The Viewpoint Blog's Ranking of the best James Bond Films. 25: Moonraker

Welcome to something that I'm going to do in the run up to the next James Bond film due for release in late October, Spectre.  The next 25 posts are going to be individual reviews of each of the James Bond films, including the 2 unofficial ones, but not the 1954 production of Casino Royale, which was made for television.

In these reviews I will give my reasons for where I place these movies in the list, and give reviews of the films themselves.

I will do this in reverse order, so starting at the bottom of the list and working my way up to the number one spot, and so, I start the list at number 25, with what I consider to be the worst James Bond film of them all.  Moonraker.

Yes, Moonraker, is in my view, the worst Bond film of them all, worse than even the unofficial ones.  But why?

First off, it wasn't even intended to be the next film after The Spy Who Loved Me.  The intention had been to film For Your Eyes Only.  But the success of Star Wars led the producers to look for a Bond novel they hadn't filmed, with a space theme applicable to it.  All they had was Moonraker, the third book in the original series of Ian Fleming novels, but the story had to be extensively re-written to make it palatable to a late 1970s audience, as making Hugo Drax a former Nazi, as in the book, would not help the movie sell in Germany, or in other parts of Europe at the time.

Christopher Wood, who had written the very successful plot for The Spy Who Loved Me film, would be commissioned again to write the story and script, only borrowing the name Hugo Drax from the book.

So how did this script hold up?

PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE

After the gunbarrel sequence, we see a space shuttle being transported on the back of a 747, as the US is loaning the Moonraker space shuttle to the UK.  But two stowaways aboard the shuttle steal it from right off the back of the jumbo jet, torching it and causing it to explode.

M gets informed by telephone and immediately asks Moneypenny where 007 is, and being told he is on his last leg of the return journey from Africa.  Cut to Bond, with his hand on a woman's leg.  Yep, definitely on his "last leg"...

However the woman turns out to be a baddie as does the pilot and as they make to leave the plane, a fight breaks out between Bond and the pilot.  The pilot falls out with his parachute on, but Bond turns to look out on him, whereupon he is promptly pushed out himself, without a parachute, by Jaws.

Yes, Jaws has returned after surviving The Spy Who Loved Me.  Boy I hope they keep him just as menacing in this film, as he was in TSWLM.

There follows one of the most amazing stunt sequences, performed by BJ Worth and Jake Lombard, where Bond catches up to the pilot, in free fall, and steals the parachute pack right off his back and attaches the pack to himself.  It's an amazing stunt, not quite on the same level as skiing off the mountain and opening his parachute as happened in TSWLM, but an amazing stunt none the less.

Hey, just a minute.  This sequence has felt somewhat similar to the one from TSWLM.  Submarine stolen instead of shuttle, phone call to M, talking to Moneypenny, Bond getting it on with a female, female turns out to be a baddie, and sequence culminating in an amazing stunt.

And, there were some similarities to the pre-title sequence from You Only Live Twice, minus the action and the amazing stunt.  It won't surprise you to learn that all 3 films were directed by the same man, Lewis Gilbert.  I guess he had a set idea about how to start a Bond film in the pre-title sequence, but for all that, they aren't bad sequences, don't get me wrong, they are wonderful excellent sequences all of them, just notable that he had a particular formula for this.

The one slight difference this time, is we get an extra little bit where once Bond has secured the parachute pack to himself, Jaws suddenly comes into view, chasing after Bond, catching up to him, and trying to bite his calf.

Bond pulls his ripcord and escapes, but Jaws discovers he has no parachute upon pulling his ripcord, and falls into a circus big top.

TITLE SEQUENCE / TITLE SONG.

The title sequence itself isn't bad, but the song, Moonraker by Shirley Bassey, is awful.  Hal David wrote the lyrics for the title song, and admittedly, trying to fit the word "Moonraker" into a song lyric is a difficult task, and props to Hal for trying, but I'm afraid the end result is awful.  I give you Exhibit A.

Where are you? Why do you hide?
Where is that moonlight trail that leads to your side?
Just like the Moonraker goes in search of his dream of gold,
I search for love, for someone to have and hold,
I've seen your smile in a thousand dreams,
Felt your touch and it always seems,
You love me,
You love me.

Where are you? When will we meet?
Take my unfinished life and make it complete.
Just like the Moonraker knows his dream will come true someday,
I know that you are only a kiss away.
I've seen your smile in a thousand dreams,
Felt your touch and it always seems,
You love me,You love me....

These are the lyrics to the song, Moonraker by Shirley Bassey. What is a Moonraker, why does it go in search of its dream of gold? These lyrics are complete non-sequitirs, they make no sense at all, and have no relevance to the film itself, other than the use of the film's name.

I've often thought that the theme should have been an instrumental, just like they did with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I think that would have been better than the poor effort we have, sung rather poorly by Shirley Bassey. Her voice is not given free reign to be powerful as it was in Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, and without that, there is nothing really special about her performance. If it had to be a title song, maybe somebody else should have sung this. Karen Carpenter would have been ideal, she had the voice to be able to do this song justice.

THE PLOT:

So, the pre-title sequence gave us our starting point for the plot. The Moonraker Space Shuttle has been stolen, the plane carrying it destroyed and 007 is on the case.  We get a brief moment with Moneypenny and Bond, and some quick exposition from M, Q & The Minister of Defence, Frederick Gray.  Also, Q introduces us and Bond to the gadget that would get a fair amount of use in this film, the dart gun.

It's one of the few gadgets that I wish hadn't been used in one film and disappeared.  A bit like the briefcase from From Russia With Love.  Versions of that briefcase should have appeared always in the films.  Same for the dart gun.  This should always have been on Bond.  Moonraker should only have been its first appearance, not its only appearance.

Anyway, Bond is sent out to California, the location of the headquarters of Drax Industries, who built the shuttle.  There Bond is met by pilot Corrine Dufour played by Corrine Clery.  There's some nice interplay here between the two, and gives us a brief moment of light heartedness before we get into the serious nitty gritty.

Upon arriving at the Drax residence, a mansion transferred brick by brick from France, Bond meets Hugo Drax, the head of Drax Industries, played by Michael Lonsdale.  Everything seems quite cordial, although with a serious undertone of concern from Hugo Drax, and understandably so, after all, the space shuttle he built for the US space programme has gone missing, and he's understandably not happy about this.  

But, after Bond leaves to begin his tour of Drax Industries, Drax turns to Chang, the man who bought in tea, and says one line of dialogue that spoils all the great work that had been done up to that point.  

"Look after Mr. Bond.  See that some harm comes to him."

Up until that point we had a nice little mystery building.  Nothing too fancy, but an interesting mystery that could have sustained the first half of the movie at least.  Instead, before the first reel of the movie is over, we have had the mystery spoiled and have no doubt that Drax is the villain of the piece.  

I'll talk more about Drax later, but back to the plot.

We are quickly introduced to Dr Holly Goodhead, played here by Lois Chiles.  

Dr Goodhead.  Now that's definitely a name from the Pussy Galore school of Female names.  I find Bond's reaction here very objectionable too, even when I saw this for the first time back in the 1980s, I thought the reaction was unnecessarily sexist, and made me feel very sorry for Lois Chiles, having to deal with that uncomfortable piece of scripting.

Bond and Goodhead have a very uncomfortable conversation as she shows him around, and we get a scene that is reminiscent of the scene in Thunderball where Patricia Fearing straps Bond into a motorised traction table.  However here, Holly straps Bond into a centrifuge chamber, which will spin him around the chamber at increasing speed, increasing the G Force on his body.

The scene is very suspenseful, and it is one of the rare occasions that we see Roger Moore's Bond look worried, even scared.  However, a well placed dart from the dartgun hidden under Bond's blazer, manages to stop the mechanism, and allows the centrifuge to slow down to a stop.  Roger Moore plays this part brilliantly, refusing Dr Goodhead's help, and doing his best to look cool, but failing.  It really helped to sell that sequence very well indeed.

Much later, Bond seduces Corrine Dufour and persuades her to help him in finding out more about Hugo Drax, which she does slightly unwittingly, including showing Bond where the safe is.  The next day, Drax tries again to kill Bond, in the midst of a grouse shoot, with a sniper, however Bond foils the attempt, and Drax has Corrine killed for helping Bond.  

Bond travels to Venice and discovers Dr Goodhead there too, as well as a secret lab, which is making some kind of liquid in special hexagonal glass vials.  An accidental breakage of one of these vials, leads to the death of two scientists working in the lab, but animals in the same room are unharmed, leading Bond to deduce that the phials contain a nerve gas that is deadly to humans, but not to animals.

It is also during this part of the film that be if the worst sequences in Bond history happens.  At around the 38 minute mark, we see the beginnings of the infamous Bondola sequence, as a man in a coffin on top of another water vehicle, suddenly opens the coffin and fires knives at Bond's gondola, killing the gondolier, but just missing Bond, who throws the knife back and finds his target.

The whole Bondola sequence lasts about 3 minutes, and is the most painful piece of cinema to watch, as it degenerates from a corny start, through a boat chase between a speedboat and the Bondola, which has a motor of its own and doesn't need the gondolier, through to the piece-de-no-resistance, a hovercraft style float inflating underneath and the Bondola going up on land, into St Mark's Square, and causing a commotion, including our second look at drunk man from the beach from TSWLM, a noble dog looking on, and a double-taking pigeon.

I'm not joking.  They played around with some stock footage in the moviola, to make a pigeon, double-take.  As sequences go, this one just went from badly corny, to inanely stupid, in about 3 minutes flat.  Any goodwill that was left after the badly handled reveal of Drax being the main villain, was completely spent here, by the end of reel 2, and we still have 4 more reels of this film to go.

If you wanna see the sequence, and I would suggest against watching, but I admit, I might not believe it from description alone, so if you do want to inflict one of the worst sequences in Bond history on yourself, you will find the scene below.

Okay, having got that monstrosity out of the way, does the film improve at all?  Back to the plot...

It's also during the Venice part of this story that we get the fight between Bond and Chang in the glassworks.  Much glass is destroyed during this fight, and of course Chang dies, before Bond does a very lame one liner, referencing Casablanca.  Most fight sequences are quite enjoyable, but this one leaves me cold.  It seems they designed that sequence to break as much glass as possible, but with the whole sequence making little real sense again.  The only thing it truly does is allow Bond to see that Drax is moving stuff to Rio De Janeiro.  

We also get a weird scene with Bond giving Holly Goodhead a jump scare, and the reveal of all her gadgets, and of her being a CIA agent.  Again, the scene makes only minor sense, as it doesn't really do the job well, it just does it and again, leaves me rather cold all told.

Anyway, after an embarrassing scene involving M, Drax, Frederic Gray and Bond, and I don't just mean embarrasing in the story, I mean, really embarrassing, badly done, badly acted, just another poor scene, we move the story on to Rio De Janeiro, and we're re-introduced to Jaws.

The porter in the Rio hotel is camp, and not in a good way, and we are introduced here to Manuela, who is from Station VH.  She has a small role in the movie, and is okay, but feels kinda weak as a character.

Bond checks out the importer in Rio whilst Manuela keeps and eye out for anything suspicious.  However, it is carnival time, so everybody is in fancy dress.  Jaws tries to kill Manuela but is foiled by the sudden appearance of party goers the first time, and then tries again, only for Bond to intervene and more party goers whisk Jaws away.

As a re-introduction to Jaws as a professional killer, this sequence once again leaves me cold, and not in the way it should.  Jaws should be menacing and here, the menace is completely undercut by the party atmosphere and the costume that Jaws wears to blend in.   It's not a bad sequence, but like so much else in this film, it feels weak and not very well done.

By this point, we're about halfway through the film, and you wonder if the production team actually took enough care with this film, as it doesn't feel well done.

In fact, there are some rather interesting similarities developing between this film and the previous one, The Spy Who Loved Me.  The pre-title sequence was very similar, the idea of humanity being killed is being developed here, even though by this point in TSWLM, it was already full blown in our minds what Stromberg was up to.  And of course, there's Jaws.  I'm beginning to sense a pattern...

Anyway, Bond arrives at a cable car station where he runs into Holly Goodhead once again, as he is spying on the airport through a telescope.  Then we have what I must apologise for saying is the worst fight sequence in Bond history.  It's not a bad sequence, it's just awkward.  

Jaws traps Bond and Goodhead in a cable car and snaps the steel cable with his teeth.  Jaws then rises on another cable car to meet the first one, and Jaws leaps across the gap to engage in a fight with Bond and Goodhead on top of the cable car.  

It's very difficult to co-ordinate a fight sequence on top of a cable car, and I have to say they don't do a bad job of it, but compared to so many other fights in other Bond films, it just doesn't meet the usual high standards of Bond fight sequences.  I cannot place any blame on the stuntmen, they did what they could, and they did it well, but... well, it just doesn't stand up compared to so many others.  It's the way it goes sometimes.  You do great work on a sequence, and no matter how well you do it, sometimes the sequence just doesn't work as well as it should.  This is just one of those times.

Bond and Goodhead manage to push Jaws down into the cable car and lock the hatch from the outside.  Then Bond uses a chain to slide both him and Holly down the cable to safety.  However, Jaws' accomplice starts up the cable car again, putting Jaws in hot pursuit of our heroes.  They make their escape by dropping down to the ground, whilst the cable car crashes into the station at the bottom, and another infamous sequence begins, as we, and Jaws, meet Dolly for the first time, and Jaws falls in love, as the famous music from Romeo and Juliet plays over the scene.

I feel really bad for Jaws here.  He is meant to be a menacing killer, and he ends up being just a joke in this film, completely misused, and really doesn't help the film at all.

We then have a weird sequence, where stretcher bearers come to rescue Bond and Holly, but they're really Drax employees who capture them, and transport them in an ambulance, to who knows where. There is a fight between Bond and one of the ambulance men which ends up with Bond and the guy on a wheeled stretcher exiting the ambulance and Bond leaving him to run into a British Airways billboard.

Oh yeah, there is also a lot of signs and billboards for 7Up in this film too.  A lot of fairly blatant product placement.

We then get another weird sequence with Bond arriving at some monastery looking like a poor man's Clint Eastwood, before it's revealed as a secret MI6 base, and Q is once again shown perfecting equipment in the field, some of which will get used later on.  And we get a second briefing scene between M, Bond and Q.

This then transitions into a sequence with Bond in a speedboat in a river, being chased by a boat firing mortars, but Bond disposes of them with some mines, only for 2 more boats to come after him, one of them lead by Jaws.  We get a slower rendition of John Barry's 007 track from From Russia With Love here, which is in rather sharp contrast to the editing in this part, which is fairly quick, not slow at all.

Bond uses a torpedo to dispose of one of his pursuers, but Jaws will not be put off, and we are faced with a cliffhanger moment.  A huge waterfall is ahead of them, and Jaws is in pursuit of Bond.  How is he going to get out of this one?

Bond escapes by transforming the roof of his speedboat into a hand glider, and takes off just before the boat goes over the falls, and I love Jaws' expression here as that happens, as if to say, that is just so unfair.

As Jaws and the pursuing boat go over the falls, we see Bond looking incredibly smug and self satisfied, and I have to say that is one of the worst character defining moments in Bond history.  Bond should never, ever, be smug.  No ifs, buts or maybes.  A smug Bond just doesn't ring true with the character established in the books, or indeed in the films.  That one shot made me cringe.

Bond lands in the rainforest, and just happens to encounter a beautiful woman.  Really???  The lack of imagination here is just numbing.  Like a siren, she leads him to Drax's secret base here in something that resembles an old Incan or Mayan temple.  This leads into Bond being surrounded by gorgeous women, and then being ejected into a pool to face a deadly python.

This sequence feels particularly weak, in a film that so far has come across as weak.  It's here that we meet Drax again, and get the full view of what Drax is doing.  Launching shuttles into space for some reason.  Bond is taken to join Dr Goodhead in a strange looking room, which slowly reveals itself to be underneath the exhaust of another shuttle.  Bond and Holly make their escape, barely, and manage to sneak aboard the last of the shuttles, and discover that they are headed to a space station that somehow nobody knows about.

How did Drax get this space station constructed without anybody else knowing?  This last piece breaks all bounds of believability.  I've had to "buy" so many things during this film and this last "buy" was just one too many.  

The whole of the last 30 minutes is set in orbit around this space station, and aboard Drax's shuttle, as we enter the usual climatic big battle in the villain's lair.  But before that battle, we get a speech from Drax, and I'm sorry to say that the speech is boring as hell, even though it's only about a minute long. This is in part due to the fact that the actor, Michael Lonsdale, has a flat, almost monotone voice, which he has used throughout the whole movie.  I get what they were trying to do, was have Drax be an understated villain, not over the top, not silly, but unstated, coldly menacing.  This is exactly what they did with Stromberg in TSWLM, only there there was enough inflection in the voice of actor Curt Jurgens, to give the words the required menace, but he certainly wasn't played in an over the top way, and they tried to do it again here, but this time, it falls as flat as Michael Lonsdale's voice tone.  

Bond and Holly disable a radar jamming system that Drax had built into the space station, and we get a cameo from General Gogol, and that's not even required.  Nice to see Gogol again, but it does feel shoehorned in.  

Bond and Holly are captured and taken to Drax, as he launches the globes that will release the nerve gas to kill the human race, and Bond persuades Jaws that his love Dolly will be killed by Drax, and Jaws turns on Drax, and just before Drax can laser an approaching American space shuttle, Bond stops the rotation of the space station causing everyone to become weightless.  Then we get the big space battle with laser guns that we saw being tested earlier.  

This sequence has echoes of the sequence in the volcano lair from You Only Live Twice.  Meanwhile we get a final confrontation between Bond and Drax, and to be honest, whilst the dialogue is quite good, the whole sequence feels like an anti-climax, as Drax is poison-darted by Bond and takes a "giant step for mankind' out of an airlock.

We have a gratuitous sequence featuring Jaws and Dolly, which feels really out of place as the space station is destroying itself, and Jaws helps release Bond and Holly's shuttle from the station as they go off to destroy the globes, which they manage to do, and then we have the worst double-entendre from Q, as Bond and Holly get it on in space as M, Q and the Minister of Defence make contact.

Overall, the plot feels like a thin thread, holding together a number of sequences that are actually quite weak all told and not that good.  Plots aren't necessarily the most important thing in a Bond film but they have to work, well enough, to be at least buyable, but there was so many things I had to "buy" here, that the bounds of believability were stretched beyond breaking point.

THE VILLAIN

Hugo Drax is a poor villain really.  They attempt to make him understated and menacing, and he just comes off as boring, flat and monotonal, which isn't good.  There is little emotion in Michael Lonsdale's performance and when he says...

"At least I will have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery."

...you're left wondering how he expresses pleasure as he sounds exactly the same as he has done all the way through the film.

STUNTS AND ACTION SEQUENCES.

Once again the stuntwork is excellently produced and performed, especially the parachute stealing moment, but the Bondola sequence felt really bad to watch, and the cable car fight, whilst excellently done, felt weaker than everything else.  As I said earlier, I can't place the blame with the stunt people, they did their work exceedingly well, but the problems of a fight on a cable car are rather easy to see.

THE BOND GIRL/WOMAN

Lois Chiles does okay here as Dr Holly Goodhead, though that name, like Pussy Galore's earns a full 10 exclamations on the weirdness scale.  !!!!!!!!!!

Dr Goodhead is not a Bond equal like Anya, but she's hardly a damsel in distress like Solitaire or Mary Goodnight.  She's tough and capable, and very intelligent, but she looked very weak in the cable car fight.  Much better in the space station though.

I can't say there was anything special about her, it was pretty obvious that she was this film's equivalent of Anya, and though she does a better job here than Barbara Bach did in TSWLM, she doesn't quite come off quite as well.

THE HENCHMEN

Chang is kinda disappointing.  He's mostly silent, except in the final fight in Venice where he goes all Kendo Nagasaki on us and has a smashing time...

The character I really feel sorry for is Jaws.  In TSWLM, he was this menacing, not unfunny, but not played for major laughs, character who you really felt could kill Bond quite easily.  Here, he's played mostly for laughs, and all of his menace is missing and undercut by the sillyness.  It's a waste of a great character, and I feel sorry for Richard Kiel having to put up with this.

OTHER NOTES

The one thing that strikes me most from watching the film, is how much they copied The Spy Who Loved Me in this film.  Christopher Wood obviously only had one plot idea, and whilst it worked the first time, the second time was just painful.  Drax is a space version of Stromberg, Jaws is here, the first of the villain's henchmen dies from a large fall, Dr Goodhead is Major Amasova-lite here, We had a shuttle stolen in this film, compared to the submarines being stolen in TSWLM, armageddon was the villain's scheme, with a new civilisation coming from under the sea, or in this case space.  The parallels are many fold, and Moonraker really demonstrates how trying to copy the previous film, never works, no matter how well established the hero is.  

Lewis Gilbert is an excellent director, but here he feels like he's hamstrung by the sequences he's trying to link together.

John Glen does a great job of editing the piece, but as the old saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and this was always gonna be a sow's ear, from the moment they copied the formula from TSWLM.  

Ken Adam's designs are marvellous as always, and to me it is a shame that this is his last Bond film as Production Designer, as his sets were always marvellous.

The cinematography from Jean Tournier was excellent as well, and the special effects crew, led by Derek Meddings did such an excellent job in creating the effects, that they were nominated in the Academy Awards Best Special Effects category.  John Barry's score is excellent, though some of the music they use for other sequences that they borrowed from other sources leaves a lot to be desired.

Roger Moore gives a good performance as Bond, and is obviously comfortable in the role here, after all, this was his 4th film, but there does seem to be something weird about 4th Bond films.  Each of the three previous actors to get to 4 films, the fourth one had been the weakest of the bunch.  I hope that doesn't afflict Daniel Craig in Spectre.

OVERALL

For me, what marks this film down significantly is the plot, how Jaws is utilised, and Hugo Drax himself.  These elements are key parts of the film, and seriously hurt it.  It doesn't even reach 001, on the double 0 scale where 000 is unbearable and 007 is perfection.  It's barely watchable, but there's little satisfying here.

It was a poor attempt to capitalise on the success of Star Wars, but capitalise on it it did, making over $210,000,000 worldwide.  This was Bond at its worst, and they needed to return Bond back to Earth, literally and metaphorically in the next film, For Your Eyes Only.

Next time: Number 24... with a story just too big for one James Bond...