Feminist

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 18 Comments

February 1, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974, directed by Guy Hamilton)

This is the first “meh” of the Bond series. Guy Hamilton is back in the director seat, for the last time, and he seems to have run out steam. If Live and Let Die was meant to crib from blaxploitiation films, 1974’s entry is meant to riff on Kung Fu flicks popular at the time. (Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon grossed over $400 million in 1973 dollars.) Richard Maibaum turned in a flaccid script then bailed. The Man with the Golden Gun was the last Bond film to be joint produced by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for Eon Productions and their falling out would end the “Bond film a year” schedule. That’s probably a good thing.

The good news is TMWTGG gets away from the Bond in America motif of the last two films. We’re back in the “exotic” far east. There’s no army of henchmen, no sharks, not even any Q designed gadgets, but there is (thank God) an underground lair. In the middle of the 70s Energy crisis, there’s a convoluted plot about how a former circus performer with three nipples named Francisco Scaramanga plots to control the solar energy market, as if that is not just called “capitalism.”.  Scaramanga is played wonderfully by Dracula icon Christopher Lee, who had just appeared on the cover of Band on the Run, the new album by Live and Let Die theme-singers Paul McCartney and Wings. The scenery in Hong Kong and Thailand is spectacular (even if the scene in Beirut was shot on a soundstage in London).

Roger Moore was back in his second 007 installment, already a bit weary. His quips fall flat (except for one at the end) and his mojo is dragging. TMWTGG was meant to be Moore’s entry into the Bond canon after You Only Live Twice. One wonders how 1967 Moore would have treated the role compared to 1974 Moore. As has become cliche, Scaramanga has a reluctant “lover,” played limply by Maud Adams (another Melania Trump clone). And, like the last film, there’s a bumbling but beautiful female MI-6 operative. This time it’s Mary Goodnight (Lord, these names) played by Swedish model/actress Britt Elkland, who was so great in 1971’s gangster classic, Get Carter. The great addition to the cast (and highlight of the film) is Hervé Villechaize as Scaramanga’s pint-sized right hand man, Nick Nack. Villechaize would go on to play Tattoo on TV’s Fantasy Island, cementing the words, “De plane!” into the English lexicon.

The Man with the Golden Gun was not well received upon its release in December 1974, the same week Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as vice president, after Gerald Ford became president to replace “Tricky” Dick Nixon, who had resigned. A dozen years in, TMWTGG was seen as boilerplate Bond, dropped in for 1974’s chapter for fans of the franchise. There’s a super-70s car chase that ends with one car jumping over a river (with an Evel Knievel reference!) and a car literally flying away and a Swedish sex symbol in a bikini, but not much else to write home about.

Let’s plug it into our analysis.

Driver of Action – Again, this is all Bond all the time. We don’t even get Felix. There is a minor sidekick in Lieutenant Hip, the Hong Kong cop played by Soon-Taik Oh (who was a staple on 70s TV shows like MASH and Charlie’s Angels). In one scene, he and his teen nieces rescue James with some serious (and seriously dumb) Kill Bill Kung Fu action. But yeah, it’s the Live and Let Die formula with much less payoff. Maybe it’s Bond’s polyester suits.

Role of Violence – Surprise, surprise, Bond smacks Maud Adams’ character, Andrea Anders, hard in the face and threatens to do it again. Was Bond striking women in the face required in all 007 scripts? Didn’t someone say something? I mean, Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” was #1 on radio while they made this. Someone could have said SOMETHING. Bond pulls out his little pistol a lot in this movie but only shoots Scaramanga in the climatic end scene, posing as a wax figure of himself (don’t ask). Bond also takes out a kung fu master, manly man that he is. His violence is balanced by Miss Goodnight, who throws Kra, Scaramanga’s only henchman, into a vat of liquid oxygen.

Vulnerability – Yeah, no. James loses his gun at one point. He seems a little annoyed that Goodnight wants to reconnect. This is Stepford Bond on autopilot.

Sexual Potency – We get glimpses of the Bond of old when James tries to suck a golden bullet out of a belly dancer’s navel and when he encounters a nude woman swimming in a Chinese crime lord’s pool. She introduces herself as Chew Mee, to which Bond replies, “Really?” The main sexual conquest is Bond’s bedding of Scaramanga’s lover, Andrea. In an über creepy scene he sneaks into her hotel room and watches her shower and then man handles her only to learn that (shock) she is a damsel in distress. Later, he’s decided that, why not, he’s going to have sex with Agent Goodnight, but Andrea shows up so he throws Goodnight in the closet and has sex with Andrea Anders instead. It’s pretty messed up.  Bond can’t keep his work life and his sex life separate. He does end up back in bed with Goodnight at the end of the film, but it feels more obligatory than romantic. 

Connection – 007 is even more isolated in this film. Even Moneypenny gets the brush off. Q and James seem annoyed by each other. James knocks a kid who fixes his boat into the river. When Andrea Anders is shot, he’s not phased. There are zero fucks given by this Bond. The film ends, are you ready for it, with Bond and Bond girl Britt Ekland in a boat! (This time it’s a Chinese junk.) James and Agent Goodnight are finally back in bed on a slow boat from China. But, as is now tradition, it’s a false ending. Tick Tack is waiting (for some reason) to kill 007. In an unnecessarily funny scene, there is a Bond vs. little person battle to expedite before James can get Mary back in the sack. When he does, in another moment of coitus interruptus, Q calls and asks to speak to Agent Goodnight. “She’s just coming, sir,” says James. Ah, there’s our man Bond. Then he sets the phone down so Q can listen them making the MI-6 agent with two backs. Really creepy.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 6

Summary The Man with the Golden Gun does a little bit better on the race issue than Live and Let Die. We do get some cool street-level views of Thai culture, including some great moments of Thai boxing. The contrast of free Hong Kong (with casinos) and Red China is flirted with. But the martial arts bit is weak. There’s no way 007 bests a Kung Fu master so easily, let alone an army of them. We get the comedic return of the racist Sheriff J. W. Pepper (from Live and Let Die), here on vacation in Thailand. (That’s a hard sell.) And a scene where Kra, Scaramanga’s black henchman, gets a little rapey with Goodnight. The hope is that mainstream audiences might have used TMWTGG as a gateway drug into the explosion of brilliant martial arts films that were coming out of Asia in the 1970s.

There are some great moments in this film. Bond flying a seaplane through island outcrops in the China Sea must have looked brilliant on the big screen. The ahead-of-its-time concept about the power of controlling renewable energy sources is noteworthy. Hervé Villechaize is an absolutely brilliant foil and steals every scene. And (recognizing that this might not be the most feminist bit of analysis) Britt Ekland is completely loved by the camera, which, of course, in Bond-land represents the male gaze. But there’s just a lot of silliness here. How did Scaramanga build an underground lair in an outcropping? And why did he include a funhouse, like some Disneyland attraction gone horribly wrong? James is going save his kept woman, but not really. James fancies Agent Goodnight, but not really. There is a car spinning 360 through the air and another flying off into the sunset. It’s like the writers just threw every leftover idea at the wall without the energy to see them through.

Roger Moore’s Bond smokes a ton of cigars in this film (calling Dr. Freud), drives a 1974 AMC Hornet through the streets of Bangkok like a madman, and kills guy who might have prevented global warming. It’s a mess and partly so because Bond is stuck in a tired model of manhood that had already become a caricature.

Next: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 19 Comments

January 24, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Live and Let Die (1973, directed by Guy Hamilton)

Now we’re into “my” Bond. The era of Roger Moore. And we’re still in America. Director Guy Hamilton and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz are back to give us a Bond version of a seventies blaxploitation film. Producers couldn’t bribe Sean Connery (with $5.5 million) to put his white dinner jacket on one more time so the scramble for the next Bond began. Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Anthony Hopkins, and (again) Burt Reynolds were considered but the license to kill went to Roger Moore (the first English actor to play the role), who had long been considered for the job. In the 1960s, Moore starred in The Saint, a British mystery thriller series, so he was 007 in training. Moore’s Bond comes off as more bourgeois than Connery’s, making his snarky quips much more funny. Maybe the comedic writing was just better in the seventies, but Live and Let Die has plenty of laugh out loud lines.

Live and Let Die is not a European film. The action takes place in New York (starting at the UN, then moving to Harlem), New Orleans, and the fictional island of San Monique. (Producers wanted to use Haiti, but the instability of Papa Doc Duvalier’s island forced filmmakers to move back to Jamaica and invent a tropical name.) There’s no Blofeld this time (but there is an underground lair!). Instead we get Mr. Big, a drug kingpin who has relationship with a Caribbean dictator named Kanaga (played by Yaphet Kotto, who had just played in the blaxploitation flick, Across 110th Street). The primary Bond “girl” this time is played by 21-year-old actress Jane Seymour. Since Pussy Galore (Goldfinger), the formula for the Bond girl has been a woman who is somehow in league with the bad guys who Bond peels away with his swarmy charm and Dudley Do-Right ethos. Here Solitaire (Seymour) is a psychic tarot card reader (as long as her virginity is intact) who belongs to the criminal Kanaga. Damsel in Distress Alert!!!

I didn’t see this movie when I came out the summer of 1973 (I was 9), but I knew all about it. The theme song was written and performed by Paul McCartney and Wings and was a radio staple that summer. I first saw it on TV a few years later and loved much of it, especially bayou boat chase that included a stunt that put the movie in the Guinness Book of World Records (which was like the Bible for kids in the 70s). As a boy in the Southern Klan town I was certainly challenged by the portrayals of black culture in the film that I found mostly frightening (especially the voodoo scenes). On its first TV screening the version that the Atlanta station showed removed the interracial kiss from the film. I missed out on that moment watching it age ll, but it was returned to the film by 1977 and, as a 13-year-old boy, I was already indoctrinated into the racist trope of black women as “sexual,” and was fixated on that scene. (The woman in question was CIA agent Rosie Carver, played by model Gloria Hendry.)

Live and Let Die was released at a time when “blaxploitation” films, made mostly by black filmmakers, started to find white audiences. Movies like Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972), and Cleopatra Jones (like Live and Let Die, in theaters the summer of ’73) were known for their gritty portrayals of black urban life, where black crime was often contrasted to the deeper crimes of racism. Live and Let Die contained many of these motifs and the images of James in Harlem capture a picture of urban decay that has long since gentrified. The film also finds great humor in the man out of place theme with Bond in his suit across 110th Street. “Can’t miss him. It’s like following a cue ball.” There’s a scene in a Harlem bar where Bond explains to a black waiter that ordering his whiskey “neat” means no ice, to which the waiter says, “Oh, we charge extra for that.” Brilliant.

Live and Let Die was hugely successful and worthy of our feminist analysis and probably a discussion about the portrayal of blackness as well.

Driver of Action – Maybe because there was (another) new Bond to introduce to the world, Roger Moore is the star of the show. We do get CIA agent Felix Leiter back in the fray (and a clever joke about a “Felix Lighter”). Felix (this time played by David Hedison) has, like in the last film, a team of unnamed CIA operatives, but this film is all about Bond in America, like a fish out of water. Everyone else is a  bit player.

Role of Violence – One might make the case that the violence in LALD is ramped up because it’s Bond vs. black gangsters (This time Mr. Big smacks the Bond girl instead of James), but it’s a pretty standard body count, including four MI-6 and CIA agents. As has become tradition, the carnage is saved for the end of the film, including 007 opening fire on a voodoo gathering. The climax of the film has James and Solitaire dangling over a pool of sharks (lordy) that end with 007 literally blowing up Mr. Big (his guts raining down into the shark pool). And after that, Bond battles Tee Hee, Mr. Big’s metal clawed henchman, tossing him out of the window of a moving train. Moore is less physical than Connery and Lazenby’s Bonds (at 45, Moore was 16 years older than Lazenby). He’s also more likely to rely on wit than weapons.

Vulnerability – This one is less clear. Moore is stepping into an established caricature that is forged on a popular formula. James shaving while sitting in the bathtub is about as “naked” as we are privy to witnessing. We do get to see James’ kitchen, complete with art deco tiles and espresso machine (Paging Martha Stewart!), but we still know little about James when he’s not 007-ing. Even his relationship with Rosie, the bumbling CIA agent posing as “Mrs. Bond” is more predatory than empathetic. Moore’s more bougie Bond is still walled off.

Sexual Potency – Bond is back. James quota of bedding three women is achieved in Live and Let Die. Bond’s first scene is him in the sack with a beautiful Italian agent, Miss Caruso, who has to hide in the closet when M and Moneypenny arrive at his apartment to give him his next mission. After they leave, he uses his cool magnet watch to unzip her dress for another round of “bonding.” In San Monique, he makes its with (double) agent Rosie in another interracial romp. When he calls her out for working for Mr. Big, looking for answers, he says, “And I’ll kill you if you don’t.” Having just had sex with him, she says, “But you couldn’t. You wouldn’t. Not after what we just done.” And his uber-creepy retort is, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t have killed you before.” Just a bit rapey. Finally, he beds the virginal Solitaire by tricking her with a tarot deck stacked with “Lover” cards so he can hit his quota. Even though her impropriety with Bond spells her death, she wants more 007 and begs him to come back to bed. “There’s no sense in going off half cocked,” he says in the best line of the film.

Connection – This new Bond is supremely detached, even from Moneypenny. When Rosie is killed, there’s not even a pause. There’s a reference to an MI-6 agent who was killed, and Bond says, “I rather liked him. We had the same hat maker.” That’s it. Even Felix is just a resource at the other end of a phone line. We do get the Bond/Bond girl end scene, this time not on a boat but a train to New York, headed for perhaps for some more cocking, somewhere south of Harlem.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 5

Summary Live and Let Die has a racial subtext that is a bit rough in 2025. Let’s start with the good news. Producers hired a ton of black performers for this film. Scenes shot in Harlem, New Orleans, and Jamaica are populated with black bodies. Cabaret singer B. J. Arnau’s soulful version of McCartney’s theme song is a high point of the film. Having said that, the movie is rife with racial stereotypes, from “pimp mobiles” and black gangsters peddling heroin in hollowed-out Harlem, to “mystical blacks” dancing with snakes and chanting voodoo mumbo. As a dumb white kid in rural Georgia, the film didn’t make me want to advocate for black people, it made me afraid of them. It was a spin on that “mystical black” trope when Geoffrey Holder, who plays voodoo-practicing Baron Samedi, became the pitchman for 7-Up in the “Uncola” commercials a few years later.

Contemporary viewers are likely to pin LALD as both racist and sexist. You’ve got the southern white cop who calls black men “boy” and you’ve got Bond who calls every woman “darling.” You get the sense that all the movements toward equity that we starting to become institutionalized in society in the seventies are kept at arms length by the WASP male fantasy of Bond. It’s a fair start for Moore, who comes in as a more older “gentleman” than Connery, which might lead one to think we’d get a Bond with a little more introspection. (You learn things as you age!) Instead we get sardonic raised eyebrows and lies to get women’s underwear off. That’s not an evolved man.

The action scenes in this movie are absolutely spectacular. I could watch the boat chase a hundred times. The surprise appearance of an underground lair with sharks is a chef’s kiss gift to Bond fans. And the one liners, delivered like a Blofeld laser, are side splitting. (“Butterhook!”) The score by Beatles producer George Martin is epic. And the voodoo and alligator scenes are completely terrifying. There’s so much to love in this film, even if Bond is stuck in a world that has left him behind. As Sheriff J. W. Pepper says to Bond, “What are you? Some kinda doomsday machine, boy?” No, just a device to preserve the old order.

Next: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 21 Comments

January 21, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Diamonds are Forever (1971, directed by Guy Hamilton)

Sean Connery is back! This is probably the Bond film I saw the most on the 4 O’clock Movie in the seventies. Watching it five decades later, it pretty much sucks. Eon Productions was Bond-less after George Lazenby agreed to only make one film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Numerous actors were considered, including Americans Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and Batman’s Adam West. Ultimately, Connery was lured back with a promised $1.5 million payday. To recapture the glory, Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton was brought back, as was theme song singer Shirley Bassey. Early 70s 007 looked a lot like early 60s 007.

Diamonds are Forever begins with Bond hunting down Blofeld, presumably because he killed his wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. However, his wife is never mentioned and James shows zero signs of grief or even vengeance. He’s been trying to kill Blofeld since 1963 in From Russia With Love. One could assume that Lazenby’s Bond may have been married but Connery’s never was. Diamonds are Forever is much more of an American film than any previous Bond movie, with most of the action taking place in Las Vegas. (One of the reasons American Tom Mankiewicz was hired to work on the script.) I loved the scenes in Circus, Circus and Bond racing cops on Freemont. That Vegas is long gone (although you can still shoot water into balloons at Circus, Circus). Diamonds also gives us our first American Bond girl, Tiffany Case (played by 70s-80s TV fixture Jill St. James).

The attempt to recreate the magic gives us Bond staples, including Blofeld (and his darn cat), CIA agent Felix Leiter, James gambling in a casino (craps, this time) and, of course, an underground lair. Also space lasers and an elephant that plays slot machines. Added to Blofeld’s bad guy team are Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, a pair of sociopathic gay assassins. This might have fit a “homosexuals are deviants” narrative in 1971, but now it’s just horribly offensive. (I thought it was creepy when I was a kid, but now it just seems really, really dumb.) We do get a bit of globe trotting with a stop in South African diamond mine (no mention of racial apartheid, just black miners smuggling diamonds) and Amsterdam, where James meets a scantily clad Tiffany and says he likes her change of hair color, “provided the collars and cuffs match.”

Diamonds are Forever premiered in Munich, West Germany on December 14, 1971, three days before East and West Germany signed a historic agreement allowing for more open travel across the Berlin Wall. The film was a box office blockbuster but reviewers saw it as more silly than sexy. Maybe that was due to the fact the the special effects budget was sacrificed to pay Connery’s salary. The scene of Bond driving a moon buggy through the Nevada desert, being chased by henchmen on dirt trikes, is particularly goofy. But you do get Bond in his white dinner jacket scaling the Las Vegas Hilton (the “Whyte House” in the film) and Jimmy Dean (the sausage guy) playing a character based on billionaire Howard Hughes, who was friends with Bond producer Cubby Broccoli.

Seventies Bond may fair better. Let’s drop Diamonds into our matrix.

Driver of Action – Diamonds are Forever is classic Bond. We get brief cameos from M, Q, and Miss Moneypenny. Felix and his CIA team play a minor support role, especially when 007 encounters Bambi and Thumper, Blofeld’s bathing suit-clad guardians of Willard Whyte. Part of the story drifts into heist film with James and Tiffany as a team, but, rarely fully clothed, she seems to be just brought along for added sex appeal. Producers had Connery back and were going to make sure he was in nearly every frame.

Role of Violence  – The film starts with Bond on a killing spree as he tries to find Blofeld. That includes finding a woman on a beach, ripping off her bikini top, and strangling her with it. Ultimately, after killing someone in Blofeld’s lab (with mud), Bond kills Blofeld. Or a Blofeld.(“Welcome to hell, Blofeld.”)  There’s a scene where Bond kills a diamond smuggler after a pretty intense fight in a Dutch elevator and the now routine scene where Bond slaps his Bond girl. Most “fun” is when Bond realizes that Blofeld is alive (THE GUY THAT KILLED HIS WIFE – BUT NOT MENTIONED). In fact, there are apparently multiple “cloned” Blofelds and cats. He’s faced with two Blofelds (this time played by Brit Charles Gray, who played an MI-6 agent in You Only Live Twice). With a 50-50 chance, Bond shoots and kills the wrong Blofeld. “Right idea, Mr. Bond,” says Blofeld. “But wrong pussy,” says Bond. Oh yeah, there’s a climatic shoot out on an oil rig between the CIA and the Henchmen that kills a grip of dudes.

Vulnerability – Nope. Zero mention of Bond’s dead wife. Not even a hint that that’s why he’s after Blofeld. Older Bond is all business.

Sexual Potency – James might be losing his touch. He hooks up with a casino trollop named (ready?) Plenty O’Toole (played by Natalie Wood’s little sister, Lana). He gets her dress off but before he can get his pants off, some mobsters throw her out of a hotel window, into a pool. He tells the gun-toting goons, “Well, I’m afraid you’ve caught me with more than my hands up,” which, I assume, is a reference to the Bond Boner. Of course, Bond does bed Tiffany Case. (Her smoking in his bed the next morning is the clue.) At one point, while his body on hers, she asks, “What’s going to happen to me?” “I’m on top of the situation,” James says. Snort. But the required three sexual conquests is not achieved in Diamonds are Forever. Gee, maybe he was thinking about Tracy.

Connection – Maybe Connery was just tired of playing Bond, but 007 doesn’t really seem to care about anybody in this film, including M, Felix, Moneypenny, or Plenty (who gets tossed out of a tenth story window). There is some connection with Tiffany, who seems to want to be a spy as much as a diamond smuggler. The film ends with James and Tiffany, wait for it it, in a boat! This time it’s an ocean liner. But we’re not quite done. Here come Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, the homicidal homosexuals, posing as waiters with bomb souffle to kill Bond. They end up on fire and blown up, over the side as James and Tiffany sail away to short-term happiness.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 4

Summary Seventies Bond still has a problem with race. The primary cast is lily white and we’re still stuck with “the sun never sets on the British Empire” ethos. (Did Richard Nixon have anything to say about British agents running amok in Vegas?) There’s a scene in Circus, Circus where a black woman is transformed into a gorilla for the amusement of children. And the mobsters of Slumber, Inc are caricatures of Italian mafiosos. Some of this will be both fixed and made worse in the next installment, Live and Let Die.

Aside from slapping Bond “girls” or throwing them out of windows, you get the sense that the most misogynist elements of the franchise were running on fumes by 1971. Diamonds are Forever is a cartoon version of a 007 film that tries to balance sexy or sexist Bond quips with more over the top diabolical plans. (There’s a comment from Blofeld that if his space laser destroys Kansas, nobody will know about it for four years.) It’s all just dumb. They should have made Gloria Steinem a Bond girl and had her repurpose MI-6 and the CIA to raid the underground lair of patriarchy. Ms. Bond, we need you.

Next: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 21 Comments

January 19, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, directed by Peter Hunt)

James Bond got married! Eon Productions had to scramble to find a new Bond after Sean Connery quit during the making of You Only Live Twice. Potential 007s included future Bond Timothy Dalton (too young) and Superman bad guy Terrence Stamp (too creepy?). Producer Albert Broccoli and first time director Peter Hunt settled on Australian model George Lazenby after seeing him in a chocolate bar commercial. Lazenby looked like a slightly younger Connery, but lacked the acting chops. He was offered a contract for seven Bond films but agreed to do only one, believing the 007 franchise would become passé in the 1970s. 

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the first Bond novel authored by Ian Fleming after his spy became a big screen feature and was written to leave out the heavy reliance on gadgets Hollywood Bond relied on. The primary Bond girl was Countess Tracy di Vincenzo, played by Diana Rigg. From 1965 to 1968, Rigg played Emma Peel on the popular British spy TV show, The Avengers. (Rigg joined The Avengers to replace Honor Blackman, who had left to play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.) Emma Peel was often considered the “female James Bond,” so bringing Rigg in may have been meant to offer a new role for the Bond “girl” at the end of the decade.

The film was premiered in the United States on December 19, 1969 while the country was consumed with the details surrounding the Charles Manson murders. By January, it topped the box office on both sides of the Atlantic but received mixed reviews for veering from the blockbuster Bond formula. Overtime, the film has gained respect for remaining closer to the Fleming novel than other screen adaptations, and that was Hunt’s intent. The script even comments on previous Bond films, such as the opening scene were Lazenby’s Bond rescues Rigg from the ocean and fights some random henchmen. Lazenby breaks the fourth wall and says to the camera, “This never happened to the other fellow.” Or when Bond resigns from MI-6 and looks at some of his gadgets from previous films with a smirk of disdain while they remain in his shabby office desk.

We do get tried and true Bond tropes, including an underground lair filled with henchmen, Bond at the Baccarat table, his appetite of Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon, flirting with Moneypenny, and Blofeld (this time played by American Telly Savalas). But in one way, this is a very different Bond film, one that ends with a Mrs. James Bond.

Let’s plug it in to our feminist matrix and see where we come out.

Driver of Action – We are in full solo Bond mode in OHMSS. We have no “team” helping drive the story. (Q only makes a brief appearance at the end of the film.) There is an MI-6 agent, apparently named Shaun, who keeps an eye on James, from a distance, in Portugal and Switzerland but is killed off pretty early. And there’s Draco, the head of a Portuguese crime syndicate, who helps Bond take down Blofeld at the end of the film. But it’s pretty much just James, including when he goes rogue from MI-6 after being taken off the Blofeld case by M. We do see Blofeld (as a prequel to Kojak) leading more of the action, including slapping on a pair of skis to race down the Alps to catch Bond. There’s also a killer bobsled race between Bond and Blofeld. And, sadly, Blofeld’s cat only appears briefly.

Role of Violence – Lazenby’s Bond seemed a little more skilled in fake martial arts skills than Connery. There’s more chops and flips but the body count is reserved for the the end of the film (although, early in the film, he slaps Rigg’s character pretty hard). He sends a few henchmen on skis to their deaths as they plunge off a cliff and during the climatic assault on Blofeld’s mountaintop lair, he machine guns a bunch of henchmen and a scientist who throws a bottle of acid at him. This Bond punched harder, but used his gun a lot less. Does that make him less manly or more?

Vulnerability – OK, this is the big one. The set up is that mob boss Darco wants Bond to marry his troubled daughter, Tracy (AKA TV bad ass Emma Peel). Darco says, “What she needs is a man to dominate her” (puke) and offers James a million pounds in gold as a dowery. Bond says he doesn’t need the money and says, “I have a bachelor’s taste for freedom.” But something strange happens. It seems like Bond is falling in love with Tracy. There’s even a very 1969 montage of James and Tracy doing “falling in love” stuff, like walking on the beach and window shopping for rings, set to an original song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David called “We Have All the Time in the World,” sung my Louis Armstrong! Is this a chick flick? Maybe it’s all part of a ruse to get Darco’s help going after Blofeld.

Nope. After Tracy rescues Bond in a Swiss town and escapes more henchmen in one of the craziest chase scenes on film, Tracy and James end up hiding in the hayloft of a barn. Instead of making his usual sex moves (like he did several times earlier in the film), he tells her, “I’m thinking about us. I love you. Will you marry me?” (I’ll take “Things I’d Never Expect to Hear in a James Bond Film” for $200, Alex.) She agrees to be “Mrs. James Bond” and we have a very different 007 flick. Instead of sealing the deal, James decides they should sleep separately. “The proper time for this is our wedding night. That’s my New Year’s resolution,” he says. “Whatever you say, my dear,” says Tracy. “And that is yours,” James quips. OK, maybe not that different.

The last Bond film of the 1960s ends like the dozens of Elvis Presley films of the 1960s, with a wedding. The proficient bedder of endless women is now wedded in holy matrimony, with M (and the rest of us) in shock that it happened and poor Miss Moneypenny in tears. But there is no happily ever after. A car driven by Blofeld pulls up next to the newlyweds and Irma Bunt, Blofeld’s henchwoman, fills Bond’s Aston Martin with machine gun fire. The final scene of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is James Bond in tears, holding his dead wife.

Sexual Potency – Before we forget, this is a James Bond film. When Tracy appears at the casino, the camera lingers on her cleavage. She ends up in Bond’s bed as a business transaction (he payed her gambling debt). The encounter is so transactional it creates doubt in the legitimacy of the “romance” that follows (enhanced by a scene at a bullfighting ring where Darco is trying to pass his daughter off to Bond.) When Bond gets into Blofeld’s lair, pretending to be a gay genealogist (don’t ask), he’s met with a dozen beautiful women (Blofeld’s “Angles of Death”) that he goes to work on, sleeping with two in one night while scheduling a third. “Work is piling up,” he snorts. He may be in love with Tracy, but Bond’s gotta Bond.

Connection – This Bond does seem to have some genuine affection for M and Moneypenny, even kissing Moneypenny on the lips. But, again, this is solo Bond in action. His connection to Tracy seems to become genuine when she rescues him from Blofeld’s henchmen, repeatedly kissing her on the cheek as she frantically drives her getaway car from their gunfire. In the end, he is alone again and viewers are told to get ready for the next chapter of our man Bond.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 5

Summary Hunt and Lazenby’s Bond may be closer to Ian Fleming’s 007 than the formula viewers had had become used to, but there’s still plenty of sexism in OHMSS. The most obvious proponent of misogyny is Darco (played by Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti). He just goes on and on telling Bond how his daughter needs to be manhandled and smiles at that fact that Bond got her in the sack. He even punches his daughter in the face, knocking her out, so she doesn’t try to rescue James in the gunfight. At the wedding he says to her, “Obey your husband in all things.” We also get get Bond ogling a Playboy magazine (and stealing the centerfold) and working his way through Blofeld’s scantily clad angels of death. “Just a slight stiffness coming on,” he says, sitting among them in his kilt.

Don’t expect Bond to be mourning his dead wife in the next installment, 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. James will be back to his old tricks. But the final scene of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service gives a glimpse of a more human man than in all the previous 007 films, left to reconcile the cost of vulnerability when your job requires you to carry a license to kill.

Next: Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 22 Comments

January 12, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

You Only Live Twice (1967, directed by Lewis Gilbert)

This might be the most Bondy Bond of all. Not only does it have the usual staples; underground lairs, evil global plots, white bikinis, and Blofeld’s pussy cat, but also a massive army of ninja warriors. I probably enjoyed it too much. Maybe it was the brilliant score by John Barry and dead volcanoes erupting. Maybe it’s because I watched it on a Saturday morning, hyped up on coffee and taking a break from the devastating news of the L.A. fires. Yeah, this was supposed to be Sean Connery’s last 007 film. The Scottish actor was worried he’d be forever typecast and announced that he’d be Bond no more before You Only Live Twice premiered. Maybe Connery’s weariness added to the “I could not give a damn” laconic attitude of 1967 Bond, making him that much more appealing to old school notions of rogue masculinity. It’s either Bond on auto-pilot or Bond fully realized. I can’t decide.

The screenplay for You Only Live Twice was written by acclaimed children’s book author Roald “Willie Wonka” Dahl. Dahl was a friend of Ian Flemming’s and (very) loosely adopted his novel for the screen. The original source paid mind to Japanese culture and Dahl retained the detailed Japanese wedding scene in the script. (Unlike other globe-hopping 007 films, the action here is primarily in Japan.) But Dahl had to create much of the plot himself. For example, producers told him Bond needed to make love to three women in the movie so he had to add two additional relationships in the screenplay.

The story is set in the 1960s space race between the US and USSR. We finally get to see Blofeld’s face and it’s great British actor Donald Pleasence. The British are trying to broker the peace between America and Russia as space capsules start disappearing from orbit. (Keep calm and don’t start World War 3.) They put Bond on the case who discovers that SPECTRE is helping an Asian country (presumably China) start a war between cold war adversaries so they can emerge from the ashes. (This plot seemed like it was as much 2025 as 1967. Because, you know, China.) After faking his own death, Bond ends up in Tokyo, after being shot out of a submarine torpedo tube without an air tank. (007 has very good lungs.) A welcomed sight is the large number of Japanese actors who were hired to make up a large percentage of the cast. Welcomed after the Hollywood tradition of making up white actors to look “Oriental.” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I’m looking at you.)

There are flushes of anti-Asian racism in You Only Live Twice. Connery’s first scene is in Hong Kong and Bond is in bed with an Asian woman. The first line of the film is, “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?” He then talks about how Peking duck is different from Russian caviar, but he loves them both. She replies, “Darling, I give you very best duck.” I laughed and I shouldn’t have. There’s a section where James has to be transformed into a Japanese villager that seems to mainly involve him putting on a Beatle wig. And so on. You Only Live Twice premiered in London on June 12 (with Queen Elizabeth in attendance), the same day the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Loving v. Virginia decision, legalizing interracial marriage, so maybe audiences were ready to see James in bed with non-white women. The film has plenty of that.

How doe Far East Bond fit in our analysis?

Driver of Action – After the ensemble romp of Casino Royale, we’re back to solo Bond. We don’t even get Felix Leiter on the scene. We do get Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service (played by Tetsurō Tamba) to provide James with his ninja training and fix him up with his undercover Japanese wife, played by Mie Hama (who I remember from 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla). Tanaka also serves as something of a pimp for James. Taking Bond home, he says, ““Consider my house yours, including all of my possessions.” Then four young women in their underwear walk out. “In Japan, men always come first. Women come second,” he says as the women bathe Bond.

Role of Violence – 007 has a license to kill a ton of people in this movie. He shoots an assassin and then three or four dockworkers (while single-handedly fighting dozens), and countless henchmen in Blofeld’s under-volcano lair. There’s a SPECTRE agent who failed to kill Bond who Blofeld dumps in a pool of piranhas. (Bond also throws a henchman into the piranha pool.) The climatic battle between ninjas and henchmen probably has a body count above a hundred. There seems to be no remorse for anyone killed. It’s just entertainment.

Vulnerability – In the novel of You Only Live Twice, Bond’s mock Japanese bride is a woman named Kissy Susuki and the union produced a child. In the film she is not named. Before the wedding Bond asks Tiger Tanaka, “Is she pretty?” He replies, “She has a face like a pig,” and Bond grimaces. Of course she’s beautiful and later plays a role in James’ rescue. As has become rote, Connery’s Bond has zero moments of weakness, although the technology used is through the roof in this film. He needs his damn gadgets. Yet, Bond seems bulletproof. Literally. There are countless rounds fired at Bond, including from four attack helicopters and Jimmy doesn’t even suffer a scratch.

Sexual Potency – In 1967, I’m banking on the fact that part of the pitch of You Only Live Twice was that is was chocked full of “exotic” Asian women. From the first scene with Bond in bed with Aki (played by Akiko Wakabayashi)l, who throughout the film rescues 007 in her white sports car, to Tanaka’s House girls, there is plenty of “exotic” on display. (It’s worth noting that when Tanaka offers Bond one of his “girls” for Bond to take back to his room, Bond picks the one that’s most likely a white actress made up to look Japanese.) Then there’s Helga Brandt, a SPECTRE assassin who has James tied to chair and becomes sexual with him. (She’s a redhead. That’s what they do.) James talk her out of holding him and then uses her knife to cut the straps on her dress. “Oh, the things I do for England,” he mutters. (She later tries to again kill him by jumping out of the plane she’s flying.) James also tries to get busy with his mock wife, but she pushes him away and he then pushes away a plate of raw oysters. “Well, I won’t need these,” he says. Is JB suffering from ED?

Connection – Bond’s connection to his co-workers is minimal. M and Q make brief appearances. Q arrives in Tokyo to bring a cool mini-helicopter with heat seeking missiles! Even Bond’s usually flirtatious relationship with Moneypenny seems to have cooled off. He doesn’t even sexually harass her. When Aki, who saved Bond’s bacon more than once, is poisoned in bed next to him, he seems nonplussed. Connery’s weariness by the fifth film is reflected in Bond’s lack of effort with the women in the film and also in a stanza from the theme song, sung by Nancy Sinatra: “You drift through the years and life seems tame ‘til one dream appears and Love is its name.” As must now be required, the film ends with Bond and his mock wife (Kissy Suzuki is definitely a “Bond girl”) in a boat, another rescue raft in another sea. ”Now about that honeymoon,” he says to her. Then viewers are told that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is on its way (along with the next batch of Bond girls).

Toxic Masculinity Score: 7

Summary It was Ian Fleming’s intent that readers of You Only Live Twice learn more about Japanese culture. When the book came out in 1964, we were only 19 years from the nuking of Japan and the end of WWII. Dahl devoted screen time to Sumo wrestling, the traditional wedding, and the rise of Japanese corporate power (there are a lot of Toyotas in this flick). But we also get nods to the Japanese version of patriarchy with Tiger Tanaka’s house girls as well as the standard English Bond jokes, like when Helga, referring to a warning about smoking, says, “Mr. Osato believes in a healthy chest” as her own chest fills the camera frame.

One wonders what You Only Live Twice would have been like if the James Bond-Kissy Suzuki marriage had been truer to the original novel. Instead we get tired James floating off be played by another actor, likely stepping into the well-established formula.

Next: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 22 Comments

January 11, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Casino Royale (1967, directed by John Huston and others)

After four hugely successful Bond films, it’s time for the first Bond spoof. Casino Royale was the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books (published in 1953). The John Huston directed film brings back many faces from the first four films from the the United Artists Bond canon, including Ursula Andress (who, as MI-6 agent Vesper Lynd, sounds way too much like Melania Trump). Casino Royale is a comedy meant to mock many of the Bond conventions, so it’s going to score differently than the films produced by Eon Productions, the home to “official” 007 movie franchise.

Here we get an older Bond, played by David Niven, who is 20 years retired after a sad end of a relationship with his beloved Mata Hari. He stutters and is known for his celibacy. This ain’t Sean Connery’s Bond. He’s brought back to MI-6 by M (played by Huston himself) to deal with evil SMERSH. (We don’t know what SMERSH stands for but there was a counter-intelligence group in the Soviet Union with the same name). M is comically killed so Bond takes the helm of MI-6, where he is reunited with Miss Moneypenny, or at least her daughter. (Strangely, Moneypenny now has an American accent, played by Barbara Bouchet, who was born in Nazi Germany.) He orders all the “Double O” agents to change their names to “James Bond” to confuse and trap SMERSH baccarat player Le Chiffre, played with gusto by Orson Welles. Two of those agents include Peter Sellers and a very young Woody Allen.

Casino Royale is a madcap farce that lampoons the cool image of 007. There’s even a yakety sax soundtrack during chase and fight scenes (some played by Herb Albert). The funny Bond quips are turned up to 11, jumping from wry to hilarious. (“James Bond doesn’t wear glasses.” Bond: “Yes, it’s just because I like to see who I’m shooting.”) The film is fully located in the mid-sixties. The first shot is graffiti that says, “Les Beatles.” The scene where the Peter Sellers’ Bond is drugged is straight psychedelia. And the movie introduces the Burt Bacharach song, “The Look of Love,” sung by Dusty Springfield (and sung by Bacharach himself in 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery). The film was released in April 1967 and Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was released shortly after setting up the iconic “Summer of Love.”

This may be an anti-Bond Bond film, piercing some of the tried and true tropes of the previous four films, but it’s worth dropping it into our feminist matrix if just for point of comparison.

Driver of Action – There are multiple drivers of the story here, including multiple Bonds. Sir James Bond (Niven) plays almost a support role. The majority of the story centers around Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers as a Bond surrogate) and Vesper Lynd (Andress). A section of the film follows Bond’s daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Bond (played by Joanna Pettet) in an adventure in Berlin (which features A Hard Day’s Night’s Anna Quayle and a hilarious scene where a hole is blown in the Berlin Wall and a wave of East Germans run out). This is an ensemble cast.

Role of Violence – It’s a Bond film so there a guns and explosions. But much of the violence is done for laughs, aided by a comedic soundtrack. But, other than an army of fembots with machine guns, there is no overt violence. I don’t think Niven’s or Seller’s Bonds kill anybody.

Vulnerability – The premise of this story is that Bond experienced heartbreak from his true love, Mata Hari, and looks for a connection to his daughter Mata Bond (who is abducted into a SMERSH flying saucer). He’s developed a stammer that he’s self-conscious of and his fighting style as become what might be describes as “effeminate.”

Sexual Potency – The joke of the movie is that Bond is celibate and that 00 agents are being killed because they can’t resist women. Bond creates a program to train agents to resist females in a scene where Agent Cooper rebuffs seductive women by throwing them to the mat. There is one scene where Sir Bond forcibly kisses Moneypenny (or her daughter). Ursula Andress plays seductress to Peter Sellers’ Bond, as does Miss Goodthighs (played by a young Jacqueline Bisset). Additionally, Dr. Noah (not Dr. No), played by Woody Allen, has a fourth quarter evil plot. He has a biological weapon that will make all women beautiful and kill all men over 4 foot 6, making him the tallest (and most sexually attractive?) man on earth.

Connection – There are few autonomous men in this film. The last quarter of the movie features Sir James, Moneypenny, Mata, and Agent Cooper working together to bring down Le Chiffre at the Casino Royale. And the Calvary (literally!) arrives to help save the day. Bond’s connection to his daughter seems sincere as is his desire to shepherd MI-6 in the post-M era. The film ends with the cast, having been blown up, floating in heaven, while Woody Allen’s character drops down to hell.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 2

Summary Casino Royale is not a feminist critique of Bond. It’s a mid-sixties comedy so there are plenty of jokes rooted in sexism. For example, after M dies, Bond is sequestered in his house with his eleven seductive daughters (actually SMERSH agents) and his equally seductive widow (played with great hilarity by Deborah Kerr). But the film also completely mocks Bond’s Lothario reputation. (Woody Allen as James Bond should make the point.) There are plenty of nods to the Bond franchise, including an underground lair and even women in gold paint, but the ensemble nature of Casino Royale stands in stark contrast to Bond 1 to 4.

Unlike the previous film, Thunderball, whose cast is entirely gone, many cast members from Casino Royale are still with is, including Ursula Andress, Woody Allen, Joanna Pettet, Barbara Bouchet, and Jacqueline Bisset. I’d love to know how they see the film’s depiction of Bond and of women from a contemporary lens. The film is both hilarious and, at times, a complete mess, but also provided a break from the Bond formula. Sometimes stepping out of something allows us a fresh perspective on it. Two months later there would be another Sean Connery Bond flick headed to theaters. I wonder if viewers saw it differently after watching Casino Royale.

Next: You Only Live Twice (1967)


The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 25 Comments

January 8, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Thunderball (1965, directed by Terence Young)

Adjusted for inflation, Thunderball is the largest grossing of all Bond films. And it looked big, being the first Bond flick shot in widescreen Panavision. This was supposed to be the first Bond feature in 1962, but a legal dispute held it up in court. However, original director Terence Young was back at the helm so it had a very “classic Bond” feel. We end up back in the Caribbean (the Bahamas this time) so we see more black faces, including Bond team member Pinder, played by Earl Cameron (who some will remember from Dr. Who). And also sharks. Lots of sharks.

My initial thought watching this film was that all these “Bond Girls” look alike. Same cheek bones, same hair style, same dubbed in voice. Maybe it was just post-holiday malaise, but I found myself repeatedly confused as to which actress Sean Connery’s Bond was making the moves on. By film #4, they were virtually cookie cutter. The primary Bond girl in Thunderball is Domino. Producers originally considered Julie Christie, Raquel Welch, and Faye Dunaway for the part, but settled on beauty queen Claudine Auger (Miss France!). By film four you get the feeling that half the draw of a Bond film is just the cavalcade of beautiful women for James to plow through. However, there is a scene where SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe (played by Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi) blows up a car with rockets on her motorcycle and then takes off her helmet to reveal her flowing red hair that is pretty, um, empowering.

Thunderball premiered in Tokyo on December 9, 1965 at a time when the anti-Vietnam War movement was gaining steam in the U.S.. (On November 27, tens of thousands of protestors marched from the LBJ White House to the Washington Monument.) Thunderball skirts Cold War tensions by, again, making SPECTRE the bad guys. This time, #2, Emilio Largo (played by Italian actor Adolfo Celi), is ransoming NATO for £100 million in diamonds after stealing two nuclear bombs (a plot later spoofed in the first Austin Powers movie).

What this Bond film is most famous for is not the women or the evil plot (both a bit tired by 1965), but the extensive underwater filming. A quarter of this film takes place underwater, including shots of cool submersible vehicles and a massive speargun battle between the good guys and the bad guys. It must have been spectacular to see it on the widescreen in the mid-1960s. Apparently, the ocean shooting in Nassau had to be done at low tide because of the constant threat of sharks and the scene where Bond is in a salt water pool full of sharks almost ended with Connery getting chomped. The tropical locale means we get plenty of bikinis and bare-chested Bond as well as boats exploding (now a Bond film staple).

Let’s plug Thunderball into our feminist matrix.

Driver of Action – For the first time, we almost get Bond as a part of a team. Presumably assembled by MI-6, we get an on-the-ground team in Nassau put together to help James avert nuclear catastrophe, including familiar faces like CIA bro Felix Leiter (this time played by Rik Van Nutter) and MI-6 gadget guy Q, who, in Bermuda shorts, laments having to meet 007 “in the field.” He’s also joined by Pinder, another unnamed Afro-Caribbean dude, and CIA agent Paula Caplan, played by Martine Beswick (back from her role as “Gypsy Girl #2” in From Russia with Love). It’s mainly Felix who bales James out (in his handy CIA helicopter), but it should be noted that Paula is kidnapped by SPECTRE and commits suicide rather than rat on James. She’s the DDID. (Dead Damsel in Distress.) But it’s still Bond in the driver seat, whether he’s dodging sharks or ordering Beluga caviar.

Role of Violence – Thunderball opens with Bond killing SPECTRE assassin Jacques Bouvar (who is dressed as a woman, so there’s that) and then escaping with a supercool (for 1965) jetpack. There’s a few henchmen (dressed in black, like an episode of Batman, which debuted the following year) that Bond kills, although they may just be stunned. Some henchmen throw another henchman into a pool of sharks. And whole bunch of frogmen, good, bad, and otherwise, get shot by spearguns in the Caribbean, some likely by 007. Other than the epic underwater battle, the body count is not giant and those scuba dudes who are killed are probably then eaten by sharks, so, the circle of life.

Vulnerability – It’s 007, so audiences don’t expect an inner window into Bond’s heart and it seems even more walled up than ever. He’s less dependent on technology than in Goldfinger, but James swallowing a radioactive pill so the CIA can track him seems like some kind of weird acknowledgement that maybe James can’t do everything by himself. There’s also a moment where James is trying to rescue Paula from Largo’s compound and he accidentally drops his gun off the roof he’s on. The look on his face seems to say, “Uh oh. My dick just fell off.”

Sexual Potency – Here’s where Thunderball goes off the rails. The first part of the movie, Bond is camped out at an English health spa called Shrublands, where he continually sexually harasses a masseuse (physiotherapist?) named Patricia (played by Molly Peters, featured in Playboy’s 1965 “James Bond’s Girls” spread). He forcefully kisses her and then when she thinks Bond’s bad experience on a, more Medieval than medicinal, stretching rack is her fault (it was a henchman) she frets that if her boss finds out, she could lose her spa job. “My silence could have a price,” James says then pulls her away for some quid pro quo sex. In the end, they’re in bed, with Bond doing the massaging.

Then there’s James’ relationship with SPECTRE agent Volpe. Her red hair is a classic signifier of a libidinous woman and when Bond walks uninvited into her bathroom to find her naked in her bathtub, he smirks with the recognition that he’s about to get another notch in his belt, “as if it was intended.” Because she’s a wicked redhead, she takes off Bond’s clothes and they end up in the sack where he tells her, “you should be locked up in a cage.” Rawr. Post coitus, she (and her henchmen) turn the tables on Bond, who seems shocked that he got caught with his pants down. In a moment for the Bond Girl demographic, she says, “But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and immediately returns to the side of right and virtue. But not this one.” Snap.

The final scenes are about rescuing Miss France/Domino from bad guy Largo. Bond sucks sea urchin poison from her foot and then they make love on the beach. When 007 says he needs her help catching Largo, she dejectedly says, “Of course. That’s why you make love to me.” Sex as transactional in Bond films. And also now cemented as a cliche, the film ends with Bond and Domino in a boat, this time a rescue raft floating in the Caribbean.

Connection – Thunderball begins and ends with Bond alone, acting or celebrating (with his prize) his actions. We do get to see a section of the Bond working with a team, but it’s sort of like Superman and his super-friends. Bond is in the lead. Again, as by Film 4, Bond is now the archetype of the man alone. He mocks love (including with Moneypenny), but he never actually has it. I wonder if writers ever considered developing a bromance between James and Felix. Maybe, at some point in this chronology, we’ll meet a James Bond who cares about somebody.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 8

Summary By 1965, James Bond had officially become a franchise, produced by men to maximize 007 revenue. In the opening credits, the only females listed are “continuity girl” and “wardrobe mistress.” The fledgeling second wave feminist movement hadn’t yet turned its attention to Hollywood and the impact of this picture of gender. The normalization of sexual harassment in the 1960s (here, Bond’s treatment of spa worker Patricia) would later be unpacked by the brilliant AMC series Mad Men (2007 – 2015). But Bond is such a cad in Thunderball it makes watching his witty banter with the other characters in the film a lot less fun to watch. 

We do get tastes of gender subversions. There’s Volpe (Italian for “fox”) blowing stuff up, motorcycle between her legs, and later removing 007’s clothes and then sexually besting him. (“But not this one.”) Again, we get a female hotel concierge ogling Bond’s backside and Paula, the female CIA agent (who dies because, you know, lady CIA agents). But it all stands in the shadow of Bond’s hyper-masculinity. He even tries to feminize Largo by saying of his skeet shooting rifle, “That gun looks more fitting for a woman.” Huh?

On a personal note, I appreciated the return to the Caribbean, especially Nassau where I experienced a particular “man making” experience as a 17-year-old boy. I loved the scenes shot during Junkanoo; Carnival in the Bahamas. It caught a glimpse of the decolonization that was happening in the black world in the 1960s and while there was no dreadlock rasta in Thunderball, behind the highly paid white actors in the camera’s focus there were a bunch of black faces who knew the world was changing. Those are the Bahamians I met when I was there as a teenager in the 1980s.

Next: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 24 Comments

December 30, 2024

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Goldfinger (1964, directed by Guy Hamilton)

“That’s my James!” Welcome to the James Bond blockbuster. With the massive success of From Russia With Love came an even bigger budget (and a new director). Goldfinger gave us franchise staples, like the pre-credits action scene, the bouncy Bond quips, infinite gadgets (including the loaded Aston Martin), the epic theme song, and multiple exotic locations (including rural Kentucky). And of course there are multiple women who are branded as Bond “girls” in the film who find their way into 007’s beefy arms.

The box office smash surely benefited from the 1964 British Invasion and the American obsession with all things English. Bond even has a snarky line about the Fab Four after he beds Goldfinger’s girl Jill Masterson, chiding her not understanding his standards for chilled Champaign. “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Pérignon ’53 above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.” (It should be noted that two of the actors in Goldfinger, Richard Vernon (Colonel Smithers) and Margaret Nolán (Dink), had just appeared in the Beatles’ film A Hard Days Night and the Beatles 1965 film, Help!, would be a send up of Goldfinger.)

Goldfinger cemented the formula for what a Bond film would be for decades to come. It was released in September of 1964, in a world that was increasingly surrendering to the ennui of the East-West Cold War, the same month as Lyndon Johnson’s apocalyptic “Daisy” campaign ad that ended with a mushroom cloud. I had been born 7 months earlier and would be socialized into a world that saw Bond as the modern model of masculinity. Let’s check Goldfinger with our five reference criteria.

Driver of Action – Goldfinger is the archetypical Bond film, the begins with him blowing some shit up in Mexico and ends with him making sweet love to Bond Girl #3 Pussy Galore on a desert island, telling her “This is no time to be rescued.” There is no “buddy,” as in the previous two films, just Bond, and his MI-6 and CIA supporters (who play minimal roles). Even the nefarious plotting by Goldfinger (played by former Nazi Gert Fröbe after Orson Welles proved to be too expensive) to irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox is a minor subplot. Goldfinger is all about watching Sean Connery as Bond move from scene to scene; Mexico, Miami, London, Switzerland, Kentucky. In the opening scene, he steps out of his wetsuit dressed in a white dinner jacket and you know this going to be 110 minutes of pure Connery.

Role of Violence – Again, Bond has a relatively low bodycount in this film. People do die, especially women, including Jill Masterson. For her flirtation with Bond, she is painted gold and dies of “skin suffocation.” Her sister Tilly is killed by Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman. But Mr. License-to-Kill is mostly restrained. A Mexican assassin gets an electric fan tossed into his bathtub. Some henchmen go over a cliff in a fiery crash after Bond shoots slick oil out of his Aston Martin. In the climatic scene in Fort Knox, Bond throws a henchman off a ledge and electrocutes Oddjob. (Apparently actor Harold Sakata was severely burned in the stunt.) Mostly Bond is the recipient of violence, including a laser beam aimed at his most manly parts while he is strapped to a table.

Vulnerability – Yeah, no. You wonder if we have to wait until the ‘90s to get new age sensitive James Bond. Whether strapped to a table with a laser heading toward his junk or locked in a Kentucky holding cell, or in a plane plummeting to the earth, we never see James break a sweat. 

Sexual Potency – Goldfinger is balls out on the message that Bond is the conquerer of women. In the opening sequence, he goes after a Mexican dancer and then uses her body to deflect an assassin. In Miami, he’s getting a poolside massage from his Florida fling, Dink (who’s cleavage was also featured in A Hard Days Night). Then there’s the romp with Jill who gets painted gold. In Switzerland, when a blonde passes him by in a ’64 Mustang convertible, he resists the urge to chase after her. “Discipline, 007, discipline,” he says to himself. She turns out to be Jill’s sister and they have a moment before Oddball kills her with his killer hat.

That brings us to Pussy Galore (the character, not the male fantasy). The Bond double entendres hit a new level here and Pussy’s name is mentioned constantly in the second half of the film. Galore is played by Honor Blackman, who was Diana Rigg’s predecessor on the highly popular British spy show, The Avengers. So she was coming in to Bondland a Judo-flipping badass, not a submissive DID (Damsel In Distress). In Goldfinger, she’s the leader of Goldfinger’s team of female pilots, playing a role in his grand slam plan. But there’s a scene in Goldfinger’s barn where James manhandles Pussy and the subsequent judo fight ends up with the two literally rolling in the hay. Galore tries to push Bond off her, but no woman can resist 007 and his assault ends in a passionate kiss. Woot, there it is.

Connection – Unbeknownst to the viewer, Pussy Galore’s Stockholm Syndrome turns her into an ally of Bond’s and Goldfinger’s evil plot is thwarted. As has already become an uber-cliche in Bond films, their end scene, making out under the parachute, casts no allusion that it’s the beginning of a beautiful relationship between James and Pussy. We know how this works. Women are transitory and co-workers are support players. Does Bond have any friends? A love that got away? He is supremely untethered. A man alone.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 7

Summary –  Like an explosion of everything that was 1960s before LSD, Goldfinger is a magnum opus of a spy action film. The clever crime attempted (to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox to drive up the value of personal stocks of the metal) takes a back seat to watching Connery leap frog from woman to woman, often with his suped-up Bondmobile (Oh, to have stock in Aston Martin in 1964). Connery’s Bond is the Id unrestrained. One wonders what MI-6’s HR department would say about the workplace flirtations between Bond and Miss Moneypenny in the post #metoo era. But it’s the scene between Bond and Galore in the barn that reminds us that the debonair spy is not immune from the misogynistic value of male entitlement. A generation of boys learned women are to be taken by men, even if they resist. Pussy galore, indeed.

While contemporary audiences my get a bit of a creepy vibe from Goldfinger’s Bond, there’s a creeping trend that may be less noticed today. The third Bond film sees 007 more dependent on the technology provided by his employer. It may be a homing device in his shoe or an ejection seat in his car, but 1964 Bond is becoming less a man left to his own devices and more to the devices Q builds for him. Bond is the halfway point between the archetypical cowboy, fending for himself on the frontier, and Modern Man, juggling apps and monitoring social media, never not wired to the electronic collective. Where would Bond be without Q? Where would we be if the internet went down? One imagines that Bond would be better off, but not by much.

Next: Thunderball (1965)


The James Bond Project: #1 – Dr. No (1962)
The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 27 Comments

December 28, 2024

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

From Russia With Love (1963, directed by Terence Young)

With the unexpected success of Dr. No, United Artists doubled the budget for the sequel and the bet paid off. (The $2 million film took in more than $78 million worldwide.) We are now firmly in a franchise of films made by men for men and their dates, starring manly man Sean Connery. Although it should be noted that Johanna Harwood, who had worked on the script for Dr. No, played a large role in the screenplay for From Russia With Love. Producers cast Italian beauty queen Daniela Bianchi as Bond Girl #2 Tatiana Romanova, after actress Elga Gimba Andersson refused to sleep with a United Artists executive. Bianchi, who could barely speak English, had her lines dubbed by a British actress.

The film starts the Bond tradition of the opening credits being projected on to the bodies of scantily clad or nude women, firmly establishing that these are stories for boys. Instead of Jamaica, most of the action takes place in Turkey, although there are obligatory scenes in London and wherever SPECTRE Island is. There we meet the Dr. Evil of the Bond cinematic universe, Blofeld (or at least his cute cat). Leaving the Caribbean means we leave any and all black actors, and the primary Turkish character, Ali Kerim Bey, is played by Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz. (In a bizarre side note, Armendáriz contracted neck cancer after filming a Howard Hughes film near a nuclear test site in Utah, and before he finished shooting his parts for From Russia With Love, shot himself with a gun that he snuck into his hospital room.)

From Russia With Love was filmed as the Cold War intensified and SPECTRE agents replaced Russian agents (who were the villains in Ian Fleming’s original Bond novel) to not further inflame tensions. President Kennedy told Life Magazine that From Russia With Love was one of his favorite novels. The film version premiered on October 10, 1963, the same day U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (crazy guy’s dad) approved J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The film was screened at the White House for JFK before he left for Dallas, where he was assassinated. From Russia With Love received mixed reviews, some saying it was slower than Dr. No, but has gone on to be held up as one of the best of the Bond series.

Here’s how FRWL charts with our five evaluations.

Driver of Action – Director Terrence Young had established a formula and he’s not going to break it on the sophomore outing. This is Bond in all his glory, now supplied with cool gadgets by MI-6’s Agent Q (played by Desmond Llewelyn, who remained as Q to 1999’s The World is Not Enough). There is a great “buddy” feature between Bond and Bey (similar to Dr. No’s Quarrel role) and a fun subplot about SPECTRE operatives Rosa Klebb and Kronsteen, groveling before Blofeld as they attempt to kill Bond for offing Dr. No. (The “R” in SPECTRE is for “revenge”- Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. FYI.) But the story doesn’t happen without their dastardly plot to kill Bond and the delight of our man James foiling their fiendishness.

Role of Violence – There is considerably less violence in Dr. No’s sequel. There are some cool explosions after a helicopter attack and a boat chase, but 007 only kills one person, SPECTRE assassin Donald Grant (played by Robert Shaw, who will always be Captain Quint in Jaws to me). Grant’s death is the result of a beautifully choreographed fight scene in a train car on the Orient Express. (Fight scenes in train cars become something of a trope in the Bond franchise.) The most shocking violence in the film is Bond’s full-handed smack across Russian agent Tatiana’s face, after which she repeatedly tells him that she loves him. I bet that clip has showed up in a few “Sexism in Film” classes.

Vulnerability – Again, there’s no chink in James Bond’s armor. No glimpse inside. Even when Bond is literally on his knees prostrate before assassin Grant, we know he has a plan to quickly turn the tables.

Sexual Potency – The first shot of Bond in the film is him making out with Sylvia Trench (from Dr. No) in a floating punt, probably on the banks of the River Cam in Cambridge. He’s playing hooky from MI-6 to work his way around the bases with Trench. (Is there a cricket version of “third base”?). When Bond first meets Tatiana, she is naked in his Istanbul hotel bed. Later she asks him, “James, will you make love to me in London?” He answers, “Day and night.” There’s another strange segment where Bond must decide which of two young, attractive “gypsy” women will be awarded the man they both want. They arrive at his room to seductive music. “This might take some time,” he says. We see the women the next morning with broad smiles as James leaves. All these women are happy for a piece of 007’s sexual mojo, even when he slaps them.

Connection – The scenes with Pedro Armendáriz as Ali Kerim Bey sparkle. They have immense chemistry, enhanced by the knowledge of the great pain he was in from his cancer. Had he lived, one could see Armendáriz as Bond’s Morocco Mole sidekick in future Bond films. But both Armendáriz and his character are dead by the end of the film. His relationship with Tatiana is less mutual, even though they have to pretend to be a married couple while on the train, and she dreams of marrying him when they reach London. She even saves him from the venomous boots of Rosa Klebb in a hotel room in Venice and his heart is unmoved. Like the closing scene in Dr. No, we end with Bond and Bond Girl #2 romantically floating together in a boat, this time a gondola, with end credits urging viewers to get ready for Bond #3, Goldfinger, which will most certainly present us with Bond Girl #3.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 7/10

Summary – From Russia With Love really front loads the male gaze on women’s bodies thing. From the opening credits, to the (very) long shot of Ali Kerim Bey’s girlfriend’s cleavage, to a very oily masseuse on SPECTRE Island, to the camera endlessly hovering on a belly dancer’s torso, there’s plenty to ogle. Then there’s the weirdly placed “duel” between two scantily glad “gypsy girls” that has zip to do with the plot. If there’s any sense of balance, we do get Bond wrapped in a towel, which probably had some men wondering what they needed to do to grow crops of hair on their chests.

There’s also an odd lesbian subtext with Rosa Klebb. Props to having a female antagonist in the second Bond film. In 1963, there was a narrative that Russian (i.e. “communist”) women were more manly, so that tracks. But to make the point that women on the other side of the Iron Curtain are not bound by the same gender rules, they add a suggestion of sexual predation when Klebb is informing Tatiana of her mission to seduce Bond. And Romanova doesn’t seem to shirk as Klebb evaluates her body and places her hand on her leg. Russians, they not like us. (Or are they?)

From Russia With Love is rough film to place. It’s the most realistic of all the Bond films from the classic era. There’s a nice complexity to the plot but we know even less about the person of James Bond. It’s almost like Sean Connery is playing James Bond pretending to be a caricature of James Bond. A lot of people think this is one of the greatest British films ever made, but it felt flat to me. And the slapping scene seemed very un-Bond, even if it served as a reminder of how normalized violence against women is in film. Where is Wonder Woman when you need her?

Next: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No

Beta Trump: The Day the King Fell Off the Hill

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 12, 2024

I was 18 or 19 when I first heard the line, “Real men don’t eat quiche.” I remember being so confused because I loved quiche! Eggs, pie, it’s the perfect meal! Was I not a real man? What if I ate quiche with one hand and bashed someone over the head with lead pipe with the other? Where was this guidebook for what was and wasn’t the permitted behavior for real men, so we wouldn’t become fake men?

Judith Butler, the philosopher who wrote Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), took issue with any attempt to define “real men” or what makes a “natural woman.” These are human inventions, invented by humans who have no actual authority over such designations. Sociologists know that gender is fluid and changes across time and space. What was masculine in 1954 is quite different from what is masculine in 2024. My own research on racist skinheads found them largely motivated by this changing nature of masculinity, as their manly factory jobs were offshored and “their women” declared their independence and began bringing home bigger paychecks. For Butler, gender was a performance and, boy, did the skinheads perform.

So it’s with great amusement that I watch the buffoonish performance of masculinity by former President Trump. This child of privilege, who has never lifted anything heavier than a golf club, has routinely pretended to be a strongman. On his first run for president, he regularly told his supporters to “knock the hell out of” protestors. When, as president, he contracted COVID, he defiantly ripped his mask off on the White House balcony (and was then whisked off to be treated by the nation’s top doctors). When an assassins bullet barely grazed his ear, he raised his fist and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” His endless admiration of dictators like Orban and Putin is all part of the act. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly had to beg Trump not to praise Adolf Hitler in public. Admiring Kim Jong Un is one thing, but Hitler, well, that might be a PR problem.

One of the themes of this election has been the 18 point gender gap between Trump and Harris supporters. And it’s not just uneducated white men that are breaking for Trump. It’s also a lot of uneducated brown and black men. Even Obama has been enlisted to try to convince black men to vote for the black woman. Is Kamala Harris this year’s quiche?

Patriarchy is the oldest power dynamic on earth. Older than capitalism. Older than racism. It doesn’t go all the way back, but as long as we’ve been defining God as “He,” men have enjoyed the privilege of being the king of the hill. Over the last 100 years, men have been slowly pushed off their throne, but they are not giving up without a fight. More women are fully employed than men. More women are graduating from college than men. And now a woman is favored to be Commander in Chief. What’s a fragile boy to do? Trump’s appeal to these broken men is as He-Man, the Master of the Universe. Ah, those were the days.

So it’s not surprising that men from every generation who still buy into 1950s myths of masculinity have glommed onto the the fake bravado of the Richie Rich from Queens (who wears a girdle). They want their UFC, their trad wives, and their unrestricted access to women’s bodies and paychecks. Trump is the incel icon. His conviction for sexual assault only endears him to the lost boys of the twenty-first century. He claims he will restore the moral authority to the days when manly men (like him?) ruled the roost. Masculinity in Harris’ America is under assault from DEI, illegal immigrants, and drag queens, according to Fox News/MAGA doctrine. Trump even referred to radio host Howard Stern as a “woke beta male” after Stern interviewed Harris this week.

Trump’s dive into the cesspool of the manosphere, doing interviews on bro podcasts and bumping chests with misogynists like Logan Paul, may be intended to stiffen his limp poll numbers, but they’re likely to have the opposite effect. Trump should have taken note of the response to his Mini-Me, JD Vance, who tried to define what was and wasn’t a “real woman.” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t childless cat owners.) The quip rallied women from across the political spectrum who collectively said, “You don’t know me, Couch Boy!” Trump’s pathetic performance of toxic masculinity may endear him to a small number of women who have Stockholm syndrome after years of abuse, but female voters are the proverbial sleeping giant. Just look at the turnout anytime abortion restrictions have been on the ballot.

The vast the majority of these self-declared “alpha males” (pffft!) have women in their lives who have caught glimpses of life outside of patriarchy. It’s a world where they have control over their lives and are safe(r) from sexual harassment and violence. They don’t want to go back to being Mrs. John Doe. A lot of the “alphas” are materially supported by women, even if it’s just living in their mother’s basement. And these women who have their alpha ears are telling them that real men support women’s autonomy and that, if not respected, they could easily take their love to a man who sees women as human beings. My guess is that those men who are still falling for Trump’s macho con don’t have women available for honest conversations. Like Logan Paul, they are flailing in a world that sees alpha men as vestiges of the bad old days.

That’s why Harris running mate Governor Tim Walz is so refreshing. Like me and Kamala, Tim is Generation X (all three of us were born in 1964), and grew up in an era when women gained immense economic and social power. We saw our moms move from housewives to career havers. Walz has all the manly credentials (veteran, football coach, fried food eater). He’s also a girl-dad (of a Swiftie, just like me!) and a defender of queer kids and women’s reproductive rights. The sad incels can try to define him as “soft” (“Tampon Tim”), but Walz’s version of masculinity is something painfully out of reach to them. His 30-year-marriage, compared to Trump’s serial philandering, stands as a model of how men should be in the world. (If you think any of Trump’s marriages were happy, I’ve got some stocks in Trump Steaks I’d like to sell you.) If Alpha Boy thinks he’s going to have a 30-year marriage with a trad wife, he hasn’t spoken to an actual female off the internet.

The conventional wisdom is that it will be female voters that save us from the strongman authoritarian trip of Trump and his Handmaid’s Tale Project 2025 vision of making America 1954 again. Many of those women will be telling their men they are voting for Trump and in the privacy of the voting booth pulling the lever for Harris. But I think a bunch of those alpha males will be voting for Harris, too. Because their girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters told them that real men vote for women.