was designed to be cheap but it is strikingly distinctive and offers a glimpse of the sort of design work we'll come to associate with the series.

Then the tarantula is let loose. Even though we (should) know that the animal is harmless, watching it crawl across Bond's skin is agonisingly tense, almost unwatchable. Most importantly it moves 007 away from the dull world of missing files and suspects and, for the first time, we see him pitted against the grotesque and the exotic. We see his nerve, his determination as he resolutely waits, refusing to panic or twitch as the spider slowly moves up his body. And then finally we see him act, decisive and lethal: the moment comes, he leaps up and hammers the creature to death with a shoe. Until now, faced with thugs with guns and knives, he's been unflappable. Finally we've seen him pushed beyond his obvious abilities.

There's a third character-defining moment in the first half of the film, but it's an unforgivable misstep. Bond sets a trap for Dent, who blunders in, thinking he's killing 007 by unloading his gun into a bolster. Bond reveals himself, gun in hand, and begins an interrogation that abruptly comes to a halt when Dent pulls the trigger on his empty Smith & Wesson. "You've had your six," mutters Bond, and shoots him. Twice. It's the first time we see Bond kill anyone. It's written, presumably, to show us he's a heartless killer, but there's no logical reason for the death. In fact it's surely counter-productive for Bond to kill an unarmed man who knows all about the enemy's plans?

The film doesn't give us much time to ponder this, though. We're immediately off to Crab Key in a little boat and everything improves from now on. The island location is colourful and full of movement: all gushing rivers, crashing waves and swaying trees, baked by the Caribbean sun. There's some real tension as the heroes are chased by guards and dogs. And we get the introduction of three great characters: Ursula Andress' Honey, Joseph Wiseman's eponymous No and, er, some bloke called James Bond starts to materialise before our eyes. These two newcomers transform Connery's Bond. It's as if everybody else he's met so far has been unworthy of his full attention and he begins to sparkle with these two.

Honey's emergence from the sea is justly famous. It's a turning point. But there's far more to it than merely a young woman in a bikini. If you can tear your eyes from her curves, Andress - even with her voice dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, (thanks Wikipedia) - turns in a sophisticated performance, walking a tightrope between the character's naivety, vulnerability and lethal capability. To my surprise, (I've only seen this a kajillion times) the film includes her backstory from the novel where she tells how she was raped, but had her revenge by killing the man with a black widow spider. It's the sort of stuff that can feel like melodrama in Fleming's hands, but it's delivered very well on screen and Honey becomes the first compelling character in the series as a result. Connery seems to raise his game too and his Bond is finally roused from his torpor of nonchalance, by turns amused, libidinous and protective.

The encounter with No is similarly transformative. Dining together in the bowels of the lair, the conversation suddenly bristles with scorn, bluff and real needle. They even argue about which vintage of Dom Perignon they prefer. Like the tarantula, it seems as if this Bond needs to be given something extreme to confront before he'll take an interest. The surroundings help too. The lair is another Ken Adam's masterpiece: an opulent dining area with a giant aquarium, corridors hewn from rock, the gleaming ultra modern control room and the dark, ribbed ventilation shafts. It's all excellent and puts Bond on a larger stage.

If his escape through those tunnels doesn't make any sense (why are they full of rushing water? - in the book it's a sadistic trial of strength, replete with rats, spiders and, I'm not joking, a giant squid) then at least it provides some struggle for our hero because this is all going to be done and dusted in a minute or two: the climax is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it affair.

Connery's Bond does a lot of hovering optimistically in baddies' control rooms (see YOLT, DAF), but it seems to work for him as within seconds he's been told to stand next to the switch that blows up the base. After a few punches and a tentative grapple with Dr No, it's all over. Yes, it's a rushed conclusion, but by this point, I think, we're grateful for that.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: There isn't one. They haven't thought of that yet.

Theme: It's the James Bond theme! And some flashing dots. Which go on a bit. Maurice Binder hasn't discovered girls yet.

Deaths: 9 (lots of people are presumably killed when the base explodes but we don't see it. I'm counting the first man Bond punches off a gantry but not the second, because there's a wide shot later with the first guy still prone as the reactor hits critical - the second chap could have escaped for all we know.)

Memorable Deaths: Dent gets shot; No's hands scrabbling at the girders as he drowns.

Licence to Kill: 5

Shags: 3

Exploding Helicopters: Zero. I mean, really...

Crimes Against Women: Ms Taro, an enemy spy, has to be kept away from the telephone while Bond waits for the police to arrive to arrest her. Obviously this is an opportunity to force himself on her rather than, say, shut her in a cupboard or something.

Casual Racism: Quarrel, Bond's Jamaican side-kick, is shown to be superstitious and drunken. Bond shouts orders to him like "Fetch my shoes!". Nice. Getting the Canadian Wiseman to play No is somewhat forgiveable given that the Doctor is half-German.

Out of Time: I'm not going to be harsh about telephones and wireless sets, but Bond's "Ciao" and "What gives?" are cringe-inducing. I'm guessing they didn't sound too convincing at the time either.

Fashion Disasters: Bond and Quarrel infiltrate the base in bright red and blue shirts. Bond wears his suit and tie all around tropical Jamaica. We get our first Nehru jacket and it's worn by Bond! 

Eh?: Why does it say 'Universal Exports' on Moneypenny's door on (presumably) the 8th floor of the offices of MI6? Is this for the cleaners' benefit? Is the 7th floor rented out to BOAC?

Worst Line: Quite a few, but "What gives?" has aged very badly.

Best Line: "Clumsy effort, Mr Bond. You disappoint me," chides Dr No. Yeah, you and me both mate.

Worst Bond Moment: Bond's murder of Dent is unjustifiable even in the context of the movie.

Best Bond Moment: There's not much competition. It's got to be that first introduction.

Overall: A cold and moody Bond, prominent product placement and (for the time) shockingly fast editing - it's Quantum of Solace! Well, sort of. It's a stately and slightly dull first outing but it does go up a gear or two in the second half. It's nicely directed but there's not enough charm or wit. A few moments of real tension, but no excitement let a lone exhilaration.  

James Bond Will Return: Well, it doesn't say that yet either. But he will, in From Russia With Love. This has got legs you know.