The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

1973's "Live And Let Die" was one of the weaker Bond outings, and by far the worst of the "New Guy" debuts. With Roger Moore at the helm, the series sank further into a spiral of comedy that had began some time ago, but had previously been kept above water due to the badassery of Sean Connery and even George Lazenby (yeah you heard me, I said Lazenby). Now with the Earl Grey flavored tofu blandness of Mr. Moore, the series continued as if it were slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) becoming a parody of itself.

Its follow-up, "The Man With The Golden Gun" is something of an enigmatic film, as it seems to be a transitional one. The lack of gadgets and inclusion of a sadistic, depraved psychopath of a villain who gets sexual thrills from killing suggests a darker, more gritty entry. However, at the same time it also features third nipples, the return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, Bond giving a wedgie to a sumo wrestler, and Tattoo from "Fantasy Island." Oh dear. I sense being annoyed by shifts in tone in my future. It's not full blown comedy yet, but we're getting there.

Why is it that nearly every expression Roger Moore makes can be accompanied by a *BOING* sound effect?

"The Man With The Golden Gun" could have been a really solid entry, and I'm saying that while being a HUGE detractor of Roger Moore. I enjoy the initial setup, which finds Bond taken off of active duty when he finds himself the target of Scaramanga, the world's most infamous assassin and the titular character. While officially off-duty, Bond is given the under-the-table go ahead to find Scaramanga and take him out first, so that Bond can get back to his current mission, which involves a new solar power source which could solve the energy crisis. Eventually and conveniently these two plots meet up in an endgame which may seem somewhat contrived, but it does give Christopher Lee a chance to fire a laser cannon, and that's awesome.

Gentlemen, the contest shall be overly large collars at dawn. May the most starched win.

There are plenty of action beats which are perhaps not quite as good as previous entries including "Live And Let Die," due to the fact that they seem rather lackadaisical and too gentle with the smug creampuff that is Roger Moore, but for what they are they serve their purpose acceptably well and tend to not be boring. The editing may be wanting, as some of the numerous chase sequences had an overall lack of reference as to who was where, and on occasion the film flat-out confuses the audience with "How in the world did he get there?" moments which are never explained, but like I said they serve their purpose just fine. And unlike "Live And Let Die" or "Thunderball," I was not bored stiff by "The Man With The Golden Gun."

Scaramanga is a thankful reprieve from Yaphet Kotto's forgettable Mr. Big from the previous outing, and for the first time since "Goldfinger" we get a memorable bad guy who isn't Blofeld. Naturally when you get Christopher Lee to be your villain its extraordinarily unlikely that he won't be the best thing about the movie, and he unsurprisingly manages to steal the show. The film does keep his debauchery to a PG level, but there are scenes with him that could have come right out of an exploitation flick, and could have gotten really, really raw and kinky had they kept going past the point the camera cut to another scene. Part of me is glad they cut away but another part of me wanted to see it, just so his character was made just that much more twisted.

You know, just to take it from an "Oh man he's going to shoot Bond" level to an "Oh man he's going to shoot Bond and then wear his skin" level.

The thing about Scarmanga that makes him so great as a character is the nonchalant manor in which Christopher Lee plays him. Lee can be super intense when needed, as his turns as Dracula showed us, but in "The Man With The Golden Gun" he overall stays icy calm and detached from the violence that he is inflicting, discussing it like it's a golf outing. Normally this would be a point against a performance but it's clear by looking into his eyes that the reason he's detached is because it's no big deal to him. He'll shoot someone in the face with the same emotion as he would have eating a sandwich. And then he'll have sex with his concubine because death puts him in the mood. It's a role fueled by juxtaposition and subtle fire behind Lee's eyes, and it's really a killer performance by one of the masters.

However, I said earlier that "The Man With The Golden Gun" could have been a really solid entry. The issues come up when discussing the aforementioned shifts in tone. While the film starts off with a very promising first act, once Bond arrives in Thailand posing as Scaramanga himself, it quickly devolves into bizarre territory as Bond is attacked by sumo wrestlers, gets forced into a martial arts contest for some reason, and then goes off on prolonged escape and chase sequences featuring the return of J.W. Pepper, who marks the absolute nadir of the film's ups and downs.

I think Rosco Coltrane and Boss Hogg congealed into a tubby, racist mass.

It's this goofy, cornball crap interjecting itself into what is otherwise a fairly dark story involving some really twisted stuff that makes "The Man With The Golden Gun" not work that well. I can't tell you how frustrating it was for me watching this film because of that reason. There are scenes in "The Man With The Golden Gun" that are outright brilliant, but they are sullied by the bad comic relief.

"I claim this land for Oz!"

A pitch perfect example is a scene where Scaramanga and Bond first meet at a mixed martial arts fight. The scene is brilliantly set when Bond sits down next to Andrea (Maud Adams), Scaramanga's consort who recently sold him out to James, only to find that she's quite dead from a gunshot. Scaramanga then sits down next to Bond and tells him in so many words, "Yeah, I killed her. And I know you tried messing with me. That's cute. Don't do it again or I'll kill you like I killed her." This is also one of the few moments where Roger Moore plays Bond in a halfway acceptable manner, making the scene very intense.

Immediately after that Bond girl Goodnight (Britt Ekland) becomes an offensively useless ditz when she gets her dumb ass captured by Scaramanga, and we get a chase scene where Bond and J.W. Pepper follow him through the streets of Thailand while Pepper shouts shockingly racist epithets which I think are supposed to be humorous. This all culminates in Bond jumping a river via a broken bridge, which spins the car in a spiral complete with a slide whistle sound effect (because that's essential to the stunt), and then the case ends when Scaramanga's car turns into a plane. Then I remember the previous scene of dead-serious coldness and I get sad.

It's just not right without the OOOOOOOOOOOOOOWHOOP!

That's really the biggest issue I have with "The Man With The Golden Gun." There are other things that annoyed me, chief amongst those is a rather anti-climatic end to the final showdown, and the utterly worthless character of Goodnight, who is insufferably dumb and pathetic even for Bond girl standards. Keep in mind this is a character whom Bond locks in a closet for hours so he can have sex with another girl in the same room, but when released she's mostly upset because Bond won't plow her immediately. That's an escalation of both Bond's piggishness and a 37-year setback for women in cinema all in one scene! Good job!

And she's supposed to be a secret agent. That's "Glasses on Tara Reid = Ph.D" level stupid.

The rest of it is middling to okay. Despite Roger Moore still choosing to act like he doesn't give a crap, it's surprising how much millage a film can get from a decent villain. Add to the fact that "The Man With The Golden Gun" is actually a very pretty film, and showcases some fantastic scenery and really cool set designs (I was particularly a fan of a secret base made from a slanted, sunken ship) and you've got a Bond flick that manages to be surprisingly not bad considering all the crap that goes along with it. It's still not anywhere close to the best, but it's far from the worst.

I wish I could have been a movie trailer maker back in the day. I wouldn't have had to give a crap.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Man With The Golden Gun" is one of the better Roger Moore entries. Most of that has to do with Christopher Lee, as he drags the movie kicking and screaming into respectability on occasion. His presence alone is enough to override some of the Roger Moore zaniness, but it's still present, which irritates me to no end. A big step up from "Live And Let Die," however.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"THE SPY WHO LOVED ME"

Live And Let Die (1973)

Ugh. You all don't even know how much I've been dreading this. In my quest to go through the entire Bond filmography, I knew I'd have to suffer through a lot of crap. The Bond films aren't exactly known for consistent excellence. But out of all the things that were weird or wacky or wackily weird about the series, nothing can top the mountain of bizarre WTF-ness that is Roger Moore.

I can't stand the Roger Moore Bond films. I hate the way Moore plays Bond, I hate the way they are crammed to the brim with goofiness and absurd comic relief, and I hate how boring they are. Now granted, as of my writing this entry I have not seen all of them, and apparently I've missed out on some of the better ones, but I'm not holding my breath. And frankly the fact that I've seen four of the Roger Moore Bond movies and am still only about halfway through them since he was Bond SEVEN DAMN TIMES makes me want to punch a llama. And I don't even know why I'd punch a llama. I like llamas. Moore just takes me there I guess.

Whatever. Let's get this started so I can get this over with and get to Timothy Dalton. I'm pretty sure that's the first time that sentence has ever been typed out.

"Live and Let Die" was the first Bond movie made in the 70's, and more than nearly any of the rest of them is clearly a product of its time. In a change of pace from the usual evil villain out to take over the world plot it focuses on drug trafficking, black gangsters and strange voodoo magic, as if Bond wandered on to the set of a blaxplotation movie being filmed across the way and everybody just kind of rolled with it. This has the side effect of, at least for me, making it seem little like a Bond movie past the twenty minute mark. It feels like I'm watching "Shaft." Only here Shaft is pasty, English and far less intimidating.

God, it's like casting Hugh Grant to play Jules Winnfield.

Obviously this was to capitalize on a fad and attempt to boost numbers in the box office, but I can't tell you what an utter shock it is to hear blaxplotation style dialogue being thrown about in a Bond movie. I had to rewind the movie every time somebody called James "honkey" or "cue-ball," just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. And I think my jaw literally hit the ground when Felix Leiter said "Get me a make on a white pimpmobile!" The levels of bizarre and "does not fit" are off the charts.

"New for 1973 - The Pontiac Pimpmobile. Starting at the low price of $3,000 or 2 kilos of heroin. Test drive one today."

The plot, much like many of the lesser Bond films, is convoluted and overly-long. It involves agents in the Caribbean/Southern US getting killed, and Bond is sent to investigate (much like "Dr. No"). The trail leads him to Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), a dictator of a small island, whom we find out doubles as a drug lord named "Mr. Big." His plan is to distribute a crap-ton of heroin on the streets for free using his chain of restaurants as a front, driving the competition out of business and creating many new addicts in the process. Then he'll charge jacked-up prices for the drugs once that is accomplished and make lots of money.

Doesn't that just scream "James Bond movie?" True, there may be Bond villainy to be found, as Katanga has henchmen, an underground liar complete with a shark tank (!) and has a tenancy to monologue, but he's still just a jumped up drug dealer when you boil it down. And Yaphet Kotto, as intimidating as he can be, isn't really selling the role very well here. He's really low-key and comes across as kind of sleepy most of the time. He doesn't seem like he cares very much, and I'm just not feeling it. And as we all know, any good action flick hinges on its villain. This is particularly true of Bond movies.

Look out, Jane Seymour! It's an evil medicine man! Quick! Get her a medicine...woman?

Even the henchmen aren't very notable. Julius Harris as the hook-handed Tee-Hee serves as kind of a prototype for Jaws, but Richard Kiel this man was not. Like most of the rest of "Live And Let Die," he's just kind of sleepily floating through the thing. And I don't what we are supposed to make of Whisper, the henchmen whose gimmick is that they can't speak above a whisper, since that's clever. What is he going to do, inaudible me to death?

Every once in a while "Live And Let Die" throws in a relatively decent vehicle segment, the most famous being the boat chase through the bayous of Louisiana. And while that bit is alright and more in line with what we're used to with the franchise, at that point we are also introduced to what is one of the more egregious examples of everything that is wrong with the Roger Moore movies...

Mitchell!? NO!!!

I'm not sure why Clifton James is in this movie as Sheriff J.W. Pepper, but his mere presence alone would be enough to make me write off the entire film, even if the rest hadn't been a snore-fest. There are plenty of problems that I have with the Roger Moore series, but the one thing that I can't see fixing any of it is a tobacco chewing, "Where you goin', boy" spouting, goofball redneck sheriff. Once again, it's something that just does not belong in a Bond flick.

Finally, let's talk about Moore himself. The problem with Roger Moore is that he's way too big of a ham, and he doesn't feel the slightest bit intimidating. Connery's smirk was less of a smile and more representative of a wolf getting ready to eat a small animal. Even Lazenby could throw a convincing punch and scowl when he needed to. And let's not even bring up Dalton's cold eyes, Brosnan's sleek physicality or the muscular wrecking ball that is Daniel Craig. But that raised eyebrow of Moore's always makes me feel like he's one step away from tugging at his collar with his finger and going "Nee-uh-uh-uh" like we're watching Benny Hill or something. There's no badassery with Roger Moore. He doesn't seem like a dangerous guy, he seems like someone you might hire to do your taxes. 

Yes, you're correct. Carnac the Magnificent would be a much better role for you.

And I know I've said this before, but my god is James Bond a creep. It's really getting old with this schtick of Bond being an utter pig, which has the ladies tripping over themselves to strip off their panties quicker. It's not quite as bad here as it was with the later Connery films as far as brute force goes, but here Roger Moore basically tricks and extorts women into having sex with him, which is just another flavor of "creepy border-line rapist."

There's little chemistry going on between the actors, either. Roger Moore and Bond girl de jour Solitaire (Jane Seymour) together are rather luke-warm at best, with the more intense but far more ill-fated and mean-spirited relationship being between Bond and Rosie (Gloria Hendry), a double agent working for both the CIA and Kananga whom Bond basically lets die without much concern. Of course that's immediately after he has sex with her, since he's a nice guy like that. And while there is a decent scene between Roger Moore and Yaphet Kotto where Kananga reveals he is Mr. Big, I was honestly hoping that it was going to be Hank Hill under the mask.

"I sell heroin and heroin accessories."

I also find it rather strange that his introduction is so underwhelming. Usually when a new Bond is paraded out in his debut it's with a dramatic reveal, usually involving a slow buildup or a flashy action sequence culminating with a one-liner to showcase what the new guy can do. But here we just see Roger Moore lying in bed with a woman way too hot for a dude like him. Then the doorbell rings and he gets up, answers it, and makes coffee for his boss while trying to keep the girl out of sight. Thrill as he attempts to hide the fact that he just had sex!!!

And that really sets the stage for the entire affair. "Live And Let Die" is just not trying very hard. And it's really about as exciting as watching James Bond get out of bed and hide a chick in his closet. I honestly don't have too much more to say about "Live And Let Die." I didn't care for it. It was actually a struggle for me to stay awake during most of it, much like "Thunderball." And, much like that film, I really don't like it.

But hey, good news. I've only got six more Roger Moore films left to go! ::shoots myself::

Man, that trailer makes me wish I hadn't nearly slept through most of this movie.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Live And Let Die" isn't the worst Bond movie, but man is it bad. It's a boring introduction to my least favorite Bond actor, and the tone, setting and themes are a radical departure which simply do not fit. About the only good thing I can say about it is that it doesn't take place in outer space, but don't worry. We'll get to that soon enough.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN