Double O Countdown: The Spy Who Loved Me

"The Spy Who Loved Me" is Roger Moore's best work as James Bond. The series had some humor still but did not go off the deep end until the next picture. It reworks the concept of "You Only Live Twice" pitting the Soviets and Americans against each other, this time to destroy the world so that the undersea empire of Stromberg will survive. Three nuclear submarines end up in a supertanker that was the largest sound-stage of any movie studio ever.

001 Submarines Fight World War Three inside a tanker.

002 The Pyramids Night Time Lighting Ceremony

I have no idea if this is a real thing or not, but it ought to be. Bond follows XXX to meet the mysterious seller of the tracking technology they are both after. They are not alone however, as the killer Jaws is also after the seller for a different purpose. All this takes place while the narrator of a cool light show at the pyramids keeps talking. This is the only time I ever thought about visiting Egypt.

003 Jaws

A hired killer who stands over seven feet and has steel teeth that he uses to bite the carotid artery in his victims neck. Richard Kiel played the part in two Bond films, and despite the obvious rip-off of the name from a familiar film from a couple of summers earlier, he became iconic in his own right.

Taking a bite from his namesake

His hand is as big as Bonds head. That's pretty intimidating.

004  Speaking of Submarines

After the ejection seat of "Goldfinger" you might wonder what the Q branch would come up with for 007 to drive on assignment. Well, they out do themselves here, a high speed Lostus that doubles as a submersible,

A cool car and helicopter chase, ends with a plunge into the Corsican sea.

 Caroline Munro, B movie Queen of the era, captains the helicopter.

005 Carly Simon sings the theme song. 

This tune was all over the radio in the late seventies. Some people  (Fogs) even think it is the best Bond theme. It has a polish that makes the movie feel sophisticated even when it is occasionally silly.

006 My Favorite Moment From Roger Moore as 007

Most people think of Roger Moore's James Bond as an avuncular,  dandy who never got his nails dirty. Here is a sequence in which Moore explodes that myth. After a fight in the rooftop of an Egyptian apartment, Jaws partner, Sandor, teeters on the brink of death, grasping Bond's tie to keep from toppling over.

 Bond questions him about the location of the arms merchant who has the submarine tracking tool for sale. As soon as he gets his answer, Bond flicks his tie.

 Down goes the bad guy, another casualty of the spy game.

Than 007 casually straightens out his tie to look good for the rest of the afternoon. Cold, James, really cold.

007 The Pre-Title Sequence

Almost everyone will agree, this was a spectacular stunt. The unfurling of the Union Jack got a standing ovation at the Royal Premier of the film attended by Prince Charles. I'll stand up for our allies here as well. For Queen and Country James.






James Bond Will Return in: "Moonraker"

Double O Countdown: The Man With The Golden Gun

The Man with the Golden Gun is one of the lesser Bonds in my opinion, put it does have some points to recommend it and I have to admit that each time I see it, it grows on me.

001 The Kung Fu Kick gets a 007 Twist

The early Seventies were filled with Blaxpoitation and Kung Fu Movies. Since the year before, Bond had indulged in the urban drama of the gritty streets, it seems logical that Bruce Lee will not have died in vain. His legacy provides Bond wit an opportunity to don a gi and get his karate freak on. Of course in the end, the twist is that the two teen girls are the real Bruce Lees of the film.

002 The Cartoon Funhouse Shooting Gallery

At the beginning of the film, a mob assassin shows up to do in Scaramanga, but he is deposited in a strange "dark ride" environment. It makes little sense but it is visually fun and it sets up the duel between Bond and Scaramanga at the end of the film.

003 The Secret Lair

The movie has some spectacular locations, none more beautiful than the island lair of Scaramanga, supposedly located just inside Chinese territory to give him cover.

The lush background for the duel between the titans of death is also the location of a solar energy plant. And it's not located in the California dessert just before the Nevada border.

004 A Penny Slide Whistle Ruins a Great Stunt

As complicated and dangerous as the alligator gag in the previous movie, but requiring more physics and math than most of us will ever do. AMC cars, a sponsor of the film (based on the make of most of the vehicles in Thailand) gets it's money's worth with an incredible 360 degree spin of a car jump. It looks great but as it happens, someone made the mistake of choosing to make it a comedy moment and they add a slide whistle sound effect to the film. It spoils the moment but not the achievement.

005 The Sun Never Sets on England (or at least English Territory)

Great Britain still controlled Hong Kong in 1974 , and in the harbor, a shipwrecked "Queen Elizabeth", the companion luxury liner to the "Queen Mary", lies on it's side,a burnt out hull, or does it. MI6 apparently can't afford the rents in Hong Kong anymore than the rest of the world, so some great set design is used to take a piece of contemporary history and turn it into a James Bond moment.

006  Francisco Scaramanga AKA Christopher Lee

With his skyscraper frame and intense eyes, he makes a perfect Bond Villain. The late Christopher Lee loos terrific in the white suits and sea island shirts that he wears in this film. He feels like he is indeed a match for James Bond.

An assassin who gets a million dollars a contract, Scaramanga also manages a business stealing technology and using it to blackmail the rest of the world. His secret weapon, well let's just say we will be discussing this in a moment.





When he acquires the solex that turns his solar panels into energy, he also manages to turn that energy into a weapon. The golden rays of the sun become a metaphorical golden gun that he uses against
Bond's plane.

007 The Golden Gun

My most coveted piece of Bond memorabilia. I'd love to get one of these reproductions of the clever Golden Gun that the villain uses to dispatch the objects of his contracts.

  A cigarette case, a lighter, a fountain pen and a cuff link, come together to create a deadly toy.

Just the Christmas present that anyone would be happy to recieve, hint hint, nudge, nudge.

James Bond will Return in: 

"The Spy Who Loved Me"

All Things Must Pass

Sunday night, we seized the opportunity to have one last go at this documentary about the rise and fall of Tower records, with a Q and A session with Director Colin Hanks and Executive Producer Glen Zipper. It was a last minute add after two nights of previous screenings that we were not able to make it to. I can happily say I am really glad to have made it to the film, it was a fascinating look into the history of one of the great retail stores that catered to music lovers around the world. The movie examines not only the impact that Tower had on the culture of music but it also provides a unique example of history, a detailed look at an  American business in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Russ Solomon is the founder of Tower Records and an out-sized personality that took to the music business after selling used records from the jukebox in his father's drugstore. The film follows his story as he builds a business, expands it almost accidentally and creates a unique business culture that empowered the managers of the stores he owned to imbue them with their own personality. Hanks started the process of putting this film together more than seven years ago, and he was able to get many hours of interviews with his subjects over that time. As with ever film, the story evolves from the material that gets developed and the editor hones it into a narrative that makes some sense. This turned into a look at the "family" that was created by the Tower records approach. Ultimately that family has to go through a pretty harsh crisis and when it gets to that point, we have been surprisingly brought into the fold to share it with them.

In the Q & A, Hanks explained that everyone had stories about their experiences with Tower. One of the questions from the audience concerned a specific location. As the director put it, "Those stories are better told over a beer in a bar than they are on screen." The one really great exception occurs when the story is told by one of the biggest rock stars of the last forty years. Elton John is interviewed and through a quirk of fate, there is even film of him going over his lists of music as he shops at Tower on Sunset Blvd. Personally, I always liked going to Tower wherever I happened to be. In 1977, we were at a Debate Tournament in Sacramento and we went shopping at Tower one night while we were there. I picked up an 8-track of the Bee Gees Mr. Natural at the home store for the chain. Most of my later Tower experiences were with the stores in Buena Park, Brea, and Hollywood.

There is a good mix of personalities from the company to tell the story. They all seemed to love the company although they did not always seem to like each other. The fall of the company may have been casually blamed on Napster, I seem to remember Justin Timberlake making a snide comment as the character of Sean Parker in "The Social Network", crowing over the corpse of Tower, but in this movie, the collapse was shown to be a lot more complicated. On-line music has not killed the sold off Tower Stores in Japan, so there might still have been a place for the company, if they had not been so heavily leveraged and the economy had not tanked.  Technology has changed the marketplace, but there is still a large segment of the population who love physical media (like me) and wish we had a paradise to indulge in browsing, handling, sharing and dreaming in real time rather than the virtual world.

My friend Michael, met us at the theater and he is a big music guy. In addition to being a former projectionist, he is an aficionado of analog vinyl  music. He seemed to really appreciate the movie as well. It is a great opportunity to see some old clips of Los Angeles and San Fransisco as well as to bend another persons ear about the good old days of record stores. Licorice Pizza, Music Plus, The Wherehouse are all gone, but none of them are recalled with the fondness that people have for Tower records. If you have any interest in the story, this is a film to check out.

We took an extra few minutes to cruise down from the Archlight and visit the old Sunset site. Hanks had been on the Mark in the Morning show the Wednesday before the weekend, promoting the film, and he had mentioned that they had restored some of the look of the old building for an opening party that they had. It probably won't stay that way forever, but if your nostalgia itch gets to be strong enough, take a trip down the blvd. and let your heart jump in hope that the past eight years has all been a nightmare and we can now stop in and find out what's new in the music world.

Double O Countdown: Live and Let Die

Enter Roger Moore for a long stay as 007. The Moore films are remembered as being light, full of humor and self depreciation, as well as being over the top. The only people for whom Moore was the best Bond are kids who first saw 007 in the 70s and fondly recall how much they enjoyed the films. Sir Roger has his moments and I think he managed to fit well with the films given their styles from that period. This is his first one, and in my opinion it was one of his best.

001   The Best Poster From any Bond Film

I did a write up a couple of years ago on the Bond Posters, and I named this as my favorite. A couple of other people shared their opinions but I'm sticking by my guns. If you want to read the whole post, click on the beautiful image below.

002   One of the Stupidest Things I Ever Did as a Kid

I had a couple of friends as a kid who were far and away crazier than I was, but I happily followed them down the path of madness. We took the shaft of pen cartridges and cleaned them out, crimped one end, put them between a bobby pin and stuffed them with sulfur from matches, creating little canons that would shoot rock salt. James Bond never did that, but... he did do this...and so did we. I'm lucky I'm not blind.

003 The Film's Motif.

I'm going to cheat here to get in some extra elements that I like about the movie. It is full of blaxploitation, voodoo, Southern Gothic, fortune telling crazy stuff.

A guy with a claw for a hand.

Tee Hee is a big guy as well, towering over Bond. He inspires one of my favorite quips from Bond. When Bond is a prisoner and Mr. Big orders Tee Hee to take his watch so he can use the serial number to test Solitare, the henchmen fumbles with it and Bond mutters "Butterhook".

Solitaire, the Bond Girl of the film, played by the beautiful Jane Seymour, reads the future for Mr. Big and Dr. Kananga. The voice over while Bond is traveling to the U.S. is full of foreboding fun.

I gave my daughter who is also a Bond fanatic, a deck of these cards as a Christmas gifts four or five years ago. The imagery on the cards is used in the poster and it was cleverly used by Bond to infiltrate the Mr. Big organization. He was Solitaire's destiny by  design.

The Funeral in New Orleans as the CIA man is disposed of with a coffin made for clean up duty on the streets.







One of the themes that was kept from the original story was the way Mr. Big controls a lot of his followers through the superstitions around Voodoo. Bond's treacherous partner Rosie, freaks out at the hat with the chicken feathers, Bond trails his suspect "Whisper" to a retail outlet specializing in the occult, and on the island that Kanaga controls, his enemies are murdered in a voodoo ritual featuring the King of the Dead Baron Samedi himself, sometimes a nightclub performer, sometimes a robot and sometimes an actual specter of doom.

004   An Amazing and Entertaining Boat Chase through the delta lands.

While it does introduce a comic supporting character that is unwisely included in a second Bond film, the boat chase should not be diminished by the presence of  Sheriff Pepper.

003 Yaphet Kotto as the Villain Mr.Big/Dr. Kananga

This wonderful actor with a distinctive pronunciation and voice, is one of the best villains in the Moore years. He has a real part and gets to play it up duringthe story, he is not some vague megalomaniac millionaire trying to destroy the world, he is simply a clever gangster who dreams big and knows how to get what he wants.

When he and Bond have their climatic fight at the end of the movie, he wields a knife like he knows how to use it. Trapped underwater (In a shark tank of course) Bond forces an anti-shark pellet down his throat.

The result is explosive.A funny and fitting end to the bad guy.

006  If They Hadn't Done it for Real, you'd hoot at the idea.

Bond is trapped by Tee Hee on an island in the alligator farm where the heroin is manufactured. He has run out of chicken pieces to distract the gators with and must figure a way out that avoids being the main course. The exit the writers cooked up is preposterous, but the stunt was really performed on camera, live. It was dramatic, silly and a laugh that earns it an honored place on my list.

007  The Opening Titles and the Title Song

The best theme of the 007 Rock era, is played over naked women in silhouette, with fire and exploding skulls. Paul McCartney proves that post Beatles, he had the best ear for a catchy tune of all the fab four.





That's all for now,

James Bond will Return in:
 "The Man With The Golden Gun".

Double O Countdown: Diamonds Are Forever

This one is a little tough because it is one of the lesser Bonds. It has it's qualities but most of them are not particularly unique so it might sound a bit familiar as we go along here. This is one of the few times in the series that a large part of the action takes place in the states, and the setting of Las Vegas was novel for the time. Bits and pieces of the era creep in and make it one of the more dated stories.

001 The Theme Song

It feels like a cheat to include the theme song in so many of my lists for this project, but Bond fanatics know that the music in the movie is one of the draws. This was a triumphant return of Shirley Bassey to the fold, and she does a silky smooth opening song that mixes electronic instruments with a great bass riff.

002 The Henchmen

If they tried this today they would be crucified. The secondary killers for Blofeld are a couple on near mincing homosexuals that are exploited for laughs more than for the danger they present. It is politically incorrect, but it was one of the first times I'd encountered a gay character in any fistion, so it was memorable to me.

Wint and Kidd are closing up the smuggling pipeline and killing all the contacts along the way. They try to get Bond a couple of times, but never manage to do a credible job of it. Mr. Wint's perfumery cologne gives him away at the end of the film.Bond does him in with his own bomb cake and a suggestive handlock between the legs that  is another gay punchline.

At least Mr. Kidd gets a more dignified death, if you consider immolation to be superior.

003 The Double Entendres

James Bond in the movie is different from the books in a number of ways, one of which is his play with language. Although the puns and risque wordplay are tiresome in the Pierce Brosnan films, they still worked coming out of the mouth of Sean Connery.

James Bond: Weren't you a blonde when I came in?
Tiffany Case: Could be.
James Bond: I tend to notice little things like that - whether a girl is a blonde or a brunette.
Tiffany Case: Which do you prefer?
James Bond: Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match...

I did not get this joke in 1971, I was thirteen at the time. Years later I almost busted a gut when i heard it again.

Here is another one from the film that I did not get the first time around and now it would get a spit take from me.

"Hi I'm Plenty"

 "Plenty O'Toole"

"Named after your father perhaps."

004  Mustang Mix Up

It is hard enough to make a movie, much less one where everything needs to be consistent. Bond and Tiffany are chased through old Las Vegas in their Red Mustang. In order to escape at one point Bond drive up a ramp, tips the car on it's side and drives through a narrow pathway that the cops can't follow through.

All well and good, except when he comes out on the other side, there is a slightyly odd issue with physics that needs to be explained and never is.

Exactly how does the car come out the opposite way it went in?

I'm not that picky, it was still a cool stunt.

005  Willard Whyte

Singer Jimmy Dean plays a reclusive billionaire who is kidnapped but no one knows it. Why? because he has not been seen in public for a number of years before it happens. Those of you not familiar with the history of Vegas and Howard Hughes will miss the sly references and outright theft of some of his story.

The above shot also includes frequently used character actor Shane Rimmer (You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and a voice in Live and Let Die)

Like the fictional Willard Whyte, Hughes occupied the top floors of the hotels he stayed at. He actually bought the Desert Inn while living there to avoid more conflict with the management.

The best part of the story with Whyte is the Penthouse suite occupied by Blofeld. It is another gem of design from the 007

006 The Poster

One of the best posters of the series. For a complete discussion check out my post on Bond posters by clicking the image.

007 The Elevator Fight

Bond has a lot of hand to hand combat in the films. This was a unique fight because it was so brutal and it takes place in an old style open elevator. The conflict with smuggler Peter Franks has drama and a couple of black humor bits because the quarter are so close the combatants can't get much momentum or leverage with one another.

The best sequence in an otherwise less than thrilling film.

James Bond Will Return in "Live and Let Die."