It was in December 2012 and January 2013 that I viewed all the James Bond films in sequence breaking off from reporting the experience before Live and Let Die, the eight film and the first with Roger Moore who portrayed the character tongue in cheek throughout and was in my judgement the weakest Bond performer although his first film with $7 million budget is recorded as netting $161,8 million which explains why he went to reproduce the role time and time and time again.
Although based on an Ian Fleming book the film was created in the style of the Black exploitation drug culture genre which had become fashionable at the time and there are many racial references and stereotyping which we will not see today or hopefully ever again. The film is set in Harlem, New Orleans and a fictitious Caribbean Island with Bond on the trail of a Mr Big who turns out to be a Dr Kananga dictator of the Island where he grows heroin and where he has been flooding the market with free stuff to put his rivals out of business via his chain of Filet of Soul restaurants. He has killed three agents on his trail.
Kananga ‘s virgin girlfriend, Solitaire. has the power to read tarot cards (Jane Seymour) with unerring accuracy until James gets his hands on her, that is. Bond’s female CIA contact is in fact a double agent working with the dictator and she is killed to stop her telling James the truth after he also got his hands on her.
In New Orleans Bond finds himself about to be eaten by crocodiles in the backwoods and there is a great speed boat race which also involves the local tobacco chewing Sheriff J W Pepper played by Clifton James and who is to appear in another Bond film later.
On the Caribbean island the couple, that is Bond and Solitaire have to encounter voodoo and escape from a shark tank but they outwit Kananga who explodes after a shark pellet is forced into his mouth. They still have to escape the evil designs of Kanaka’s henchman Tee Hee Johnson who has an artificial pincer hand although the film has an ambiguous ending as sitting on the front of the train is voodoo man Baron Samedi another Kananga henchman. Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leitner also has a role in the film. There are some good images , including the last but the film did not lead me to waiting eagerly to see the next or to having any WOW factor moment and only rated about 5 to 6 on my Bond rating scale
The ninth film is The Man with the Golden Gun with Christopher Lee as the Man Scaramanga, Britt Eckland as the Bond girl and Hervé Villechaise as Nick Nack Scaramanga’s height challenged manservant creative accomplice. The film also cost $7 million in 1974 to make with box office totals down to under $100 m at 97.6.
A golden bullet with 007 is received at M16 and is correctly regarded as a challenge to Bond. Her finds that a character called Scaramanga has a Golden Gun made for him and gives up his normal duties to go privately go in search of the challenger.
Bond traces the supply of golden bullets via a belly dancer in Beirut to Macao and Hong Kong and a night club casino run by the Man’s mistress, He finds that the bullet has taken him away from his assignment involving a device to help solve the energy crisis and that this device has now come into the possession of Scaramanga and M and Q have their headquarters in the wreck of British ship in the harbour with Bond ordered to kill Scaramanga and retrieve the device.
Scaramanga is taking over the business of a Thai gangster and although he manages to retrieve the device all his good work is muck up by his stupid assistant Britt Eckland. In a car chase in Bangkok he encounters and is assisted by an on holiday with his wife Sheriff J W Pepper. Bond discovers that the golden bullet was in fact sent by Scaramanga’s mistress because she has been taken as a child and forced to work as a prostitute and wants to kill her employer. She dies.
Bonds assistant Miss Goodnight (Eckland has landed herself in the trunk of Sacramanga’s car which transforms itself into a plane, taking the girl and Nick Nack to his private Island hideaway.
Bond uses a tracking device with Goodnight to locate the island where he finds that the villain is using the energy device for a high tech solar powered plant which he wants to sell to the highest bidder.
The opening of film reveals Scaramanga with the help of Nick Knack using a area of mirrors and projections, The Fun House, to kill off a challenger for a large sum of money. It is now Bond’s turn to go head to head with Scaramanga in his Fun House where outwits the villain killing him. Ms Goonight continues much things up and pushing a henchman into a pool of liquid helium she caused the energy device to explode and blow up the island. The couple manage to escape in junk after another encounter with Nick Nack. The film involves an Asian agent in Hong Kong and Bangkok who ahs his mobile HQ in a train and has attractive daughters assisting, Lois Maxwell played the role of Miss Moneypenny for the 9th of 14 times.
The Spy who Love me cost $14 million to make in 1977 and amassed $185.4 to get the commercial aspects of the series back on track. The film was acclaimed as the best Roger Moore Bond and nominated for three Academy awards but without success.
A British and a Russian nuclear submarine disappears and we the audience learn that they are drawn into a massive super tanker floating dock where the crew are taken prisoner. Bond is having some R and R in an Skiing Cabin in Austria when he is summoned and where he is pursued by a small army of Russian agents who he evades by ski jumping off a mountainside opening a union jack parachute. He kills one of the agents.
He earns that someone has acquired a super submarine tracking system and he and the Russians go in pursuit in Egypt with a ‘Son et Lumiere’ production among the pyramids the setting for a mini adventure involving his Russian counterpart Anya Amasova, They are told to join forces by Walter Gotell as head of the KGB and Bernard Lee as M. Geoffrey Keen debuts as the Minister of defence in a role he continues for five films with Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny and Desmond Llewelyn as Q and his technical tricks. The couple have their first encounter with Richard Kiel as Jaws one of the great Bond characters.
The couple work out that the man behind the submarine thefts is Curt Jurgens as Karl Stromberg who plans to trigger World war III by using the submarines to fire missiles at Russia and West and create a new underworld water civilization and which enables the latest Q car to be used as sports car which also becomes an under water craft. The pair become a couple after Bond saves her from the character Jaws but later she promises to kill him when their mission is over discovering that the agent Bond killed in the Austrian Alps was her boyfriend. The couple visit Stromberg at what appears to be his under water home but later they find that he has an extraordinary underwater Atlantis type of community which can rise above the sea bed to above the water level
The couple board a third nuclear submarine which is captured and in turn they are captured and separated. Bond manages to first rescue the crews of captured Russian, USA and British submarines and then cleverly reprogrammes the two missiles so instead of heading for Moscow and New York they destroy each other’s other submarines. Why the villains only launched one rocket from each submarine remains a fortunate puzzle.
Bond rescues the Russian girl, and Kills Stromberg in the process and they also appear to kill Jaws. The couple escape as the Atlantis is destroyed, The couple are seen having an intimate relationship by their superiors while Jaws escapes from the shark tank. I regarded this film as OK than good and certainly did not merit Academy recognition despite its popularity at the box office.
While most of Roger Moore Bond films have become a hazy blur of miscellaneous images, Moonraker did register because of he final sequence in which Jaws and his girl friend escape the disintegrating space station back to earth, safety, and life happy ever after together. This 1979 film marked the beginnings of major expenditure on the films with $34 million but with continuing high reward at over $210 million box office returns
A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in mid-air and Bond is called back from R and R to investigate. On his homeward journey Bond is sent flying out a plane by none other than Jaws but survive by taking the parachute from the pilot and Jaws lands into a circus tent..
Bond proceeds to the Drax Industries shuttle-manufacturing complex where he meets the owner of the company, Hugo Drax, and henchman Chang. Bond also meets an astronaut, Dr. Holly Goodhead and survives an assassination attempt via a centrifuge chamber. Bond is later aided by Drax's personal pilot, Corinne Dufour, as he finds blueprints for a glass vial made in Venice. Bond then foils another attempt on his life, using a hunting shotgun to shoot a sniper.
Upon discovering that Dufour assisted Bond's investigations, Drax has her killed. Bond then heads for Venice where he again encounters Goodhead and there is a splendid is chased through the canals by Drax's henchmen. He discovers a secret biological laboratory, and by accidentally poisoning the scientists there, he learns that the glass vials are to hold a nerve gas deadly to humans, but harmless to animals. As yet he does not know how this is to be used,
Chang attacks Bond and is killed, but during the fight, Bond finds evidence that Drax is moving his operation to Rio de Janeiro. Rejoining Goodhead, he deduces that she is a CIA agent spying on Drax. They promise to work together, but quickly dispense with the truce. Bond has saved one of the vials he found earlier, as the only evidence of the now-empty laboratory, giving it to M for analysis, who permits him to go to Rio de Janeiro under the pretence of being on leave.
In Rio, Bond meets his Brazilian contact Manuela. Drax hires Jaws to finish Chang's job of eliminating Bond. Bond meets Goodhead at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, where they are attacked by Jaws on a cable car. After Jaws' car crashes he is rescued by an unlikely partner called Dolly , and the two fall in love his bringing about a major change in his character and motivation.
Bond and Goodhead played by Lois Childs are captured by henchmen, but Bond escapes and reports to an MI6 base in Brazil and learns that the toxin comes from a rare orchid indigenous to the Amazon jungle. Bond travels the Amazon River looking for Drax's research facility and again encounters Jaws and other henchmen. Bond escapes from his boat just before it hits the Iguazu Falls, and finds Drax's base. Captured by Jaws again, Bond is taken to Drax and witnesses four Moonraker’s lifting off. Drax explains that he stole the Moonraker because another in the fleet had developed a fault during assembly. Bond is reunited with Goodhead; they escape and successfully pose as pilots on the sixth shuttle. The shuttles dock with Drax's space station, hidden from radar by a cloaking device.
Once on board the station, Bond and Holly disable the radar jamming cloaking device, resulting in the US sending a platoon of Marines to intercept the now-visible space station. Jaws captures Bond and Holly and brings them to Drax.
Drax plans to destroy human life by launching fifty globes containing the toxin into the Earth's atmosphere. Before launching them, Drax also transported several dozen genetically perfect young men and women of varying races, to the space station. They would live there until Earth was safe again for human life; their descendants would be the seed for a "new master race". Bond persuades Jaws and Dolly to switch their allegiance by getting Drax to admit that anyone not measuring up to his physical standards would be exterminated and Jaws attacks Drax's guards.
A laser battle ensues both inside and outside the space station, in which Drax's guards and his master race are all killed. During the battle, Bond shoots Drax with a cyanide-tipped dart, then pushes him into an airlock and ejects him into space.
In order to destroy the three already launched globes and return to Earth, Goodhead and Bond use Drax's personal shuttle - at the same time observing Jaws and Dolly escape from the disintegrating space station. I thought this was the better of the Moore Bonds.
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