Watching the Wheels

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy

The James Bond Project #15: Never Say Never Again

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 12 Comments

March 16, 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.

Never Say Never Again (1983, directed by Irvin Kershner)

Never Say Never Again has everything you want in a James Bond film; exotic locations and women, Blofeld, cool gadgets, stolen nukes, double entendres, sharks, and Sean Connery. After completing Diamonds are Forever in 1971 and saying he would never play 007 again, Connery was lured back into the role by producers Kevin McClory and Jack Schwartzman. Connery, at 52, was still younger than his Eon Productions counterpart Roger Moore, but the non-canonical Bond film, Connery’s last, would poke fun at the aging agent while still delivering classic Bond tropes.

The return of Ernst Blofeld and his white cat, who were killed off in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, serves to remind us that we are not in the official BCU (Bond Cinematic Universe). It does however bring back SPECTRE and the thrill of an evil global plot. Blofeld (played by Max von Sydow) directs billionaire businessman and SPECTRE Number 1 Maximillian Largo (played by Klaus Maria Brandauer, who seems to have greatly inspired Elon Musk) to hijack some Navy nukes to extort the world. Sexy assassin SPECTRE Number 12 Fatima Blush is played by Playboy model Barbara Carrera, who passed up a role in Octopussy to work in a Connery Bond film. NSNA’s Bond “girl” was played by Kim Basinger, in the role that launched her career. While NSNA has a less polished feel than the Eon catalog, Irvin Kershner, director of the 1980 blockbuster The Empire Strikes Back, gave the film a tight pace as 007 hops around the world.

The film gives us a younger, more bureaucracy-bound M, and a Q who complains about the bureaucracy. When Bond enters Q’s lab, Q says, “Good to see you, Mr. Bond. Things’ve been awfully dull ’round here. Bureaucrats running the whole place. Everything done by the book. Can’t make a decision unless the computer gives you the go-ahead. Now you’re on this. I hope we’re going to have some gratuitous sex and violence!” And we get that and more, including a return to the Bahamas and the film debut of Mr. Bean’s Rowan Atkinson as Nigel Small-Fawcett.

While not in the “official” 007 catalog, let’s analyze it for fun.

Driver of Action – If you’ve got Sir Sean Connery, you might as well let him drive the whole damn film. From the first jungle battle scene to the last underwater fight scene, this is a James Bond film. We do get the return of CIA agent Felix Leiter (this time played by former San Francisco 49er Bernie Casy) who shows up 57 minutes into the film, but he’s in the usual minor support role. There are no real storylines that compete with the spectacle of 007.

Role of Violence – In the opening scene Bond kills a bunch of dudes with varying means (including a blowdart), but it’s revealed to be a training exercise. He does kill a would-be assassin with his urine (don’t ask) and later blows up Fatima Blush, leaving her smoking high heels on the ground. Old Bond fights a lot but you get the feeling that he’s just not cut out for the fisticuffs anymore.

Vulnerability – Much is made in the start of the film about James advanced age. He laments that M doesn’t have much use for “double O’s” anymore and that he’s “teaching not doing.” M sends him to a health farm to get fit and get rid of his “free radicals,” accusing him of, “too many dry Martinis.” Bond being Bond dutifully goes but smuggles in Beluga caviar, quails eggs, vodka, and foie gras.

Sexual Potency – Sean Connery fans paid for Classic Bond, so the women needed be laid out like a buffet. While the banter with Ms. Moneypenny is tepid (James: Still here, Moneypenny? You should be in bed. Moneypenny: James, we both should be!), James does bed four women in the film. The first is the chiropractor at the health farm, Nurse Patricia Fearing. Then he gets busy with Fatima Blush, on a boat in Nassau. (James: You’re marvelously well equipped. Fatima: Thank you, James. So are you.) Then he’s in the sack with some unnamed woman he met on a fishing boat. Finally, he ends up making sweet love to Kim Basinger’s character, Domino, on a Navy Submarine. In 1983 the AIDS epidemic was still largely confined to gay and IV subcultures, so this was probably our James’ last hurrah.

Connection – In this film we see James Bond wrestling with his age, but still not willing to let his guard down and open up. There is a glimpse at the end. Since two “boat sex” encounters were ticked off in the film, Never Say Never Again ends with James and Domino back in the Bahamas. Domino brings him a fruity drink instead of his martini. He moans and she says, “You’ll never give up your old habits, James.” He replies, “No, you’re wrong. Those days are over.” Is he ready to settle down with the girl from Athens, GA? The film ends with Connery winking at the camera.

Toxic Masculinity Score: 5

Never Say Never Again comes with plenty of Bond cliches, including watches with lasers, a pool full of bikini clad babes, James in a tux, and all his “Is that about sex? quips. (“Going down, one should always be relaxed.”) As a non-Eon film, the score and the theme song suck. But the rocket motorcycle chase in Nice, France and the scene with the sharks (Are those frickin’ lasers on their heads?) are pretty awesome. The film drags a bit with Connery’s lethargy and there is a really weird scene of Bond and Domino dancing a tango after he beats her boyfriend at a video game that seems way too eighties.

Bond as the sexual conquerer is also paired with his role of the rescuer of women. Domino is tied up on an auction block to be sold as a slave in North Africa. James literally rides in on a horse to save the damsel in distress. Fortunately, she saves him later in the film by shooting a speargun into her former lover as he’s about to kill Bond. There’s also the scene where he kills Fatima after commenting on her “hatred of men.” Seemed misogynistic to this viewer.

Never Say Never Again premiered in the U.S. on October 7, 1983, just four months after Octopussy and sold fewer tickets. There had been some talk about bringing Connery back in for a new series of Bond films to rival the Eon franchise, but you could tell that the Scotsman’s heart just wasn’t in it. Connery would go on to star in iconic eighties films like Highlander, The Name of the Rose, and The Untouchables, and leave 007 behind on some boat with some random damsel in distress.

Next: A View to a Kill (1985)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 14 Comments

February 27, 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.

Octopussy (1983, directed by John Glen)

Fifteen years after the Beatles went to India, Britain’s second biggest export headed to the Asian subcontinent. It wasn’t to study meditation, but to fight the Cold War with an army of fembots. Octopussy sees our man Bond caught up in a conspiracy that includes fake Faberge eggs and loose nukes. Star Roger Moore had wanted to retire after For Your Eyes Only, feeling he was to old to play Bond, but word that Sean Connery was returning to play Bond in a non-Eon Productions film had worried producers that Bond-in-Waiting Timothy Dalton (and a few other potential contenders) would not be ready to compete with the O.G. 007.

The result is a film that tries to capture the Bond magic with a middle-age spy who has more lines on his face than stinging lines of dialogue. There are challenging scenes of Bond swinging from vine to vine with a dubbed in Tarzan yell, Bond fighting a henchman on top of a flying airplane, and Bond fighting two henchmen on top of a moving train (a scene that almost killed another stuntman). Watching this film made me wonder if they had Ibuprofen in the 1980s. Producers brought back Maud Adams, who had played Andrea Anders The Man with the Golden Gun. It made sense to have a slightly older Bond “girl” in the title role. This was Bond for aging Baby Boomers.

The film primarily takes place in India and East Germany, with a fun intro scene in some random Latin America country that has Bond flying a cool one-man plane out of the back of truck being chased by some banana republic types. We have a new M, played by Robert Brown. Desmond Llewelyn is back as Q and this time he’s got tons of gadgets for James to play with (including one Bond uses to zoom in on an MI-6 worker’s cleavage). James is back in his white dinner jacket and tux and there he is riding a horse through the jungle and crossing a river inside an alligator submarine. (Someone should have told filmmakers that India has crocodiles, not alligators.)

Octopussy is Bond in a holding pattern but let’s discuss it anyway.

Driver of Action – Bond is back on his own. We do get a lot of Q. There’s a local agent named Vijay, but he’s not long for this world. There’s a real missed opportunity to tell the story of Octopussy (Maud Adams) who has created an island of misfit women in India who are also (how?) circus performers in East Germany. I’d love some Octopussy fan fiction because that would be a great story. But later in the film, James raids the bad guy’s compound with Octopussy’s all female army of circus warriors in their Electra Woman costumes and it’s glorious. Why did it take 21 years to get Bond to lead an army of fembots in an invasion of an evil-doers lair??? Oh, and Bond arrives in a Union Jack hot air balloon! I’m serious!

Role of Violence – Old Bond is pretty good at killing henchmen, including some rogue Soviet soldiers. That’s about it.

Vulnerability – Bond’s wall is way up with a few weird exceptions. There’s a moment that he laments that thousands of innocent people will be killed if the renegade Russian General Orlav detonates an A-bomb in Berlin. There’s a scene where James, desperate to save the world, can’t get a ride to the circus to defuse the bomb. Cars full of young people laugh at the old man desperately trying to hitchhike. 007 seems supremely uncool in his manic state. There’s also a bizarre sequence of James dressed as a clown trying to tell everyone there’s a nuclear bomb about to go off and they just laugh at him. Sad clown Bond must have been hard on 007’s ego.

Sexual Potency – It’s interesting watching this Bond age. There’s a scene in Moneypenny’s office where he perks up at seeing her new assistant, Miss Penelope Smallbone. (These names are such a crack.) There’s a great interchange where Moneypenny calls him on the carpet for his leering:

Bond: What can I say, Miss Moneypenny, except to say that she is – as attractive and, eh – as charming…

Moneypenny: As I used to be?

Bond: I didn’t say that.

Moneypenny: You’re such a flatterer, James.

Bond: Oh, Moneypenny, you know there never has been and, there never will be, anybody but you.

Moneypenny: So, you’ve told me.

The bedding three women per film quota is waning by 1983. James does sleep with Magda, who is kind of a double henchwoman to two bosses (played by Kristina Wayborn, Miss Sweden 1970). And, of course, he sleeps with Octopussy, after forcibly grabbing her. She resists and then relents as all women do. “Oh, James,” she says, falling into her bed in a scene that seems like a mirror of the same encounter between the two in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Connection – Bond’s connection to Octopussy is uber-flimsy. Even though the actors have a previous relationship, there is zero chemistry. Regardless, as is required by international law they end the film in a bed in a boat. (I literally laughed out loud.) This time the boat is a slave galley rowed by Octopussy’s army of circus ladies. Where they are rowing to, we don’t know. James is in her bed and has been injured in a crazy stunt (dem bones) and she says, “I wish you weren’t in such a weakened condition.” Then he breaks loose of his leg brace and amorously grabs her. “James!” The end and yawn.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 3

Octopussy gets points for having an army of bad ass women fighting evil henchmen and having a Bond “girl” that’s only 18 years younger than our James. But there are some tired tropes. James sleeping with Magda seems pro forma. There’s a scene where Octopussy gets slapped by the bad guy that could be cut and pasted from a half dozen other Bond films. And there’s a hotel pool populated by bikini-clad babes that seems like a now required sequence. But we do get 007 in the casino, this time playing backgammon. (OK, grandpa.)

India looks great in this film. There’s an exciting Tuk Tuk chase scene in the streets of Udaipur and plenty of elephants, tigers, cobras, and spiders to let you know we’re not in London anymore. The Berlin scenes were shot in Britain and look it. It was great having John Barry back to do the film score after the super cheesy CHIPs music Bill Conti provided for For Your Eyes Only. But Octopussy never really gets off the ground with much peril or charm.

Octopussy premiered in London June 6, 1983, the week that the UK’s Conservative party, led by Maggie Thatcher, was re-elected in a landslide. At the time, I was living in a part of London called Brixton, famous for its riots against Thatcher and the very conservative world of Commander Bond. Prince Charles and Lady Diana were at the premiere while I was probably at some little punk rock club nearby. Moore’s Bond in this film seemed to be even more removed from the world he inhabited. Roger would have one more chance to make James Bond relevant. But first he’d have to contend with the return of a certain Scotsman to the role.

Next: Never Say Never Again (1983)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 14 Comments

February 23, 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.

For Your Eyes Only (1981, directed by John Glen)

The third decade of Bond! After the silly sci-fi spectacle of Moonraker, producer Cubby Broccoli wanted to get 007 back to basics for the first Bond of the 1980s. While there is no underground lair, there’s plenty of other Bond staples, like assassins on skis, James in his tux at the baccarat table, underwater battles, and sharks. First time director John Glen, who had edited several Bond films before this, was brought in to bring James back to earth with a plot that was back to spy vs. spy and less reliant on tech (much to the chagrin of Q who seems at his limit with 007 snark).

A 54-year-old Roger Moore (who seems a bit out of breath in a few scenes) is paired with this round’s Bond “girl,” 25-year old French actress Carole Bouquet. Her character, Melina Havelock, is the daughter of marine archeologists who are killed because the KGB is trying to retrieve some British spy technology from the bottom of the Mediterranean. This launches her into the role of sidekick as she tells Bond, “I don’t expect you to understand, you’re English, but I’m half Greek, and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!”

By 1981, we have established the tradition of the opening action scene being completely over the top. This one starts James at the grave of his wife, Tracy and ends with Bond captured in a remote controlled helicopter controlled by none other than Blofeld! (and his white pussy cat, presumably not the same one from Diamonds Are Forever). The scenes with the helicopter (with 007 hanging on for dear life) careening over London are eighties epic. The comic death of Blofeld was a long time coming and apparently meant as an FU to the producer of Thunderball, who claimed ownership of the Blofeld name.

For Your Eyes Only gives 007 fans the tropes they crave and, unlike Moonraker, has aged well. Moore’s Bond flirts with the problematic nature of his Lothario reputation while still throwing a solid punch. The quips are dialed back and much of the action is movie candy for the widescreen. For the first time the opening credits reveal females in roles like “production manager” and “continuity,” where previously women were relegated to costumes and make-up. Maybe some of these women whispered in filmmakers’ ears not to make Bond such a dick.

Let’s plug FYEO into our analysis.

Driver of Action – This is Moore’s Bond, but early in the film he is rescued by Melina and her crossbow, although in the mad escape car chase he does ask, “Mind if I drive?” Later in the film he is assisted by Milos Columbo, a pistachio-eating smuggler, and his band of thieves. No CIA help here, M (Bernard Lee) died of cancer before his scenes could be filmed, and Q was inserted merely for comic value. This James Bond is completely capable of solving all problems and escaping all sticky situations.

Role of Violence – There is a great relief of seeing 007 finally kill Blofeld, the man who had his wife killed, by dumping him and his electric wheelchair down an industrial smokestack on the Southside of the Thames. (We don’t know who got custody of the cat.) There are a bunch of henchmen killed, connected to various parts of the plot to get the spyware to the KGB. The most spectacular death is a henchmen in a deep diving suit, looking very robotic, who is blown up inside a sunken English trawler. Boom.

Vulnerability – Credit is given for reminding Bond fans that he was (briefly) married and she died in his arms. It was the only real glimpse we ever got into James the man. The epitaph on her tombstone is, “We have all the time in the world,” his last words to her in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Early in the film, Bond is captured by Cuban hitman Hector Gonzales and rescued by Melina. He seems a bit confused that he suddenly is the damsel in distress, but, like Jesus, he ultimately takes the wheel.

Sexual Potency – Here’s where we start to get a bit of a shift. Bond does not seem to be leering or sexually flirtatious with Melina, 29 years his junior. And between Bond and Moneypenny, the old spark is back, perhaps because they actors are now close in age (both were born in 1927!). Moneypenny, knowing Bond is about to arrive at MI-6 HQ, applies her makeup as James’ hat flies to the hatrack. “Moneypenny, a feast for my eyes,” James says, kissing her on the lips. “What about the rest of you?” she asks. “Well, I was going to get around to that.” There’s the old James Bond we love.

Another character is figure skater Bibi Dahl, played real life figure skater Lynn-Holly Johnson. She has a girl-like crush on Bond and climbs, naked, into his bed. In a shocking turn of events, he rejects her. “You get your clothes on and I’ll buy you an ice cream,” he says trying to kick her out of his room as she plants a kiss on him. Bond does sleep with the Countess Von Schlaf (played by Cassandra Harris, wife of future Bond Pierce Brosnan). The scene feels a bit like, “Oh, this is a Bond film, he needs to bed SOMEBODY.” But like a lot of James’ one night stands, she is killed by some bad guys shortly after bed with Bond. (Death by dune buggy.) And, as if a contractual obligation, James sleeps with Milena at the end of the film. (Can’t let the fans down.) But Bond ’81 seems noticeably less horny. Maybe he was worried about Blofeld’s cat.

Connection – Even though the the plot is pleasingly complex (for a Bond film), 007 is just here to get the job done. There is zero emotional connection. Even Q seems to get on his wick. Milena is strikingly beautiful but she seems to be just a pawn in his plan to stop the KGB from getting this thing (that looks like cheap lighting board). That’s why it’s a bit of a shock that the film ends with them in bed together (ON A BOAT!). Her neglige slides off and she tells James, “For your eyes only.” Roll credits.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 2

FYEO has some boffo Bond moments. James and Milena in a mini-sub battling another mini-sub under the Mediterranean is pretty damn cool. The scene where 54-year-old Bond is scaling an Alpine cliff in Northern Italy while a henchmen is trying to dislodge the pitons holding his rope is pretty edge of the seat. And there’s a wild ski chase sequence in a bobsled track (that led to the actual death of a stuntman). There’s also some light comedy regarding Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. “She’ll have our guts for garters,” the Minister of Defense says. The film ends with Thatcher (perfectly played by Scottish comedian Janet Brown) trying to congratulate Bond over the phone but actually talking to Milena’s parrot, who repeatedly says, “Give us a kiss.”

The misogyny in this 007 chapter seems to be dialed back a little. Bibi, the pigtailed ice skater, gets slapped by two men, but not by our hero. Gonzales’ Spanish villa is basically a swimming pool surrounded by bikini-clad women and KGB boss, General Gogal, has a secretary who appears to also be his young mistress. Posters for the movie featured Bond framed by woman’s bare legs, meant to attract male eyeballs. But for 1981, the year Porky’s came out, that all seems rather tame. It offers promise that 80s Bond can deliver the action that fans love with out the adjacent sexism.

For Your Eyes Only Premiered June 24, 1981 putting in direct competition with the Bill Murray film, Stripes. Aided by the popular theme song, sung by Sheena Easton, the film was second highest grossing Bond film (after Moonraker). Long, at 127 minutes, the film attempted to bring the grit back to 007 and find a place for the British spy in the new decade after 20 years of carving out the formula. Can Moore’s Bond age gracefully?

Next: Octopussy (1983)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

February 7, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 14 Comments

February 7, 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.

Moonraker (1979, directed by Lewis Gilbert)

Bond in space! For Your Eyes Only was supposed to be the last 007 of the ‘70s, but due to the popularity of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the sci fi genre, Eon Productions decided to launch James into orbit. For the last time, Lewis Gilbert directed an expansive epic action adventure that starts with Bond falling through the sky without a parachute and ends with him floating in space with this episode’s Bond “girl.” The story is that Steven Spielberg offered to direct Moonraker after he wrapped up Close Encounters, but producer Cubby Broccoli wanted to stick with Gilbert. One can only imagine what THAT film would have looked like. Instead we get a camp romp that pleased Bond fans but looks pretty silly now.

Moonraker sees Roger Moore closing in on 50 but bringing some svelte bona fides to an older Bond. Hair and makeup prop him up nicely. Bond is up against another evil industrialist, this time its rocket designer Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale, who looks way too much like Peter Dinklage in this movie). Drax, like the megalomaniac in the last movie, wants to kill all the people on earth and then repopulate the planet with his master race of humans who are hanging out in his space ark. Bernard Lee makes his final appearance as M, the role he played since the first Bond film in 1962. Bond is aided by CIA agent/astronaut Dr. Holly Goodhead (Woot! There it is!). Goodhead is played by Lois Chiles, who delivers every line like she’s loaded on valium. Even when everyone on Earth is about to die, her voice remains in the “Gee, what should I wear to work?” range. Maybe Chiles was trying to play against the sexist “hysterical female” archetype, but women are allowed to have emotions. Oh, and Jaws (Richard Kiel) is back and he’s in love.

As we’ve come to expect, Bond does some globetrotting before he leaves the globe. Moonraker takes him to California, Venice, Italy, and Brazil. There’s a boat chase in the canals of Venice, that’s played for comedy (and is really dumb) and there’s a boat chase on the Amazon (that’s pretty cool). In the film, Drax has built a fleet of space shuttles to launch from his underground lair (Yes!) in the Amazon. The real space shuttle wouldn’t be launched by NASA for another two years, on April 12, 1981. That gave movie goers in 1979 a glimpse into what the 80s might look like.

Moonraker premiered in London on June 26, 1979, a week after President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II agreement in Vienna, bringing cold war tensions down a few notches. The film was United Artists widest opening picture and highest grossing of the Bond franchise to that point. There was no hit theme song this time. Shirley Bassey was brought back in after Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, and Kate Bush (!) passed. At the end of the seventies, Bond’s philandering was becoming tired, leaving audiences wondering if the franchise would survive into the 1980s.

Let’s drop Moonraker into our analysis matrix.

Driver of Action – As we’ve established, the Moore Bond films firmly place James in the driver seat, typically with the female spy sidekick who he can also sleep with. Dr. Goodhead doesn’t drive much of the story in Moonraker, and, like, the last film, needs to be rescued from the bad guy. Even though she’s a CIA agent AND an astronaut, James is still running the operation. We do get the team of M, Q, Moneypenny, and (now) the Defense Minister wedged in to help the ludicrous plot move along.

Role of Violence – 007 has a pretty low bodycount in this film. He shoots a would-be assassin out of a tree while pheasant hunting and, other than killing Drax at the end, that’s about it. There is a crazy climactic space battle with lasers when, somehow, a battalion of U.S. soldiers are crammed into the cargo bay of a space shuttle and then attack Drax’s space station. (I’m guessing this is where Trump got his idea for a U.S. Space Force.) Not sure where all the laser guns were in 1979, but Bond doesn’t really engage in any of the violence (like in the last film when he was mowing suckers down). Maybe older Bond has lost his taste for blood.

Vulnerability – Moore’s Bond is a robot. When he discovers Goodhead alive in Drax’s underground lair (beneath a shuttle that’s about to lift off), he says “Thank God you’re safe.” That’s it.

Sexual Potency – I could write a dissertation on this one. The FDA wouldn’t introduce Viagra until 1998 and one wonders if the mad scientists at Pfizer dreamed of a drug that would give men Bond boners. 007 is MI-6’s heat seeking missile. He’s rapacious. There isn’t a skirt he won’t chase, except for Miss Moneypenny, who is now matronly and completely off Bond’s radar. (How I miss their banter.) Speaking of Moneypenny, at the start of the film M asks her if 007 is back from his mission. “He’s on his last leg, sir,” she replies. The next shot is Bond’s hand on a flight attendants bare leg. “Any higher Mr. Bond and my ears will pop,” she says. (Of course she’s a double agent and Bond is sent flying out of the plane without a parachute, leading to one of the greatest action stunts in movie history.)

Bond may have failed at getting her knickers down, but you can’t keep a good Double O down. He makes passes at every woman under 40 that passes his field of vision. He would have made the moves on Drax’s hench-women, but he had to wrestle a giant anaconda. Shit happens. He does end up in bed with Corinne Dufour, Drax’s personal pilot, played by The Story of O’s Corinne Cléry. (She is killed by dogs for her transgression.) He also beds his MI-6 contact in Rio, Manuela. In his hotel room, she bares her leg and James asks, “How do you kill 5 hours in Rio if you don’t Samba?” Then he unties her frock. James meets Dr. Goodhead in California at Drax’s compound, but then again in Venice where he realizes she is CIA. He seduces her into bed and makes the case that she should team up, but she slips away in the morning. The film ends with Bond and Goodhead having sex in zero gravity onboard a Space Shuttle. As is the gag now, the MI-6 brass is watching and M asks what Bond is doing. Q replies, “I believe he is attempting re-entry, sir.” Thank you and goodnight.

There also a side story worth commenting on. The monstrous Jaws is “redeemed” by falling in love in Rio. He’s a giant and she’s tiny with braided pigtails and glasses, dressed like a farm girl with heaving cleavage. Next to him, she looks like a child and I think that’s the point. She doesn’t speak, only stares lovingly her 7 foot 2 man. When Jaws realizes there’s no room for him and “Dolly” in Drax’s fascist utopia, he helps Bond to thwart the evil plot. The odd pair then open a bottle of champaign as the space lair is destroyed. The whole thing is icky.

Connection – Again, Moore’s Bond is a man untethered to anyone. There’s a scene where he’s riding a horse in Brazil looking like a gaucho. It’s an obvious nod to Clint Eastwood, the penultimate seventies model of masculinity, the high plains drifter. His connection to Goodhead is wafer thin. In the obligatory coitus end scene, James and Holly are having space sex and she says, “Take me ’round the world one more time.” He drolly replies, “Why not?” Boring sex is boring.

Summary Moonraker is so broad and silly it’s just a romp at this point. The countless henchmen scientists in their yellow jumpsuits, the martial arts attack by Drax’s Asian manservant in a glass museum that destroys dozens of priceless artifacts, escaping the bad guy in a Carnival celebration (Thunderball redux), pretending to be weightless by moving slowly, it’s all in good fun. But the fact that Moore and Chiles seem so completely bored by the script drags down the campiness of Bond ’79. And Jaws and his child bride may have delighted young fans in the Carter era, but it just seems kind of sad now.

These seventies 007 movies have consistently missed an easy opportunity to be a part of the decade where feminism went mainstream. Most of them attempted to pair James up with a female spy that could have been his equal or even taught him a few things. Instead they played the role to attract the male gaze and be yet another notch on James’ bedpost. Yawn. Will things be different in the third decade of our hero?

Next: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The James Bond Project #10: 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

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

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

February 6, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 16 Comments

February 5, 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 Spy Who Loved Me (1977, directed by Lewis Gilbert)

This was the first Bond film I saw in the theater. My dad took my little brother and I to see the PG-rated Spy Who Loved Me the summer of ’77. I was 13 and what I remember most was the brief glimpse of Barbara Bach’s (or her body double’s) right breast in the submarine shower scene. I was 13, OK? But The Spy Who Loved Me was a return to form after the limp Man with the Golden Gun in 1974. It had all your musts, including oodles of cool gadgets from Q, Bond in his tux and bad girls in bikinis, scores of henchmen willing to die for a megalomaniac, and sharks. My absolute favorite part of the film when I was a kid (besides the boob) was the Lotus Esprit that turned into a submarine, complete with missiles. I thought that was the coolest thing on earth and dreamed of a submarine car of my own. Ironically, in 2013 actual megalomaniac supervillain Elon Musk bought the film’s Lotus for £616,000 in hopes of turning it into a workable submarine. (Like most of his crazy ideas, he failed.)

Roger Moore definitely is getting his mojo back in his third installment in the Bond franchise. While his lines still fall a bit flat, he’s got Bond “girls” dripping from his arms. On top of the TSWLM list is Barbara Bach as KGB agent Anya Amasova, AKA Agent XXX (get it?). Bach was a model and Spaghetti Western actor who would next star in Caveman (1980) with her future husband, Beatle Ringo Starr. (Rumors were that Moore wanted Brigitte Bardot for the role.) As a sort of seventies Blofeld, this installment’s villain is wealthy industrialist Karl Stromberg, who wants to destroy the world so he can build a new world under the ocean. Stromberg is played by Curt Jürgens, who starred with Bardot in And God Created Woman in 1956. Added to the cast is Richard Kiel, who stars as the indestructible steel toothed giant, Jaws. The return of You Only Live Twice director Lewis Gilbert helped to bring some of the Connery-era swagger back to 007’s mission.

As is expected, the exotic locales splash across the screen. Bond riding a camel across the Egyptian desert and then chasing the bad guys through the Giza ruins was not filmed on an English set. It was there on sight, as were the scenes filmed on the Italian island of Sardinia. We return to some classic Bond tropes, like assassins on skis (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and underwater battles (Thunderball). There’s sexy one-liners (Her: But James, I need you! Him: So does England.) And sexist one-liners (James commenting on a woman in a bikini in a boat, in front of Anya, posing as his wife – “What a handsome craft. Such lovely lines.”) And while we don’t get an underground lair, we get an under WATER lair that serves its purpose.

The Spy Who Loved Me premiered in the United States on August 3, 1977, the same day that the Tandy Corporation debuted the first mass produced microcomputer, the TRS-80, forever changing popular culture and gadgets in James Bond movies. The film received mixed reviews but fared better than its predecessor. Boosted by a great theme song, sung by Carly Simon (and constantly on the radio the summer of 1977), the film was United Artists biggest grossing movie to date, but competed in theaters with the box office sensation that was Star Wars, putting it at #8 for the year (between The Deep and Oh, God!)

Let’s put The Spy Who Loved Me in our feminist evaluation machine.

Driver of Action – I’m getting the feeling that the formula for Moore’s Bond films are it’s just him. Even though he’s paired up with a Soviet spy, Anya Amosova, this isn’t a buddy film. She’s primarily sexy arm candy whom 007 has to rescue. (Although there is one scene in Egypt where she throws up her arms in a Charlies Angels karate pose that I thought was going to give us some Russian aggression, but no such luck.) James does not even have a support team. We get brief cameos by Q and Moneypenny, but this is just James.

Role of Violence – 007 kills some people in TSWLM. At the start of the film he shoots a Soviet agent (who is Anya’s boyfriend) with a rocket ski poll while skiing backwards. He drops one of Stromberg’s henchmen off a roof in Cairo, and then kills a half dozen more in a crazy car chase in Sardinia, including killing a bikini-clad helicopter pilot with a missile from his submerged Lotus. When the action moves to Stromberg’s tanker, which is being used to capture nuclear submarines, 007 with a machine gun goes on a rampage. There are literally bloodless corpses everywhere. Where’s the blood? And James shoots Stromberg multiple times in his underwater HQ.

Vulnerability – There is actually a mention of Bond being married in the film. Anya brings up that he was married and his wife was killed and he stops her from going any further. It was almost a moment of James the person. The break from James performing “007” was jarring but it only lasted for a split second and then it was back to Robot Bond.

Sexual Potency – This version of Bond wants to be as horizontal as possible. Miss Moneypenny might be too old for him in the late 70s, but every other women on the screen is fair game for his jacked up libido. To be fair, the film starts with a twist on the familiar theme. A man that looks like James is in bed with a beautiful woman when the phone rings. We learn that the woman is actually a Soviet agent, Anya Amosava, and the man is just a lover. Never fear, the very next scene is James in bed with a Russian woman in Austria. It’s a clever trick perhaps meant to say that women can play this game. James in Egypt meets a very white sheik who has a harem of beautiful women. When Bond is offered one of the women for the night he says it would be rude to refuse the offer. In Cairo, he meets another woman who is linked to a connection. He tries to seduce her but ends up using her body to block an assassin’s bullet. Oh well.

The rest of the film is about James and Anya, cold war enemies who have teamed up for some “Anglo Soviet cooperation” to stop this dude who is stealing submarines and wants to blow up the world. Bond can’t keep his hands off her and she may just be playing him by letting his hands and lips wander. But there is a scene on a train (You know, the scene on the train!) where Jaws attacks James and Anya and Bond tosses him out of the train window (We’ve seen this movie before) and Anya says, “You saved my life.” The sexy sax version of theme song swells up as James takes her in his arms. Later, the film ends with 007 and XXX getting busy in a preview of Glasnost ten years down the road.

Connection – This is a weird one. (Surprise.) The film is called The Spy Who Loved Me and theme song is sung by a female so it’s reasonable it’s about Anya being loved by James. In the film Stromberg says Bond is “in love with a Russian agent.” But it doesn’t seem like either are in love with anyone. Anya seems to forgive him after finding out he killed her boyfriend, but it doesn’t seem the least bit romantic. This is the aloof Bond of the seventies. Even Q and Moneypenny are kept at arm’s length. Regardless, the film ends with James and Anya bobbing in the ocean in a luxury escape pod, complete with a bed and a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon ’52. The pod floats into a cruising British destroyer where M and the British Ministers of Defense peer in through the window to see the two spies in flagrante delicto. “Bond! What do you think you’re doing?” asks the defense minister. “Keeping the British end up, sir.” And scene.

Toxic Masculinity Score: 6

Summary Watching this movie took me right back to the summer of ’77. The underwater submarine car battling frog men with their own subs was bliss for a 13-year-old boy. Catching a glimpse of Bach’s boob while sitting next to my dad was both terrifying and titillating. (See what I did there?) No part of me questioned the silly logic of the plot. Now I look at through the lens of 48 years of media. Stromberg has hundreds of henchmen all in red suits, like they were the henchmen of Squid Games. I wondered, who made these suits? Did Stromberg buy in bulk? Are they one size fits all? And do these henchmen get benefits? They all seem to be willing to die for him (and they all do). There should at least be life insurance in their benefits package. And dental.

The Spy Who Love Me, through that modern lens, has a pretty dim view of women. Bach, a few years after the film, said as much, telling People Magazine in 1983 that in the film Bond, “is a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets.” Moore himself said much the same in the 1970s. “Bond, like myself, is a male chauvinist pig. All my life I’ve been trying to get women out of brassieres and pants.” At least Bond doesn’t smack any women in this film on his way to thwart the accelerationist doomsday plot of this episode’s mad genius. While the mushroom clouds over the Atlantic might dampen the joie de vivre of the cold warriors warming things up the film’s climax, were left wondering will the aging Commander Bond will run out of notches on his belt before producers run of out of Ian Fleming novels to film.

Next: Moonraker (1979)

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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

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

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 17 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 #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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

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

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

January 24, 2025February 1, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 18 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 #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

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

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

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

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

January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 20 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 #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

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

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

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

January 19, 2025January 19, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 20 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 #2: From Russia With Love (1963)