Virulent Memes

On to the second and the more vexing of the Dalton 007 flicks, he’s got a License To Kill oh wait no it’s been revoked how could that have happened they’ve usually been pretty lenient before,

The Opening

It’s literal hi-jinks as James Bond and his good CIA buddy Felix Leiter are on their way to Felix’s wedding on the Florida Keys. On the way, though, they’re waylaid by the DEA who have found out that big bad drug lord Sanchez is in the area and want Leiter to help out, while Bond comes along for the ride.

After the obligatory shootout, they nab Sanchez trying to escape the area in a light aircraft by tying it up to the Coast Guard’s chopper. Yeah, that’s three different agencies involved. Anyway, job done, they manage to get the church in time by parachute. Cue opening credits.

The Titles

You know what? I’m tired of describing these – I think I even stopped trying in earnest about half a dozen films back. I love the style as it puts you in the headspace for the film to come, like the Star Wars crawl, but it’s basically gone along the same ideas – even the same typeface – for ages.

The Soundtrack

The title song is performed by the Empress of Soul, Gladys Knight, bringing back the torch song after the new wave phase, and Patti LaBelle doing “If I Asked You Too” over the end credits. Michael Kamen was brought in to do the main score as Barry was otherwise detained, and being a very experienced soundtrack composer by this time, does a pretty good fist of it.

The Locations

Besides revisiting the tip of Florida and the Bahamas for what seems like the umpteenth time, the crux of the action takes off to what’s referred to as “Isthmus City”, somewhat of a proxy for Panama in General Noriega’s time, although the actual filming takes place in Mexico.

Notably, the only part set in the Old Dart is Moneypenny surreptitiously arranging to send some support to Bond, who is effectively on the lam.

The Genre

Firstly, I should point out that this is one of those Bond films that foregoes just being “Bond” and runs with a popular prevailing trend in the wider world of popcorn cinema; to wit – drug trafficking thrillers. Things like Tango & Cash starring Kurt Russell, Lethal Weapon starring Mel Gibson, and Tequila Sunrise starring Kurt Russell and Mel Gibson.

Not that Bond tackling a kingpin is entirely new territory for the series, of course, recalling Live And Let Die. What puts the distinctly late 80s tone on proceedings is the revenge part.

That Got Dark Quickly

You see, we pick things back up after the wedding at the reception, everyone having a lovely time, Felix Leiter (David Hedison, the first actor to reprise the role in the series, with his last time being 16 years prior) and Della give James an engraved lighter as a gift to the best man, eventually Bond leaves the party to go to his next assignment.

Meanwhile, not far away, Sanchez, being used to throwing stacks of cash to bend cops if bullets aren’t practicable – “silver or lead” as it goes – promises to throws a stack more at CIA guy Killifer who is supposed to be bringing him in, but rather succumbs to the bribe and allows Sanchez to escape.

Sanchez promptly has his goons go to Leiter’s place to carry out the reprisal – one of the goons being Dario, played by Benicio Del Toro in an early role. They do brutal things to Leiter with a shark and arguably worse to his bride. Bond is just about to leave at the airport when he gets wind that a drug lord has escaped – he assumes the worst, and finds the assumption to be correct upon returning to the Leiters’ residence, with Felix missing a few extremities and his wife… yeah, it’s brutal.

The Vendetta

Having experienced something similar himself (see OHMSS) and then seeing it done to his best mate, Bond goes bugfuck insane, albeit in as coolly professional a manner as one can do when embarking on a vendetta. M gets wind of this, arrives in the Keys and orders Bond back to work, Bond is having none of it and offers his resignation, as is usual in such circumstances, M gives him two weeks leave but – this time – revokes his licence to kill, Bond is having none of that either, and escapes. He’s gone rogue. *extremely deep and gravelly voice* He’s a loose cannon! He’s a maverick! He’s on a mission of payback!

First thing Bond does on his private investigation is check out the marine research centre, owned by one Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), who uses it as a front for his boat to traffick drugs and money back and forth for Sanchez. Bond checks out the boat and the operation and Sanchez’s girlfriend Lupe Fiasco – I mean Lamora – (Talisa Soto) and then pinches a stack of cash just for the hell of it.

He also hooks up with Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) in the Bahamas, the last survivor on Leiter’s list of contacts. Dario also turns up to the meeting, a bar fight ensues, yada yada yada, let’s just cut to the chase and go to Isthmus City.

The Squeeze

While Bond was probably as monogamous as he’d ever been in the previous film, this time around he’s bouncing between Lamora – who more or less tells Bond as much as she knows about what Sanchez is up to, since Sanchez whips her – and Bouvier – who is a very capable pilot and fortunately isn’t the kind to shut up because that’s what expected of her.

The Operation

Where basically Sanchez has bought the whole country, the bank, the casino, the cops and everything with even El Presidente having to answer to him. Bond uses the cash he stole from Sanchez to set up an account in Sanchez’s bank (sneaky!) and uses it as collateral to go to the casino, roll some highs, and get himself a meeting with Sanchez (who presumably didn’t recognise him from the arrest earlier).

Sanchez takes a bit of convincing but buys Bond’s “I’m an ex-British agent” schtick – because technically it’s true. Bond even manages to drop Krest in the poo by claiming Krest has been siphoning money for himself, and then cashing out some of Sanchez’s in the decompression chamber of Krest’s yacht for when Sanchez inspects it. For his apparent disloyalty Krest himself gets locked in the chamber, and, well, the results are pretty gruesome/weird.

Q turns up, not really caring that 007 is “on leave”, and drops some gadgets on him. Bond tries to make use of these to snipe Sanchez as he’s negotiating with some prospective partners from the East, but the operation doesn’t quite work out, and indeed Bond finds himself having to deal with … ninjas? From the HKPD? Yes, he’s stumbled onto their operation to take Sanchez out, but before they can sort of their differences, Sanchez’s guys turn up and kill the Hong Kong cops, Bond awakes in Sanchez’s compound and plays the situation to get further into Sanchez’s confidences, and pretty soon he gets to see the actual operation himself.

Although it’d be fair to say that Sanchez doesn’t ever completely trust him, as he outlines the cunning plan – dissolve the cocaine into petroleum, ship the product out in tankers, and then extract it later. It’s all hidden underneath some kooky charismatic temple run by Prof. Joe Butcher (Wayne Newton) who plays a oily televangelist charlatan for some cult temple.

Anyway, as its Bond’s turn to get executed, all hell breaks looks as the facility begins to explode, all of Sanchez’s flunkies get checked off – Dario ends up dying in what looks like a meat grinder, the head of security is impaled by a forklift, the nerdy accountant gets shot for bugging Sanchez about the externalities. Finally, after what is a pretty cool pursuit sequence involving several petrol tankers and Bouvier buzzing around in a plane, finally Bond sets Sanchez aflame with Leiter’s lighter.

After a quick shot to Leiter recovering from his injuries telling Bond that his bosses have forgiven his trespass, Bond chills out with Q at a party, fobbing Lupe off onto El Presidente – who apparently isn’t too bothered by the demise of his country’s biggest industries, drug trafficking and charlatan worship – and choosing to hang out with Bouvier instead.

The Production

This was a weeeeird one. The last time I watched it I was a bit underwhelmed by it, maybe because I was comparing it to The Living Daylights, but on this reviewing, eh, it’s not so bad. Still pretty brutal though. Also, that recurring thing with shark scenes in the Bond films is still pretty tedious – although this time around at least it had a point.

After LTK, the rights to 007 got into a legal minefield, delaying the next Bond film for six years, after a period they’d been churned out every second year for over a decade. As a result, this would be Timothy Dalton’s last Bond film, and I reckon it was a shame we didn’t see at least one more out of him, just to see what he could do with the character next.

As for the two we’ve have, they’re what I would call solid – credible plots, plenty of action, minimum cheese. If Roger Moore had remained the archetype of the filmic Bond for his successors, there mightn’t have been much point to the Austin Powers films. The Bond of Dalton is considerably more gritty and hardboiled, but also not afraid of vulnerability, which you never really got from Connery, to mark that difference. Once Pierce Brosnan was finally able to take up the role, he could take a bit from both while putting his own stamp on the character.

The hiatus probably wasn’t a bad thing, to give things a breather, though. The real world was changing, with the Cold War was winding up – hence the War on Drugs backdrop instead – so the world of Bond needed to change too. What we end up with next is a pretty good film that deals with that new world, also reclaiming some of the fantasism of the peak of the Moore years. That is for next time, though.

Overall

At times an ugly film, but aside from that, fortunately it doesn’t meander off the path too far. 007 plays a dangerous game and it’s quite fascinating to watch him slowly pull apart Sanchez’s network, even when he’s has to improvise. And of course one thing it does is flesh out a little more of the Bond backstory, giving Leiter something to do other than be Bond’s American friend who sorts out the paperwork. In this case, Leiter must suffer.

The continuity of a series that was already well into its third decade is getting particularly wonky. One way of trying to explain it is James Bond is a Time Lord (nb: Skyfall spoilers) which is an absolutely bonkers theory that I love, in the process tying together two of the most enduring characters in British popular genre. The theory’s driven into overdrive by Dalton later appearing as Rassilon in the Doctor Who revival, which is why I’m mentioning it here, but that’s where I’ll leave it.

As we leave Dalton’s Bond to brood moodily, I’m giving it 16 out of 20 electric eels.

And thus we begin the short but sweet stint of Timothy Dalton as 007, as he punches out The Living Daylights.

(NB: Before I proceed, for another take on the film, do check out Eamon Hamilton’s <a href=”https://eamonh.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/send-my-regards-to-dalton/”> Send My Regards To Dalton</a>.)

The Opening

Bond and a bunch of his double-oh mates are sent on a training drill to assault a facility on the Rock of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, one of the mates is playing for keeps, bumping off another agent, before 007 realises that shit has indeed gotten real, and heads off to deal with the double-agent assassin himself. Having neutralised the threat, he drops in on someone’s boat to recuperate in a manner befitting him.

The Titles

The continuity is retained in the inimitable Maurice Binder style. Likewise, a-ha are put on duty to score the opening song – it’s not miles away from “A View To a Kill”, but probably their only song most people might recall apart from that one with the comic book video.

The Soundtrack

This is John Barry’s last score for the series, and in truth it’s a pretty good one, delineating the “new” Bond with added synth and percussion during the action scenes. The Pretenders also get a couple of contributions in, particularly on “If There Was a Man” over the end titles with Chrissy Hynde proving that had the producers gone for a more conventional lead song, they’d fit right in.

The Locations

Exotic and varied, as it should be. After the opening at Gibraltar, the film is set in Bratislava to Vienna; Tangier in Morocco, and the wilds of Afghanistan (actually, Morocco again).

007.4

Timothy Dalton is a breath of fresh air, and in other circumstances (i.e. no Thunderball remake) he might’ve been given the gig a couple of years earlier – but then he would’ve had to deal with scripts of Octopussy and A View To A Kill that were tailored more to Moore’s style. (Then, his turn as Prince Barin in the Flash Gordon movie might’ve been evidence he could hack that anyway.)

Obviously comparisons are bound to be made with his predecessors, but my view he brought a slight return to the harder edge of Connery’s portrayal, although not totally unsympathetic, which perhaps touches on the better part of Lazenby’s very short run. As a slightly younger guy, he could more credibly do the action shit that was looking damned weird with Moore doing it.

Nevertheless, there was some big boots to fill in Roger’s wake, but I feel Dalton slipped into them like he’d worn them for years. It probably helped that he was a bit of a Fleming obsessive and was keen to have the films resemble that old school style, in the vein of From Russia From Love.

The Hook

The plot, accordingly, is more down-to-earth but still high-stakes Cold War thriller, with Bond being specifically assigned to help a Russian KGB general Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé) defect to the West from Bratislava during a concert. In the process of doing so, he spies a sniper, but sees that she’s the beautiful cellist performing in the concert, so rather than going boom-headshot, the old dog deigns to just knock her gun off target. He’d have to follow that lead later after he successfully smuggles Koskov out of Czechoslovakia through an oil pipeline.

(For a while I thought Koskov was played by Falco, and was somewhat disappointed when I found out the truth.)

Koskov fills in Bond and pals at the safehouse on the hot info that General Pushkin has revived “Smiert Spionom” – Death to Spies – which happened to be on the tag left on the agent killed at Gibraltar. Soon after this debriefing Koskov is abducted by some goons. Oh well, easy come, easy go.

Bond is set on the trail of Pushkin in Tangier and naturally decides hit up Bratislava first for the hot cellist, Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo) – all part of the investigation, of course. As it turns out, Kara is Koskov’s girlfriend (and why she was sent to snipe her boyfriend does becomes clearer later) so decides to accompany Bond to find Koskov.

Bond confers with his MI6 colleague Saunders who’s found financial links between Pushkin and crazy American arms dealer, compiler of “biggest badasses in military history” listicles and Warhammer enthusiast Brad Whitaker. Soon after the rendezvous, Saunders gets splatted in a particularly awful way, as orchestrated by the henchman Necros, whose M.O. is strangling people with headphone cords and leaving Smiert Spionom calling cards. Hey, every henchman has to have their gimmick.

(By the way, Necros was played by Andreas Wisniewski, who also played henchmen in Die Hard and Mission Impossible films. Talk about getting typecast!)

With nothing left to do in Bratislava, Bond moves on quickly, escaping from Czechoslovakia with Milovy in a hotted up and tricked out Aston Martin that is cool af, but needs more durable tyres. After a brief stop over in Vienna, they make their way to Tangier, where Bond catches up with Pushkin.

The Line

As it turns out, Pushkin isn’t the one behind “Smersh” – more or less, he’s after Koskov for siphoning funds in the guise of phony arms deals – with Whitaker of course – and he and Bond figure out that Koskov has manipulated Bond into killing Pushkin to get him out of the way, so his death needs to be staged so Koskov and Whitaker do whatever it is they’re going to do next.

I think I read somewhere that there’d been an idea to cast Sean Connery as Pushkin, but perhaps for the better, as that might’ve been too much of a mindfuck for a film with a new Bond. Instead, we have the extremely capable John Rhys-Davies, who cops the same “Scottish pretending to be Russian” accent as Connery puts on in The Hunt for Red October.

Anyway, the fake death fools Koskov enough, but for all of that, when Bond returns to his hotel room, he’s drugged by Milovy at Koskov’s behest, and, oh, he wakes up on a plane headed to Afghanistan.

The Farce

In the year 2016, if you tried to pitch an idea for a film where the Great White Hope teams up with a bunch of Afghani jihadis to fuck up some shit, you’d probably get laughed out of the lift. But in the late 80s, the plight of the plucky resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was very in vogue, with Rambo III also getting in on this game a year later, even ending with the timeless dedication “Dedicated to the brave Mujaheddin fighters”.

The Sinker

James Bond’s intervention is slightly less bloody than John Rambo’s, but first he has to escape from the Soviet base along with Milovy (whom he has forgiven her for spiking his drink, about the same time Milovy gets dumped by her boyfriend) – as they do so, they also liberate one of the natives.

Later, it turns out the “native” is Kamran Shah (Art Malik), leader of the local resistance militia and apparently an alumnus of the Oxford Revue, who vouches for Bond and Milovy when they stumble on his mates waiting outside the base.

To keep the resistance ticking along, they have tonnes of opium to trade with the Soviets – actually, Koskov, who intends to on-sell the opium for a stupid profit and then buy the materiel from Whitaker, keeping the difference.

At the site of the deal, Bond suggests fucking shit up, Kamran is all “hell, why not”, so Bond plants a bomb on the cargo plane amongst the opium, but gets spotted by Koskov and Necros in the process. Milovy ends up dragging the mujahuddin into a full-blown Terence Young style battle on the airbase while Bond takes off with all the drugs in the plane, soon being accompanied by Milovy and Necros.

Bond gives Milovy a crash course in flying the thing while he goes and hangs out the back with Necros, who suddenly has to leave. Then Bond remembers the bomb – he deactivates it just in time but soon notices that his new mates are on the run from some Soviet tanks, so he makes use of it to blow up the bridge behind the mujahuddin as the tanks roll over it. Happy ending!

The Denouement

Actually, it’s a Bond film, so it needs a proper 007 happy ending. And also the two lead villains aren’t dead yet, so let’s deal with that.

Bond storms Whitaker’s pad in Tangier, Whitaker demonstrates of some of his products but after a tête-à-tête he gets squashed by one of his war hero statues. Walks in Pushkin, walks in Koskov, Pushkin arrests Koskov, whom presumably gets to break rocks in Siberia or something.

Finally, we advance to Kira Milovy’s grand debut as a soloist in Paris, and while everyone is milling around after the performance, old mate Gogol (who’s been shunted to the diplomatic core) promises the now-defected Milovy permission to visit Russia any time, and Kamran and his mates also rock up straight from Afghanistan. More innocent times in 1987.

Milovy excuses herself to the dressing room, where we finally get the 007 happy ending.

The Production

This became a crucial point in the series; while being very much in keeping with the general 007 vibe, the opportunity was taken to get rid of some of the cruft that had accumulated around the films. It strikes a good balance between continuity – John Glen getting to lead the direction for the fourth film and just now hitting his stride – and revitalising it.

The most common criticism about Dalton’s portrayal in comparison with other actors’ seems to be the relative lack of humour, but I don’t know if that’s such a terrible thing. Dalton does get to deliver a few corny one-liners, just to keep the tradition alive, but thankfully they are made spare and effective. Instead, we have a Bond which is hard but not callous, disciplined but flexible.

We do get another film from Dalton, where his Bond gets even harder – and even a bit callous – as I recall and will revisit very shortly. I do think that is a shame that we didn’t get another couple more out of him, though, but that was hardly Dalton’s fault, as I gather. If anything, the pause in production gave some time to reassess the idea of Bond after the end of the Cold War.

Overall

As for this instalment, As far as I can recall I did see this one in the cinema – often I skipped over the films when they came out but the idea of a new Bond was pretty exciting at the time. I continue to regard it with a fair amount of affection, subsequent geopolitical developments aside. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to type Czechoslovakia as one word. Also hard to tell how much longer Gibraltar will remain in the UK, as well.

While it’s a steely portrayal, and the plot is occasionally threadbare, it also provides a good balance of intrigue and spectacle. And really, it’s probably the most fun I’ve had rewatching these films since Moonraker (which, I know, is completely the opposite in tone) and realigns a franchise that was in serious trouble of succumbing to cheese poisoning.

As such, I’m giving it 17 out of 20 luftballons.

After that little diversion off to the side, it’s time to return to the Old Firm as the tyranny of Roger Moore’s smirk comes to an end. We bring you the fabulous A View To A Kill!

The Opening

Perhaps trying to recapture the ice magic of The Spy Who Loved Me‘s prelude, we come across Bond trying to retrieve some stuff in the Siberian tundra from a body, which we learn later is another Double-0 agent. It’s a microchip! But soon the Russkies are upon 007 as well, and he needs to flee. After getting his skis shot out from under him, he blows up a pursuing snowbuggy and improvises a snowboard. And “California Girls” starts playing. Gnarly. Anyway he finally reaches his submersible escape vessel, where he gets all nice and cosy with the pilot.

The Titles and Soundtrack

Yeah, Duran Duran are all over this like a rash. Actually, it’s not such a bad song, and fits the film in the end, probably due to John Barry putting it into some kind of order for the band. As far as the main score goes, the OHMSS theme also gets another welcome workout in parts. The imagery itself is very dark and moody and conforms very much to the Moore-era template.

The Locations

The whole MI6 massive gather at Ascot for the horse races to glare at Max Zorin, not to make him uncomfortable or anything like that, but then most of the action focuses around the sights in and around Paris and San Francisco.

The Mastermind

We’re finally back to having a properly nutso lead villain. Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, is a billionaire industrialist who’s also a completely psychotic product of eugenic tomfoolery, and while being mentored by the KGB, has turned his back on Mother Russia to indulge in such bourgeois pleasures as horse racing.

At his side, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Grace Jones, playing May Day, who is apparently almost as nutso as Zorin. She also has a couple of assistants in Jenny Flex and Pan Ho (Alison Doody and Papillon Soo Soo) whom job is to be glamourous and presumably deadly, although Ms Day is a hard act to follow.

Completing his retinue is Scarpine, who is, yes, nutso as well. And Grandpa Nutso, who is apparently the whole reason for Zorin being a freak. He also enjoys breeding thoroughbreds and doping them to the gills so they bug out after crossing the finish line, so you know, basically there’s a whole entourage of weirdos hanging out with Zorin.

The Plot

Anyway, Zorin, while getting a foothold in the microprocessor market, wants to corner the market by, well, wiping out Silicon Valley. I can get behind that. The plan is to trigger the faultlines on either side of valley, causing a double earthquake, sinking the valley into the bay and drowning lots of techbros. To do that, he’s making use of a whole lot of old mines and oil drilling operations, including those of a company once owned by the family of…

The Squeeze

Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), who’d inherited a bunch of oil rigs or whatever, but with Zorin taking over much of the company shares, she’s pretty much being squeezed out forcibly. However, as Bond stumbles across her and they nut out what Zorin is actually up to, they’re well on the way to foiling the plan. I don’t think it’s much of a shock that she’s who Bond ends up with, although he also gets to shag May Day, and Pola Ivanova, a KGB spy who was also on Zorin’s case, and his squidgy submarine pilot right at the start of the movie.

So I think that’s four during this adventure? At least equal with his record so far.

The Allies

There’s Achille Aubergine, the French connection who puts Bond closer to the trail. He gets killed by May Day.

Sir Godfrey Tibbett, also of MI6, assists Bond in figuring out what’s going down at Zorin’s horse stud outside Paris, as he plays the ruse of being Bond’s manservant. He gets killed by May Day.

Chuck Lee, of the CIA, helps Bond out a bit in San Francisco as the case progresses. He gets killed by May Day.

The Farce

Actually, while the movie is pretty much standard Moore-era cheese, there’s nothing really awful about it. It was pretty weird skimming some of the contemporary reviews with someone complaining about the dumb police chase, like that was anything particularly new. In fact it seems de riguer for Bond films set in America to have some dumb police chase, and at least the SFPD chief wasn’t as terrible as the Louisiana sheriff guy.

The Badass

Another thing that seemed to cause complaint was May Day’s apparent face turn at the end. Look, I don’t know about you, but if my psychotic boyfriend decided he was going to drown me and all of my pals, I wouldn’t take it lightly. Yes, May Day killed a bunch of folks, but at the end of the day she sacrificed herself to saved Silicon Valley, so I think we can give that a pass. “She wasn’t all bad”.

At least the turn wasn’t all corny like Jaws’.

The End

Even after the plot is foiled, Zorin and the crew (what’s left of it) snatch Sutton and Bond rather implausibly grabs one of the mooring lines, getting the blimp tangled up in the Golden Gate Bridge and of course Bond and Zorin have a big dumb fight and Zorin falls down, although Scarpine and Grandpa Nutso are still in the blimp. Grandpa gets some dynamite with the intent of chucking it at Bond but drops it, blowing himself and Scarpine up.

Finally, Bond and Sutton gets some time to themselves, at least until Q uses a Tandy version of K-9 to perve on them. Exit Roger Moore, who did indeed roger more.

The Production

Moore’s last film, dare I say it about three films too long (quite probably even by his own admission) when the credibility disappeared, but on the other hand, the casting of Walken and Jones is at least out there enough (I note David Bowie and Sting was also mooted, Bowie would’ve been so out-there the whole movie would’ve collapsed, and as for esteemed Gordon Sumner, well, if you’ve ever watched the Dune movie – yeah), possibly the best mastermind-henchman pairing since Scaramanga and Nick Nack, but as Golden Gun demonstrated, not even a charismatic rogue’s gallery can help if the film loses direction midway through, as seems to happen after Bond arrives in San Fran, although at least it does get going again once Bond and Sutton turn up at the mine and we find out exactly how bonkers Zorin really is.

It’s also the last appearance of Lois Maxwell in the role of Moneypenny, as the final link with the cast of Dr. No. Front office chat will never be so awkward.

Overall

Given the uneven quality of the series, particularly for the 80s films, AVTAK sits quite solidly in the realm of “ehhh, that wasn’t terrible, I’ve seen worse”. Of the seven films in Roger Moore’s stint, it’s certainly the most seventh.

Maybe not in quality – it’s not a stinker by any means. The thing is, while I’m getting a pretty clear idea of the best 2-3 of each era, this ain’t amongst it, it’s sitting in that very watchable but not terribly brilliant niche. Like all Bond films, if this comes up on telly when a bunch of people are watching it at the same time, it’d be fun to snark about on socmed.

Pretty good bad guys, pretty good evil plot, maybe it just gets a bit lost in the middle.

As such, I’m giving it 15 out of 20 killer butterfly lures.

It’s time to revisit the dubious charms of Octopussy. Halfway there!

The Opening

Bond, ever the imperialist running dog, causes havoc somewhere in Central America, buzzing around in some kind of collapsible jet, and luring a heatseeking missile to blow up a hangar for some reason. None of this is adequately explained, although some guy who looks like the dictator from the Tropico games seems to be running the place.

The Titles

Pretty much in the usual Binder style, although this includes some laser projections on the nekkid ladies.

The Soundtrack

John Barry is back in action, trying to make of what happened to the piano the locum destroyed in For Your Eyes Only, and eventually deciding to stick to what he does best. There is a bit of ethnic forgery going on, for instance during the elephant hunt. The opening song, “All Time High”, with words by Tim Rice and sung by Rita Coolidge is perfectly serviceable but marks the end for torch songs for now.

The Locations

After the opening in Banana Republic and then the Old Dart for the setup, most of the action takes place in two main theatres, Rajasthan in India and the wilds of what was the frontier between East and West Germany. I think it’s kind of weird the 007 films haven’t seen much these places so far, particularly with Germany was where you’d set more than a few Cold War thrillers. Just not enough ski slopes, I guess.

The McGuffin

Another British agent, 009, dressed as Pennywise escapes from a circus somewhere in the Ost, pursued by two knife wielding freaks called Mischka and Grischka; while they mortally wound him, he manages to crawl to the British ambassador’s doorstep with an bejewelled golden egg in his hand, where he carks it. What’s it all about?

The Mastermind

Actually, there’s sort of two guys driving the plot this time around.

I’ll start with General Orlov. Played with lurid bellicosity by Steven Berkoff, Orlov first appears at a meeting with the other Soviet generals including Gogol, and Orlov is basically all “we have all the tanks! why can’t we just invade the rest of Europe!” and Gogol just sighs.

And then we don’t see Orlov again until some time later in the film when we’re all “who is this guy? Oh right, the crazy Russian general”.

In effect the main antagonist is the exiled Afghani prince Kamal Khan, played by the European Louis Jourdan, and his hook is, I dunno, smuggling I guess. As it turns out the game is that Orlov is having fake replicas made of all the Soviet treasures (like the Faberge egg) and smuggling the real shit out, with Kamal as the fence. Anyway, they’re in cahoots, and they’re up to something.

The Henchmen

We have about three metric tonnes of creepy guys hanging around the film. Most notably, Kamal’s bodyguard Gobinda, played by storied Indian actor Kabir Bedi. Gobinda is pretty much all business, no gimmicks and is well’ard.

Nevertheless, the gimmick goons aren’t far away, as I mentioned there’s Mischka and Grischka and their steak knives, as well as some proper thugs, one of whom has a highly implausible contraption consisting of a couple of circular saw blades on a chain. Wonder if you can pick those up at Bunnings.

The Squeeze

Octopussy is the first film to be named after the “squeeze”, played by Maud Adams making her return to the series as a completely different character after playing Scaramanga’s ill-fated mistress in The Man With The Golden Gun.

Octopussy has a lot more agency though; a smuggler like her father (who’d been brought to heel some years earlier by Bond himself) but also trying to go legit through enterprises like, well, circuses. In addition, she’s set up a refuge for the Octopus Cult in the midst of India where she takes in lost girls with names like, err, Gwendoline and Midge, encouraging them to be badass enterpreneurs and circus performers. Cool!

It’s pretty much All-Girl Island, but when Bond turns up, Octopussy makes an exception.

There’s a but, though.

Octopussy is all tied up with Kamal’s smuggling operation, since it’s “her” circus that operates as a front for the trafficking, as it’s allowed to cross the Iron Curtain with impunity, as apparently when stationed in West Germany, there’s nothing US airmen enjoy more than a circus.

She is kept out of the loop in one very important respect, though. Kamal and Orlov ain’t just smuggling jewels.

The Plot

Yes, Orlov and Kamal decide to do a switcheroo, and instead of hiding the jewels in the human cannon (can I mention at this juncture what a goddamn preening showboat the Human Cannonball guy is? Yeah. OK.) they’ve put a nuclear device in and set it to go off at the US base.

Orlov’s dangerous idea is to cause a nuclear incident in the West that’ll be blamed on a faulty US warhead, the NATO countries will decide to disarm unilaterally, so the Soviets can walk right in, sit right down, and let their hair hang down or something.

Basically speaking, Orlov is setting U.S. up the bomb so all their base are belong to Russia.

(I’m sorry.)

Bond manages to figure out that something’s going on, since there was a handy flyer for the gig at Karl-Marx-Stadt (it’s now Chemnitz again) while on Octopussy Island, so he makes his way there, overhears all he needs to know, and sets off in pursuit of the circus train which has pulled up its pegs and already on its way to “Feldstadt”.

Orlov himself ends up being shot up by his own men at the border crossing as they think he’s defecting. Gogol walks up to him and says “you idiot” or words to that effect.

Bond catches up with the train and of course has to fight EVERYONE on it and eventually falls off somewhere in the countryside, meaning he has to find another ride to the show. So he steals one and for his troubles, he’s pursued by the Polizei to the circus site, which has already set up and is primed to go off with a bang.

The Farce

Yes! You knew it was coming to this!

Bond has basically chained dozens of German johnnyhoppers to a US military base, so he has a hell of a time making it into the Big Top before the Big Pop because of all the interference from cops and air force guys. After leading everyone a merry dance he sneaks into the circus ring disguised as a clown, tries to convince the air force bigwigs that there’s a bomb, and everyone just laughs at him because LOL funny clown.

He finally defuses the thing, happy ending, etc.

The Last Bit

Well, no, they still have to clean up Kamal and Gobinda, because they weren’t hanging around and are already back in India. Octopussy and her acrobats infiltrate Kamal’s fort, soon enough Bond turns up in a bloody Union Jack balloon with Q (who actually gets to do a lot more stuff this time around), and whatever, after some mucking around on a plane Kamal and Gobinda are dead and Octopussy and Bond are doing what usually happens at the end of a 007 movie.

The Production

Of course I’m running out of new things to say about the production side of things, the movies were being churned out every second year by this stage, so at this point while the producers would try to push the envelope in every movie, there’s an increasing sense of a well oiled machine in action.

The Other Fellow

Now, of course, Moore had pretty much had his fill of Bond after the last one, and as far as the portrayal of the character goes, a fifty-something secret agent doing stupid things was stretching credibility a bit too far. Bond, having made it to this age, could well be excused if he was just going to take the government pension and flop out in Nassau playing baccarat, drinking martinis, and being a dirty old man.

Instead, in 1983, we had two Bond movies that were stretching the character’s credibility in that fashion. Timothy Dalton, amongst others, was emerging into the frame as the next new Bond, but he’d have to wait because putting a first-time Bond up against Sean Connery probably seemed too much of a risk.

I didn’t think this at the time, however. As young kids, brother and I were stupidly into 007 at the time, so TWO NEW BOND FILMS IN THE SAME SUMMER what could be better. I didn’t even know who this Connery guy was, to me Moore was Bond, but when they came out we saw both and we thought they were both amazing. Which shows you how discerning I was.

So of course I will be going over Never Say Never Again next. Obviously it’s not an “official” Eon production, but since Connery puts in a solid performance and there’s interesting things to write about it, I will. Notice I didn’t use this privilege for the first Casino Royale.

But that’s for next time.

I should also mention what else was happening in the film world. For instance, Raiders of the Lost Ark came out the same year as For Your Eyes Only and absolutely slaughtered it in the action-adventure stakes. (I cannot tell you how much the melting face scene freaked the crap out of me, though I got over it.) Temple of Doom, the same again, although I was merely icked by the icky things because I was a leetle bit older. And funnily enough, when Connery got his turn in that series a few years later, his role was suitably mature and this time he didn’t have to wear a wig.

Overall

In all honestly I do think it was a step up from For Your Eyes Only, if only a minor one. On the downside, we have some problematic casting, a mild manifestation of the Kipling complex, and too many fucking clowns. On the upside, the Indian scenery makes a nice change, and for some reason the train and car chases around the German countryside pleased me as well. And even with the awkward casting, Adams, Jourdan and Bedi do a good job in their roles. As for Berkoff, well, it’s a performance.

As far as I can remember, this is also the first 007 that actually puts the Cold War front and centre – although it’s always been in the background, it’s been SPECTRE or some rogue weirdo as the main antagonists rather than the USSR per se. At the same time, it also mixes things up with a jewel caper, so we’ve got that interesting combination for a plot. And it’s really weird that I hate the clowns but I didn’t mind so much that last sequence when Octopussy’s troupe is beseiging Kamal’s palace.

Such a strange Bond movie. I don’t like it as much as I did when I was a dumb kid, but I’m still giving it 14 out of 20 face-humping molluscs.

Yeeaah, Moonraker. PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW. This one has perhaps the oddest reputation of the series, which is saying a lot, but it’s the late 70s, so it’s time to head out of this world.

The Opening

The UK is borrowing an American space shuttle (let’s face it, they could never build one themselves), but it gets hijacked! Calamity. James Bond gets put onto the case, but on his flight back home he bumps into an old friend, and they both decide to leave the plane early.

The Titles

At this point the Binder sequence is pretty much what you’d expect. Vaguely meaningful silhouettes, etc.

The Soundtrack

Shirley Bassey gets her third title song, but it doesn’t quite stack up to her previous renditions of “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds Are Forever”. Not her fault, really, the song is a bit crap, especially in the wake of “Nobody Does It Better”.

John Barry returns as the composer after taking time out from The Spy Who Loved Me, but he’s continued the new direction Hamlisch took on that film. It’s a good thing, although we don’t really get into the disco until the reprise of the theme song in the credits.

The Locations

Probably the most variety of all this time; Bond’s first port of call is Drax’s complex in California, then it’s off to Venice again, and in a first, we go to Rio. Eventually the action goes deep into the Amazon, and then of course “space”.

Actually, at least Bond gets to be an astronaut this time, remembering that in You Only Live Twice he missed his chance when Blofeld smelled a rat because Bond insisted on carrying his air-conditioner to the rocket him.

The Squeeze

Thankfully, the idea of Bond’s love interest actually being capable in their own right has continued from the previous film, with CIA agent and astrophysicist Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) being his counterpart this time. While Bond has a lot of fun mansplaining her field of expertise to her, basically, she knows how to fly a space shuttle and he doesn’t, so maybe this time he should shut the hell up and just shoot the poison orbs.

(Yes, we know, the double-entendre name, ha ha.)

Along the way Bond is also assisted by the local help in Rio, who manages to escape being eaten by Jaws, and before that, one of Drax’s employees who takes the fall for Bond stealing Drax’s plans, and does get eaten.

The Mastermind

Hugo Drax is pretty much Evil Elon Musk. OK, there are some of you who might say that Musk is evil anyway, but while he does have an advanced private space program, at least he isn’t intent on purging humanity of all but the most boring examples of the species.

So Drax is a proper supervillain – megalomaniac, intelligent, Nehru jacket, grandiose schemes, loves a portentous declamation. I think Michael Lonsdale pulls it off with aplomb – the fantastic beard helps – but at no stage does he make it look like fun. Even when he’s out on his estate shooting birds (the avian variety) for recreation he’s all business.

The eternal humourlessness is accentuated with a peevishness any time he discovers Bond has managed to escape death, whether it be by enormous rubber snake, rocket blast or centrifuge.

“Mister Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you.”

In fact, Drax wishes to provide an amusing death for everyone who doesn’t conform with his body policing, by widely dispersing a nerve toxin extracted from a rare Amazonian orchid. The base of this final operation is a large space station twice the size of the ISS, which remarkably cannot be detected from Earth because of its radar jammer. (Never mind that anyone with a decent telescope could probably spot it and report it to the authorities.)

All up, I think Drax is one of the best Bond villains. But he needs to take more joy in his work like Scaramanga did.

And as for his staff…

The Henchmen

At the start of the movie, Chang (Toshiro Suga) is Drax’s fixer, who is basically another martial arts fool. Amongst Chang’s core competencies are looking creepy, waving a wooden stick around (to be fair Suga is really good at aikido in real life), and turning centrifuge dials with malicious menace.

He comes a buster in Venice, though, so Drax has to call up a labour hire firm for a replacement. Drake or Skilled or whoever send him Jaws (Richard Kiel), who’s been at a loose end since the death of his last employer, and Youtube hasn’t come along yet so he can’t monetise videos of him crushing things with his teeth.

Anyway, Mr Jaws is happy to be back in action, and of course there’s a score to settle. Jaws catches up with Bond and Goodhead in Brazil, and after some shenanigans on cable cars on Sugarloaf Mountain where he uses a cable for dental floss, things go awry and he ends up in a pile of rubble. Where he finds love at first sight, as you do.

Although this might be a welcome development, he still has a job to do, being tasked with the defense of Drax’s grand plan aboard the space station

The Allies

Although when Bond not too subtly has it dawn on Jaws that Drax’s grand plan doesn’t necessarily include him and his pigtailed friend, he pulls a face turn and starts fucking shit up. This turncoat behaviour not going to go down too well with Drake International.

Bond and Goodhead (actually, just Goodhead, Bond is the muscle in this case) manage to disable the space radar jammer, allowing Houston Control to finally “see” the massive space base they should have bloody spotted with their own eyes, NASA very quickly deploy a space shuttle full of space marines for a space battle using space lasers.

There’s no blood for the blood god though, since laser beams have a cauterising effect. Basically it’s *pew pew pew pew pew* for several minutes until Drax and all of his master race are dead.

A few of the death probes had been deployed, so after the fracas Bond and Goodhead have to use a spare shuttle to zap them before they decant their contents. This is achieved after a close call, and with some time up their sleeve they start some zero-g experiments. Unfortunately they left the webcam on so everyone 0n earth could have a good perve, leading Q to drop one of the best lines in the series.

The Gadgets

Getting back to Q, at the start of all this nonsense he provides Bond with a wrist dart gun. This gets Bond out of trouble in the centrifuge, and is also used for the coup de grace on Drax.

The Production

In the wake of Star Wars, everyone wanted to do space movies to cash in, and so we got the Bond space movie. The space sequences are utterly ludicrous from a science point of view – could you imagine watching this on video night with Neil DeGrasse Tyson? He’d be utterly insufferable.

Nevertheless, I am still impressed by the zero-gravity effects work – as far as I know it was done with wires and other “movie magic” but I did think at time that they may have used a vomit comet – although of course they couldn’t have, the stage too vast for that.

I was less than impressed by the boat chase scene in Venice. At its end, Bond pulls his gondola up to the edge of the water, unfurls a hovercraft apron, and then scoots off across the plaza. That’s so bad in itself, but it’s the cuts to the bystanders including the fucking pigeon that pretty much sink the ship.

Overall

By this stage, you know that 007 had become kid-friendly movies. I mean, the idea of Jaws becoming a goodie was prompted by letters from children, and it was absolutely true. It certainly didn’t kill the series, but the camp tone for the series that didn’t really lift until Timothy Dalton’s introduction.

Sure, there’s innuendo, but if you’re a kid around the age of 10 or 11 you don’t even see that, and when the hormones kick in, it becomes apparent it’s prety lame anyway.

Also, it occurs to me that out of Moore’s movies so far, only The Spy Who Loved Me feels like it’s been allowed to be a Bond movie in its own right. Live and Let Die cribbed blaxploitation, The Man With The Golden Gun did chop-socky (badly), and of course in Moonraker we have the Obligatory Space Movie With James Bond. I think it gets away with it because Bond In Space isn’t a huge stretch from the high-tech world-in-peril schemes of past films.

But – it is stupid, over-the-top, ridiculous fun. At least some of the lessons learned from The Spy Who Loved Me about keeping the character and plot entertaining, it keeps a steady beat, and even if it is deathly corny and preposterous at times, it is never boring.

As a result, I think it deserves 16 individually crafted hexagonal glass vials out of 20.

My knowledge of The Man With The Golden Gun is pretty strange, as I usually flick onto broadcasts during the third act, when it seems like it’s a pretty decent Bond film. Having not made myself watch the whole thing, there were some surprises in store – and not all of them were nice.

The Opening
Again focusing on the villain, the open has Scaramanga and his floozy Andrea Anders hanging out on their sekrit island, with Nick Nack as butler. Some gangster dude arrives from somewhere, and Nick Nack invites him in and then heads off a control room, directing a GAME OF DEATH between Scaramanga and gangster guy in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Naturally, Scaramanga wins.

The Titles
While in the classic style, it’s just basically nood women shimmying again. Even the title song is quite pedestrian although Lulu does her best.

The Soundtrack
Even the soundtrack is lacklustre, with some low points, like the slide whistle over the barrel-roll jump, making it sound like the foley guy from Funniest Home Videos was let loose on the mixer.

We might as well muse on some of the rejected suggestions for title song acts; Elton John in his prime (with Bernie Taupin doing the lyrics, not Don Black) might’ve been amazing as a follow up to Wings’ contribution. And of course Alice Cooper actually submitted his own title song, but it was also rejected for some reason. (Maybe Mr Cooper was a bit too out-there for the producers.)

The Locations
We’re back to the East for the first time since You Only Live Twice, with brief sequences in Beirut (in a London studio), Macau, Hong Kong, the second act in Bangkok and surrounds, before finally we reach Bad-ass Villain Island.

The Villain
There is only one thing holding this film together, and that is the pure personal charisma of Christopher Lee as Francesco Scaramanga, the Man With The Third Nipple.

As I write this, it’s nearly a year since Lee’s death, so I think it’s worth reflecting on how awesome he was. Up to the point his acting career was mainly in horror, but before all that, he actually worked as a commando and an intelligence officer as part of his war service. I think badass is perhaps an overused term, but it surely must apply to Christopher Lee.

I’m not sure if he brought any practical insights to Guy Hamilton the way he did to Peter Jackson when describing what noise you’d make if you were stabbed. But anyway, the dining table scene is fantastic (yes, better than Dr. No) and elevates the whole movie since it also gives Moore a chance to stretch

He is assisted in a number of ways by Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) who’s one of the more memorable henchmen throughout the whole series. In the end Nack survives the destruction of the base, escapes on the junk with Bond and Goodnight, and while those two are getting comfortable, he attacks them with a knife and several bottles of Dom Perignon. Nick Nack is sent packing and is given a berth with a more scenic view.

There’s the plot that has something to do with using solar power to corner the energy market – timely, because of the energy crisis in the early 70s, but having a particular resonance today, even though the technology is now common as muck, thank god – but that’s more of a McGuffin. Ostensibly, Hai Fat (Richard Loo) is employing Scaramanga to kill the inventor of the “solex” and steal the device, to complete his battle station or whatever, but essentially Scaramanga’s motive is that he enjoys killing people. The big paydays that come with it only add to the fun. Psychopath, yes, megalomaniac, not so much.

There’s basically one scalp he really really wants, though, and it’s James Bond. When Bond finally turns up they have that nice dinner conversation and then do the funhouse thing again. Naturally, Bond wins.

The Squeeze
Generally the Bond’s female sidekicks have a degree of moxie and agency beyond being something for Bond to root. In contrast Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) seems mostly useless. There is the bit where she precipitates the destruction of the base by throwing its sole employee into one of the helium vats, but I think this is one case where MI6 would’ve preferred the base intact.

There’s also Scaramanga’s mistress, Andrea Adams (Maud Adams) who is a bit more useful, although as the sacrificial lamb her exit is both chilling and yet underwhelming. Adams appears again in the series as the titular character in Octopussy, so to go along with the thirty different people that have played Felix Leiter or Blofeld, we have the same actor playing different key roles.

The Gadgets
They’re mostly in Scaramanga’s employ – there’s the cool looking solar power base (still cool even today), the car that attaches to a plane (why not just get a normal plane?) and of course the Golden Gun.

And for the service of his mission, what does Bond have Q make him? A decoy nipple. Yup.

The Farce
There’s a bit to unpack here.

The martial arts gimmick replaces the blaxploitation/voodoo gimmick here, and but it’s just doesn’t have any snap. After a clumsy attempt to infiltrate Hai Fat’s compound in Bangkok, Bond is knocked out cold and taken to a martial arts school, where he is matched against a couple of the acolytes. Bond has had ninja training, remember, so he gives it a red hot go, but decides that discretion probably is the better part of valour, and anyway it turns out two teenage girls do a far better job of fending off the dojo than Bond.

And then there’s the return of the redneck sheriff from Live And Let Die. Why? Comic relief? I know the ’70s Bond movies are the last place to look for gravitas, but c’mon, people, at least preserve some dignity in your global superspy fantasies.

The Production
When you have a location as distinctive as Khao Phing Kan it makes setting the scene for a villain base a bit easier, and the accoutrements like the storage vat thing and the control doohickey whatchamacallit. So that’s good. It looks a bit cheap when it starts to fall apart but then you can go “wow this is just like Dr. No! Classic!”

The barrel roll jump should’ve been impressive but, well, as I said above about the overlaid sound effect and that bloody sheriff character. Gravitas, eh.

Overall
Like I said, Lee’s performance holds this together. I think it’s better than Diamonds Are Forever by dint of a great villain, more interesting locations, and a proper final act, but on the whole it doesn’t quite gel as well as the best 007 films.

At least I do know that it gets better from here on, the next one arguably being the definitive 007 film of the Moore era. Can’t wait to get my jaws into that one.

As for this go-around, it’s 13 wooden elephants out of 20.