Worst Bond Moments 1962-1971
Firemass
AlaskaPosts: 1,910MI6 Agent
Okay so we're all familiar with the Tarzan Yell, Jaws falling in love and the bad CGI ice surfing. These are what is considered "low hanging fruit" in terms of being easy to spot as the worst Bond moments.
But what about the earlier films from 1962 to 1971? Did Connery ever goof up? These films are classic enough that we can poke a bit of fun at them. This is not meant to be mean spirited in any way. I love Dr. No, but that car chase has not aged well!
Here's my top 10 worst Bond moments from Dr. No thru Diamonds Are Forever:
1. Raping Pussy Galore in the barn (GF)
2. Wounding a shark on purpose (TB)
3. Making Bond look Japanese (YOLT)
4. Blofeld in drag (DAF)
5. Bond wearing a kilt (OHMSS)
6. Nut-crushing move (DAF)
7. The fake car chase with squealing tires on a gravel road (DN)
8. Strangling a girl with her bikini (DAF)
9. The tarantula crawling on glass above Sean's arm (DN)
10. The dragon tank and dragon tracks (DN)
But what about the earlier films from 1962 to 1971? Did Connery ever goof up? These films are classic enough that we can poke a bit of fun at them. This is not meant to be mean spirited in any way. I love Dr. No, but that car chase has not aged well!
Here's my top 10 worst Bond moments from Dr. No thru Diamonds Are Forever:
1. Raping Pussy Galore in the barn (GF)
2. Wounding a shark on purpose (TB)
3. Making Bond look Japanese (YOLT)
4. Blofeld in drag (DAF)
5. Bond wearing a kilt (OHMSS)
6. Nut-crushing move (DAF)
7. The fake car chase with squealing tires on a gravel road (DN)
8. Strangling a girl with her bikini (DAF)
9. The tarantula crawling on glass above Sean's arm (DN)
10. The dragon tank and dragon tracks (DN)
My current 10 favorite:
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Comments
Some nice choices. How about Bond singing 'underneath the mango tree' Some of the other DN choices are really a function of low budget and technology. Also don't think Pussy was raped by Bond.
Also Dalton's 'strawberry jam' line in TLD
Cringeworthy ' no armour left' scene in CR
Dragons in SF!
Dalton's terrible 'Dracula hair' in LTK (I'm a massive Dalton fan BTW)
The spider on the glass doesn't bother me, they used the same trick in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy is dropped in to the well of souls with the snakes.
Yeah, but to be fair, while I agree a barn isn't a very nice venue, the very impromptu nature of rape suggests that Bond had to do what he could, I mean he couldn't very well book a nice hotel and then say, well, I'll rape you there, could he? Besides, he wasn't allowed off the compound.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
1. Yelling "Fetch my shoes" to Quarrel in DN. (He actually orders Quarrel around a few times. Then he let's him get killed. Poor bastard.)
2. Moments when someone says, "Oh, wow, that's ... James BOND" like he's some international celebrity (E.g. Tiffany Case, "Do you know who you just killed? James Bond!" in DAF).
3. "Right idea, OO7,... wrong pussy."
4. Calling Tiffany Case a "stupid twit" (or was it worse?).
5. Back to Quarrel. That dopey shot where he takes a shot of rum from the jug (first night on Crab Key), along with a Warner Bros cartoon musical motif. Ah, 1962. Haha, look at the googly eyed native boy, har har har. Man I hate that shot.
6. The photographer girl cuts Quarrel's face up with a broken flash bulb ... he shows a handful of blood ... no one offers him a bandage or anything.
7. Bond goes to bed with Tatiana in his hotel suite ... but he never turned off his bath. Guess it was a huge tub, in the bridal suite.
8. Dubbing Lazenby's voice when he's Hilary Bray. Totally unnecessary, big distraction.
9. On that note, Ruby Bartlett gnawing her chicken and grinning her greasy chicken smile at him. Not very sexy, Ruby. (I hope she flossed after dinner.)
10. James Bond impersonating Jerry Lewis impersonating a goofy, buck toothed Chinaman in his jail cell door at Goldfinger's Kentucky stud ranch.
11. Just about all of YOLT.
“It reads better than it lives.” T. Case
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
- Blofeld having about a hundred opportunities to kill Bond in YOLT before finally getting a throwing star in the arm when he's about to shoot.
- The guys in space suits chasing after Bond in slow motion in DAF.
- All the soldiers falling asleep at the same time in Goldfinger when the planes fly by.
There's alot more. I'm watching all the Bond movies in order right now and I just remember alot of WTF moments while watching these ones.
Any lengthy underwater sequence
Carpets & drapes remark in DAF
Heavy-handed references to previous films in OHMSS
Wint & Kidd especially the dessert bit
And Lazenby being part dubbed, ridiculous, makes a mockery of the whole film when it is trying to be credible. Astonishingly, Roger Moore in his new book says Lazenby seems better as an actor when he is being dubbed, that it's an improvement.
Agree, Ruby Bartlett seems about the least desirable conquest, like Sarah Millican.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Looks a bit like roadkill to me
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
And I dunno, I mean look at the way Bond deals with WhiteLeiter in Thunderball. Always it seemed to me sort of cutting him off and talking him down, it rankles, like he doesn't want good looking competition. Imagine if it were a black Leiter who got introduced in the film by having Bond smack him in the stomach, then wandering off to the shower, apologising, saying 'Sorry Felix, you were about to say 007...' right in front of the very hood he was supposed to be shielding it from!
It would be more like, 'Sorry Felix, just a Rodney King moment, y'know...!'
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Perhaps there's something to your theory. All I know is that every time I watch that scene it strikes me as not only condenscending, but racist as well. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it because I happen to be Black and I know what it's like to be spoken to that way by white individuals who I have never seen speaking to other white people that way. At any rate, I generally enjoy Dr. No and I try not to let that moment ruin it for me.
The explosions in DAF that look like they've come from a kid's Chemistry set (literally)
The music when Bond arrives at Goldfinger's stud
Tiffany Case falling off the oil rig when firing a machine gun in DAF
Tiffany Case changing wigs in DAF intro scene
YOLT plot - few Fleming novel reference points - Blofeld asw the first megalomaniac Bond villain that led on to the excesses of TSWLM and MR
Awful Back-projection in Goldfinger
9. Trying to make a white girl look Chinese in DR. NO (But Joseph Wiseman I don't mind as much)
8. The SPECTRE sequence at the beginning of RUSSIA WITH LOVE (It's too long, kinda boring and dumb)
7. The dubbing of the guys in the boat in DR. NO ("We'll be back... we'll be back with the dogs... full speed ahead!" He doesn't even have the megaphone on when he says the last line, it's kinda funny though)
6. The psychedelic ceiling in MAJESTY (really dates the film)
5. Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (Although Mr. Kidd catching on fire is hilarious)
4. The tilted car changing sides in DIAMONDS (How did they screw that one up?)
3. Blofeld in drag (Actually just Blofeld in general from DIAMONDS)
2. The boring underwater fight from THUNDERBALL
1. George Lazenby... Just George Lazenby
Fleming has several racist comments in GOLDFINGER, which I'm rereading currently.
“It reads better than it lives.” T. Case
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
The tires squealing on a dirt road is of course ridiculous, but it does convey the idea of a car chase going on to the audience, for example. The 1971 Ford Mustang Mach I going in one side and coming out the other was the result of mix-up that couldn't be fixed. By the time they realized it was screwed up, Ford had already taken the specially rigged cars back to the factory.
Quarrel really gets the raw end of the stick and it's been discussed a lot, I think, but Zena Marshall as a Chinese girl is overlooked. A lot. It would be understandable, I guess, if they didn't have anyone (which was a legit predicament they ran into 20 years later with OP after neither of the Indian actresses they were looking at seemed to fit either the role of Octopussy or Magda, thus having to rewrite both characters' backgrounds).
However, they cast Yvonne Shima (Japanese Canadian, granted...) in the same film as Sister Lily. Look at most of her roles (you can find pics of her characters) and she really was very attractive. I'm guessing they "aged" her in DN, and her older voice was provided by Nikki van der Zyl (I believe she actually spoke with a Canadian accent). Would it really have been too much trouble to at least swap their roles? Neither played that big a role. I mean, just consider that they could have easily made her look like this, considering this photo was from 1965...
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6101/6275249466_5f6dc9a532_z.jpg
However, taking the cake for the "what were they thinking?" award was Blofeld in drag. I just cannot see absolutely any reason whatsoever why this happened other than to shoehorn in a one-liner and it takes away A LOT of the character's sinister intent.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Hahaha..I was thinking the same. You almost start wondering if the other posters like the Bond movies.
1. Connery 2. Craig 3. Brosnan 4. Dalton 5. Lazenby 6. Moore
About "fetch my shoes" , imo he was just being rude like he was rude to Leiter in TB........he wanted to emphasise he was in charge , not in a polite way though.
Yeah, that (and the police officer in AVTAK: "And I'm Dick Tracy and you're still under arrest") always bug me, too... but then I recalled that in Pearson's 007 Biography (I think it's there) the thought was that Bond was a real MI6 agent that Fleming wrote the fictionalized adventures of (like the adventures really happened, but Fleming wrote them as novels and embellished the story). So, Bond would be viewed as a fictional character in the real world.
The other thing is that Tiffany, indirectly working for Blofeld, would have known about James Bond and his reputation.
It's a minor thing but..... When Bond gets out his cigarette case as they are sitting in Quarrel's boat, he offers a cigarette to Leiter but not to Quarrel.
Now why would you do that? It's not a military thing, like showing he's in charge, it's just... mean.
When Bond climbs into the back of Professor Dr Metz's van at the petrol (gas) station in DAF - did absolutely nobody see him? And Metz didn't hear the doors open or close? Really?
of caviar, without using a mother of pearl spoon
dreadfull
I'm such a Pleb, always shaken I had to look up
how to eat Caviar.
Your reply made me splutter, ive now got coca cola running out my nose
(but secretley between you and me im happier with pie,mash and eels )