Saturday, January 29: Mississippi Mud
NOBODY DOES IT BETTER
by John M. Floyd
A few months ago I did a column about the James Bond phenomenon, and mostly about Bond movies. I’m not sure how pertinent it was to our crime/suspense short-story theme (although a few of the films were loosely adapted from Fleming’s short stories), but I am sure that I had fun doing the research. What other excuse could I have used to dig out all my old Bond books and tapes and DVDs?
The Me Who Loves Spies
With that in mind, I have put together a probably-too-long list of my personal opinions regarding Bond movies, novels, and shorts. JLW and I have wasted time with (sorry, I mean “discussed”) this stuff at length in the past, and I hope you’ll let me know your own feelings on the subject. It’s been reported that approximately two billion people have seen at least one Bond film, and who knows how many have read the novels and stories. Like him or hate him, 007 won’t soon be forgotten.
Here, then, is my take on the best and worst of good old JB’s adventures on the screen and on paper:
NOTE: Remember, these are opinions. “Best” means “my favorite” and “worst” means “my least favorite” — and that’s all they mean. Your mileage will vary.
Best movie: Goldfinger
Worst movie: A View to a Kill
Best plot (movie): From Russia With Love
Worst plot (movie): Moonraker
Best novel: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Worst novel: The Man With the Golden Gun
Best short story: “For Your Eyes Only”
Worst short story: “The Property of a Lady”
Best Bond actor: Sean Connery
Worst Bond actor: Roger Moore
Best Bond girl: Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Worst Bond girl: Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), The World Is Not Enough
Best stunt: Skiing off a cliff, The Spy Who Loved Me
Worst stunt: The flying and rotating-in-midair speedboat, Live and Let Die
Best opening credits: Goldfinger
Worst opening credits: Licence to Kill
Best pre-credits (teaser) sequence: Heroin plant explosion and “positively shocking” fight scene, Goldfinger
Worst pre-credits (teaser) sequence: Snowboard-to-submarine escape, A View to a Kill
Best gadget: Briefcase, From Russia With Love
Worst gadget: Invisible car, Die Another Day
Best villain: Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe)
Worst villain: Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), Tomorrow Never Dies
Best ally: Karim Bey (Pedro Armendariz), From Russia With Love
Worst ally: Nigel Small-Fawcett (Rowan Atkinson), Never Say Never Again
Best henchman: Oddjob (Harold Sakata), Goldfinger
Worst henchman: Nick Nack (Herve Villechaize), The Man With the Golden Gun
Best Blofeld: Anthony Dawson (face unseen), From Russia With Love and Thunderball
Worst Blofeld: Telly Savalas, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Best M: Bernard Lee, 11 Bond films
Worst M: Edward Fox, Never Say Never Again
Best Bond outfit: Vested gray suit, Goldfinger
Worst Bond outfit: Clown costume, Octopussy
Best villain/henchman death: Oddjob’s electrocution, Goldfinger
Worst villain/henchman death: Mr. Big (Yaphet Kotto), who blew up like a balloon and then popped, Live and Let Die
Prettiest movie (scenery): The Man With the Golden Gun
Ugliest movie (scenery): Licence to Kill
Best fight scene: Bond vs. Red Grant on the train, From Russia With Love
Worst fight scene: Bond vs. Blofeld in the mud bath, Diamonds Are Forever
Best battle: The attack on Fort Knox, Goldfinger
Worst battle: Underwater hand-to-hand-combat fiasco, Thunderball
Best quote: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,” Goldfinger
Worst quote: TIE: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” From Russia With Love; and “I think he got the point” (after spear-gunning a bad guy), Thunderball
Best chase sequence: Ski escape from Piz Gloria, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Worst chase sequence: Gondola/speedboat/hovercraft chase in Venice, Moonraker
Best soundtrack: Goldfinger
Worst soundtrack: Never Say Never Again
Best song: “We Have All the Time in the World” (instrumental, John Barry orchestra), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Worst song: “The Man With the Golden Gun” (vocal, Lulu)
Not that it matters, but here are my rankings for actors’ portrayals of the Bond character, best to worst: Connery, Brosnan, Craig, Dalton, Lazenby, Moore. (I go back and forth between Craig and Brosnan, and I didn’t count David Niven, from the first Casino Royale.) Oh, and I almost forgot: I think the best non-John-Barry-written songs are Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme” from Dr. No and Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die title theme.
From a View to a List
My ranking of all the movies, best to worst, is: Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Dr. No, Thunderball, GoldenEye, You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Diamonds Are Forever, The Living Daylights, Casino Royale (2006), The World Is Not Enough, Quantum of Solace, Tomorrow Never Dies, Licence to Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Never Say Never Again, Die Another Day, The Man With the Golden Gun, Live and Let Die, Octopussy, Mooonraker, and A View to a Kill.
My ranking of the novels, best to worst: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, From Russia With Love, You Only Live Twice, Dr. No, Live and Let Die, Thunderball, Goldfinger, Casino Royale, Mooonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, and The Man With the Golden Gun.
My ranking of the short stories, best to worst: “For Your Eyes Only,” “The Living Daylights,” “From a View to a Kill,” “Quantum of Solace,” “Risico,” “The Hildebrand Rarity,” “Octopussy,” and “The Property of a Lady.”
For Wise Spies Only
If any of you are interested, the “Two-Disk Ultimate Edition” DVD of Dr. No has some great featurettes about the entire Bond movie franchise, and Deborah Lipp’s The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book (S & R Publishers) is a lot of fun as well. Unlike Q, Ms. Lipp does occasionally joke about her work.
And to those of you who are now thinking I’m a stark raving Bondmaniac . . . well, I find that shocking.
Positively shocking.
A very neat set of insights on what is also *my* favorite spy. For my money, though, I would have mentioned one short story that I did not see on your list: Fleming’s “007 in New York.”
Originally published as in in the New York Herald Tribune in 1963 as “Agent 007 in New York”, the story was included in the New York section of the book “Thrilling Cities,” a collection of non-fiction travel articles that Fleming wrote for the Sunday Times.
The story is famous for two things; being the shortest of the Bond stories Fleming ever wrote, and the fact that it contains a rather nice recipe for making scrambled eggs “James Bond”. It’s not much of a mystery story — just of a slice-of-life tale of our favorite spy, really — but in my opinion that makes it even more interesting.
After all, did *you* know Bond liked to read thrillers?
Joseph, they say you should try to learn something new every day (which is easy for me, since I know so little to begin with), and I did NOT know about “Agent 007 in New York.” I read Thrilling Cities long ago but I don’t have it here on my shelves, and somehow I’ve completely forgotten about that story.
It’s now on my (re)reading list. Many thanks for mentioning it!
Somehow I get the impression you don’t have a very high opinion of Moonraker, John.
Sigh. I have the suspicion you may well be justified in that. Sigh.
But it was the first movie during which I ever got to hold a girl’s hand. That puts it in a class of its own as far as I’m concerned. Not that I remember much of the plot…
Hamilton, the truth is, I probably shouldn’t be overly critical of any of the Bond movies, because I already know when I enter the theatre (or hit the PLAY button on my DVD remote) what to expect — and I enjoy fast-moving, escapist entertainment as much as the next guy. But I do think Roger Moore (a fine actor) turned the series into sort of a silly comic romp, and I thought Moonraker and a few others were particularly poorly done. I’ll always prefer the old Connery films.
By the way, I watched a documentary from Netflix last night called THE 50 WORST MOVIES EVER MADE . . . and when compared to any of those, Moonraker was pretty darn good.
Great list from a dedicated Bond student!
It got me thinking about other categories, such as funkiest diabolically delayed demise (laser saw, shark tank (suggested by Megamind)) and funkiest car stunt (warped bridge, too-narrow alley in which car magically ‘flips’).
Hmm… I see Hamilton is a man of a certain Bond age. I had to see Ipcress File twice, once at the drive-in and once to actually watch it.
Leigh, JLW suggested more categories as well. His were Sexiest Villainess (Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe, Thunderball) and Frumpiest Villain/Villainess (TIE: Lotta Lenya as Rosa Klebb in FRWL and Putter Smith as Mr. Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever).
As for the car stunts, the tilted car-in-the-alley stunt is also notable because it went into the alley balanced on the left-side wheels and exited the alley balanced on the right-side wheels. Good grief. (I think that was in Diamonds Are Forever.)
Sorry, that should’ve been Lotte Lenya, not Lotta. I’m not good with names of Austrian actresses.
John, there’s no question that you’re right, objectively speaking: Moore’s Bond movies do tend to be on the silly side, and Connery is clearly the better Bond. But this insight is hard won for me, Moore being the first Bond I ever encountered (and in a hormone-laden context at that).
Incidentally, my high regard for Roger Moore has more to do with his role (next to Tony Curtis) in The Persuaders! than with his stint as James Bond. As I may have mentioned before, I grew up in Germany, where The Persuaders! ran on TV under the title Die 2 (“The Two”). The interesting thing about the show is that the German dubbing seems to have completely ignored the original English dialogs and instead turned Brett Sinclair’s and Danny Wilde’s banter into metafictional musings. This resulted in a level of popularity in Germany (as well as other non-English speaking countries) that the series never reached in England or the US.
Yes, Leigh, the Moonraker anecdote no doubt dates me. I wish I’d ever had a chance to “watch” a movie in a drive-in, but they were all gone by the time I could legally drive.
Roger Moore fan here. I remember an interviewer once asking him if that was his name or a boast. And what a fun show The Persuaders was!
No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die. Agreed. Best line in all the movies.
Thanks John. I now have to dig out my Spy Who Loved Me DVD (sadly, the only Bond movie I own).
I loved The Persuaders, guys — no argument there!
And Stephen, I’d probably be better off NOT to own so many Bond movies.
I remember the Persuaders! To me, Moore will always be Simon Templar…(Cue the halo and music)