ON AN EARLY JAMES Bond site, alt.jamesbond, the easiest way to initiate a good argument was to state categorically that (pick a title) was the best Bond movie. There wasn’t a movie, no matter how awful, that wasn’t defended with vigor as being the best; however, without some benchmark of drama like Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy, picking the best Bond movie is like picking the best color, the best greeting card, or the best wedding gown. It’s entirely subjective and therefore hard to defend.
That said, there are elements in all the Bond films that sparkle like little diamonds. When a defender talks about one film being the best, it is often because of one of these factors. Perhaps he or she loves the excitement of the prologue, or the intricacy of the plot. Perhaps a spectacular villain or a glamorous Bond girl makes that film his or her favorite. Perhaps the special effects, the cars, the location, or even the music propelled it to preferred status. So, in order to determine precisely which Bond film is, in fact, the best, I will be examining what each of these elements contributes to the whole, reviewing the films and, with tongue firmly in cheek, assigning a value to each of the parts, in hopes of coming up with a somewhat more objective, by-the-numbers winner—and ending those online squabbles once and for all.1
Before looking at the works produced by EON, we’ll use a film that fell outside of the Bond franchise as an example of how the process of assigning points will work. There were several attempts at Bond other than EON’s productions. Fleming’s early sale of the Casino Royale screen rights spawned an episode of a live broadcast called “Climax!” in the early days of black-and-white TV, starring Barry Nelson as an American Jimmy (!) Bond with sidekick Felix Leiter and a spoof starring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, an off-the-wall comedy that bore no resemblance to Fleming’s story. The most successful of the spin-offs was Never Say Never Again based on the same story line as Thunderball.
Never Say Never Again didn’t incorporate the standard “Bond Film” elements, but it was a serious and, in some camps, quality production. It starred Sean Connery looking better than he did in Diamonds Are Forever and featured one of the loopiest Bond villains, Fatima Blush, played by Barbara Carrera. The cast included other superb personnel, including Klaus Maria Brandauer (equally loopy!), and Kim Basinger.
| NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN | ||
| Prologue: | 0/5 | (since there was no prologue) |
| Plot: | 20/30 | (unoriginal, based on Thunderball) |
| Villains: | 16/15 | (Ms. Blush, surely worth the extra point!) |
| Bond Girls: | 5/15 | |
| FX: | 15/20 | (nice tango by 007 and Miss Basinger) |
| Cars: | 5/10 | (no cars, but an exciting motorcycle incident) |
| Music: | 0/5 | |
| # of Major Locations: | 7 | (bonus points) |
| Total: 68 of 100 points | ||
Got the idea? Then let’s get started.
Moonraker often snags the prize for last place. I won’t argue. Although some of the space scene special effects are impressive, the plot and Jaws are over the top and the key heavy, Hugo Drax, is a bore. (In the novel Moonraker he was in danger of killing 007 with boredom with his long-winded life story and why he intends to use Moonraker to kill a few million people, a far more modest proposal than his movie alter ego’s plan of wiping out the Earth’s population.) Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) makes a gorgeous Bond girl and is the high point of the film.
Call them clever, grandiose, impossible, or downright nutty, the twists of the plots keep us interested, if sometimes puzzled. (Why destroy the world to control it?) Here, using the Solex Agitator would give The Man with the Golden Gun the power of the sun. Actress Maud Adams is this story’s Bond girl. But aside from her, the story didn’t offer much to recommend it other than the clever use of cars: it converted the AMC Matador into an airplane, and in a spectacular scene had a car shoot up a twisted ramp, part of a destroyed bridge, and complete a 360 degree roll to land upright on the other side of a river!
Discussions involving 007 inevitably mention whether the action is plausible or ridiculous. A View to a Kill opens with an action that would probably be considered impossible but actually was accomplished by stuntman B. J. Worth: the parachute leap from the Eiffel Tower. The only thing that mars the sequence is the chase scene that follows with Bond driving a Renault taxi that has been cut in half in an accident. Compared with gassing everyone in the world as in Moonraker, scoundrel Max Zorin’s plan to flood Silicon Valley by causing an earthquake so his business could control the microchip market almost makes sense. Q supplies Bond with a few useful devices including a minicopier to duplicate a check for evidence, a pen microchip tracking device, and a camera ring. And while it wasn’t a Q device, Zorin’s conversion of a construction shed into a blimp was pretty spiffy.
In The Living Daylights, we meet a new James Bond, Timothy Dalton, a 007 who didn’t crank up the hearts of many critics or followers. However, I thought his rather serious (almost dour) portrayal was more in line with the character that Ian Fleming had in mind. Unfortunately, the story line was weak and MI6 must have told Q to empty the warehouse of every gimmick they had to make up for it. There were three nice touches: the Aston Martin Volante; Kara Milovy, the Czech cellist, played by Maryam d’Abo; and the campy downhill escape on the cello case.
Dr. No, the first of the EON franchise, predates the signature gun-barrel theme but opens well with its quirky “Three Blind Mice” motif and the killing of a British agent in Jamaica, followed by the famous introduction by Sean Connery, “Bond, James Bond.” One of the virtues of Dr. No for Ian Fleming admirers is that it stuck fairly close to the novel’s plot; however, in the book he agonizes over having to kill as part of his 007 rating while in the film he knows that Professor Dent has an unloaded gun and deliberately kills him and intentionally pumps a couple more bullets into his body.
An element in Dr. No later developed more fully was the wisecrack remark (some say overly developed in Roger Moore films). Another was its use of a marvelous villain. Dr. No is played chillingly by Joseph Wiseman, whose hooded eyes look through, not at, his enemies. And when Ursula Andress walked out of the sea, she initiated the parade of lovely women who later played Bond’s lovers, foils, and hopeful assassins. Although it had not yet fully developed what would become Bond trademarks, Dr. No still earns a respectable score.
Power-crazed Kamal Khan, in league with a genuine screwball Russian general, Orlov, is the antagonist in Octopussy. Their plot was to steal an atomic bomb and set it off on an American base in Germany so that European anger would drive the Americans out and allow the Russians to invade Western Europe. Maud Adams starred as Octopussy, the leader of a traveling circus, a cult figure . . . and a gem smuggler. Khan and General Orlov used her to smuggle the bomb onto the base. The film is rife with gorgeous Octopussy girls, weird villains, and spectacular Indian locations. Of all the deadly weapons used in the Bond films, I have to tip my hat to the spin-saw, a circular saw on a yo-yo line that descends to slice up people who have offended Mr. Kahn. An early high point in the story was Bond’s use of a small jet plane to escape from a Cuban-like military base. The AcroStar is engaged in flight by missiles and Bond escapes by flying through the rapidly closing doors of a hanger; the pursuing missile smashes into the closed door, blowing the building to pieces. Oh, yes, and Q provides a video-screen watch for Bond. Lacking a good song named “Octopussy,” the company had the good sense to have Rita Coolidge sing “All Time High” over the opening credits.
I almost took points away for the prologue of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s not so much as it’s dull, but that it breaks a rule of good fiction. At the end of the prologue, after George Lazenby dispatches the bad guys, he turns to the camera and says, “That never happened to the other fellow,” a reference to Sean Connery. Why would James Bond say “that never happened to James Bond”?
Seeing one James Bond plot, with few exceptions, is seeing them all. A megalomaniac plans to cause great havoc in the world to control what remains of his own Eden. However, what can intrigue us and thus make one plot better than another is the way the villain intends to gain control. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ernst Stavro Blofeld plans to send beautiful, brainwashed women from his spa back to their hometowns to release biological pathogens into the world. The man is totally certifiable!
Diana Rigg has a strong showing in this film. Unlike many of the “Oh, James, sigh” girls, Tracy is strong and determined. Her transformation from a suicidal woman to a loving wife, underscored by Louis Armstrong’s singing “We Have All the Time in the World,” is a high point.
A winner in Live and Let Die is the cruel Mr. Big, leader of a drug smuggling ring. His henchman with the hook hand, Tee Hee, was one of those secondary characters who make villainy a remarkable contribution to the story. The film also boasts two excellent Bond girls, the supernatural Solitaire and double agent Rosie, the first black girl to become Bond’s lover. Once again, Q supplies 007 with a particularly fortuitous buzz-saw watch used to save Bond, played for the first time in this film by Roger Moore, and Solitaire from death. And as I disagree with 007 about listening to the Beatles without earmuffs, the title song (technically not a Beatles song) sung by Paul McCartney and Wings is a strong contribution to the title sequence. (I usually wear earmuffs when listening to the music from the later films.)
One of the highlights of Tomorrow Never Dies is Bond’s BMW 750, a wheeled fortress with rockets, chain cutter, bulletproof glass, spike dispenser, and remote-controlled device in a cell phone. Just what every boy needs. Also a highlight is Teri Hatcher playing the elegant and sophisticated Paris Carver, wife of the evil Elliot Carver. I thought Carver’s dream of dominating the news was about as bland as one could get, but he had his moments . . . like having his wife killed merely because she had been Bond’s lover. Michelle Yeoh’s tough Chinese spy, Wai Lin, proved a superb challenge for 007 to work with, which was a pleasure to watch.
The opening to Thunderball features Bond’s escape from a castle by jet pack. For the first time, we see Ernst Stavro Blofeld as the villain Bond will face again in other films. SPECTRE steals nuclear weapons from a NATO bomber and uses them to extort money from the United States and England. Q provides a mini-aqualung and a Geiger counter watch (to locate the hidden bombs) and a jet pack, and the undersea action supplies dramatic special effects. Plus the title song was belted out, really belted out, by Tom Jones over the opening credits.
The World Is Not Enough continued EON’s BMW mania, giving Bond an automobile that would suit a rock star. The plot revolves around stunning Elektra King, the daughter of an oil heiress and a recently slain British aristocrat. As Bond mentions, quoting the O’Neill play title, “Mourning Becomes Electra.” She plans to use her secret lover, the criminal Renard, to explode an atomic weapon in a key shipping area, forcing the world to depend on her pipeline for oil. Much of the film displays what has become standard action for a 007 film with nothing unusual except for the final conflict between Bond and Renard where Bond handles radioactive rods with his bare hands to stop the atomic explosion.
Enthusiasts who like action enjoy the opening to Die Another Day, with the hovercraft chase and 007 blowing up everything in sight. Although most Bond title sequences have a certain sameness about them, typically featuring silhouettes of shapely women, the sequence for Die Another Day is highly creative, with the figures alternating from fiery to icy.
Although she turns out to be a villain, Bond would have to search diligently for a more beautiful Bond girl than Rosamund Pike’s Miranda Frost. And the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish appeared as an invisible car—quite a trick! (Pun intended.)
Die Another Day was an anthology of references to earlier Bond films: Q’s laboratory testing early devices, John Cleese as Q (“I never joke about my work”), Halle Berry coming out of the sea like Ursula Andress, and the picture on the wall of the subway depicting the British sailor from the Player cigarette pack. The original came from Domino’s four-page dialogue in Fleming’s novel Thunderball. (“The man of my dreams,” she says. “The sailor on the packet of Players.”)
In Diamonds Are Forever, SPECTRE is smuggling diamonds for use in a laser capable of firing from orbit, with which they plan to control the world. (Blofeld again. As I said before, the man is certifiable!) The Bond girls, unfortunately, don’t measure up; Jill St. John as Tiffany Case starts out as a cool cookie but quickly deteriorates to the usual “Oh, James!” Plenty O’Toole at least provides a great line when she is tossed out the window of a high-rise hotel by a thug. (Bond mentions that it was a good shot because she landed in the swimming pool; the thug replies, “I didn’t know there was a pool there.”)
007 employed a piton gun in this movie, later used with great effect in GoldenEye’s prologue. But the special effect that made the film was the car chase within the confines of a small parking lot, with an escape through a narrow alley. Bond’s Ford Mustang drove through it tilted on two wheels. (The only problem? The Mustang entered the alley on one set of wheels and emerged on the opposite set.)
From Russia With Love is a favorite with many Bond admirers. In the very creepy prologue we are led to believe that 007 has been killed, strangled to death by Red Grant. Wristwatches have often played a big part in helping Bond in many of his adventures, but this time, in this murderous training exercise it is Grant who uses his watch for something other than telling time—he pulls a thin wire out of it and garrotes the man posing as Bond. Watch logic, by the way, is not always evident in the Bond films. In Live and Let Die, one watch is designed by MI6 to deflect bullets but in the demonstration with Bond, it attracts metal. That seems counterproductive!
If anything stands out in the Bond movies, it’s the marvelous, zany, evil villains. They are all so creative, so sure of themselves, so self-righteous in their chosen paths of destructive criminal activity—and the utter efficiency of Red Grant as a professional killer makes him a worthy foe. But logic is not Grant’s strong suit either. Pointing a gun at 007, Grant tells Bond he will be presumed a victim of suicide, then adds, “The first bullet won’t kill you; neither will the second.” What a way to commit suicide! Q provided 007 with a special briefcase (knife, tear gas, gold, folding rifle). And, instead of using From Russia With Love as the title song, the directors chose to have Matt Monro sing it within the story through Bond’s car radio.
For sheer spectacle, the ski jump off the cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me with the Union Jack parachute has to be one of the best prologue stunts. (How does Q anticipate these needs?) Here, Stromberg attempts to precipitate a war between the United States and Russia by stealing both countries’ nuclear submarines. The girl, Anya Amasova, Bond’s counterpart in the KGB, has to work with him to prevent SPECTRE from succeeding.
The car, a fantastic Lotus Esprit that converts to a submarine, could lay mines and fire sea-to-air missiles! There is one beautiful villainess whom many felt should have had a larger role, the helicopter pilot, Naomi, but alas, 007 kills her after her brief appearance. In a musical departure from other films, The Spy Who Loved Me’s opening included Carly Simon singing a non-title song, “Nobody Does it Better.”
While the For Your Eyes Only title sequence features the face of the singer, Sheena Easton, the prologue is otherwise less dramatic than most. On the other hand, the plot is a bit more complex and clever. Bond’s “ally” is actually the bad guy who intends to steal the ATAC, a device that controls submarine Polaris missiles, while the initial villain, a Greek smuggler named Columbo, becomes Bond’s ally. Super-car Lotus Esprit makes another appearance, but Bond uses a Citroen 2 CV “deux cheveau” for a car chase down a mountainside. Another exquisite Bond girl, Melina Havelock, is present to avenge the death of her father, a noted marine scientist who worked with MI6.
Unlike many films where music unobtrusively soothes us during love scenes and hypes our blood pressure during action scenes, music often stands out in Bond films. From the Monty Norman twangy-guitar Bond theme that was introduced in Dr. No, to the signature title themes by mainstream artists, to the beautifully crafted John Barry scores, James Bond music is always recognizable. One of the most haunting and beautiful of these was Barry’s You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra during the title sequence.
In You Only Live Twice, Asian women were featured for the first time with beautiful Japanese actresses Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama playing opposite 007. Bond is made up to look Japanese and assumes the role of the husband to “Kissy,” who in reality is a Japanese secret agent there to help Bond find the hidden SPECTRE rocket base. Q supplies Little Nellie, a gyro-copter with built-in offensive and defensive weapons used by Bond in a successful aerial battle with SPECTRE helicopters. Incidentally, the screenwriter on this film was Roald Dahl! Yes, that Roald Dahl.
Licence to Kill was Dalton’s second and final outing as Bond. I liked this picture. I liked the cleverness of Sanchez, the main villain, with his escape plan and money-raising scam. His young henchman, Dario, also stood out as a ruthless and chilling sidekick. Carey Lowell was refreshing, competent and a total babe as the Bond girl. The comic relief by Wayne Newton was wonderfully underplayed. The gadgets and equipment were low-key as well (a manta-ray cloak, a cummerbund with concealed rope, and a Piper Cub-sized airplane!) and employed to great effect. The only nod to the spectacular was the massive semi-trailer tilting up on two wheels as the rocket whizzed beneath it.
With a 640-foot bungee-cord jump down the face of a dam, followed by a battle with a Russian garrison, followed by a motorcycle chase of an airplane over a cliff, the introduction of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in GoldenEye is intense; returning Shirley Bassey for the title song was a nice touch of Goldfinger nostalgia. Maybe I was just hungry to see Bond in action again, but I enjoyed this film. The Aston Martin DB5 is back for a cameo appearance. Then there is the eye-popping red Ferrari 355 driven by the equally eye-popping Xenia Onatopp (played by Dutch actress Famke Janssen).
Alec Trevelyan, formerly MI6’s agent 006, was suitably treacherous as a turncoat. The well-staged fight scene with 007 forces the viewer to use some imagination since it was shot in partial darkness. I didn’t find Trevelyan’s motive for turning against Britain convincing, but he is convincingly evil. His ICBM train is ugly and brutal-looking, a perfect piece of equipment. The Russian girl, Natalia, is pretty and vulnerable without being too “Oh, James!” Q provides enough equipment to make it all interesting, providing Bond with a pen grenade and a piton gun (its second appearance). All in all, if you could get over Brosnan, not Connery or Moore, being Bond, it was a highly competent film.
I clearly remember one 1964 evening in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, standing in a long line of people outside the cinema waiting for the doors to open for a new movie called Goldfinger. Although I had not seen the previous films, I had read all the Ian Fleming books and was as hyped as the publicity about the film. Sitting in the darkened theater, I was mesmerized as the white dots marched across the screen to the four stinging darts of music followed by the twanging of the 007 theme. The gun barrel led to the wavering dot that opened on the duck swimming toward the dock . . . I had entered the magic world of 007.
Goldfinger started strong and never let up. The prologue alone propels the viewer into everything that is James Bond. There is danger, sophistication, gadgetry, sex, spectacle, action, and gallows humor (“Shocking, positively shocking”). And the film that follows builds on every one of those elements. For the first time in a Bond film, all those diamonds that are the symbols of the Bond franchise came together in spades. The title sequence uses the girl’s gold-covered body as a projection screen on which to depict scenes from this and previous films. Shirley Bassey’s brassy treatment of the title song sets the hard-edged tone of Goldfinger’s character, and the title music is often repeated during subsequent scenes, sometimes mixed with the 007 theme, in a highly effective use of orchestration. The opening of the story in Miami illustrates Bond’s decisive character; he not only understands Goldfinger’s cheating nature and uses it against him, but also uses his considerable charm to win over Goldfinger’s Girl Friday, Jill Masterson.
To learn how Goldfinger is smuggling gold, 007 pursues Goldfinger’s elegant 1937 Rolls Royce from England to the continent. The trip is not only clever for its tracking gadget, but it is also beautifully photographed in the Swiss mountains. During the chase scene in Goldfinger’s gold-processing plant, as in Pussy Galore’s aerial spraying scene toward the end of the film, John Barry’s score sets an action-in-progress theme that contributes to the excitement. By contrast, the morbid theme he composed to introduce Oddjob’s appearances is especially tragic when he launches his deadly hat to kill Tilly Masterson.
Oddjob, played by Hawaiian wrestler Harold Sakata, was an extraordinary villain! Always silent, bizarre in appearance in a tight formal suit, he wears a bowler hat that can slice through a statue’s neck. Oddjob is invincible with his enormous strength that can crush a golf ball and take blows from a heavy bar of gold bullion. Goldfinger himself seems unstoppable in his quest to control the world’s gold market by invading Fort Knox and exploding a radioactive device. The plot is unique in the way Goldfinger intends to dominate the world economically. Goldfinger also has the honor of uttering one of the most famous lines of any Bond film just before he is about to turn 007 into a contralto, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”
When Bond is on Goldfinger’s jet there is a passing reference to Q’s gadget-filled briefcase from the previous film, but the first of this film’s spectacular Bond gadgets is the Aston Martin DB5 with its bulletproof glass, oil ejecting spray, smokescreen ability, revolving license plates (“valid in all countries”), tire-slashing hubcaps, front-firing machine guns, and—everyone’s favorite—the passenger ejection seat.
The main Bond girl is, of course, Pussy Galore. Honor Blackman, best known at the time for her role in the British program The Avengers, is introduced rather late in the film but clearly makes her mark with her name, her appearance and the fact that she is “immune” to Bond’s charms. However, he does break through her icy exterior and converts her to heterosexuality with a single encounter in a horse barn. (Nobody does it better!)
| GOLDFINGER | ||
| Prologue: | 10/5 | (for everything!) |
| Plot: | 40/30 | (unique) |
| Villains: | 25/15 | (villains galore!) |
| Bond Girls: | 25/15 | (five bonus points for Tilly Masterson alone) |
| FX: | 25/20 | (crushing the Lincoln Continental definitely worth the extra points) |
| Cars: | 25/10 | (DB5) |
| Music: | 10/5 | (brassy Bassey) |
| # of Major Locations: | 7 | |
| Total: 167 of 100 points | ||
Goldfinger is not, of course, without its flaws. An obvious problem is the way Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus “gassed” Fort Knox. Getting the entire population in on the ruse in such a short time without the media or Goldfinger finding out is unrealistic. Also, it takes the gas a few seconds to kill the thugs when released in a sealed chamber, while merely spraying gas over the fort instantly drops marching troops. (Are nonmilitary aircraft even allowed to fly over Fort Knox at that height?) There was also a major error in photographic framing when Bond uses the tire-chomping hubcap to disable Tilly Masterson’s Mustang. Bond comments on it being a bad coincidence that two tires blew out. They both ignore the obviously slashed metal all along the side of the car, clearly visible to the audience. It may be picky to mention, but when Bond mentions their close call (“Three more seconds and. . . .”), the clock on the Fort Knox bomb had obviously stopped at 007 seconds. He can determine the half-life of radioactive material in his mind but can’t count up to 007?
Goldfinger is the obvious winner when it comes to what it takes to make a Bond film a Bond Film! How can one argue with quantified logic?
Bias! What bias?
RAY DEMPSEY lives in Palo Alto, California. During his career he taught high-school and college-level classes, worked in sales and marketing in publishing and the airlines industry, and most recently served as customs compliance manager in high tech before retiring. He holds degrees from Emerson College, Boston; marketing (summa cum laude) from Clark University; and an MBA from Babson College. He has published in Monogram Aviation Publications and contributed articles to the Ian Fleming Web site. Ray has traveled extensively in the United States, Asia, and Europe where, in Holland, he had the good fortune to meet his beautiful wife, Anneke, his partner for over thirty-four years.
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1 The actor playing Bond is a major element in any Bond film, but rating them requires more than a short discussion of Connery’s toughness, Lazenby’s looks, Moore’s humor, Dalton’s intensity, or Brosnan’s charm.