Only now does it occur to me... that if William Castle had ever directed a James Bond film, it definitely should have been THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.
What would the gimmick have been? Flying skeletons? A full-on working fun house in the lobby? 13 GHOSTS-style Scare-o-manga-vision? A free novelty rubber nipple with admission? (Christopher Lee's character Scaramanga has a notable extra nipple.) Something to do with a gang midgets at the theater?
Of course, with the latter, I'm alluding to the irrepressible Hervé Villechaize (FANTASY ISLAND, FORBIDDEN ZONE), whose measured performance as "Nick Nack" reaches levels of subtlety previously reached in a Bond movie only by Bruce Glover in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. I'm going to choose to believe that the incongruous beauty of a little person in a Bond flick is what sparked the imagination of the makers of FOR Y'UR HEIGHT ONLY, the first of many glorious Weng Weng Agent 00 movies from the 1980s.
As far as Bond flicks from the Moore era go, this is one of– if not the– best. I have some fond memories from childhood of seeing this on TV, and though that may color my opinion, it's got a taut storyline, a great villain in Christopher Lee's titular assassin,
those great "Dark Carnival" sets on Lee's private island, a solid 70s Bond girl in Britt Ekland (best known for THE WICKER MAN and being Peter Sellers' wife)
and it even has Bond doing an embarrassing loop-de-loop bridge jump like something out of a DUKES OF HAZZARD episode or a Burt Reynolds movie, complete with a slide whistle sound effect. Whew!
[Also, despite the fine opening song collaboration between John Barry and Lulu, I can't help but think Alice Cooper's unused title track would have been a nicer (and more rockin') fit. That is all.]
0 comments
Post a Comment