For Your Eyes Only - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project #12)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Dir: John Glen

Atrocious Bond

by

 Jay Maronde

                This movie is atrocious. To be honest, it’s so fucking bad I had trouble viewing it and writing this review. In fact, I watched the next two movies just to psyche myself up for writing this, and I still almost submitted this review containing only the words, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Unlike The Man with The Golden Gun, this movie doesn’t just suffer from a bad plot, it suffers from bad vision—atrocious vision, in fact—and it doesn’t even have a midget to make things go down any easier.

                Let’s start at the very beginning, the very first scene. Bond is visiting his deceased wife at a cemetery. It’s sad, it’s stupid, and it’s only there because the writers/producers were unsure if Roger Moore could be enlisted to reprise his role as Bond and as such needed a scene to possibly introduce a new actor as Bond. Moore eventually capitulated, returning geriatric as ever—meaning that this scene has even less significance and seems even more tasteless. While Bond is at the cemetery, the office calls the priest and tells him to inform Bond that they are sending a chopper for him. Bond hops in the chopper, seemingly off to another highly important mission. Unfortunately, an unnamed, uncredited, bald wheelchair-bound cat-stroking villain shocks the pilot to death, and takes remote control of the helicopter with the intent of killing Bond. Clearly Bond isn’t going to die before the credits, so he pulls some pretty sweet maneuvers and eventually dispatches this villain. This “not-Blofeld” is here because the producers had just finished another extensive round of litigation with our old real life villain, Kevin McClory, and Albert R. Broccoli wanted to symbolize his success of finally being rid of both villains. Sadly this might be the most satisfying moment in the movie, as the rest just drags.

                The title credits feature a forgettable 1980’s anthem by Sheena Easton, which is only of note because Easton appears in the title sequence herself and is the first Bond songstress to do so. The song was actually quite successful and every Bond song since has had a tied in music video as a result of the song’s success. But not even a great song can justify the tripe that is the rest of the film.

                After the titles we are transported to an unknown locale in the Mediterranean where a covert British spy ship is quickly sunk by sea mine. The boat carries a transmitter to control the nuclear missiles on the British fleet of Polaris submarines. Clearly the MI6 needs this item back, so they contract fellow Britons the Havelocks to retrieve said item. The Havelocks are murdered on their research vessel right in front of their daughter Melina, played by the very passionate Carole Bouquet (who coincidentally is named Melina, the Greek word for Honey, in an Homage to Dr. No’s classic Bond Beauty Honey Ryder—another tragedy because Bouquet cannot compare to Ursula Andress). Bond is called in to find and interrogate the murder suspect, who is now relaxing at his villa, waiting to be paid by the villains who ordered the hit. Bond witnesses the payoff, and then is captured. Personally, I would have cut this whole divergence from the film as it really adds nothing but to introduce the silent henchman—then again I would have cut about ¾ of this film, or just made a completely different movie. Melina shoots the assassin with a crossbow, in a scene which I feel only adds to the anemic aged-ness of Roger Moore, as James Bond shouldn’t really need random revenge seeking women to help or save him. Bond and Melina escape, but Bond’s Lotus explodes after two low-level henchmen try to break into it (in a scene which was supposed to symbolize that this new Bond film would rely less heavily on gadgets, which was a huge error in the entire direction of the film because Bond’s super gadgets are a big part of the reason to view any Bond film). In truth the scene just makes Bond’s gear look craptacular, so Bond has to escape by driving the girl’s Citron, which again is shameful for the world’s best secret agent to be driving such a tin can.

                Next Bond travels to Italy, to a winter Olympic compound (added to the film to capitalize on the popularity of the recent winter Olympics in Lake Placid). Here in Italy, Bond again meets up with Melina and has a few assorted adventures dealing with henchmen of all sorts and eventually has a social meeting with the film’s real villain, who is at the time posing as an ally to Bond. The villain here is played actually quite wonderfully by the delightful Julian Glover. Glover’s performance is quality Bond Villain evil, but my major complaint is that he does a much better job playing a nefarious double agent villain almost a decade later in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (coincidentally one of his co-stars in that film is former Bond Sean Connery). The whole Italian part of this film also adds nothing to the plot, as even though Bond and MI6 know almost exactly where the nuke transmitter is located (off the coast of Greece) for some reason Bond needs to wander around this ski resort town and have silly-ass adventures. I will note that two of Bond’s escapades in this part of the film contain very commendable women. First off while visiting the ski resort town, Bond dispatches several henchmen, including one whom he throws through the window of a flower shop. While the henchmen and the fight scene aren’t very memorable or classic, the girl in the flower shop is very notable for how she got the role. Robbin Young was actually the winner of Playboy Magazine’s, “Be a Bond Girl Contest,” and besides being rather pretty, launched her modeling career and was featured in a Playboy spread. The other notable woman is The Countess Lisl von Schlaf, played prettily, but again not memorably by the beautiful actress Cassandra Harris. While Harris’ performance isn’t spectacularly wonderful, what she did while off camera is the notable part, as she introduced her current husband (some little known actor fellow, Pierce Brosnan) to Broccoli, and clearly this would have some very long lasting implications for the franchise.

                Eventually Bond decides that actually getting in a mini-sub and recovering the artifact that the whole film revolves around will be a good plan. He goes to Greece, recovers the device, gets roughed up by some henchmen in an underwater battle, loses the device, fights some more henchmen, and eventually recovers and destroys the device. Now this seems like a great end to a Bond film as Bond vanquishes all the villains and does save the day, but again this falls short, as this sequence occupies approximately thirty minutes of the two hour plus film. I’m sorry but had I been alive in 1981 and gone to see this film, where only the last half hour of the movie had anything to do with the plot, I probably would have smashed my face into the wall of the building upset about the other 90 minutes of my life I had sacrificed to this complete drivel.

                I really wanted to write some sort of redeeming conclusion here, but I’ve got nothing for you, dear reader. What I can say, is that if you have a choice of watching any of the Bond films, this one would easily be at the bottom of my list.

                 

The Spy Who Loved Me - Dir. Lewis Gilbert (The Bond Project #10)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Dir: Lewis Gilbert

Back on Track

By Jay Maronde

                Director Lewis Gilbert and Set Designer Ken Adams teamed back up again—and after extensive delays, seemed to re-work their “You Only Live Twice-magic” into the Blockbuster smash The Spy Who Loved Me—and saved the entire James Bond Franchise. This film is widely regarded as Roger Moore’s best Bond work (not necessarily by me), and he is more than adequate in this film in which James Bond’s ability to seduce women literally ends up saving his life while dealing with a Soviet spy. But the real star of this film is Ken Adams’ completely insane sets (which earned him on Oscar nomination) and the brilliance of Gilbert’s special effects team.

                First though, let’s start with the problems, which were once again legal, and once again caused by the Franchise’s early dealings with one Kevin McClory. Litigation is nothing new in Hollywood. People sue other people all the time—in fact, the producers had to buy at least one other litigant’s film treatment to avoid being sued by him—but Kevin McClory takes the all-time cake. From my research it seems as though McClory  sued the James Bond Franchise for almost 50 years. He even went to so far as to produce a non-authorized Bond in the 1980’s. I personally feel that he got his what for during the production of this film.

The Spy Who Loved Me was, and forever will be, the only Bond Film that occurred in the same order as the book from which it drew its title: the 10^th book became the 10^th film. Coincidentally, and partially because of McClory, the film draws almost nothing from the book besides the title and part of the inspiration for its uber-famous henchman: Jaws (played famously by Richard Kiel). TSWLM was supposed to be another film in which Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE were the villains. McClory had already won the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE in earlier litigation, so when he heard this new film would include Blofeld, he sued again.  The producers had his number this time and almost immediately rewrote the entire script to no longer include any mention of BLofeld or SPECTRE, and instead created a villain extremely similar to Blofeld, except named Stromberg. AHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA Kevin McClory had to learn the expensive way that he didn’t have the exclusive monopoly on fictional villains.  (Sorry, I just like it when Bond’s enemies get theirs).

                Anyways legal problems aside, Gilbert (who had actually been chosen after Steven Spielberg refused, having just completed Jaws and stating that he “wanted to see how these fish movies turn out”) began work on a Bond to really outperform the others, and in this effort went to some amazing extremes.

First off, over 1 million dollars of this production’s budget went directly towards the building of an all-new world’s-largest-ever-soundstage built at Pinewood Studios and named the 007 stage. The first job for this stage was the interior of Stromberg’s super-evil nuclear-submarine-swallowing super tanker The Liparus (the water tank inside the stage actually held more than one million gallons of water to enable this footage). The new stage was so incredibly large that a super-secret consultant was brought in to aid with the lighting: Stanley Kubrick. A Shell corporation executive and golfing buddy of Producer Albert Broccoli had volunteered a real Shell supertanker for the film, but the production team had been forced to pass as the insurance which would have been required would have been outrageously prohibitive.  The outside shots of the supertanker were filmed with an almost 70 foot long model.

Another favorite special effect is Bond’s white Lotus Espirit turbo coupe which converted to a submarine when driven into water. This car is easily one of my favorites throughout the series, because it is super cool, which is exactly why after the film’s release the waiting list for a new Lotus suddenly grew to over three years. Another aquatic effect in this film is Bond’s use of the world’s first jet ski. The “water motorcycle” (as it was at the time called) ridden by Bond during the latter part of the film as he assaults the evil villains lair, literally sprouted an entirely new watersport.

                Gilbert’s two other smashing successes with this film came from two shockingly different angles. First there was Jaws, cast perfectly with the actor Richard Kiel, who in real life is actually over 7 feet tall, and still works with the Bond Franchise doing Bond events and promotions. Jaws was immediately popular with Broccoli—so popular, in fact, that Broccoli had the script rewritten so that Jaws could live and escape and therefore possibly reappear in a later Bond adventure. Screener audiences loved Jaws so much that they gave the film a standing ovation when Jaws escaped. Over the years, Jaws has become one of the most recognizable and beloved Bond villains.

                Gilbert’s other success was even more important: he singlehandedly re-envisioned the entire humor of the franchise. Gone were the slapstick shtick and vaudevillian humor; gone were silly southern sheriffs and stunts corrupted by penny whistles. This new Bond was smooth as ice, and when he does make a joke it’s in an extremely pithy, very British, overly-sexualized-and-yet-not-quite-skeevy manner. My favorite Bond zinger comes at the very end of the film after Bond has escaped from the villain’s destroyed fortress in an escape pod with the lovely Soviet Agent XXX (played well, but not too memorably, by the very pretty Barbara Bach, who is actually currently married to none other than Ringo Starr). The two have escaped, and the girl is about to make good on her oath to kill Bond once the mission is over. Bond then seduces her in a scene which couldn’t have been more perfectly written for Roger Moore. As Moore handles Bond’s favorite business, the escape pod is recovered by the British and when M (again played by the classic Bernard Lee) asks Bond what he’s doing, Bond replies: “Keeping the British end up, sir!”

                This movie was wildly popular and easily made up for the lackluster financial performance of The Man with the Golden Gun. The theme song “Nobody Does it Better” went gold, even though it was the first Bond theme song not to be titled the same as the film, and has been covered by numerous artists over the years since it was first recorded by the ethereal Carly Simon. On a strange note: this film ends with the classic “James Bond will return…in For Your Eyes Only.” Moonraker would actually be the next Bond film to be produced as the management team would seek to capitalize off other space movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but also to parlay the audience’s love of the character Jaws by having him reappear in the successive film. It is of little concern though, as Gilbert had saved the longest running film franchise.  Were it not for his excellent direction of this film and re- direction of the entire series, one truly wonders if we would all so eagerly be awaiting next month’s Skyfall.

The Man with the Golden Gun - Dir. Guy Hamilton (The Bond Project #9)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Dir: Guy Hamilton

What Happened?

By Jay Maronde

                Let me start this review by admitting this: film critics love to be critical of movies. I personally try to write about the good parts, and I also happen to really like James Bond (which I why I signed up for this task). But every once in a while you need to get a little crazy and go on and on about how wrong things really are. This being said, I do mean to keep it relatively short, because to be honest, you know a movie is pretty effin bad when the midget is the best part about it.

                Let’s start right there. The midget is the best part about this film.  Herve Villechaize is usually pretty awesome in whatever he appears in, but here, Guy Hamilton cast him perfectly as “the midget Oddjob”, referring to Harold Sakata’s role in Hamilton’s earliest Bond Film, the 1964 Blockbuster Goldfinger. “Nick Nack,” as he’s credited, has some of the most memorable roles in the film* and is the first Bond henchman to be captured. Another great casting in this film is Sir Christopher Lee as Francisco Scaramanga, the super villain million-dollar-a-hit assassin who is Bond’s arch-nemesis in the film. Scaramanga is almost always referred to as one of the best-acted Bond Villains and indeed Lee was asked to reprise the role and do the voicing for Scaramanga in the James Bond video game Rouge Agent. The rest of this film seems to spoil itself.

                Britt Ekland stars as James Bond’s personal assistant Mary Goodnight, and is possibly the dopiest secret agent ever. Ekland had wanted to be a Bond girl since she saw Dr. No, and personally I think that the producers should have cast her about a decade earlier, and then maybe she wouldn’t look so past her prime. Roger Moore is obviously also past his prime, but there’s a lot of stuntman fights to attempt to convince the public otherwise. Worse yet, the production team added parts where Bond throws a child off a boat and threatens to break Maud Adams’s arm in a very weird attempt to make Roger Moore seem like a more “rough-and-tumble” Bond. Moore claims to have hated filming these parts of the movie because he didn’t like what those actions implied upon the character of Bond and would have preferred to charm the woman instead. Maud Adams is more than delightful in this film but drastically under-cast; so under-cast, in fact, that she stars in the later James Bond film Octopussy as Octopussy herself. The only other women in the film are two hideous kung-fu-fighting sisters who save the elderly Bond during a Kung Fu Fighting scene (added in a poor attempt to capitalize on the Kung Fu movie craze at the time) and another actress playing a belly dancer who I also believe was “cast elderly” in an attempt to make Moore look younger.

                The stunt sequences were another good thing that was ruined by supposedly “genius” ideas. This film features the famous car barrel roll jump, preformed in one take only by the famous stunt man “Bumps” Willard. The stunt was also the first film stunt ever to be calculated by computer, as it had been designed at Cornell University years before as a calculation problem for a vehicle physics simulator. The stunt had been being performed for years as part of the American Motors Corporation traveling Thrill Show, but the producers went on to copyright and patent the trick so that it could never appear in another film. Now, this seems like it would be awesome right?  A James Bond car chase with a Barrel Roll, right? Well, you’d be wrong—because the music department decided to add a ridiculous whistle sound during the barrel roll, and the production team put Sheriff J.W. Pepper (who was actually an extremely popular part of Live and Let Die) in the passenger seat with James Bond for comic relief.  Even the title song is goofy as shit, a real toe-tapper, but has been described as “one long stream of smut.” The producers had originally spoken with Alice Cooper about a rock song to have the same title, and in fact his version appears on his “Muscle of Love” album, but the producers chose to use the slightly more “upbeat” version featured here and performed by LuLu.

                The real problem with this movie is the plot. James Bond is removed from duty and asked to resign because a super villain wants to kill him. Why should James Bond worry about a super villain, even if he is the world’s most expensive hitman? Bond deals with villains all the time, that’s his job—he’s James Bond. And this super villain—why, if you are the world’s best paid super villain, with your own private island, and the answer to the worlds energy crisis (this is actually the last Bond Film until Quantum Of Solace to deal with an environmental plot), and a midget to attend to your every need, why would you pay other hit men to attempt to assassinate you?

                The Production of The Man with the Golden Gun was rushed to the market to capitalize on numerous factors present in the era when it was produced: the energy crisis, the rising popularity of Kung Fu, and the popularity of the other films in the franchise. As a result, the film seems like a mish-mash of garbage strung together without much forethought. This resulted in poor ticket sales and almost a three year production delay until the next James Bond film, along with director Guy Hamilton’s dismissal from the franchise. Furthermore, the resulting financial crisis caused longtime producer Harry Saltzman to be forced to sell his half of the James Bond Franchise to United Artists pictures.

*It is unclear to me whether “Nick Nack” plays many roles or one, and so I have left the original language unedited.  - JK