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The British secret service receives a golden bullet with 007's
number on it. This is the calling card of Scaramanga, "the
man with the golden gun", renowned as the deadliest assassin
in the world. James Bond has been marked for death, and he'll
need all his lethal instincts and seductive charm if he is
to survive...
Released
only a year after Live and Let Die, Roger Moore's second
Bond film was perhaps rushed into production a little too
quickly.
The
Bond series has, of course, repeated itself to varying degrees
ever since its second movie, but on this occasion the absence
of new ideas becomes particularly noticeable. For example,
Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) possesses a powerful laser, just
as Goldfinger did, but he admits that "science was never my
strong point", a line transplanted almost verbatim from Charles
Gray's Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. Also lifted
from Goldfinger is Bond's announcement that something
has come up (a double entendre that would be repeated yet
again in The Spy Who Loved Me).
Most
obviously of all, Sheriff JW Pepper (Clifton James) from Live
and Let Die makes a return appearance, though this is
actually a plus point, as Pepper provides some of the film's
funniest comic moments, particularly during the movie's signature
stunt sequence, the famous 360-degree bridge jump. (This stunt
is explored in the new-to-DVD television programme American
Thrill Show, while Bond stunts in general are the subject
of this DVD's thematic documentary, Double-0-Stuntmen.)
The
main reason for watching this movie is the character of Scaramanga
himself, who is transformed by writers Richard Maibaum and
Tom Mankiewicz, and by actor Lee, into a far more memorable
foe than the thug depicted in Fleming's novel. The statuesque
Lee presents a villain who is a believable threat to James
Bond, who is almost a darker incarnation of him. Scaramanga's
disarming respect for 007 dramatically offsets the villain's
other guise, that of a cold-blooded killer.
Apart
from the name Francisco Scaramanga, his nickname "the man
with the golden gun", and the presence of Mary Goodnight (Britt
Ekland), the movie has little in common with Fleming's book.
It could, therefore, quite easily have been novelised as part
of the literary canon, as subsequent films have been. (Indeed,
as with Diamonds Are Forever, Vic Davis penned a prose
adaptation for the Daily Express, which appeared during
December 1974.) Goodnight is a recurring character in the
books anyway, so there would be no problem with keeping her
in my imaginary novelisation - let's call it A
Million a Shot
or Silvershot. The only major changes that would be
necessary would be to the villain's names. He could use silver
bullets and/or a silver-plated gun - hence the nickname "Silvershot"
suggested by my alternative title - or some other gimmick
instead of gold. The villain's personal history would also
require slight alteration to avoid duplicating that of Fleming's
Scaramanga.
The
movie Scaramanga's "funhouse" training ground provides visual
excitement at the opening and closing of the film. The first
instance acquaints the audience with the danger inherent in
this setting, before Bond is placed there later on. This is
a similar dramatic device to the one used in Live and Let
Die's funeral processions and sacrifice sequences. Production
designer Peter Murton and his team also provide ingenious
sloping sets for the interior of the capsized cruise liner,
Queen Elizabeth.
New
special features include an additional commentary by Roger
Moore, unedited footage of the fight sequence involving the
karate kids Cha (Joie Pacharintraporn) and Nara (Qiu Yuen),
and excerpts from a Russell Harty interview with Moore and
Hervé Villechaize (Nick Nack) - though for some reason Harty's
questions are edited out and we only get the actors' responses.
The
Man with the Golden Gun has its moments, but in terms
of overall quality it's easy to see why this was the lowest
grossing film in the series. Hardly a golden age.
  
Richard
McGinlay
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