Category: Guy Hamilton

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

By Marc S. Sanders

Bond. James Bond going Mano y Mano against Francisco Scaramanga, also known as The Man With The Golden Gun.

Regarded as one of the least successful films in the franchise, Roger Moore’s second outing as 007, with Guy Hamilton directing his fourth installment, is really fun and devious.

Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is former KGB who lives on his own island where he takes pleasure in carrying out gun duels with anyone up to the challenge. Professionally though, he works independently charging a million dollars to anyone requesting an assassination by means of his golden gun with accompanying golden bullets. Though it seems now the expert marksman is reaching out to Bond as a worthy competitor.

Bond doesn’t even know what Scaramanga looks like. So, he jets off to Beirut, then Thailand, Taiwan and eventually the villain’s own private island located in the seas off the coast of China. Also, there is Scaramanga’s latest toy, consisting of unlimited solar energy, a device he could sell to world powers globally for the highest bid while also bankrupting the oil industry.

Bond has encounters with a quirky henchman again. This time it’s a deadly midget named Nick Nack (Herve Villacaize, Fantasy Island). He’s a lot of fun as he teases both Bond and his boss, Scaramanga, in a fun house obstacle course as they carry out their best efforts to survive.

Two Bond girls (Maud Adams and Britt Eckland) allow Moore to balance the ladies in a hiding game within his hotel room while trying to keep them from running into each other. It’s light farce.

The Man With The Golden Gun also features one of the greatest automobile stunts ever captured on film, an alleyoop flip over a ravine with a broken bridge. Needs to be seen to be believed.

What keeps this film from highest of regard though is the return of Clifton James as Louisiana Sheriff J.W. Pepper for some cheap laughs that didn’t work when we saw him the first time in Live And Let Die. He’s a pest who’s contrived to show up in Taiwan of all places and coincidentally run into Bond again. Really? Seriously? There’s no reason for this annoyance to be here.

Still there’s lots of good moments including Bond vs two sumo wrestlers as well as fighting his way out of a deadly dojo with the assistance of some karate skilled school girls. Then there’s Scaramanga’s flying car which is extra cool.

007 embarks on an adventure that still holds up. Christopher Lee is loving his villainy and Roger Moore continues with the part well. He’s a sharp guy.

The Man With The Golden Gun is a film worth revisiting.

LIVE AND LET DIE

By Marc S. Sanders

I dunno. For me, the suave sophistication with the tongue in cheek persona of James Bond doesn’t mix well with the ‘70s cinematic themes of Blaxploitation and island voodoo rituals with snake bite human sacrifice. Live And Let Die was never a favorite of mine in the series. Still, it has some merits; even pioneering moments that set the standard for the next 20-25 years of 007. The gadgets are getting cooler (like a handy Rolex watch with a super magnet and buzz saw) and better, more natural looking action.

Harry Saltzman & Albert Broccoli present a film where the action scenes are the most authentic yet. A car chase with a double decker bus doesn’t feature the background film scroll seen in the rear window of an automobile, like prior films.

There’s a particularly long sequence featuring a boat chase through the Louisiana bayou. Great stunts and well edited footage here, although it features one of the most annoying characters in the whole series, redneck Sheriff GW Pepper (Clifton James, who always played the same role like in Superman II and even The A Team). This scene is an absolute blast of fun as Bond commands a speed boat while trying to evade a handful of bad guys in pursuit. Cars are wrecked. Boats are wrecked, and a bride to be wails aloud as her wedding is ruined. It’s just fun.

Roger Moore slips comfortably into the role of the Britain’s most celebrated secret agent. He’s handsome, for one thing, and his humor is dry enough that even in the face of death a pun is well delivered.

Yaphet Kotto plays Kananga, a far cry from the Cold War villains of Blofeld and Goldfinger. Turns out this guy just uses a couple of bars as a front for his heroin dealing enterprise while he dons a neighborhood crime boss image of “Mr. Big,” looking more like a villain of Shaft. He’s nevertheless good. Though he starts out the role quite subdued, he gleefully comes alive in the second half of the film when Bond intrudes on his secret lair.

Tom Mankiwietz’ script is lacking though. The pre title sequence gets me curious why three agents are inventively killed, but then the story mires itself in Kananga relying on Tarot card reading from the first virginal Bond girl, the High Priestess known as Solitaire. (Jane Seymour’s first screen role.) This offers no suspense or substance. We wait for cards to literally be turned over. Not exactly nail biting. Seymour is beautiful, but the intelligence and sex appeal of the character is flat.

There are also scarecrows and Caribbean island voodoo that are hardly threatening and belong in a horror film, not a Cold War era Bond adventure.

All of this weird material was twisting the series a little too far off course.

Live And Let Die does add a great henchman to 007’s rogue gallery; that of the imposing Tee Hee with enormous height and his steel lobster claw arm. He’s a fun bad guy that happily deserts Bond in a hungry alligator swamp.

Director Guy Hamilton’s third Bond film is not a total bust. It’s well cast in villains and Roger Moore is a perfect successor. Location shots of New Orleans and Jamaica (subbing for Kananga’s Caribbean island) are cool to see. The Harlem, New York footage really doesn’t belong here, though. It also has one of the best, most often played songs in the whole series, compliments of Paul McCartney & Wings. Again, it suffers however from a short sighted script.

Bond will be better served in missions yet to come.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

By Marc S. Sanders

Director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger) returns to helm Sean Connery’s final portrayal of 007 in the EON Productions series with Diamonds Are Forever. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t even come close to measuring up to Hamilton’s prior effort.

Little regard is offered to the shocking ending of the prior installment, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A quick opening has Bond tossing Blofeld (head of SPECTRE, here played gleefully by Charles Grey) into a lava pit. Following Shirley Bassey’s pretty good theme song, 007 is assigned to acquire diamonds that are getting smuggled from the mines of South Africa and intercepted by a beautiful American red head named Tiffany Case (Jill St. John, who is pretty fun in the role). Only problem is that nearly every person the diamonds pass through ends up dead by the homosexual henchmen Mr. Kidd & Mr. Wendt. Considering the sexual tête-à-tête the Bond films became known for by the 7th film, Hamilton and company play up these guys like a weird joke in their inflection with one another, and even the fact that they hold hands at times. The music resorts to a mischievous note on the saxophone. In 1971, this might have held for a good laugh. In the PC era, it really doesn’t feel appropriate to imply these assassins are disturbing simply because they’re gay.

Eventually, the pursuit of said diamonds moves to Las Vegas where some silly Smokey & The Bandit (which was not even close to being released yet) humor occurs. Bond pilots a moon buggy through the Nevada desert while cars that are chasing him fall apart and flip over against the sandy terrain. More silly car chases happen in the heart of Vegas. The sheriff and his men are turned into Keystone Cops. It’s a little too much slapstick actually.

Still, why the need for the diamonds and what does a mysterious, unseen, wealthy man named Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean) have to do with it?

Bond films work best when the villains work. There’s not much given from a powerhouse villain here like there was in Goldfinger. The necessary shootout ending occurs on an oil tanker this time, and Bond is hardly threatened or under much duress. Thus, killing any kind of suspense.

Connery is fine but you can also tell his commitment is hardly in the role. He’s working just enough for a paycheck-reportedly collecting a record million dollars to return to the role one more time.

By the time the film ends, you feel ready for a drastic change in the franchise. The ‘60s camp is over with. Disco seventies is here. So you wish that 007 can make a smooth transition to the changing cultural times. We would have to wait and see what producers Harry Saltzman & Albert Broccoli could do next to reinvigorate the franchise.

GOLDFINGER

By Marc S. Sanders

If From Russia With Love offered a promising future for James Bond, Guy Hamilton’s direction of Goldfinger solidified it. This is Sean Connery’s best representation of 007, and yet the only triumphant thing the character does is win a golf match against the title character, Goldfinger, played by Gert Frobe.

As good as the film is, ironically Bond does not succeed in any effort to thwart the diabolical plans of Auric Goldfinger, who intends to invade the gold depository located at Fort Knox. Bond doesn’t deactivate the bomb. He doesn’t successfully get his CIA allies on the right track. He doesn’t even do away with Mr. Goldfinger. Everything happens to occur circumstantially. James Bond just got lucky this time.

So then why is the third entry considered by many to be the best in the series?

Well, the movie is immense in its charm, and it pioneers the flavor of nearly ever Bond film released from here on out, at least until the coming of the blunt, brooding instrument of Daniel Craig.

The vile henchman, Oddjob, with his razor bowler hat introduced a staple needed for a winning film. Every bad guy had to have an unusual trait. Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) set a more defined precedent for the Bond Girl. Even Shirley Bassey’s dangerously pounding title song carried a threat of the most sadistic villains to come.

Plus the gadgets are exceedingly fun. How do I know? Because time and again Bond returns toward using his classic Astin Martin DB5 with tricked out machine guns, oil slick and (I wouldn’t joke about this) ejector seat. 007’s moment with Q became a necessary ingredient in every Bond film following “Goldfinger.” Actually, I think Q is only missing from 2 or 3 films following this entry.

The tongue in cheek theme couldn’t be more apparent in this film thanks to Sean Connery. “Manners Oddjob. I thought you always took your hat off to a lady.” 007’s casual response to any threat, or what follows after subduing a bad guy, is such fun. What else would you say after you’ve electrocuted a guy in a bathtub?

“Shocking. Positively shocking.”