The Spy Who Loved Me

Let Bond be Bond.

Really, it was as simple as that.

After The Man With the Golden Gun, the Bond franchise was in trouble. After the box office ticked upwards for Sean Connery's return in Diamonds Are Forever, the first two Roger Moore movies had seen consecutive box office declines, and generally poor critical receptions. I have nothing to back this up with, but I have no doubt if the next Bond movie didn't show substantial improvement at the box office, Roger Moore would have been cast aside as a failure.

Furthermore, Bondmania was long over, and even the imitators and spoofs had folded up their tents and gone home. The Kevin McClory legal wranglings had raised their ugly head, which resulted in the longest ever break between Bond movies. Harry Saltzman had left the production team, so suddenly Cubby Broccoli was alone. And it became fashionable to question whether or not, in a time of detente, a spy series was relevant. And when cinema was moving towards more realism, whether or not massive spectacles were still viable or desirable.

So there was a lot at stake in making the 10th Eon Bond movie. Attempts to make the series "relevant" (with drugs, or the energy crisis) and cash in on other genres (blaxploitation, kung fu movies) had not proven successful. What to do?

It was simple, really...Let Bond be Bond. Or, as Bond said at the end of Tomorrow Never Dies, "Give the public what they want." Don't try to reinvent the wheel...don't try to stuff Bond's square peg into some other genre's round hole. Commit to the over-the-top secret agent fantasy. Bring back Ken Adam and have him give us mind-boggling sets. Give us exotic cars, not AMC Hornets. We can have fun and wink at ourselves, but the movie must take itself seriously at some level.

And it worked brilliantly. The Spy Who Loved Me more than doubled the box office of TMWTGG. It was also a massive critical success. More importantly, just as the cinema was beginning to shift towards blockbusters and events, TSWLM put Bond back on the map, put the name James Bond back on everyone's lips, and re-inserted Bond back into the cultural consciousness. For an entire generation of Bond fans, this movie defined what the franchise was about.

And I'm here to tell you that it is the most overrated Bond movie ever. (editor's note--Sorry. folks, I tried to stop him...)

That doesn't mean that it's not good--hell, it's really good. But something can be good and still be overrated. Fans and critics of a certain age, by a huge majority, will tell you that this is the best Bond movie. Whenever they talk about a more recent Bond movie, or villain, or gadget, they will invariably phrase it as "the best XX since The Spy Who Loved Me." Check it out...go look at how many Casino Royale (2006) reviews used that phrase in one form or another.

And I'm here to tell you that, not only is TSWLM not the best Bond movie, it's not even the best Roger Moore Bond movie (editor's note--again, sorry, readers...I think he's off his meds today).

One of the first problems Broccoli faced was that he had a Fleming title, but not a Fleming story, to work with, and nobody had any idea what the hell the movie was even going to be about.

Why? Because The Spy Who Loved Me was the one Bond novel Eon was not allowed to the content of...they could use only the title. Why? Because Ian Fleming so hated the novel, he had that stipulated in the deal when he sold the rights--that only the title, and none of the prose from that book could be used!! He so hated the book, he prevented in from being published in paperback in the U.K.

Why? Because TSWLM the book ISN'T a Bond book...it's a romance novel that guest stars James Bond for a few chapters. Seriously. It's told first-person perspective by Vivienne Michel, a young woman who ends up managing a hotel in the Adirondacks. After reminiscing about her past loves, two gangsters (Horror and Sluggsy--really!) show up to burn down the hotel and kill her (and worse). James Bond doesn't show up until 10 chapters in. Thanks to a convenient flat tire, he shows up at the hotel, offs the gangsters, does the nasty with Viv, and leaves by chapter 15, and we watch as Viv deals with the aftermath and pines for the spy who loved her. If you ever get around to reading this book, I promise you that it's even more of a romance novel than I've made it sound like.

So the decision to announce at the end of TMWTGG that TSWLM was coming next was odd, given that there were other titles available that afforded at least some Fleming content to be adapted. Now, for the first time, they would have to make a 100% original Bond movie, with no characters or plot from the books to draw upon--which could only have added to the pressure of having to salvage the franchise.

Although the screenplay is credited to Roger Maibaum and Christopher Wood, at least 8 different writers toiled on prospective screenplays through at least 15 drafts, including comic book writer Cary Bates, John Landis (!), and Anthony Burgess (!!). Ideas from almost all of those versions ended up in Maibaum's scripts. When Guy Hamilton left because he thought he was going to get to direct Superman The Movie, Lewis Gilbert came on board to direct and brought along Christopher Wood to tie everything together.

S.P.E.C.T.R.E. was to be the villain again (with or without Blofeld, depending on which version of the script you're looking at), but just before production was to begin Kevin McClory tried to get an injunction halting the film, claiming he owned S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and Blofeld. Not wishing a lengthy legal battle, Broccoli punted, having Wood remove all S.P.E.C.T.R.E references. All of this wrangling and re-writing was to have an impact on the movie, the result being a weak, generic and underdeveloped villain in a plot that is largely a remake of You Only Live Twice.

Before we go too much further, I did promise you folks some actual frontal nudity, and it's right here in the teaser, 1 minute and 15 seconds into the movie...just on the sailors right...

Holy schnikes!! A closer look ( but blurrier, though):

Ladies and gentleman, the first and only fully bare breasts in Bond history. I never noticed this until the first DVD's came out. Obviously the set designer wanted to make the submarine authentic, with nude pin-ups and everything. Did Gilbert not notice when shooting, or not care? Did Broccoli notice? Given that back in those days bare breasts were pretty much an automatic R from the MPAA, it's a good thing that no one noticed...

Back to the teaser. The first half of the teaser, the taking of the British submarine, plays out virtually identically to the teaser from YOLT (albeit much better filmed), when an American spacecraft is captured by forces unknown. And thus we've begun the reincarnation of that movie's plot: ships (space or sea) from the superpowers are captured by a larger ship that swallows them. The reason: to cause a nuclear war. In YOLT, the Chinese want to eliminate the other superpowers and rule what remains of the world; in TSWLM it's Stromberg who wants to eliminate the surface would which he deems corrupt, so he can begin his undersea kingdom. So right off the bat, we get low marks for originality, as the best that all those writers and drafts could come up with was repeating the Bond movie of a decade ago.

Ahh, but the rest of the teaser...that's what everyone remembers. The summoning of Agent XXX. And after this bit:

...all of us sexist bastards in 1977 assumed that XXX was the man. OK, no we didn't...after all, the title and all the publicity had already given up that game. Still, for you young 'uns, this was considered fairly shocking stuff back then.

Then we get the Log Cabin Girl, and perhaps the most iconic "Oh, James" in the entire series. And the printing watch, which is pretty silly (if you have a watch that can receive a radio signal and print out a message, why not just have it scroll on the watch face, instead using an ersatz label maker, which can't have a lot of capacity?), but a good gag nonetheless. Then we get a nice little ski chase, which they don't overdo. Well shot, exciting arrangement of the James Bond theme by Marvin Hamlisch. It is marred a bit, though, by the fact that we (meaning I) don't get initially that it's Barsov, Anya's boyfriend, who is pursuing Bond. When we saw him before, he was naked...now we see him with his body and head covered and, frankly, his face just wasn't that memorable. Even now, on my 526th viewing, in his ski outfit he really doesn't look like he did when he was with Anya. There's also the problem of context--it's less than two minutes of screen time later, and there's been no indication that time has passed, so it doesn't compute in our heads that he's made a journey to Austria in that time. Seriously, the first time I saw this, I had no idea they were the same guy. Better writing/editing direction should have been able to avoid this confusion...or maybe I was just stupid...

This all leads, of course, to the Asgard jump, which is so good and so impressive that it's justifiable to call it the greatest Bond stunt ever. Compare the execution with the Barrel Roll jump in TMWTGG. With the car jump, the movie calls a lot of attention to the stunt beforehand, telegraphing it clumsily. They use slow motion and a stupid slide whistle to call attention to how cool it is. And they use J W. Pepper afterwards to loudly proclaim how cool it was. Not so the Asgard jump. You don't see it coming ahead of time...the cliff is just suddenly there. The score falls silent, letting the stunt itself take main stage. And Bond himself treats it nonchalantly, without self-congratulation or whoopin' about how cool that was. And like any good set piece, the audience is so enthralled and enraptured they don't have time to ask delicate questions (would someone trying to be a secret agent really emblazon their parachute with their country's flag? So much for covert...And where, exactly, does Bond land? And his skis are gone...how does he get out of the mountains? On foot?).

We then proceed to the perfect combination of song and credit sequence. Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" is one of those songs that has become part of the culture, and is so ubiquitous that you tend to forget how good it actually is until you take the time to really listen to it. And Maurice Binder gives us what is probably his best title sequence, that works well in unison with the song. With the 1976 Montreal Olympics having thrust gymnastics back into the American consciousness, the acrobatic women swinging around the guns seemed to hit a real chord.

Then, after a couple of meetings, we're off to Egypt. And while the filmmakers have obviously used exotic locales to good effect before, they use the living hell out of Egypt, and to great effect. The desert, Cairo, the pyramids, the temples...all make for awesome and memorable set pieces. Jaws' murder of Fekkesh at the pyramid show, with the use of light and sound, is one of the best scenes in all of Bond--almost Orson Wellsian! The atmosphere, the jousting between 007 and XXX, lots of good spy work in tracking down the microfilm...all very enjoyable. Not perfect, mind you...the fight with Jaws trying to destroy the van was a little too cartoonish. Hamlisch is a little too eager to put in goofy music or sample other movies' music as a joke (a habit that would continue through the rest of the Moore movies). And we'll deal with Stromberg in a bit. But overall, 55 minutes in, this movie IS on a pace to be at least the best Moore Bond.

But then the gaps in the patchwork script start to show through. That's not to say the movie becomes bad. But there are definite some valleys of mediocrity popping up in amidst the thinning peaks of quality. For example, after they leave Cairo, Bond and Anya take the train. Now, what route, exactly, are they taking from Cairo to Sardinia that requires an overnight train trip?? Especially when their mission--to locate missing submarines and nuclear missiles--seems a little urgent for such a leisurely mode of transport. So why? My best guess is, they just wanted to have (yet another) train compartment fight. Maybe it made more sense in one of the earlier versions of the script, but as is it just comes across as another attempt to recapture "Bond's Greatest Hits." The fight with Jaws is nice, but it's not substantially any better than the fight with Tee Hee in LALD, and we're already starting to over rely on Jaws to keep interest up.

Then, Bond and Anya go to visit Stromberg at Atlantis, his wonderful sea city. For some reason, they pose as a marine biologist and his wife. This ruse results in a short meeting between Bond and Stromberg, and nothing is accomplished. Bond doesn't find any clues, gets no guilty admissions from Stromberg. 007 does nothing clever or heroic or secret agenty, and Stromberg does nothing particularly menacing. I've had more tense meetings with my mailman. Anya spends the time taking a tour of the facility, off screen. How pointless was this meeting? The only clue they obtain is looking at the publicly displayed model of Stromberg's tanker, the Liparus! That's right, if Stromberg doesn't have that model sitting on a pedestal in plain sight, our intrepid spies are at a complete dead end. Rather than their investigation turning up anything, the clue is shoved beneath their noses, unlike the first hour of the film.

The rest of the movie has about 10 minutes of plot to fill 55 minutes of time. They do a decent job--the action pieces are nice, the pace within each piece rarely flags--but it is noticeable that what's happening over the last half of the movie is a bit padded. Stromberg's goons try to kill Bond; Bond and Anya go on a submarine; submarine gets captured; Bond and sailors capture boat; Bond kills Stromberg and rescues Anya. Most of these pieces aren't bad, some are pretty good...but they all last longer than they should, and several end in distinct anti-climaxes.

The car chase is pretty good--after 3 straight Guy Hamilton films, it's nice to see a director who knows how to stage a vehicle chase in an exciting way. And if you're not going to drive an Astin Martin, well, a Lotus that can turn into a submarine is a pretty fair substitute. Two things slightly mar this sequence, though...having Jaws walk away unscratched from the fatal car crash simply adds to the cartoonishness of the character; and too long is spent having bystanders gawk at the Lotus as it drives onto the beach. Yes, it's cool--but do we really need two reaction shots each from the guy drinking win,e the kid, THE DOG?!?! Too self-indulgent, too much calling attention to how cool the filmmakers thought they were (although nowhere as near as bad as Moonraker would get).

If it's a Lewis Gilbert directed film with a massive Ken Adam set, you know we're going to have an overlong battle at the film's climax. So as it was in YOLT, so as it is in TSWLM. On the plus side, this one is better filmed and more exciting than the battle in YOLT. However, this one is egregiously overlong--the entire battle, up to the sinking of the Liparus, lasts nearly 20 minutes. That's a long time for any set piece, even a good one. (Aside: a number of people, including myself from time to time, have complained about the finale of Tomorrow Never Dies being "too Rambo," too much machine gunning and action movie as opposed to Bond movie. Well, if true, what does that say about this movie?).

And it ends in the most enormous anti-climax possible. Bond defeats the threat--by pushing some buttons on a control panel and watching icons on a screen. Oh, and they give us some stock footage of missiles and nuclear explosions, too. Very emotionally unsatisfying. 007 might as well have been playing a video game.

The rescue of Anya features the fairly unmemorable death of Stromberg, and (yet another...sigh) battle with Jaws, who is now deflecting bullets with his teeth. All in all, a fairly mediocre ending, until the memorable escape pod recovery, and the greatest line in Bond history, "Keeping the British end up, sir." (editor's note--every week you say some line is "the greatest line in Bond history." snell reply--Sue me, I'm fickle).

So a brilliant start, and a substantially less brilliant finish. What drags it down?

First, there's Stromberg. A lot of the problems can be blamed on the fact that they had to make the last-minute change in villains. But this character clearly needed 2 or 3 more passes through the word processor. This was something new for Bond--someone who wasn't out for riches or power, but a megalomaniac who actually thought he has doing the world a favor, a true madman. This could have been very interesting. But, frankly, Stromberg is boring. He doesn't have a single memorable line. His motivation is completely undeveloped...his single speech about how the world is "corrupt" and needs to be replaced has no examples of how the world is bad, no clues about how his undersea world would be better, nothing besides a bare thesis statement--it's the Cliff's Notes version of a Bond villain!! (Not to mention, of course, that his complaint about the corruption and decadence of the surface world is belied by the opulence of his quarters and dining hall...).

None of this is helped by Curt Jurgens' lethargic performance. He didn't have a lot to work with, true, but there's not a shred of charisma is his Stromberg, not a sign of the leadership qualities that would get people to follow such a madman. There's nothing there for the audience to latch on to, to like (as they should at least secretly admire something about most Bond villians) or hate. There's absolutely no chemistry between him and Bond, so the three scenes they have together are flat and lifeless. Stromberg is probably the worst villain in a top-tier Bond film.

And then there's Anya. It is popular to declare that she was "something new," the "first liberated Bond girl," the first to be "Bond's equal." Seriously, even devoted Bond fans who should know better act as if Anya Amasova is the first competent women to ever appear in a Bond film. Allow me to quote, as just one example, Stephen Jay Rubin from the excellent The Complete James Bond Encyclopedia:

Beginning with Major Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me, the Bond flimmakers began to give the women in 007's life a stronger dose of reality. The chauvinistic approach to the breathless, bosomy female of the 1960's was replaced with a more believable female protagonist who could defend herself and sow 007 a thing or two...

Major Amasova is, in effect, the first liberated woman in the James Bond series..

Well, pardon me, but I call poppycock on that. Aside from the fact that they try to sell us this bill of goods every decade or so (Wai Lin is a new type of Bond Girl!! Jinx is a new type of Bond Girl!!), even in 1977 this was revisionism of the rankest kind. Pussy Galore was a "breathless, bosomy female" (well, bosomy, sure, but breathless)? Aki and Kissy in YOLT were both competent secret agents, both saving Bond's life. And I sure wouldn't want to be the one to tell Tracy Bond that she was unliberated and couldn't defend herself. Even Tiffany Case was a hard-nosed and in control character, until the writers lost track of her character in the second half of the film.

And really, what does Anya do that's so impressive? Yes, she outwits Bond with the sleeping powder cigarette...that puts her even with Pussy, who knocked Bond out unexpectedly. Bond has to rescue her from the villains more than once. She lets Jaws get the drop on her while she's picking up the microfilm in a way that would embarrass a rookie cop. She breaks out one martial arts stance, but in her only fight scene she's utterly helpless. The character doesn't even get any stunts!! Bond gets to kill several people, Anya...zero (OK, maybe the guys in the mini sub she dropped the mine on...). Bond does all the heavy lifting to save the world and killing the villains, Anya is tied up for 30 of the last 35 minutes of the film. To claim that she's Bond's equal, or that she's something new even by 1977 standards, is wrong, a symptom of fond memories of people's first Bonds and a belief that what the press releases tell you is the truth. Don't get me wrong, she's not a bad character...but she's not the revelation that many people claim.

And the good parts of Anya are substantially undercut by Barbara Bach. Don't get me wrong, she's verrrry beautiful, and Ringo is one very lucky man. But (editor's note--uh-oh, here it comes) she is a terrible actress. She has no ability to emote. Her laborious Russian accent hides the fact that 100% of her line readings are identical. Happy, sad, angry, vengeful, determined, uncertain...all with exactly the same tone and inflection and cadence, a flat monotone. Seriously...listen to the film without looking at the screen...see if you can figure out her emotional state is supposed to be. (I would consider the excuse that having to do a Russian accent so strained her concentration that she couldn't give anything more to her lines...but that's an explanation, not a defense, and hardly an indication that she's actually a better actress than she showed here.)

So why do people so sing her praises--aside from her beauty, that is? She get's cachet from two things. First, she had the good fortune to fall between Britt Ekland and Lois Chiles, which would make anyone look better by comparison. Secondly, she's got a good role with a HUGE pop culture significance as "the first liberated Bond girl." Well, I'm declaring that the empress has no clothes. She is awful in the role, and hurts the movie.

Finally, there's Jaws. Yes, he's a pretty good henchman (but again, a lot of that is because he follows Knick Knack, the lamest henchman). But they overuse him in the movie, and turn him into Tom the cat to Jerry's mouse...he's electrocuted, thrown off a high speed train, walks away from a flaming wreck that kills his companions, deflects bullets with his teeth, kills sharks, swims away from exploding sea fortresses...it's too much, too far, and drags Bond too far past the line of not-quite-realism into unbelievability. He's a better cartoon character than henchmen. That's why Bond's fight against Sandor is so much more compelling and more memorable. A fight against someone who can be hurt and killed is much better than a fight against someone who can't, because there can be an ending. Ah, well, at least Jaws won't be back in any other movies...

As for Bond himself, another popular thing to say is that "he grew into the role of Bond" in this movie. Again, I have to be the contrarian. It IS the film in which the public accepted him as Bond. But as to his performance, I think that he was more hard-edged in LALD and TMWTGG, even though those were inferior movies. Don't get me wrong, he's perfectly fine here, and when he kills Sandor and pumps 4 rounds into a blubbery, defeated Stromberg, yeah, he's a bad-ass. But what most people see as "Moore coming into his own" is really the writers actually giving him better things to do and say. It's not like he had a chance to show his pain at the mention Tracy's death in LALD, or had a line anywhere as near as good as "keeping the British end up" in TMWTGG. It's an improvement in writing, not an improvement in acting, people.

So what do we have overall? A pretty good Bond movie, at times a VERY good Bond movie, which is especially laudable considering some of the circumstances under which it was made. But it's also a movie that's built up a huge amount of critical and cultural baggage--"the movie that saved Bond;" "the first liberated Bond girl;" "the first Bond blockbuster;"--that have caused a lot of people to overestimate (or just plain misremember) how good it really is. It didn't save the franchise (but it may have saved Moore). Even without adjusting for inflation, it still finished far behind Goldfinger and Thunderball in box office, so it was hardly the first Bond blockbuster.

So you see, a movie can be both overrated AND still good. If you remove TSWLM from the context of the hoopla, and watch it for what it actually is, you can see that it's far from perfect, and certainly not the best Bond movie. Too much is recycled, the second half is slack compared to the first, the villain is uninteresting, the girl not as good as advertised.

But it is pretty damned good, because they finally managed, for the first time under Moore, to let Bond be Bond. And now that the series had regained its footing, there's no way they could blow that momentum and screw up the next movie, is there??

SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:


**As a consequence of the ad hoc nature of the script, timeline problems abound. In the teaser, XXX and Barsov are on leave somewhere in Russia. Anya gets orders to report to HQ immediately, while Barsov has to leave for his mission in Austria. We then see Bond and Barsov in Austria, where Barsov dies. After the opening credits, we see XXX reporting to Gogol, where she is informed of her mission and of Barsov's death. Wait--Barsov had time to get to the mountains of Austria, die, and have word get back to Gogol, all before Anya even made it to Gogol in person?!? What, she took the scenic route?

Similarly, as they prepare to investigate the Liparus, we learn that Bond killed Borsov three weeks ago. Even allowing for non-precision or exaggeration (but both Bond and Anya say it was 3 weeks...), does that seem credible from what we've seen? Both were told to report immediately, both presumably went to Egypt directly. Is there any way the events we've witnessed could have taken 3 weeks?? That must have been one slooooow train to Sardinia...

**And that, of course, means Stromberg had possession of the British and Russian subs for 3 weeks. WHAT THE HELL WAS HE WAITING FOR!?!?!?! Since the Liparus never put into port during that time, and he had the flipping nuclear subs and nuclear missiles, why the frak didn't he start his own personal Armageddon 3 weeks earlier? Or two?? Why wait until Bond and Anya got closer, and closer?? Why wait for the British and Russians to team up, so they'll know you're responsible, which makes it much less likely you're plan will spark an immediate nuclear war from each side??

**You can't find good help, can you? The nimrods that Stromberg had captain his stolen subs just reset the missile coordinates for the EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION of their original targets, and they don't even ask a question? They never think to ask why they're firing their missiles into the middle of the ocean? They don't require a password or failsafe code for that drastic a change in their plans????

**In Dr. No, Crab Key went up in a nuclear fireball. Now, two more spots in the Atlantic have burst into mushroom clouds. Are there any open shipping lanes left in the Northern Atlantic? It must be a pretty damn radioactive ocean by now...Irony: this probably killed a lot of Stromberg's precious sea life.

**So Stromberg was going to trick the surface world into destroying themselves, while he and his droogs live happily ever after underwater. I'm not at all sure how they were going to repopulate, though...In all of Stromberg's ships and complexes, we only saw two women...his assistant, whom he killed, and Naomi, who died. Did he have a hidden cache of women hidden on Atlantis somewhere? Maybe that's why he wanted to keep Anya...

**Speaking of Naomi...va va voom. The camera likes her a lot, and the film would have been better with more Naomi and less Jaws.

**The Iron Rule of Bond Movies--hotel clerks are hot from James:

Is it just me, or does she get waaay to much screen time? Was she dating Lewis Gilbert?

**He's back:

Man, you can tell a Ken Adam set from three miles away, can't you? He hasn't been with Bond since Diamonds Are Forever, and won his first Oscar for Barry Lyndon in the meantime. But that hasn't dulled his ability to do completely insane Bond sets. I mean, who in the world has an office like this?

Or a nightclub like this...

And if I'm a super-villain, Ken Adam is designing my underwater lair...


and my escape pod.

And of course, there's the Liparus interior, so huge they had to build a a special soundstage for it, the world's largest. By the way, those sub exteriors are about 5/8 scale, while the interiors we see are about twice as big as the real thing. Ken Adam--bringing Time Lord design sense to nuclear submarines.

And you know what I want for Christmas:

That globe.

**Stromberg may have been a lame villain, but he does get the unique honor of the DOUBLE BLOFELD KILL!! First, he makes the two scientists who developed his sub tracking system think that he believes one of them is the traitor...but then he (surprise) kills his unnamed assistant, instead!! Phew...then he lets them leave...and he blows up their helicopter!!! Two Blofeld Kills (with three victims) for the price of one!!

**I am puzzled, though, why he kills the scientists. They did the work for him, right? He promises to give them their $10 million each. Is he trying to save the money? (He does specifically stop the payment on the wire transfer after they're dead..but then again, the cost of that helicopter must have offset that.) Is he afraid they'll squeal, or be traced back to him? Or is it just because he's a dickweed?? No reason at all is given. It's not a mystery of Goldfinger proportions, but it is puzzling. (And what about the copter's pilot?? Hmm??)

**You know that scene where Bond and Anya pretend they're not going to have sex, and get ready, and keep waiting for the other one to come to their room? Spielberg soooo ripped that off in Temple of Doom...

**Hey, look, Bond has learned how to defuse a nuclear bomb since Goldfinger...

**Bond Score: 3. Log Cabin Girl, the Arab Beauty with the rose in Hosein's harem, and of course Anya. A number of missed opportunities, because don't think he wouldn't have gotten it on with Felicca, the hotel clerk, or Naomi if he got the chance. Cumulative Bond Score: 29.

And as always...

Wait a minute...there must be a black hole or quantum tunnel, because For Your Eyes Only didn't come next...what could possibly have happened to change their minds?? DAMN YOU, STAR WARS!!!!

Ranking The Theme Songs

Well, it's time to officially put my neck on the line, as I rank ALL of the James Bond theme songs. Before anyone attacks me as having no taste:

A) Well, you're probably right. I freely admit that I'm a musical idiot.
B) As always, this is just a catalogue of my tastes, not some absolute declaration of musical quality. There are few bad songs here, but some decent ones are ranked lower because, while good, don't meet up with what I think are the requirements to be a good Bond theme song.
C) Said requirements include, but are not limited to: appropriateness for the genre, ability to be used well in the film's score, memorability...it's not an exact science, there's no formula, and I can't promise that I've applied these all consistently.
D) I do not include "The James Bond Theme." It only covered 1/3 of the credits in Dr. No, and of course has become so iconic that there's no way it wouldn't win. Call it a Hall Of Fame member.
E) Casino Royale (1967), being a "comedy," is not included on the list. While I like the theme song, it's a comedy theme song, not a spy movie theme song, so it would be comparing apples and oranges. Never Say Never, which desperately wanted to be a "real" Bond movie, is included.
F) As with all the other rankings I'll be throwing up here, this is just a snapshot of 2008. My (and society's) tastes shift, some things age well and some badly. This list looks different than the last time I did it, and will look different again a few years from now. Hell, it looks different than 5 minutes ago, as I re-arranged some things twice while typing this up...

OK, I've covered my ass enough. Let the kvetching begin!!

21) Never Say Never Again (Lani Hall)--Ouch. After spending a gazillion dollars to get Sean Connery on board, you'd think they would have spent a few bucks on a song that didn't sound like it came from a generic 1985 romantic comedy or sitcom. Yuck.

20) The Man With the Golden Gun (Lulu)--A vapid attempt to forge a Bond song from elements that were successful elsewhere. Lulu is no Shirley.

19)From Russia With Love (Matt Monro)--A decent tune, but Monro's syrupy vocals turn what should be an exotic evocation of globe-trotting into a sappy crooner. They didn't play his vocals over the opening credits for a reason...

18)Moonraker (Shirley Bassey)--Third time was not the charm for Shirley. Granted, it must have been tough to come up with a good song for the title, but this is Shirley's weakest performance to boot.

17) "All Time High"--Octopussy (Rita Coolidge)--Demerits for not including the movie's title in the song (although that seems to be the new trend). An attempt to capture the style of "Nobody Does It Better," but it's not a Bond song at all--it's not about the plot, not about Bond, not about the girl, the villain, the action--it's just a generic (albeit not completely terrible) love ballad.

16) The Living Daylights (a-Ha)--The perils of trying to be trendy. Sometimes it works, sometimes you pick a one-hit wonder who deserved to be. The thready vocals, weak syntho-pop, and lame lyrics confirm that it was the video for "Take On Me" that made the band a hit, not their music. No Duran Duran here...


15) The World Is Note Enough (Garbage)--I like Garbage. I like Shirley Manson. And while I'm listening to the song, I like it. But it's not memorable at all--when it's not playing I just can't remember how the damn thing goes! Like many of the David Arnold era, it's not different enough from the others.

14) License to Kill (Gladys Knight)--One of those I can never make up my mind about. Sounds great while listening to it, but fades from the mind very quickly after consumption. And the chorus doesn't fit comfortably with the rest of the song...

13) Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow)--Not bad. Suffers from the fatal defect of being infinitely poorer than the alternate title track by k.d. lang that ran over the end credits. And the chorus is overly-histrionic when her voice simply can't handle that. Sorry, Alex.

12) You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra)--Great, lush melody, used excellently in the film...but Nancy's voice isn't up to the challenge.

11) Goldeneye (Tina Turner)--I wish I could rank this one higher than I do, but it's starting to get tough. Sadly, it's in the movie with the worst score known to modern man, so the song's virtues quickly get burned out of your brain by the terror that is Eric Serra.

10) Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney & Wings)--I'm not as high on this as nearly everyone else is. To quote from my review of the movie: "It's too schizophrenic for my tastes, less than the sum of its discordant parts... it feels like somebody jammed "Man With the Golden Gun" and "Nobody Does It Better" together, but didn't bother to thoroughly blend them. Individually the parts work...together, not so much."

9) "You Know My Name"--Casino Royale (2006) (Chris Cornell)--This damn song grows on me the more I listen to it. I've never cared much for Chris Cornell in any of his bands, it doesn't use the film title, it was a real dick move not to allow it on the movie soundtrack CD--there are a lot of reasons I shouldn't rate it this high. But there it is. Goddammit, it's a good song.
8) Diamonds Are Forever (Shirley Bassey)--Perhaps the most underrated Bond theme. Overshadowed by "Goldfinger," but just listens to Shirley's vocals, the throbbing bass line...sensuous and strangely enthralling.

7) Thunderball (Tom Jones)--You have to respect a song when the guy faints trying to sing it. So over the top that it's a perfect fit for it's movie, both in the credits and throughout the movie.

6) Die Another Day (Madonna)--OK, I'll admit I'm a Madonna fan, so maybe my tastes are colored here. And I know the electronica-lite isn't for everyone. But once you get past that intro, there's an attempt to do something really different, to break out of the mold that had other Bond themes of the era sounding more-or-less interchangeable. And it works perfectly in concert with what they're trying to do over the opening credits. An idiosyncratic choice to put it this high, but one I'm sticking with.

5) "Nobody Does It Better"--The Spy Who Loved Me (Carly Simon)--One of those songs that you constantly take for granted, forgetting how good it is until you actually listen to it again. I do wish that it had used the title more than once as a throwaway, but that's it's only weakness.

4) For Your Eyes Only (Sheena Easton)--Haunting and gorgeous. Practically perfect.

3) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (John Barry)--The days of instrumentals for Bond films are long gone (what, someone can't give Moby a shot?), but it's hard to see why. A great, great, GREAT spy movie instrumental, circling around itself again and again while never repeating. And now it's stuck in my head again for the next two weeks.

2) A View To A Kill (Duran Duran)--Yes, I'm serious. This is one freakin' awesomely good song, the first attempt at a "modern" Bond theme, as John Barry unexpectedly drags the franchise musically into the 1980s (especially surprising after the Beach Boys in the teaser). And hell, just listen to Simon LeBon emote! Plastic Soul at it's finest.

1) Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey)--No surprise. The ur-Bond theme song, surely already existing in our race memory and merely plucked forth by Bassey and Barry and Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. As responsible as anything else for the popularity of the Bond franchise. Seriously.

Well, there it is. Have at me...

The Man With the Golden Gun

There's a good reason I'm re-watching all of the Bonds before issuing my latest rounds of ratings.

Because if I had been forced to do this without a refresher, I would have sworn on my mother's grave (as yet unused) that there was no way that I could ever say that The Man with The Golden Gun was better the Live And Let Die. No way.

And yet here we are. Maybe my memory was faulty. Maybe LALD has aged so poorly it sunk below MWGG. Or maybe my tastes have just changed.

That's not to say, of course, that MWGG is actually one of the better Bond movies. It's not. But in re-watching it in such close proximity to the others, well, it was a lot better than I remembered it being. Which isn't necessarily saying too much, but still.

Ian Fleming didn't do them any favors with the novel. It was the last Bond novel he wrote, and was a very odd duck. It took place after the You Only Live Twice novel, which ended with Bond amnesiac and wandering around western Asia. As MWGG opens, Bond has suddenly returned after a year of being missing and presumed dead. It turns out the KGB found him, brainwashed him, and sent him back home to assassinate M (he tries, but fortunately he fails).

After MI-6 "unbrainwashes" him, M decides there's only one thing to do...send him on an impossible suicide mission, whether either he succeeds and proves himself all healed, or dies a hero's death. That mission: to kill Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, a hitman who works for the Soviets (as well as independent jobs) who has become quite the thorn in the CIA & MI-6's sides. Bond heads to Jamaica under the cover name of Mark Hazard (really!!), pals it up with Scaramanga, and spends the next 120 pages in an unnecessary cat and mouse game before getting around to killing "Pistols." Bond is restored to the good graces of MI-6, the Queen offers him a knighthood (which he refuses), and he spends 3 weeks shacking up with Mary Goodknight "convalescing."

Obviously, the basic premise of the book was a non-starter, so the writers pretty much jettisoned everything except Scaramanga and Goodknight. The good news is, Richard Maibaum came back on board to do the final draft of the screenplay from Tom Mankiewicz's earlier version. That means that stuff actually happened in the movie between the set pieces, unlike LALD. The bad news is, it was a mostly silly nothing.

We start, once again, with a teaser without James Bond in it, just a wax dummy (much as From Russia With Love had a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. goomba in a Bond mask). This is a distinctly better teaser than LALD. Instead of a bunch of random, unrelated events, we spend some quality time getting to know our villain and his henchman. It's far from perfect...it goes on too long; it's a little too impressed with itself for the "funhouse" death match as if other movies hadn't been doing it better and scarier for years; and the series' continuing fascination with 1950's cartoon versions of gangsters produces a most uninspiring foe for Scaramanga. And of course, you can't replace Roger Moore with a wax dummy (no jokes, please). But it is an improvement.

Then comes Lulu. Now, I don't hate this song as much as some others do. But it really is substandard. It's a vapid attempt to mimic Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" with a more uptempo beat, sort of "Goldfinger" meets the bouncy half of "Live And Let Die." Sadly, it falls well short of both of those, musically and lyrically. John Barry does do a better job of integrating it into the score than George Martin did in LALD, though. Historical sidenote: they really should have used the version Alice Cooper made for the movie...

Once the movie proper starts, we learn that Scaramanga has apparently decided to kill 007, and sent a trademark golden bullet ahead as a warning. This leads M to take the surprising step of relieving Bond and suggesting that he resign!! But M is really manipulating Bond to go hunt down Scaramanga first--look at the smile on M's face when Bond suggests that course of action. A well-played scene with M, once again demonstrating that beneath the cranky facade is a leader who respects Bond's abilities. Then again, by movie's end he's crankier than hell again, repeatedly telling Q to shut up and blaming things on Bond that couldn't possibly be his fault.

We then get the quest for Scaramanga, which takes Bond to Beirut, Macau, and Hong Kong. All colorful stuff, involving belly dancers, specialty gun makers, and a mysterious, beautiful woman. One of the interesting things is to watch 007's behavior. Roger Moore's Bond, it is often said, didn't play Bond as ruthlessly as Connery. That may have been true later in his career, but in this movie he's a real son of a bitch. Seriously. Watch how he threatens the gun maker Lazar. Yes, it's a humorous predicament, but Moore plays it as deadpan, not tongue-in-cheek, and as threateningly as Connery could have...he's a man to be taken seriously, not a quip-master. When he follows Andrea Anders to her hotel room, he is cruel and vicious, almost breaking her arm, slapping her around, and threatening to have Scaramanga kill her. Sure, he's motivated by a death threat, but this is not the James Bond who yells "Sit!" when confronted by a tiger--this is a Flemingesque no-nonsense agent.

When Bond shows up to the spot where Scaramanga is supposed to be, surprise, someone else is shot!! Apparently, Bond was not his target!!

Now, up to this point, I have to say that this has actually been a pretty good Bond film, teaser aside. We've got an interesting situation, with Bond's livelihood threatened (in more ways than one), lots of interesting locations, and beautiful women. It's been briskly paced, and the performances have been pretty good.

But this is the point where the film ever so slightly starts to go off the rails. The Hong Kong street where the assassination takes place is virtually empty, which drains it of any sense of an exotic location, making it look like a set where they couldn't afford extras (plus, a bustling street would have made Scaramanga's shot more impressive). The way it's staged, there's also no way Knick Knack could have gotten the solex agitator off of Gibson's corpse in the 3 seconds Lt. Hip was distracted--and if Bond hadn't been there, Hip never would have been distratcted, and there would have been zero chance to recover the solex. So some of the directing/editing/screenwriting cracks are starting to show, damn it!!

Solex agitator? Ah, yes, our MacGuffin for the movie. You see, being a creature of 1974, the "energy crisis" was on everybody's mind, so once again the franchise tried to get topical. The solex agitator was the invention of a British scientist who had defected, and the mission Bond was on when he was relieved was to find Gibson and get the solex back. The solex was "the essential component" in a solar energy system that was "95% efficient" and would "solve the energy crisis" (SPOILER ALERT--apparently, it didn't solve our energy problems). Now, that's a radically absurd coincidence, that Bond's hunt for Scaramanga leads him right to Gibson as Gibson is killed by Scaramanga--another sign of lazy screenwriting...

The writers apparently thought that pitting Bond against the world's top assassin wasn't enough to fill a movie, so they made the solex agitator the prize that everyone was seeking. The problem was, there were no real stakes involved. Since Scaramanga was going to auction off the solex, there's no reason Britain (or America) couldn't just buy the thing. And there was no real consequence to NOT getting it--no threat to world or English security, no war or global domination, and nobody England was competing against to get it. Compare with the McGuffin in For Your Eyes Only--two known Cold War adversaries each trying to get a vital military secret that could give launch orders to any of England's nuclear subs. It's got 2 known enemies jousting, there are real consequences, nobody can just buy the damned thing at an auction, and it's the actually point of the movie, rather than a sideshow distracting us from Bond vs. Scaramanga.

So with Scaramanga no longer an actual threat, the movie really derails. We get a lot of pointless fights and chases, and no real plot development. Bond tries to pose as Scaramanga via a fake third nipple, but since Hi Fat already had hired Scaramanga, he knew it was a ruse...so we waste a lot of screen time on Q's oddest gadget ever. Then we get a fight with sumo (in Thailand?) which ends when James Bond is conked from behind by a midget with a trident. How embarrassing. Then Bond is dumped off at a kung fu school to be killed...

Wait a minute, this bears more examination--it's a good example of how the movie changed from a decent spy picture to just having things happen because they amused someone. In no particular order:
A) Why, if you want to kill Bond, dump him unconscious at a kung fu school you own, let him wake up, and proceed to have your pupils spar with him? Never has "just shoot him!!" been more obvious.
B) Like last movie, we have to try to copy other popular cultural phenomenon, so this time we're trying to mimic Enter the Dragon. Sadly, it's a poor imitation, as nothing that we see there is as remotely well-filmed or as engaging.
C) What happened to all of Bond's ninja training? Or his judo? You'd think a serious secret agent in the 70's would know a least a little rudimentary martial arts...but Bond wins by deceit and punching...
D) Fair is fair: the bit where Bond knocks out his opponent while bowing is pretty funny. And check out how closely his next opponent watches during the bow.
E) When Bond tries to escape, Hip and hips 2 teenage nieces outfight 20 evil martial artists, without ever needing more than one blow to fell an opponent. Bond doesn't even throw a punch. All with silly music in the background, telling you that even John Barry isn't taking it seriously by this point.
F) Hip and nieces drive away, accidentally leaving Bond behind...even though the girls tell him, he never notices that the man they've come to rescue isn't even in the damn car. And it's never followed up on. Seriously, they're not even trying any more. Sigh....we're now in the land of farce.

And it wouldn't be a Guy Hamilton movie without a long and non-thrilling chase sequence. Hey, how about a boat chase!! Sure, we did one that lasted 2 1/2 hours last movie, so why not do another one?!? This one is mercifully briefer, but contains the most terrifying thing ever:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

The return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper pushes the movie past the breaking point. How they thought this character was worthy of a return appearance is a mystery that I shall never be able to fathom. And while I know this is hard to believe, they manage to make him even worse than he was in LALD. Louder and more obnoxious? Yup. More racist? Yup--count the number of times he refers to Thais as "little brown pointy heads." He's the vilest personification of the ugly American. But at least he has just this one scene and we're done with him, right?

After Scaramanga kills his partner Hi Fat (rendering the entire 2nd half hour of the movie pointless, with no plot advancement whatsoever), Bond is left with no leads, and prepares for a night of unbridled lust with Goodknight. Until the deus ex machina, Andrea Anders returns. She reveals that she was the one who sent the death threat to Bond. The only way she can escape Scaramanga is to get someone to kill him, and only Bond is capable. And check out Bond still being something of the cad--despite the fact that Anders is throwing herself at him, he refuses to help her (or be seduced by her) until she promises to get him the solex. And he refuses to kill Scaramanga unless he gets the solex first.

We then get a scene that is simultaneously great--Bond's first meeting with Scaramanga, the death of Andrea, kickboxing!!--and silly--Goodknight getting locked in the trunk by Scaramanaga. This leads to--surprise--another long, boringly filmed car chase. This chase is different for two reasons. First, it brings back J.W. Pepper on more time---OH GOD IT BURNS AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Secondly, there is The Jump.

This is a crazy good stunt, and they really do it--no trick photography or fakery. Stunt driver Bumps Willard had been doing this on the car show circuit for a couple of years, so the producers brought him in to set it up for Bond. They had to rebalance the car (the driver was in the center), and used computers to make all the calculations...but it was done for real, without special effects, and they nailed it on the first take!! Sadly, this scene is marred by two things--the decision to show it in slow motion, and the uproariously funny use of a slide whistle as a sound effect, both of which make the stunt feel cartoony and faked, inviting laughter instead of awe. And to complete the over-the-top ridiculousness, we get Scaramanga's flying car.



Which leads to our final showdown at Scaramanga's secret HQ in Chinese territory (actually the gorgeous Phucket, Thailand). Well, eventually leads to our final showdown. Scaramanga insists on giving Bond a tour of his solar plant, which gives Bond a chance to show off obscure physics knowledge while making Scaramanga look stupid. Seriously, if you want a good compare/contrast between Connery's Bond and Moore's, it's right here: Connery was knowledgeable about liquor and not much else (e.g., he doesn't know much about diamonds in Diamonds Are Forever) while Moore excelled at showing off by giving pompous, boring know-it-all lectures on the temperature of liquid helium or the exact processes of a solar energy converter.

The final showdown between Bond and Scaramanga is partially a let down due to the fact that it's just a repeat of the teaser--we've already seen all the funhouse tricks. Also, the denouement seems physically impossible, or at the very least bad directing and editing. We start with this shot:

Scaramanga doesn't look too far away, but then suddenly we see this:

Which means that in 32 seconds of screen time, Bond A) removed the dummy B) took off the dummy's coat and tie C) put on the dummy's coat and tie immaculately D) somehow retrieved his lost gun, or grabbed the dummy's gun--what, it was loaded? E) put the dummy out of sight and F) got into the pose--all while within Scaramanga's line of sight. Nice trick.

But despite Scaramanga being dead, we still have 14 minutes to kill, so we first have to retrieve the solex, which leads to the MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT IN BOND HISTORY:

That's right, Goodknight activates the solar collector with her butt. This is the second out of three movies that's had had the villain capture the Bond girl and dress her in a bikini at the end, and in both those movies the girl's butt played a prominent role in the outcome. Something you want to tell us, Guy Hamilton??

And then there's the last bit with Bond vs. Knick Knack, the less said about the better. This was a case of the producers going for an unusual henchman, and coming up with someone so tremendously unthreatening that it damages the credibility of the whole situation. When Bond can dispatch him by locking him in a suitcase, well, we're not exactly in Red Grant or Oddjob territory, are we? If you're going to have the henchman survive to take revenge after the boss dies (3rd movie in a row), you really should have that henchman be someone Bond and the audience might actually worry about.

Christopher Lee is great as Scaramanga, but the script keeps undercutting him by making him out to be a total dufus. He's played as sort of an idiot savant at murder, but clueless at everything else. He's not as adept at wine as Bond, behaving like a fanboy taking notes on his hero's favorite things. He kills Andrea to get the solex back, but unlike Bond, doesn't even bother to look on the floor where it may have fallen out of her purse. He doesn't understand anything about the solar energy MacGuffin of the plot, which makes the solex agitator even more painfully obvious as a needless time-filler. When the villain doesn't understand or care about the goal of the movie, that devalues both the goal and the villain.

Britt Ekland is a lovely lady, albeit not a great actress. Yet, to be honest, she's not as bad as everyone seems to remember (myself included). Yes, she has her moments of incompetence, ESPECIALLY the butt scene, but surprisingly they're usually mixed with moments of surprising effectiveness. Example: yes, she cuts off James taxi when he arrives in Hong Kong, so he can't follow Anders; but it's her knowledge that only the Peninsula Hotel used green Rolls Royces that leads him to her without another boring chase scene. Yes, she should have got the hell out of the way once she was handed the solex; but she was trying to do the right thing by planting a tracer on Scaramanga's car. If she doesn't do that, they never find him again. She's wise enough to call Bond on his preference for one-night stands, even if she does give in. And she's a great sport about getting stuck in the closet while Bond and Anders are making the beast with two backs (second movie in a row Bond hides a girl in a closet!!). Yes, she becomes a complete dithering idiot at the end...but on the whole she's more helpful than people usually notice. I don't know that I would put her in the top half of Bond girls, but I do think she's better than given credit for.

So what we have here is a frustrating movie that starts out so very well, but then quickly disintegrates into a hodgepodge of re-used cliches and joke characters from the prior two Bond movies, an emphasis on the silly that kills most of the sense of danger and adventure, and a notable sense of tiredness that resulted from having the same director and writer on for 3 times in a row. Whether the producers would acknowledge it or not, the franchise was in serious trouble. Could it be saved? Tune in next week to find out...

SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Ladies and Gentleman, the first high five in James Bond history:

**We get the first mention of another Double-O agent since Thunderball, and for the first time one is actually named--Bill Fairbanks was 002!!

And can I just say, that Saida was one cold-hearted bitch of a belly dancer?? Her lover is shot through the head while laying in her arms, and before doing anything else she pries the bullet out of the wall to use as a lucky charm?!? That's lucky?!?

** One of the more famous glitches in the franchise's history: the makeup table gets shoved askew during the fight, so you can see the crew in the mirror at one point.

By the way, why, exactly, are these guys attacking Bond???

**I didn't really talk about Maud Adams above, did I? She's probably the best thing about the movie. She brings a real sense of class and desperation to her role, and she's sexier than hell to boot. And she actually makes you believe the silly plan that she came up with. It's no surprise they tapped her to be the Bond girl a decade later.

**In many ways this is the kinkiest Bond movie. Bond describes his idea for a fake superfluous nipple "kinky," and the way Scaramanga caresses Anders with his gun after a kill is pretty icky. Ian Fleming would be proud.

**It's the sport of the future.

**Anybody writing about this movie has to include this shot...it's obligatory.

**So billionaire capitalist industrialist Hi Fat, who's expecting to make kajillions with the solex agitator, set up his energy station in Communist China?? And he seriously believed that they weren't just going to seize it from him, if for no other reason than to cause economic chaos in the West (see Goldfinger or You only Live Twice)?

**Product placement is part of the game, and I'm usually not one to whine about it, but whatever thrills there might have been in the car chase in Bangkok are drained away by the sight of an AMC Hornet chasing an AMC Matador. Oh, how exotic and thrilling. They could have made something of that by emphasizing the oddness (see the Citroen in For Your Eyes Only, for example), but the whole thing is done without irony of any kind. So two cars that would be rejected as too lame for a Starsky and Hutch chase are the centerpiece for a James Bond film. (Before you comment, yes, I know that the twisty car jump was designed for AMC's, so it was sorta required, but still...)

**I've been remiss...I haven't mentioned Chu Mi yet.

**From the dialogue in the teaser, Knick Knack and Scaramanga have invited many a villain to the island, to give Scaramanga some competition to keep him happy. Here's the question: do these guys know they're going after the world's greatest hitman? What, exactly, does Knick Knack tell or promise them? Either the hitmen are arrogant idiots to believe they can take Scaramanga, or Knick Knack is a dickweed, setting them up on false pretenses...sure they're bad guys, they deserve to die, but still...

**If your vats of liquid helium are going to cause the entire island to explode if anything room temperature gets dropped in them, shouldn't you have better lids on them? And not have walkways with breakaway railings right above them?

**Prior to the butt scene, before Bond climbs in into the pit to get the solex, he takes time to move the control console closer to the pit. Why? There's no reason to, except to have it close enough for Goodknight's butt to hit it!! What a clumsy piece of staging...

**Bond Score: 2. Anders and Goodknight. Cumulative Bond Score: 26

And as always:

Can Ringo Starr's wife save the franchise? Be here to find out!! BONUS: The first and only topless scene in Bond history!!