Bondfest: For Your Eyes Only
Mission Dossier: For Your Eyes Only
The Year: 1981
The Director: John Glen
The Bond: Roger Moore
The Girl: Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock
The Baddie: The devious Aristotle Kristatos
The Scene
Late night start on this one. Spiced rum and V (separately mind you) were in order.
For Your Eyes Only is based (somewhat) on one of my favourite Ian Fleming Bond books, a collection of short stories with the same title. Coming on the back of the exhilarating Moonraker though, the film is far from a favourite of mine.
The film does open on a very interesting note, with Bond seen leaving flowers at the graveside of his late wife. This is not really revisited though, despite a suggestion of it later on when Bond is unable to save a woman that he cares for. The film sees a British surveillance ship sunk, a ship with a very important piece of equipment onboard. It is the ATAC device which coordinates British submarines. The Russians, who else, are pretty keen to get their hands on the device. And so begins Bond’s race to get to it before them. He gets involved with Melina Havelock, the daughter of a man murdered whilst assisting the British on the case, who is understandably keen to avenge the death of her parents. It all comes to a head during the final showdown at an incredible mountain rocky outcrop. But despite the awe-inspiring setting, this is one of the most tedious of Bond conclusions, seeming to really drag on.
Much of the film drags on really. The only sequence that really engages is a snowbound chase sequence, which are becoming increasingly familiar features as the series wears on This one is a cracker, managing to incorporate one of those huge ski jumps, a bobsleigh run and a couple of motorbikes. Less engaging though is the sheer lack of fire in the relationship between Bond and Havelock. Their interactions are exceptionally wooden, something which plagues much of the film actually. There are a couple of more things that really plague the film too. The music is woefully dated 80s style, some of the worst 80s synth you would ever have the displeasure of hearing. It is even more jarring because music is usually such a strong suit of the series, with John Barry’s brilliant use and invocation of the theme song throughout many of the films matching Bond action so perfectly, whilst this is quite the opposite. The frustrations really add up in the film. This one also sees a return to the horrid special effects that marred films such as You Only Live Twice. Effects that had happily not been present for a number of films. The script is poor too, the criticism of Roger Moore efforts being too jokey is really borne out by this film. The constant, terrible one-liners make this one very difficult to watch without hoping, even just a little bit, that Bond cops a bullet at some stage.
The listless central couple of the film.
This is definitely one of the weaker Bond films. Somewhat similar to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service there is little to recommend it when you compare it to the other films in the series. Very little excitement and a not very little good villain leave this as one of the more anaemic efforts. A silly entry to the series that is not worth bothering about.
Verdict: Schooner of Tooheys New
Bondfest Leaderboard
- Thunderball (1965)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Moonraker (1979)
- Dr No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- The Spy who Loved Me (1977)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- Diamonds are Forever (1971)
- You Only Live Twice (1967)
- For Your Eyes Only (1981)
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
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Bondfest: Moonraker
Mission Dossier: Moonraker
The Year: 1979
The Director: Lewis Gilbert
The Bond: Roger Moore
The Girl: Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead, a CIA agent.
The Baddie: Hugo Drax, with more than a little help from the returning Jaws.
The Scene
It was my partner’s turn for the TV, so I shipped out to the ‘cave’ at our place, and tried not to get too distracted by the in progress LOTR puzzle.
I loved Moonraker as a kid, but these days Bond in space makes me suspect horrifying cringeworthiness. Horrifying cringeworthiness with lasers of course.
The film does not start in the cringeworthiness vein. In fact the first hour of the film is really quite excellent, with not a hint of space travel involved. The prologue section is one of my favourites in the series. Subtle it is not, but delightfully action packed it is. First of all, a space shuttle is stolen, managing to simultaneously destroy the huge airplane that was carrying it in one fell swoop. Then Bond is tossed out of a plane parachuteless and has to flog a parachute off another dude as he tumbles to earth at great pace. Then Jaws shows up, just for good measure. His parachute does not open, but luckily for him he lands on a circus tent so survives. That may all sound like Bond at its worst, but it is really fantastic. Following this, Mr Bond gets on to the main part of the film involving the villainous Drax. Drax’s company constructs space shuttles, including the one that was stolen. The devious plan is another with a Nazi-esque feel to it, just like The Spy Who Loved Me. This time the idea is to wipe out the human race. Oh except for Drax and the other members of his perfect class of people, they will be up in space getting ready to repopulate the world.
One of the great features of Moonraker, as with a number of Bond films, are the hilarious methods for attempting to kill Bond. This time we have attempted death by centrifugal G-force trainer and death by python in the Amazon. The latter one is actually a really cool and tense scene. The script flirts with breaking the fourth wall but manages to remain nicely self-referential. Late in the piece Drax exclaims with disappointment to Bond that he has managed to “defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you”. Drax is a vicious bastard, and there was one point early in the film that really shocked me. When dealing with a lady who assisted Bond, Drax releases his two dogs on her. What follows is the most beautifully filmed scene in the first 11 James Bond films. The woman desperately tries to flee through the forest, with light slanting through the trees. A piano tune builds and there is even the slightest touch of slo-mo used. It comes out of nowhere, but is a stunningly filmed piece of beautiful violence. Overall, the non-space elements of this film are excellent – there is a good villain, a great mystery and a deft touch to the whole thing. And of course it has Jaws, a whole lot of Jaws, including the beloved (by me at least) cable car scene. He also features in that great plot swerve late on when Bond points out the incompatibility between Drax’s rather Aryan view of the future of the human race, and Jaws’ physical appearance. That of his beloved girlfriend too.
Jaws and his lady.
Now to the vexed question of Bond in space. To be fair, it must be said that only the last half hour of the film takes place in orbit. Some of the space effects in earlier films have been to put it bluntly, woeful. Worse than that, they have been so bad that they have seriously compromised enjoyment of the films in which they feature. Moonraker though has really convincing space effects when it finally heads into orbit. To my mind, they are on par with those seen in Star Wars (1977), a film of similar vintage. One of the issues some may have with the film is the fact that the final 15 minutes belongs almost exclusively in the sci-fi genre. Frickin lasers and all. But for me, it works well, and if you can let go of the fact that this spy series is dabbling in the all of a sudden popular genre of sci-fi, then you will find much to like. I think that people who take issue with the space elements of the film are barking up the wrong tree anyway. Without a doubt the worst part of this film is the appearance of the shittiest hovercraft ever seen on film, which unfortunately closes out an otherwise cracking boat chase through Venice. The whole film just has a delightful randomness that more often that not works really well. Take for example the Aikido fighter that pops out of nowhere in Venice. No lead up, but then he and Bond put on a fantastic fight scene. There are ‘fun’ Bonds films, and then more serious ones. This definitely belongs in the ‘fun’ camp, and is one of the very best of them.
Plenty of the aspects of this film just should utterly not work, Jaws’ relationship for example, but they do somehow. By far and away the best Roger Moore Bond film so far, and for me, one of the best of all the Bond films. Take a look at this one.
Verdict: Longneck of Melbourne Bitter
Bondfest Leaderboard
- Thunderball (1965)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Moonraker (1979)
- Dr No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- The Spy who Loved Me (1977)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- Diamonds are Forever (1971)
- You Only Live Twice (1967)
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
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Bondfest: The Spy Who Loved Me
Mission Dossier: The Spy Who Loved Me
The Year: 1977
The Director: Lewis Gilbert
The Bond: Roger Moore
The Girl: Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova, the Soviets’ best agent.
The Baddie: Karl Stromberg, along with that coolest of all henchmen, Jaws.
The Scene
The Spy Who Loved Me time was also mid-afternoon beer time.
The Spy Who Loved Me sees the finest spies from either side of the East/West ideological divide go head to head. On the Pommy side is our very own James Bond, whilst on the Russian side is Anya Amasova, otherwise known as Agent Triple X.
The film opens with one of the Brits’ nuclear submarines getting into trouble and going missing. In a really clever end to this little sequence, one of the sailors looks into the periscope and simply mutters “oh my God”, without revealing to the audience what they have seen. As a result of the disappearance, James Bond is dispatched to Egypt to establish what is happening. It turns out that the security of the British network of nuclear subs has been compromised. This sees the Russians enter proceedings. First as adversaries and then quite quickly as allies against the unknown enemy. There is so much scope for really clever things to be done with Bond and Amasova sparring with each other. Initially, the subjugation of and condescension toward the Russian are frustrating. Bond easily gets the upper hand, for the mere fact that he is a male. The filmmakers seemingly want us to forget that Amasova is the USSR’s finest spy, surely she would have a fair fight to put up, even against the great James Bond. Gradually though the filmmakers get to grips a little with the great opportunity they have on their hands and they do something rather clever. Amasova appears to fall easily to 007’s sexual charms which had me up in arms. But really, she is playing Bond and in fact utilises her seducing charms to get a big one-up on him. His smugness, believing that no woman on earth can resist his charms, comes back to bite him on the arse bigtime. So that was a nice moment, but the film is a mixture of doing the premise justice and coming up short. Most disappointingly, despite touching on it briefly, the film does not examine in great detail the ideological divide the two when they become allies and eventually lovers, which if done well could have really made the film really stand out from the Bond crowd.
The main villain of the film is Karl Stromberg, whose goal is the slightly Nazi-esque idea of killing off most of society so that he can create a new undersea utopia. Unfortunately though Stromberg is not a very strong villain, actually one of the more forgettable ones in the Bond films. As sheerly forgettable as Stromberg is, the film introduces the only henchman to go any where near matching Oddjob’s popularity in the series – Jaws. Seeing Jaws in Moonraker was one of the things that made me fall in love with the Bond films as a child. And even today, he is such a fantastic character. Richard Kiel is a huge dude, and conveys a lot through his physicality. Plus he has deadly metal teeth so that is pretty darn cool. Fully kitted out gadget laden cars have not really featured in the series so far except for Goldfinger. So it is great to see one of my favourite of all the Bond cars here, the Lotus Esprit submarine car. The car is awesome, on land it seems lightning quick and when it gets wet, it turns into a sub which comes in rather handy.
Jaws and Bond, doing their thing.
This is the best of the Roger Moore films thus far. I can’t help feeling that a little more could have been done with the phenomenal premise involving these two spies. But there are some fine moments and definitely a fine car. Plus for me, any Bond film featuring Jaws is a Bond film well worth seeing.
Verdict: Stubby of Reschs
Bondfest Leaderboard
- Thunderball (1965)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Dr No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- The Spy who Loved Me (1977)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- Diamonds are Forever (1971)
- You Only Live Twice (1967)
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
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Bondfest: The Man with the Golden Gun
Mission Dossier: The Man with the Golden Gun
The Year: 1974
The Director: Guy Hamilton
The Bond: Roger Moore
The Girl: Britt Ekland as Goodnight
The Baddie: The world’s greatest assassin Francisco Scaramanga and his small offsider Nick Nack
The Scene
Didn’t watch the film out here, but thought it would be nice to do some writing in the sunshine and fresh air after a couple of days getting square eyes in front of a screen.
Opening with a close-up of a third nipple, as you do, The Man with the Golden Gun is a globetrotting Bond adventure flying around between Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, Britain and more. Thankfully this film is far more respectful of Asian cultures when compared with the horrific effort of You Only Live Twice, incorporating some cool martial arts sequences and providing some handy local allies for our hero. The film was critically derided upon its release; however I recall quite liking it on my first viewing, so let’s check out if that verdict remains accurate.
The film continues the upward swing of the series with Moore at the helm, with the interesting story and a nice man to man battle between James Bond and the film’s main villain Francisco Scaramanga. Whilst the film does expand out the narrative as it goes on, it remains essentially a battle between Bond, and the world’s greatest assassin, the titular man with the golden gun. Having Christopher Lee play the role of Scaramanga is a great boon for the film. He really is a fantastic actor and brings a calm menace to his role, an excellent and worthy adversary foil for James Bond. Lee perfectly conveys an egotistical man who happily toasts “To us, for we are the best”. Roger Moore continues to grow into the role of Bond decently if not spectacularly. It is great to see a really amusing scene between he and M early in the film, with M happily providing a list of parties who would be willing to pay for Bond’s assassination. No other Bond would ever have the rapport with Bernard Lee’s M that Connery had, but Moore does a pretty good job working with him.
One of the other strengths for me is the supporting characters, who add a lot to the overall experience. Despite her rather bumbling manner, Britt Ekland’s Goodnight is a pretty good Bond girl who adds a spark to proceedings throughout. Nick Nack, played by Herve Villechaize, is Scaramanga’s midget offsider. Whilst it would have been easy for the character to descend into a figure of ridicule and endless midget jokes, he manages to be a serviceable henchman mainly due to Villechaize’s excellent performance. Undoing a lot of this good work is the inexplicable return of the most annoying character in Bond history, Louisiana Sherriff JW Pepper as played by Clifton James, who finds himself on holidays in Thailand spending most of his time spouting racist epithets at the locals. When he is “deputised” to assist Bond, the audience is on a hiding to nothing. He only features for 10 or 15 odd minutes, but I simply cannot comprehend what the makers of the film were thinking when they decided to bring JW back for a second time round.
Christopher Lee really is fantastic as Scaramanga, the man with the golden gun.
The Man with the Golden Gun gets by on the strength of its core villain, supporting cast and a storyline that pits Bond off against a cracking enemy. Like its predecessor, the film is not in the league of the series’ first four efforts, but is definitely an enjoyable enough watch.
Verdict: Stubby of Reschs
Bondfest Leaderboard
- Thunderball (1965)
- Goldfinger (1964)
- Dr No (1962)
- From Russia with Love (1963)
- The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
- Live and Let Die (1973)
- Diamonds are Forever (1971)
- You Only Live Twice (1967)
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
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