For Your Eyes Only

So the Bond pendulum (Bondulum?) swings once more, away from the thoughtless insanity of Moonraker and back towards the earnest and hard-working For Your Eyes Only. The new director is former Bond editor and Second Unit Director, John Glen and (like Peter Hunt with OHMSS) he sets about trying to fix the problems he sees in the series by pushing 007 back to his early Sixties roots. Out go the gadgets, the preposterous plots, and the sledgehammer jokes; in come many of the hallmarks of a classic thriller, and we end up with an old-school adventure, replete with sunken treasure, pirates and a literal cliffhanger finale. 

Because the source book was a short-story collection, FYEO is a clever hodgepodge of scenes from various Fleming stories, all welded together within an original framework. It turns out this is a pretty good way of constructing a Bond movie as the constituent Fleming elements are faithfully reproduced without compromising the overall cinematic plot. It also means that the film is very down to Earth, and is perhaps the least fantastical of all the Bond movies. Melina's mission for revenge comes from the eponymous short story For Your Eyes Only, where Bond, sent on a personal mission by M to kill the assassin of some friends, bumps into a woman trying to do the same thing and avenge her parents' death. The Mediterranean feud between smugglers Colombo and Kristatos, complete with Anglo/Soviet proxies and plot twist, is lifted from Risico, from the same collection, whilst the keel-hauling scene (and to some extent the sunken treasure plot) are left over from the novel of Live and Let Die. It's a bit of a mixture but they are fused very effectively and together they set the tone for the film, blending a manageable amount of melodrama with some mildly grubby Cold War espionage. Apart from the PCS and some small quibbles about the A.T.A.C. MacGuffin (see Eh? below) everything that happens is completely credible - in fact when compared to the rest of the series, FYEO is practically cinéma vérité.

Hang on, but aren't Bond films really dull when all the fantasy is stripped out? Isn't that the problem with the first half of DRNO? Well, no, not if what's left is full of tension and action and cleverness, which is what we have here (and in FRWL too). Don't forget it's Bond's style, resourcefulness and wit that makes him such a great action hero - if he has to employ a gadget then it's the way he uses it that matters. The fantasy is great if it is cool and clever (the Lotus Sub/the DB5) and annoying as all hell if it is crass and stupid (the gondola), but it's always best when he brilliantly extemporises.

Here the decision is taken to do away with all gadgets whatsoever and leave Bond to cope instead with whatever is to hand. This is very clear in the first major action sequence, the escape from Gonzales' villa. There's a reason that Bond's Lotus has such a ridiculously over-sensitive burglar alarm (it explodes when an inquisitive guard breaks a window) and that is to force 007 instead to get away in a roughed up Citroen 2CV. The audience gets an immediate double-whammy: whilst our anticipation of the Lotus's (and Bond's) superiority are blown up we get a sight gag as Bond does a double-take at Melina's car. And then we get an excellent car chase - bereft of technological gimmicks and totally reliant on some high-precision stunt driving. 

The rest of the film continues in this vein, serving up the usual series of fights and chases, but never allowing Bond's presumed invincibility to diminish the tension. Instead he's repeatedly shown at vulnerable moments: pinned down behind a tree by a rifle marksman; deep underwater, unaware of the armoured assailant bearing down upon him; hanging from a rope whilst far above his pitons are being knocked from the cliff-face, one by one. Most tellingly, we even see him at his wife's graveside - a very rare reminder indeed that there is supposed to be a man inside the suit. This isn't normal Bond fare and, in another shocking departure, the action sequences are interspersed by scenes where characters properly interact thus advancing the story! When Bond warns Melina about the personal cost of her desire for revenge or Colombo persuades Bond to trust him we are light years away from the standard one-dimensional conversations elsewhere in the series. It's good stuff.

Moore is very good here too. In fact he comes much closer to playing James Bond (rather than the character he normally plays, 'Roger Moore playing James Bond') than at any other point in his tenure. Although he looked both podgy and creaky in Moonraker, he is completely credible here, even at 54. He's an older Bond to be sure, but he looks grizzled and weathered rather than merely decrepit. Being thrown into a romantic clinch with twenty-two year old Lynn Holly-Johnson (playing ice skater Bibi Dahl) should make Moore look impossibly old, but somehow it doesn't and the thirty-two year age gap merely makes Dahl look stupidly young and naive in contrast to Bond. The familiar Moore smugness is almost non-existent and, slim and seemingly in better physical shape than ever, he is more convincing in the fights than he has been previously.

Two things help him here. Firstly, Moore benefits enormously by having a female co-star who can convincingly sell her interest in him (especially as he gets older) and Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock excels at that. Straight away, in the 2CV chase, he fires off a weak joke and she really laughs, as if helplessly exhilarated by the adventure into which she has fallen (I've a suspicion that it's a natural laugh from Bouquet that they kept in, but all the same). In fact throughout the film there's a coherence to her characterisation and, even better, she doesn't end up in a bikini, needing to be rescued! Secondly, there's much less humour in FYEO and as a result Moore's natural twinkle becomes charismatic rather than smug. It's the corollary of DAF where Connery, having played Bond straight for five films, becomes suddenly funny. 

Because it's all so straight Julian Glover's villainous Kristatos doesn't have a lot to do which is rather a shame as he's one of the better actors in the series. [BONUS FACT: Julian Glover also played baddies in The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and classic Tom Baker Doctor Who story, City of Death. Don't think anyone else has achieved that. What I'm saying is, he's kind of a big deal.] It does however make him one of the more believable Bond villains and there is something satisfying about that. Chaim Topol does good work as Bond's comrade in arms, Colombo, and tradition demands that I describe this as 'evoking the spirit of Pedro Armendáriz' from FRWL. There's a whole thesis to be done on the supporting male characters in the Bond stories, but suffice to say the one thing they all have in common is a 'warm, dry handshake' - knowing this perhaps helps make more sense of the scene where Colombo persuades Bond to trust him: it looks as if Bond changes his mind rather easily if you miss the significance of that handclasp.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Well isn't this strange? Blofeld pops up out of nowhere and tries to kill Bond with a remote control helicopter. I say Blofeld but, for legal reasons, the bald, white cat-fondling villain is never formally identified. Around this time Kevin Mclory was trying to get a rival Bond film made based upon rights he claimed from Thunderball - which included Ernst Stavro and SPECTRE. Broccoli's response was to drop Blofeld down a chimney. Interestingly, this sequence was scripted as an introduction to the new Bond, should Moore not return. Interesting because it's so unlike other Bond introductions - but maybe it would have been shot differently if a new actor had actually ended up involved? By the way, Mclory's film project eventually popped out as Never Say Never Again starring everyone's third favourite 007, Sean Whatshisface. 

Theme: It's another sedate theme song gently lulling us to sleep whilst Binder does his stuff. His stuff's a little better this time - gentle swimming silhouettes - and there's some real novelty in having Sheena Easton sing at us on-screen.    

Deaths: 53, holding pretty steady. Three of those deaths go unseen but are reported. One guy is shot in the chest with a cross bow bolt but, somewhat miraculously, doesn't seem to be terribly injured. However he is stuck atop a Greek mountain and his criminal comrades are all dead. It's a fifty/fifty call but I like to think that Bond handed him over to the proper authorities promptly enough that he was able to get medical attention he needed.     

Memorable Deaths: Gonzales gets a cross-bow bolt in the back as he dives into his pool. Bond kicks Locque's car off of a cliff and throws a piton into a guard so that he falls off a cliff. A chap in a hi-tech diving suit gets blown up underwater. And, of course, someone who may or may not have been Ernst Stavro Blofeld is dropped down an industrial chimney.   

Licence to Kill: 14. Again holding steady.

Exploding Helicopters: 0. For the eighth time in twelve films!

Shags: 2. But it might have been three had he not disappointed young Bibi Dahl.  

Crimes Against Women: Hardly any! All right, a bit. Dahl gets slapped about by the baddies, but then they're baddies (and she is the closest thing to Scrappy Doo that we'll ever see in a Bond film - apart from possibly Rowan Atkinson in Never Say Never Again. Ah, you'd forgotten about that hadn't you!). No FYEO is very unsexist. Considering. The two women Bond beds, Melina and Lisl, have distinct characters without being either damaged damsels or twisted sexpot stereotypes. And Bond doesn't patronise them - hell, he and Lisl even exchange small-talk, as if she was a real person that he was a bit interested in. Melina's desire for revenge is hackeneyed as a characterisation possibly, but it's one we haven't seen so far in a Bond film (no, I'm not counting Tilly Masterson or Amasova) and it means she has valid emotional reactions throughout. Yes, Bond does take over the driving duties from her during the 2CV chase, but there's no snide comments about women drivers this time - the distinction being drawn is not man versus woman, but spy versus amateur. And when Colombo expresses regret that they are attacking St. Cyril's with 'only six men', Melina immediately responds, brandishing her cross bow, 'and one woman'. Yes, it's clichéd dialogue but the implicit sexism, that Colombo doesn't count her as a combatant, is immediately corrected. This new spirit has even reached MI6 where Q Branch is very obviously an equal opportunities employer, even if Sharon does end up making the tea. It is just a little sad though that Moneypenny's gadget is a make-up kit hidden in her filing cabinet.

Casual Racism: Very little. Kriegler the KGB agent is rather obviously a stereotypical (East) German: a giant blond strongman who excels at winter sports. But I'm clutching at straws really. In fact the film does try and subvert some prejudices - there's a real moment of understanding between Bond and (the Russian) Gogol at the end that suggests they can share a joke even as their governments point nuclear missiles at each other. 

Out of Time: Q Branch's Indentigraph uses data discs the size of pizza boxes. Meryl who? Janet Brown, the definitive Margaret Thatcher, pops up alongside John Wells as Dennis.

Fashion Disasters: For the third film in a row Moore gets dressed up in bright yellow and this time it's rubber pyjamas. Bleurgh. Bibi skis in a cowboy hat and ear muffs, which is frankly unforgivable. . .

Eh?: I'm given to understand (thanks Wikipedia) that Greek Orthodox churches do not have confessionals. I suppose there are plenty of Catholic churches in Greece but surely it's just as likely that Q knocked up a confession box for the sole purpose of briefing Bond? And whilst we're here I note that the habit of recklessly sending high-ranking intelligence officers out into the field has not yet been rethought. Can't they use the bloody phone? >> According to Melina, the ruins on the sea bed are 5,000 years old, which is just about feasible although it would put it right on the fringe of the Early Helladic I or (more likely) Early Cycladic I eras. This claim is however undermined by the Roman-looking mosaics and statuary, and the Doric columns. I'll leave that one with you then. >> Bond, playing Baccarat and having drawn five, is told by Kristatos that "the odds favour standing", to which Bond replies "if you play the odds." This is all nonsense as any Bond fan worth their salt will tell you. In fact as no less an authority than James Bond himself explains in Casino Royale, (1953): "Five is the turning point of the game. According to the odds, the chances of bettering or worsening your hand if you hold a five are exactly even." >> Right then, this A.T.A.C. device. It's some sort of code control thing for giving orders to nuclear submarines yes? Fair enough, I can see why the UK would feel the need to retrieve such a device before the USSR can get their hands on it, but at the end, having dashed it on some rocks, Bond claims to Gogol "That's detente comrade. I don't have it. You don't have it." That's rubbish surely? The Royal Navy didn't just make one A.T.A.C. did it? Are there not blueprints? Schematics? >> Nobody seems to mind that Kriegler has bunked off from his biathlon to chase Bond across a ski resort, but presumably he's facing a DNF after all that. >> Why does Melina leave that oxygen cylinder on the sea bed? And why does Bond drop it back into the sea when they're done with it? I call that littering. >> Bond is spotted by a guard as he climbs up the cliff. Why doesn't the guard just shoot him? Why doesn't he raise the alarm? No, much more sensible to climb down and knock the pitons out. Some people don't half make things difficult for themselves.    

Worst Line: The ersatz Blofeld cackles "I hope you had a pleasant... fright?" and then, pleading for his life, makes this utterly bizarre offer to Bond: "I'll buy you a delicatessen! In stainless steel!" Really? 

Best Line: There aren't many zingers here so the best line comes from my nine year old son. He watched the 2CV chase which ends with 007 introducing himself. "Wait," he says, "he did all that before he even told her his name? Wow, that James Bond really does have a way with the ladies." 

Worst Bond Moment: Getting propositioned by Bibi. Although, to be fair Bond looks as uncomfortable about it as we are.

Best Bond Moment: The 2CV chase is a classic, but there's one moment in the middle of it that is just brilliant: a swerving braking manoeuvre from Bond that sends the little yellow car shooting backwards and causes the two pursuing vehicles to smash together. Executed at high speed, it's a breath-taking balletic piece of stunt driving and, though it only lasts two seconds, deserves a lot of attention.

Overall: It's hardly John Le Carré, but this is the first Bond film since FRWL that has any chance of being considered a straight espionage thriller. It works very well, with some excellent chases and action set-pieces almost making up for the missing flash of the spectacular that, say, TSWLM or Goldfinger can provide. It's the best of the Moore Bonds, or at least joint best with TSWLM, depending on what you want: each is an excellent example of, respectively, the fantastic and the more realistic versions of Bond.

James Bond Will Return: ... in Octopussy.

Proof that Doctor Who has a Mary Poppins bag.

From 'The Land of Happy Endings' by Scott Gray, art by Martin Geraghty.

Moonraker

I suppose there's a widely held notion that Bond films are either grim and gritty or high camp but that's not true. The best Bonds blend the two, the fantastic and the real world, and if we each have our own idea about where they meet, all we're doing is marking the point on the scale where we think the balance should be. But surely to goodness there can't be too many people who think that Moonraker is anything other than batshit crazy. It's so preposterous, it makes YOLT look like Cathy Come Home. It's odd because this is the same writing/directing team that nailed TSWLM two years before. Perhaps they were over-confident? Or maybe, after Star Wars and Superman, they felt they had to push Bond further to compete. Well, whatever the reason, this just doesn't work.

It follows the model from TSWLM fairly carefully, but somewhere along the way things fall through the Looking Glass into an insane version of the Bond universe. Take an example. In TSWLM, Bond has a streamlined sports car that converts into a submarine during a helicopter attack. It's very silly and it stretches our credulity but we knew it was going to do something as soon as Q pushed the keys into 007's hand. In the equivalent sequence from Moonraker Bond hails a seemingly random gondola and, having been attacked by a man hiding in a coffin on a Venetian canal, converts it first into a motor boat and then into a hovercraft in order to escape. For an encore, he drives the craft around a tourist-packed Piazza San Marco, and even the pigeons give him double-takes. It's beyond silly, it's ludicrous, a carelessly thrown away joke for which we are given no explanation, no context, no reasoning. In short, the credulity gap is unbridgable.

It's the same with the villains. Stromberg's plan had been to kill a few hundred million with stolen conventional nuclear weapons whilst hiding in his underwater sea base: silly but merely very unlikely. Here Hugo Drax's completely bananas scheme is to retire to an orbital space station before killing EVERYONE on the planet below with a nerve toxin derived from a rare Amazonian orchid that will leave all other forms of life untouched. Villainous schemes should teeter on the very edge of plausibility. Drax's is just stupid, and so far removed from feasibility as to render it dramatically worthless.

Throughout the script is littered with inconsistencies, improbable coincidences and stupid nonsense. It creates the impression that nobody really cared how everything was fitting together or whether it was making any sense. As I mentioned last time, Jaws was an effective villain in TSWLM because Bond was required to use his brain. Here nobody is using their brain and so Jaws is defeated in Rio by having some Mardi Gras revellers brush against him, sweeping him away into the carnival. Just a small example but typical of the carelessness with which this film has been plotted. It's depressing, but see the Eh? section anyway for a summary of as much of the madness as I could bear to remark upon.

Is there anything grounded about this film? Anything worth shouting about? It's Ken Adam's last Bond film and he leaves us with a magnificent control room for the Moonraker launch headquarters. It's angled and pointy and full of screens so it looks a little like a modernist chapel full of abstract stained-glass. (It's Bernard Lee's last film too, having played M since DRNO. He died just as filming began on FYEO.) Michel Lonsdale is rather good as Drax, displaying all the frosty and languid hauteur of a Himalayan glacier. And the centrifuge sequence is effective even if it is a rip-off of the traction machine from Thunderball. Houstonian Lois Chiles is nicely brusque and professional as NASA/CIA operative Goodhead, but weirdly turns to simpering jelly once Bond has got her into zero G. It's a shame because the corresponding character from the novel, policewoman Gala Brand, wonderfully does the opposite: appearing to be falling for 007 before telling him she's not interested and walking away on the last page. And if there was ever a Bond film where he deserved to be left standing dejected and chastened at the end, it was this one.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: It's a good stunt for the time, especially as it was done for real (if you want to see it done with CGI then watch third-rate Schwarzenegger flick Eraser which totally rips this off). But all too soon it all turns into a big unfunny joke when Jaws turns up and flails about in mid air like Wile E. Coyote.

Theme: A soporific combination of music and visuals. Drear and dull from Dame Shirley and John Barry; Maurice Binder feels compelled to dig out the trampoline again so it's all unnecessarily reminiscent of TSWLM.    

Deaths: 55 - way down on TSWLM but still quite hefty and comparable to the death tolls of the mid-Sixties.   

Memorable Deaths: Corinne is chased down and savaged by Drax's evil big dogs.   

Licence to Kill: 15. Again it's small beer after TSWLM but it's really rather high even so. As of Moonraker, Moore's average kills per film is 31.25 and the average for Bond across all 11 films so far is only 17.

Exploding Helicopters: 0. But a jumbo does get exploderised by a shuttle's exhaust.

Shags: 3. This is now seemingly an unbreakable limit, a natural law of the Bond universe: no more than three sexual partners per film! 

Crimes Against Women: The soul-crushingly awful sexism and male insecurity of the Moore era is exemplified by Bond's smug, patronising and faintly bemused response to meeting NASA scientist and CIA operative Doctor (Holly) Goodhead: "A woman!" The man is a twunt. Dr Goodhead becomes the fourth woman in as many films to shag Bond within seconds of rejecting his advances. Remember boys, no means no.

Casual Racism: Hardly any. But then South America and Venice (and Space) aren't presented as real places full of indigenous cultures but as sandpits for Brits and Americans to play in. 

Out of Time: The US Space Marines all wear silver-foil spacesuits as if it were the Sixties. 

Fashion Disasters: Bond's back in a safari shirt. The yellow space suit with skullcap does him no favours either. And why does he dress up like a gaucho?

Eh?: I am going to get shouty here, sorry. Deep breath then and off we go! >> Drax, a government contractor responsible for building the space shuttle (and therefore, you know, probably vetted at least, if not kept under constant surveillance) has built his own launch complex in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. It is capable of launching multiple shuttles simultaneously (with all that implies for staff numbers and resources). To do this he has presumably procured himself the technical expertise of many individuals from astronautical engineering, one of the smallest and closely monitored industries on the planet. He has also built a space station in Earth orbit capable of docking all these shuttles - in other words it is vast - without anyone noticing. Hell, you can see the ISS with the naked eye but nobody in the world has noticed this space station? It's the most stupid thing in the series and makes SPECTRE's volcano lair look like a loft conversion. >> The nerve toxin kills only human life. Wow! Sounds impossible to me. And it's derived from a plant that made people infertile? Yes, of course! Because infertility and death are the same thing! Even more stupid is the fact that Bond is now a genius biochemist who can recognise a chemical formula instantly and knows the botanical history of the rainforest. FFS. >> Okay, let's say Britain really really needs one of these Moonraker shuttles (WHAT FOR?); why would you transport it fully fuelled? Or even a little bit fuelled? >> There's NOBODY aboard the space station until the Moonrakers dock. All the people who secretly built it in space just left it there? Why leave it unmanned? The first chap aboard has to go and switch on the gravity, like coming home from holiday and putting the heating on the instant you get back. >> And of course, there's the corridor labelled 'NORMAL GRAVITY ZONE', because gravity can be fenced in by airlocks. >> If the Moonrakers steer themselves, why have pilots at all? >> The gondola. >> Why have a top secret nerve toxin laboratory in the middle of a densely populated city? Sorry I mean why have a top secret nerve toxin laboratory in the middle of an ornate 18th century ballroom in the middle of a densely populated city? Because the glass is handy? >> Bond puts a glass phial of the DEADLY TOXIN in his shirt pocket and then has a massive and protracted fist fight in which a load of glass gets smashed. Reckless at all? >> And having discovered the top secret nerve toxin laboratory in the middle of an ornate 18th century ballroom in the middle of a densely populated city, Bond... waits overnight for M and the Minister of Defence to arrive from London before securing the building or having the lab investigated! What? And then send them in to the DEADLY LAB first? Is there no one more expendable than the MINISTER OF DEFENCE? Argh! >> If it's Summer in Venice (and it is) how come it is February in Rio? Are the laws of Time in abeyance now as well? >> Well, yes they are: within half an hour of spotting Drax's space station, the US have launched a militarised shuttle full of space-trained Marines from Vandenberg, CA. That's nifty. But even more amazing is the fact that M, Q and the goddam Minister of Defence are able to hot-foot it from London to the control room in California in the time it takes for that shuttle to reach the space station. I say from London, but it's just possible that the UK government keeps its top-ranking intelligence officers permanently travelling around the world, just to be on the safe side. >> In Rio, Bond desires to check out the airport... so he goes up a nearby mountain and looks at it through a tourist's telescope. Why not just go to the airport and look through the fence? During the (Californian) pheasant shoot, how does Bond know there's a sniper in the tree? >> Bond and Goodhead just happen to bump into the pilots of the remaining shuttle exactly when they need to. >> The tiny Venini glass shop - right on the Piazza San Marco, no less - Tardisly contains a showroom, a museum, a vast factory and warehouse, a palazzo interior (with deadly nerve toxin lab) and St Mark's Clocktower. >> Oh there's more too... but you get the general idea.      

Worst Line: See Crimes Against Women above. There are others too, but I'm losing the will to live just thinking about them. 

Best Line: Quite a few, surprisingly. The pick of them are from Drax: "Take care of Mr Bond. Make sure some harm comes to him." And my favourite: "Mr Bond, you appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."  

Worst Bond Moment: The gondola? The Magnificent Seven rip-off? The rubber snake fight? Plenty to choose from.

Best Bond Moment: I'm afraid it can only be the three second shot during the PCS where he streamlines his body into a free-fall dive and the Bond theme starts up. That's it.     

Overall: Careless, thoughtless, bombastic and ridiculous. Just as with YOLT, the series has become bloated and stupid and badly needs to return to Earth.

James Bond Will Return: ... in, for the second time in a row, For Your Eyes Only.

The Spy Who Loved Me

Isn't this the quintessential Bond movie? It seems to offer everything we've come to expect - excitement, fun, adventure, spectacle. In fact The Spy Who Loved Me is result of a deliberate attempt to hone the series' formula to perfection.

Legal disputes caused a three year hiatus after the somewhat poorly-received TMWTGG. The production team used the time well, though, aware that they needed to come up with something extra special for the next installment, something that could revitalise the series. Something sufficiently 'Bondian'.

This is the word that the production team used repeatedly, amongst themselves and in interviews, whilst scripting, filming and promoting TSWLM. They had a clear idea of what they meant by it and I think they successfully transferred their vision to the screen.

TSWLM is grander and more spectacular than anything since YOLT. In fact, it has a lot in common with that predecessor: there's east/west tension, stolen hardware, the threat of nuclear war and an epic scale. It also had the same director, Lewis Gilbert, and no Fleming plot to adhere to. But there is one big difference: this is brilliant, coherent, well made and not at all a gigantic, vacuous mess.

As it's the tenth in the series, here's ten things I like about TSWLM (anyone doubt I can find twenty things I hate about DAD?):

1) I love this car. Let's get this one out of the way: the Lotus Esprit S1 Turbo is the best Bond car. It's beautiful. Utterly original and recognisable, very British and also modern in a 1977, 'R'-reg kind of a way. Being very picky, I think the S2 Turbo is even more beautiful (see FYEO for that), but this one here is the best Bond car. Of course, the DB5 is exquisite, a classic. But it's also become a Bond cliché, dragged back in GoldenEye, TND and even Casino Royale, each time getting older and making 007 look more and more like Bergerac or Inspector Morse. And the Lotus is used so well! The DB5 may be part of the classic style of Goldfinger but, ejector-seat aside, it's poorly employed: Bond fails to run over an old woman and then drives into a wall, having played chicken with a reflection or something. It's one of the worst Bond car chases. You can't say that of the Lotus in TSWLM. The chase here lasts just a few minutes, but it's stomach-troublingly fast, providing a real visceral thrill as the Lotus growls and powers around the Sardinian hairpins, dispatching baddies and dodging bullets. And then - kadumsssh! - Bond drives into the sea! Even after many repeated viewings, I still experience a lurch as that happens, a ghostly echo of whenever it was I saw it for the first time. It is brilliant. It is always brilliant. The frenetic pace dissipates as the car transforms, and we get to admire it all over again, sleek and white against the water, like a cruising shark. Just marvellous.

2) The Pre-Credit Sequence. Thirteen years after the explosive beginning to Goldfinger, a crucial element of the Bond formula finally slots permanently into place. From now on every Bond film will start with a spectacular stunt or set-piece sequence. This one sets the tone for the whole movie, puts Bond back on skis, lets him shoot a Russian and then - gasp! - makes him zoom over the edge of a precipice. You can keep your flashy CGI; we are watching a man fall to his death. We know it's a stunt. We know it's not real. We know (now) that he's got a parachute. But he carries on falling and we are holding our breath, waiting and waiting and waiting... It takes ages before, finally, woomph, there it goes, and even then it seems to unfold in slow motion. Worth waiting for though. And what a parachute.

3) Jaws. I know he becomes a buffoon in Moonraker but don't let that count against the character here. Jaws, played by 7ft 1.5 in Richard Kiel, is a truly chilling monster in TSWLM - the murders of Fekkesh and (particularly) Max Kalba are terrifying, almost supernatural, as the silent giant tenderly bends the neck of his victim and reaches down with his glinting metal teeth. As a small kid, this scared me witless. Jaws also presents a, ha, sizeable challenge to Bond. Unable to physically overpower him, 007 is forced to improvise and to outsmart Jaws. He does this three times during the film, and each time it is different, spontaneous and satisfying. Excellent stuff.

4) Major Anya Amasova. Apart from a last-reel regression into damsel-hood, Agent XXX is the much-vaunted, long-awaited 'equal' Bond woman. As the KGB's top agent she's definitely a match for 007, repeatedly out-smarting him, even if she doesn't seem able or willing to duff him up. It's only 1977 so there's still a far way to go, but this is tremendous progress on, say, Thunderball's Domino, let alone TMWTGG's Goodnight. It's telling, perhaps, that she's a compelling and motivated character given that she is the first of the Bond women not to have been invented by Fleming. And she leads nicely in to..

5) The Spy-Rom (as opposed to a Rom-Com). I know we are spoiled, in the days of Craig, by having characters intelligently interact with each other, but look again at the Egyptian sequence in the TSWLM. Bond and Amasova have their own little story here - maybe it's lightly sketched, but it is there. They meet as enemy agents, competing for the same prize. But, like in a good rom-com, they move through the gears, from antipathy to distrust to cautious flirting, even whilst they are double-crossing each other. It's good stuff for a Bond film, for a Moore Bond film it is amazing. Amasova even mentions his dead wife and you know how often that gets referenced! (Yes you do. It's 3 times, 4 if you count OHMSS itself.) Throughout the film it's clear that they realise they have, as spies, a shared experience that draws them together, even whilst their political affiliations force them apart. The sub-plot, that Bond has killed Amasova's lover on a previous mission, looks like it is sending the movie into fascinating and uncharted emotional waters... right up until the champagne cork pops and she forgets all about it. Never mind! Damn good try, TSWLM, damn good try.

6) Music. I still don't really know who Marvin Hamlisch is other than that he is the man what done the music for this. It's very of its time, but I think that's a real strength: there's a disco sensibility throughout and it makes the movie feel fresh and contemporary - at least compared with the last nine films. The theme, 'Nobody Does it Better', sung by Carly Simon, is sublime. Easily one of the very best Bond songs, it could serve as a theme for the entire series.

7) Pinewood and the Big Battle. A big set-piece set-to had become a staple of the series with FRWL, but recent films from DAF onwards had left them out. TSWLM redresses all that with a massive battle between an army of henchmen and a combined force of British, Soviet and American submariners. It's colossal and achieves this grand scale because it's shot on the new 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios. Purpose built to accommodate Ken Adam's vast set-design, opened by Harold Wilson in 1976 and twice rebuilt after burning down (1984 and 2008), it is still the biggest stage in Europe and is the Bond films' permanent legacy to the British film industry.

8) Keeping the British End Up. We've had Bond in post-colonial denial, and Britain punching above her weight. Now we get a more relaxed, Eurovision-style of patriotism - plenty of flag-waving but with tongue firmly wedged in cheek. Whether it's the Union Jack parachute, POLARIS, Bond in his Royal Navy uniform or the Lotus Esprit, there's plenty of Britishness on display (although Bond's line in the PCS is that 'England' needs him, rather than the union - go figure). But none of this is taken very seriously - Britain's pre-eminent global prestige is presented rather like Stromberg's undersea base: a preposterous, pleasing notion that exists only within the reality of the movie. This allows us (the British audience) to glory in our pretend amazingness even whilst we laugh at how silly and rubbish we really are. Perfect! And that last line is pure Carry On, another enduring British film series...

9) This is Moore at his best. There's plenty to say about Roger Moore and I think I'll leave most of it until after AVTAK and do it all in one go. But this is his best film as Bond. In LALD and TMWTGG, he's still a little uptight and the comedy is, perhaps, overplayed - here's he's relaxed a lot more and the humour is (relatively) subtle. The balance suits him. Other factors help too. The naval uniform he wears for most the end of the film lends him credibility for the action sequences. Never really convincing in fights, he doesn't need to be here as the mismatch with Jaws pushes the emphasis on Bond's ingenuity rather than his physical strength. And the relationship with Amasova is more convincing than many of the others we see during the Moore years, if only because he is not yet so obviously elderly. Having said that, Moore was 50 when TSWLM came out, nearly ten years older than Connery had been in DAF: I think it's fair to say that the man was incredibly well-preserved and in very good shape. After this he becomes distinctly pudgy for Moonraker and is visibly superannuated by the time of his final outing in AVTAK - but here, in TSWLM, we have Moore in his prime.

10) It's entirely fabricated. Fleming's novel is a rather tawdry melodrama set almost entirely in an up-state New York motel. It was poorly received and Fleming more or less disavowed it and, although happy to sell the film rights to Saltzman and Broccoli, he did so under the proviso that they could only use the title - none of the book's contents should make it to the screen. Probably good news for the production team that had to meet international expectations with a spectacular Bond film - but of course, the last time they had to come up with a story from scratch they had spewed out the undisciplined mess of YOLT. As I mentioned above, TSWLM has almost an identical plot, but it works: the story flows and makes sense. The film is pretty much a greatest hits package for Bond - in fact, let's count them off shall we? PCS stunt, sharks, gadget-car, car chase, ski chase, fight on a train, henchmen, Moneypenny, M, Q, Royal Navy, submarines, Americans, Russians, a big battle, bomb defusal, nuclear war averted, a villainous lair (with monorail), exotic locations, underwater fight - they all turn up here... I make it only 'torture scene' and 'Bond beats baddy at game of skill/chance' that don't feature. Once again the producers had proven that the franchise was sustainable beyond the finite resource of Fleming's novels. Increasingly, they would need to elaborate heavily on the books in order to make the movies.

And the one novel of Fleming's that could only be ruined by such treatment was Moonraker.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: I think I probably covered this adequately above. Hell, here it is. Knock yourself out.

Theme: Excellent Bond-ballad 'Nobody Does It Better' tinkles away over images - well, what's Maurice Binder got for us this time? Tramopolines! He actually seems to have put some effort in and the result is the freshest opening titles since YOLT. Some Soviet iconography (furry hats/boots), some phallic gun barrels and lots of naked women doing bouncing, jumping, marching and gymnastics though. There is a point where it looks like it's about to turn into the opening titles of The Good Life. See if you can spot it. Incidentally, I saw Binder interviewed on a Saturday morning kids' show when I was little and he swore blind that the models weren't naked. What a liar.    

Deaths: Hang on now a minute. The whole death thing goes a bit screwy with TSWLM. The battle aboard the Liparus is the most chaotic yet with bodies flying hither and thither and wide shots showing countless corpses strewn everywhere. Then there are the two submarines that get hit by nuclear missiles, killing an unspecified number of crew members. There is no way to be sure what the death toll is for this film. But it is a lot. Counting normally (men on fire, guards falling over and not getting up again and so forth) I make it 82. Assuming Stromberg only uses skeleton crews for those subs (say, 30 men each?) and that maybe 25 are killed when Bond blasts open the control room then we get a whopping 167.   

Memorable Deaths: Everyone that Jaws bites down on. Stromberg's secretary is fed to the sharks via a trick elevator. Bond callously drops Shandor off a roof and empties his Walther into Stromberg in cold blood, seemingly for no other reason than so he can have run out of bullets in time to meet Jaws.   

Licence to Kill: Remember in TMWTGG when Bond killed just one person? Forget that. His tally is shockingly high here, positively off the scale. The average kills per film before TSWLM was about 7.8. In this film alone it's at least 37. If you say that Bond's personally responsible for destroying the two subs too (it was his idea and, hey, he is the hero with all the buck-stopping that implies), then the figure rises (based on my assumptions above) to an emetic 107! It may not surprise you to learn this is a record so far. Major Amasova offs two herself as well.

Exploding Helicopters: 2! A solid score. They're clearly models but, hey.

Shags: 3. Given some of the excesses of TSWLM it's surprising this figure isn't higher. Agent XXX can only muster 2.

Crimes Against Women: Back in the old days, with Connery, both men and women accepted the patriarchy. There was no need to mention it, or to say sexist things. That's just the way it was and everyone behaved as if it was normal. Now, in the late 70s, when "womens' lib" is a thing, the film series has to respond. So we get Major Amasova, agent XXX - a different kind of Bond woman. And we also get Bond being really patronising to her. It's as if the films acknowledge the challenge of sexism whilst simultaneously feeling obliged to belittle it. The classic scene is where Amasova is trying to drive the van away from Jaws. Bond sits in the passenger seat being very smug and unhelpful. "Why not try reverse?" he chirrups. "Can you play any other tune?" he snarks as she crunches gears. It's a set up because she immediately does something impressive and cool - but it's only a momentary flash of skill whilst 007's stereotypical 'women drivers' schtick lingers in the mind. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because she ends up half-naked, tied-up and helpless at the end of the movie anyway. Ultimately, there's only room for one sexy super spy in a Bond movie and that's the fifty year old white dude.

Casual Racism: Egypt gets a rough deal out of this does it not? We see the pyramids, a muddy river bank and the desert. Where's Cairo? Where's the modern urban spaces? And the 'Egyptian builders!' joke of course. Then there's all that faux-Bedouin nonsense, with a pair of Oxbridge gadabouts playing at being Lawrence playing at being sheikhs. However, I do enjoy Amasova's devotion to Mother Russia. The stuff about her knowing that the Karl Marx is the largest oil tanker in the world is nicely played and subtly done.

Out of Time: There are two 1977's on show here. One is ultra-modern - POLARIS, the Lotus Esprit, the Wetbike, the disco influence on the new version of the Bond theme ("Bond '77"). The other has a slight retro-sophistication. It's that fragrance of the 1940s that you get in some films and fashion from the late Seventies. The Mujaba Club could have Sydney Greenstreet sat in a corner. 

Fashion Disasters: Bond's bright yellow ski-suit. His Bedouin garb. Other than that he's quite the natty dresser here.

Eh?: Apparently Bond is on first-name terms with the Minister of Defence ('Freddie', since you ask), but only here, so apparently there's a falling out of some sort. Amazingly, Sir Frederick Gray (bit odd to be knighted whilst in office isn't it?) will keep his ministerial brief (despite reshuffles and, er, changes of government) all the way through to TLD. >> We've seen it before (YOLT, TMWTGG) but it never jarred like it does here: why does MI6 need intricate bases all around the world, especially inside an ancient Egyptian temple? How on Earth is M able to justify waltzing about the world (Hong Kong - twice - and now Egypt) to brief 007? And Moneypenny tags along and Q gets to duplicate his R&D department. Astonishing. >> If Amasova saw the plans for the Lotus Sub two years ago, why does she gasp in astonishment when Bond drives into the sea? (Maybe she never expected the British bourgeois capitalist lap-dogs to be able to build it properly?) >> The subs are sent off to nuke New York and Moscow, then receive new orders telling them to wang the missiles into the Atlantic - and nobody thinks to double-check with HQ? >> Stromberg has a gun hidden under his dining room table and the muzzle runs the full length of it so he can shoot people at the far end. Fair enough. But once he's tried to dispatch Bond with it, 007 retaliates by firing his Walther up the pipe, through the gun and into Stromberg's stomach. Which is surprising enough as a one-off, but Bond manages to pull off the same trick shot from thirty yards away during the infamous 'magic bullet' gun-barrel sequence of DAD.      

Worst Line: Abandoned girl: "But I need you!" Bond: "So does England!" Really? England? It's bad enough Connery supporting Scottish independence, we don't need you chipping in too, Roger. Is it an attempt to 'simplify' things for 'Americans'? Or did they feel the urgent need to evoke Nelson before the opening titles? It won't be the last time that the series erroneously refers to England instead of Britain and the sin is compounded here by Bond heading straight for the Faslane naval base in, er, Scotland...  

Best Line: Kalba's clipped response to 007's "I'm Bond, James Bond.": "What of it?" He tells Amasova that she has just saved his life and she replies "We all make mistakes, Mr Bond." 

Worst Bond Moment: The Lawrence of Arabia homage. The smarmy patronising lines. Killing Shandor - and Stromberg for that matter - in cold blood. Is there no capacity for MI6 to take prisoners?

Best Bond Moment: Many. The parachute jump has become a quintessential visual signature for 007, as has the Lotus submarine. The most satisfying is Bond's repeated and ingenious improvisations to get rid of Jaws.    

Overall: There are Bonds that are better acted or that have better scripts. There are Bonds that are more exciting or better directed, or that are more dramatic. But TSWLM is surely one of the best overall, a general all-rounder that still manages to excel in one or two departments.

James Bond Will Return: ... in For Your Eyes Only, apparently. For some strange and mysterious reason Broccoli changed his mind, convinced that the franchise needed to go into space. So next up it's actually Moonraker.

The Man With The Golden Gun

This is a film obsessed with people being very still. Firstly, and most obviously, someone took the decision not to fork out for wax models and to make actors hold their breath instead. I know this because the guy playing the waxwork Al Capone blinks like a frog when he fires his gun. And then we get Roger Moore trembling ever-so-slightly in the background of a scene, pretending to be his own Madame Tussaud's figurine. The indignity! Maud Adams  makes a good go of it when it's her turn: after her character is bumped off she has to sit agonisingly still, just so, for AGES, and in extreme close up too, with only the barest whisper of movement. Then there's the sight gag of Nick Nack and the sumo wrestlers all pretending to be statues in Hai Fat's grisly grotto.. which seems to cheat and use real statues! Poor Mary Goodnight has to hide under the duvet whilst Bond flirts with another woman on top of her and then finally [SPOILERS!], the big reversal: Bond snags Scaramanga by pretending to be the wax model of himself pretending to be a wax model of himself.

It's a good ending, albeit one that only works if Bond is able to creep up to his dummy doppleganger, undress him, swap clothes, then hide the mannequin, and assume its pose/position - all of this within a few seconds and in full view of Scaramanga, who is standing JUST THERE the whole time. (It looks like we're finally seeing the fruits of all that ninja training in YOLT and for further evidence of Bond's accomplishment as a quick change artist see Octopussy.) However this climax also relies on Scaramanga previously having given the waxwork-007 a loaded Walther PPK (Bond having lost his own), which seems to me to be the height of super-villain hubris. Will they never learn?

Never mind for, despite all that, it IS a good ending and if all this waxy lifelessness feels like I'm building up to damn what is, let's face it, rather a relaxed and gentle Bond film, then be assured: the climactic and preposterous duel with Scaramanga is where this dummy, like a young Kim Cattral, comes magically to life.

I love the duel because, for the first time since Red Grant in FRWL, Scaramanga presents us with an 'anti-Bond': an equal and opposite adversary. But unlike Grant, Scaramanga can match Bond in multiple ways - he too is a connoisseur of fine wines and beautiful women, and consumes them both with a Bondian appetite. Christopher Lee brings a purring sophistication to the role. He is a cold, cruel man who takes delight in the chance to measure his talent against the renowned 007. That he's certainly one of the most memorable villains in the series says a lot about the performance, because he's given comparatively little to do and only gets to spend a few minutes with Bond. When they do get together, there's verbal sparring as they show off whilst touring the power plant and they carp at one another over the dining table, the veneer of social decorum just covering their murderous intentions. Yes, it's another cock fight, but at least one offering the remote possibility that Bond might not win through this time.

The 'fun house', the location for the duel, is a terrible, zany idea, like something from a bad episode of the Avengers. It doesn't really seem very Bondian, but neither does it feel like the urbane Scaramanga should be at home here really. Presumably this is how wacko midget henchman Nick Nack gets his kicks.

Despite the revolving mirrors and silly wax works, the tension builds nicely as the assassins try to seek each other out. With hindsight a lot of the frisson comes from knowing that they are unwittingly pre-enacting the 'Golden Gun' multi-player mode from the N64 GoldenEye game: creeping through a labyrinth, knowing that one bullet will mean instant death. Once he's stops mucking about with Nick Nack's leitmotif, '30s jazz and saloon bar pianola, John Barry, pushes it all to the nerve-wracking limit with this before the final cathartic gun-shot rings out.

But before all that there's the rest of the film to get through and it's a little lack-lustre. The twinkle is beginning to glint in Moore's eye, but he's still forced to grim his way through some sub-Connery-schtick, leering at Maud Adams as she showers before slapping her about. You can see his heart's not in it. He also spews the most horrendous amount of technobabble about the Solex, the irrelevant McGuffin. It doesn't add anything to the story and the idea that Bond is an expert in the theory of solar power conversion is even more preposterous than Christmas Jones being a nuclear physicist. There's still an emphasis on comedy, but there isn't the tendency for farce that we saw in LALD; here it's more a slightly grubby knowing sense of humour (the belly dancer's charm, Lezar's 'piece').

John Barry returns with one of his best Bond scores, mixing the film's theme up again and again into pleasingly 007ish variations. He also manages to perk up dull moments - when Bond is being arrested (at great and rather boring length) there's some deliciously suspenseful music sulking in the background.

There's no major action sequence to lift the earlier scenes and the only stunt to speak of is the rather marvellous car jump over a broken bridge. Shame it is utterly ruined by a silly swanee whistle (but see here for how magnificent it looks without it!).

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: Another Bond-less PCS introduces us - at some length - to Scaramanga, Nick-Nack and their labyrinth. It sets everything up for the final duel nicely enough and this is surely the point.

Theme: It's a punchy little number with some filthy lyrics (the implication being that Scaramanga runs some sort of fertility clinic), but it's never going to win any 'Best Bond Theme' competitions. Maurice Binder continues to pull the same boring rabbit from his hat, this time with south-east Asian models doing the jiggling.   

Deaths: An all time low of 6. Quite remarkable. I'm not counting the boy wounded in the stomach in the knife fight (no way that's fatal unless the school's pastoral care is very poor indeed) but even if I did the tally would still be the lowest so far.    

Memorable Deaths: Hardly any. Scaramanga kills most of them and that means they die the same way: a golden bullet to the chest.    

Licence to Kill: One. I'd never noticed this before but 007 only kills one person in this movie and that is Scaramanga himself, which is not only fitting but also rather wonderful I think. Bond doesn't even fire his gun until the duel starts.

Exploding Helicopters: Again zero, a sure sign that budgets have been squeezed lately. A seaplane is blown up on the beach but this does not count.

Shags: 2. Mo(o)re austerity. 

Crimes Against Women: Moore's Bond is at his nastiest here, twisting Andrea's arm. But the film's treatment of Goodnight is beyond disgraceful. She's presented as a total dim blonde, getting kidnapped, losing car keys, obstructing Bond when he wants to follow someone, handing Scaramanga the Solex and so forth. Worst of all, she hits a button on a console with her pert bikini-clad backside and nearly skewers 007 on a sunbeam as a result. Bond is dismissive of her throughout and it's clear that she's of no operational value to him as a fellow agent. He is happy to shag her though. Brilliantly, startlingly, she turns him down (see Best Lines) but then changes her mind immediately. It's hardly empowering, but even worse is to come. Having offered herself up to him, Bond makes her hide in the wardrobe whilst he beds Scaramanga's girlfriend.

Casual Racism: Nothing casual about the way Sheriff J. W. Pepper abuses the people of south-east Asia. How anyone thought it was acceptable, even as a parody of racism, is beyond me.

Out of Time: Well, everybody is kung-fu fighting- huh! - so it must be 1974. 

Fashion Disasters: Bond has developed a penchant for rather awful safari shirts.

Eh?: So it's Scaramanga's girlfriend that send Bond the bullet. So why does he have a life-size model of Bond in his house? How did she get the bullet engraved? >> Can Scaramanga really just announce that he has taken over Hai-Fat's company like that? If the Queen Mary is such a brilliant hiding place, how do the British smuggle all their top security personal aboard without the Chinese noticing? Is there a tunnel from Whitehall? >> But the most bewildering question is what on earth is J. W. Pepper doing on holiday in Thailand when he obviously hates foreigners? It's amazing he even left Louisiana.   

Worst Line: Bond, trying to suck up to a belly dancer: "You really do have a most magnificent abdomen." And all that Solex stuff, goodness me it's dull.Worst of all though is his patronising reassurance to Goodnight (after he swaps her for Maud Adams mid-hook-up) that "Your turn will come!" Give that man a slap.

Best Line: Mary Goodnight strikes a momentary blow for feminism having been propositioned by 007: "Oh James, I'm tempted. But killing a few hours as one of your passing fancies really isn't my scene." Needless to say, her resolve lasts all of five seconds. Bond wonders aloud who might want to kill him. "Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors... the list is endless!" snaps back M.

Worst Bond Moment: Bond suffers various indignities here (being squeezed by Sumo wrestlers and kicked about by kung-fu-ists, swallowing a bullet from a belly dancer's midriff, getting kicked in the shins by a midget) but surely the worst thing happens to Roger Moore - forced to stand there in the background of a shot pretending to be his own wax-work double.

Best Bond Moment: The bridge jump is nice as is the 'oh no' when he realises who's car he's just stolen. But the best bit is the final gunfight with Scaramanga. Excellent stuff.   

Overall: The Bond/Scaramanga duel is so pleasing that I tend to leave TMWTGG with an artificially high opinion of it. It's a small-scale Bond film that adds up to more than the sum of it's parts, but those parts are slight indeed. In its defence it was made very quickly and with a limited budget - but it was poorly received. It's not a bad Bond film at all, but once again the series had misplaced its sense of the spectacular. It's clear that the producers knew this needed to be rectified - but that'll have to wait for next time.

James Bond Will Return: ... after some legal wrangling and some franchise-saving head scratching in The Spy Who Loved Me.