Heavy Bondage: The Man With the Golden Gun

There seems to have been hardly an attempt to interest us in characterization.
- Tom Hutchinson in the Sunday Telegraph (December 1974)

The Man With the Golden Gun
Film: 1974
Book: 1965 (13th in chronology)

Irreverent Synopsis: Bond is taken off the hunt for a missing solar energy expert because M has received a gold bullet that has his number - literally. The bullet is presumed to be a message from Scaramanga, a high-paid assassin. Bond is given leave to pursue the matter unofficially (that is, to hunt down Scaramanga and kill him), but ends up getting retangled in the Solex McGuffin plot, absolutely implausibly. Eventually he does kill Scaramanga, but like the rest of this film, it is a wholly unsatisfying event.

Major Observations: The only thing which saves this from being the worst Bond film of all time is a certain promise around the edges. Perhaps, rather than considering this an egregiously bad Bond film, we should consider it a monument to greatly squandered potential. This film could have been much better. It should have been much better. Instead it is not very good at all. The viewers knew it, too; this film still has the lowest American attendance of the entire series to date, although Licence to Kill came close to the same attendance low and arguably did worse financially, depending on how you count the money.

So what happened? Well, there are two possible backlot causes, to begin with. First, the film may have been rushed. You'll notice, if you check the dates, that the Bond films had more or less settled on a one-every-two-years schedule. However, Golden Gun came out a mere seventeen months after Live and Let Die; one version says that Eon was so pleased that they had managed to succeed with the Moore casting that they crowded the next one ... but more likely, the answer lies in the second backlot problem: The dissolution of the partnership between Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

Most accounts have it that Saltzman was the more active force in the early days of the partnership; Saltzman was a very energetic producer. However, this same energy led him to have a roving eye, always searching for new projects to invest in, which led to his being increasingly distracted from the Bond series. They also had numerous disagreements on methodology and so forth. By the time of OHMSS the two were essentially alternating production duties, some say to avoid confrontation; Live and Let Die was reportedly Saltzman's, and Golden Gun Broccoli's.

If the two were barely speaking at the time, and feeling like they were competing against one another, this may have accounted for the schedule-cramming. By the middle of 1974 Broccoli was willing to admit in public that relations with Saltzman were "very strained."

« "Dramatically, wouldn't you say?"

Lot insiders knew it long before that.

The final stroke was when Saltzman reported to the press in November 1973 that he was selling his half of Danjaq/Eon to Columbia Pictures. This was news to Broccoli, who had assumed that he would have first rights to buy out Saltzman's half. Also, since United Artists had done a great deal of the financing and, in essence if not on paper, had an exclusive production contract with Eon for the films, the concept of part of the property being owned by a rival studio was somewhat disturbing.

To use Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's understatement, "It is likely that Saltzman's decision ... was motivated by the need to raise capital." Saltzman was very overextended (all those shiny side projects, some of which were flops) and he apparently either promised his half of Danjaq or all of it (reports vary) to Swiss bankers to pay his debts. Of course Broccoli's take was that he had no right to do so; even if only selling his half, the value of his half could not effectively be determined without dissolving Danjaq, which Broccoli did not want. The matter went in and out of the Swiss courts without resolution. Finally, in late 1975, United Artists quietly purchased Saltzman's half, neatly avoiding future issues with either Saltzman or Columbia. UA reportedly paid twenty million dollars, which was, in retrospect, a bargain.

The next Bond film was not until 1977; some of this was surely because of the court cases, but some of it was the period of silence and rethinking which follows a Bond flop. You will see it again in later pages.

This film starts out watchable and reasonably enjoyable, assuming you skip the title song (the music is great, but the lyrics are atrocious, and besides, you have already heard a far better version of it in the brilliant "funhouse" music in the pre-credits sequence). It continues to be entertaining straight through to the point where Bond has a meeting with M and company in the wreck of the Queen Elizabeth. After that, gentle readers, you may choose to either watch the karate-school sequence or not (I like it, others don't) ... but with that one exception, there is no good reason to see the rest of the film.

The sad thing is that Scaramanga is much more interesting here than in the book, especially with the casting of Christopher Lee (who was a friend of Fleming's). Lee felt that Fleming's book (his last full-length) was weak, which it is, and that Scaramanga would be better pitched as someone who clearly thought of himself as Bond's dark twin and equal - Bond with the gloves off, as it were. He was right. The few scenes with Scaramanga where this is allowed to develop show the potential for what could have been.

But the filmmakers instead chose to concentrate on the Solex McGuffin (an outright invention of the film), for reasons known only to them.

Perhaps they were scared that they wouldn't be able to have a sufficiently exciting film with just the idea of Bond stalking Scaramanga - never mind that the detective-work portions of the film, the first third, are the most watchable parts.

The film isn't helped by one of the most annoying women ever in a Bond film. Mary Goodnight is not supposed to be like this. In the books, she's Bond's secretary (actually, secretary for all the 00 agents), replacing Loelia Ponsonby from the earlier books. During the period when Bond is out of commission between You Only Live Twice and Golden Gun (some of which he spends being brainwashed by the Russians), she changes to a staff posting in Jamaica, which is where the book of Golden Gun is set. Apparently the film producers didn't want to go to Jamaica a third time. Goodnight is by no means the incompetent bimbo she's portrayed as in the film, and I blame the script, not Britt Ekland.

Opinion is divided on Maud Adams as the doomed Andrea. I happen to feel her performance is weak; others like it. Adams will later return in Octopussy, and mileage varies there as well.

Bond himself here is not exactly shown to advantage on either the brute or gent scale, with few opportunities for either. His conduct toward Andrea is perhaps overly harsh; his conduct with Goodnight is, to my mind, rather more excusable. (Sorry. I really cannot abide her.) On the few occasions on in the film when he does get in an outright brawl, though, he conducts himself well. Saida's dressing room and the dojo sequence are both fine examples of Bond showing dangerousness and class at the same time.

Minor Observations: If the thug in the pre-credits sequence (Rodney) looks familiar, go back two pages, where Marc Lawrence was throwing Plenty O'Toole out a window.

This film, among its few jewels, contains some of the best Bernard Lee snipes ever. "Who'd pay a million dollars to kill me?" Bond asks. "Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors - the list is endless," M fires back. Later, on the Queen Elizabeth, we see Bond finally get one of the rare chewing-outs that I'm sure his boss must be tempted to give him on a constant basis.

The car-spiral stunt was actually performed as seen on film, minus the stupid sound effect; it was designed and planned via computer for that exact car (an AMC Hornet, by the by, not a Pacer) and captured in one take; the stuntman refused to do another. Some reports say that originally the script called for the police cars to attempt to do the same thing and fail.

There are any number of scenes which were not shot, including a sequence where Q gives Bond a camera to take to Thailand which does everything but take pictures; however, one sequence which was filmed is a considerably longer version of the final duel between Bond and Scaramanga. Parts of this showed up in some of the trailers for the film.

Again, I don't normally go out of my way to point up plot holes, but it's never been clear to me why Bond has to go retrieve the bullet that killed 002, when he has a fine example of a bullet to analyze sitting right there in Headquarters with his number on it. Perhaps he isn't sure that one really is Scaramanga's, whereas he knows the one that killed 002 is? I suppose we'll have to use that. And, by the by, Scaramanga really should have noticed that Andrea swiped the bullet to send Bond, given that he has such a limited supply of the expensive things.

Next page: The Spy Who Loved Me