RTE rejects TV3 collaboration offer on diaspora channel.

So, being reported by The Irish Times, and coming to my attention via the Media Boy Blog, is a report that TV3 has offered to collaborate with RTE on a best of Irish TV channel for the Irish diaspora.

Irish World then reported, and again brought to my attention by the Media Boy blog that RTE rejected the idea calling it speculative and premature.

Premature?  Remember, this is the company that part owned Tara TV between 1998 and 2002.

There hasn't been a TV channel aimed at the Irish abroad since then.  There hasn't been a true best of Ireland TV channel since then.

RTE has not only RTE 1 & RTE 2, but also RTE News Now and RTE Jr.  TV3 has of course TV3 and 3e, and UTV Ireland when that deal gets completed, and what ever that becomes.  Some have suggested it will get closed down, others think it will become 3u, and what a horrible name that is, but whatever happens there, the idea of RTE and TV3 teaming up for a channel is a great combination.

Think about this.  TV3 already have Ireland's only local breakfast TV show in Ireland AM, so they could start the ball rolling at 7am.  Have live news from TV3 at 12.30, 5.30 and 8.00, with live RTE News at 1.00, 6.01 and 9.00.  That already gives a collaborative channel a great structure of live news to work from.  Adding in Xpose, The Seven O'Clock Show, Midday and Tonight with Vincent Brown from TV3, and Today and The Late Late Show from  RTE, and you have the basics of a great channel that would showcase the best of Irish TV.

RTE should rethink the whole rejection of TV3's idea as it is a good one.  What's more, they should be looking to get RTE News Now onto Sky in the UK, Freest in the UK and Virgin Media in the UK as quickly as possible.  

BBC Local Radio: Does it have a future?

So, I'm doing my regular skimming around the various forums, looking for interesting posts, and I spot something on Digital Spy that actually got me thinking.

I know, something on Digital Spy actually got me thinking, that's a first!

The poster posed a question about BBC Local Radio as a whole.  Has it, as an idea, had its day?  Indeed, some of the commenters there raised very valid and accurate points about the state of BBC Local Radio.

BBC Local Radio as a whole has over 8.5 million listeners every week.  That's not a shabby performance, especially when you consider the nearest thing to a comparable commercial network, Heart, gets over 9.1 million listeners per week, and other than Heart, the only stations that score higher, are BBC Radios 1, 2 & 4.  By those standards of measurement, surely BBC Local Radio's future as a whole is secure.

But start digging just below the surface of those numbers, and the picture looks a lot different.

Just in the last year, BBC Local Radio as a whole, has lost over 400,000 listeners.  That's not so good.  The overall share of listening is also down slightly.

And when you start looking at individual stations, it doesn't get much better.

Let's start with BBC Guernsey.  In a market where you have two main local stations, one BBC and one commercial (Island FM), you'd think that given the way the BBC is always portrayed by commercial radio companies as being dominant that the BBC Local station would be the runaway leader here, and you'd be wrong.

In a market that has only 53,000 available listeners, BBC Guernsey scores 20,000 whilst Island FM scores 32,000.  In the last year, BBC Guernsey has lost 4,000 weekly listeners, whilst Island FM has also lost listeners, just 1,000 of them though.  Obviously national radio in Guernsey has gained listeners compared to the local stations.

But even with losing 1,000 listeners, Island FM has still seen its share of listening go up from 45.7% to 46.1% in the past year.  Not too shabby.  By comparison BBC Guernsey's share of listening has dropped, from 20.9% to 20.5%.  So how does Island FM do so much better than BBC Guernsey?

Some could put it down to the fact that Island FM is a more music service, but that's too simple an explanation.  If that was all it was, commercial radio as a whole would be outperforming the BBC and that simply isn't the case.  BBC Radio 4 outperforms every other station and network, except for BBC Radio 2, so the amount of music clearly isn't the deciding factor here.

When you listen to the output of Island FM, one thing stands out immediately.  It has a very community-based feel to it.  They talk a lot about local events and promote local causes.  Live local programming hours are greater than on most mainland local commercial stations, from 6am to 10pm on weekdays, 7am to 6pm on Saturdays, and 8am to Midday on Sundays, their Sunday afternoon show is voice tracked, according to their public file, although when listening in myself, I couldn't tell that it wasn't live.  It's also one of the few remaining local commercial stations to feature a sports show on a Saturday afternoon.

If anything, it's a mixture of having a good mix of music, familiar enough, yet with enough variation that allows you to discover tracks you might not have heard before, combined with the community feel, and a professional imaging that doesn't make the station sound small and you have what I consider to be the perfect balance of elements to make great commercial radio.

The news on the hour doesn't feel too long, at 3 minutes, and you feel briefed, rather than feeling like you've not been told enough.  Radio news itself is another whole separate issue that I could talk about in another long article, but I'll save that for another time.  Suffice to say, Island FM's news feels about right.

Okay, so I can hear the next question forming in your minds.  "That's in a one BBC versus one local commercial situation, but in my area, there are 2 or more local commercial stations up against one BBC local radio station.  Does BBC Local Radio do any better there?"

Well, let's use BBC Radio Cornwall as an example.  BBC Radio Cornwall has traditionally been one of BBC Local Radio's better performers, so if that is leading, then maybe the picture isn't quite so bad.

Well, BBC Radio Cornwall does score a decent 141,000 listeners in a market of 463,000.  That's a 30% reach, that's pretty good... but that's down 12,000 listeners in the past year.  It's scoring decently on share as well, a none too shabby 16.1% share of listening... down from 18.3% a year ago.  Oh dear, this picture ain't looking too great to be fair.  But, if it's ahead of its commercial competition, then we can still call it more successful.

Let's start with the biggest national name in local radio, Heart.  Heart do report their Cornwall service separately, so we do have a direct comparison.  And they score... 117,000.  24,000 less than BBC Radio Cornwall, so BBC Radio Cornwall is still more popular.  However, that score is up 20,000 on the same time last year.  That doesn't sound so good for BBC Radio Cornwall, who have lost 12,000 listeners in the same time.

How does share of listening compare.  Well, Heart are much further back on that count, scoring only 8.5% share, but that is up on the 6.6% of a year ago.  However, it's still nowhere near BBC Radio Cornwall's 16.1%.

But although they may be the biggest name in local commercial radio nationally, Heart are comparative newcomers to Cornwall, as Pirate FM were Cornwall's first local commercial radio service, launching in 1992.  How do they compare to BBC Radio Cornwall?

Well, on the reach side, Pirate FM scores... 165,000.  24,000 more than BBC Radio Cornwall, and that's up 5,000 in the last year.  That's not so good for BBC Local Radio.  However, on the share side, Pirate FM comes in at 11.7%, quite a way back from Radio Cornwall's 16.1%, and itself, down from 12.5% a year ago.

And those figures don't show how that compares to recent entrant NJoy Radio, who broadcast on DAB, and are not currently registered with RAJAR for ratings, nor does it show how it compares to the various community stations that broadcast on FM across Cornwall, Penwith Radio, Source FM, CHBN, The Hub and RSAB.  And even then, because of broadcast area, we don't know how many listeners in the Cornwall area listen to other stations that are available in the area, but are not predominantly targeted at Cornwall, such as Radio Plymouth, BBC Radio Devon and Smooth Plymouth.  Also, we don't have figures for two other DAB stations that Pirate FM produce.  Pirate Oldies or Escape To Cornwall.

It's not clear cut by any means, but it is fair to say that BBC Radio Cornwall is amongst the best performers in the BBC Local Radio stable.  Their next door neighbour, BBC Radio Devon, has had in recent times one of the worst collapses of audience I've ever seen.  In just one year, they've dropped from 212,000 weekly listeners, to just 169,000.  That's a massive 43,000 listeners deserting BBC Radio Devon.  The figures for share of listening are no better.  One year ago, 11.4% share.  Today, just 7.6% share.  That's a drop of a third overall.  A 33.3% fall in share of listening, just let that sink in for a second.  There's a third less listening overall to BBC Radio Devon in the past year.  That's a big problem.  A problem that is somewhat disguised by the fact that there isn't really a direct comparison available with Heart in Devon, or with Radio Plymouth, Radio Exe and The Breeze (formerly Palm FM).  Also, there are no figures for any of the community radio stations in Devon, Soundart Radio, Phonic FM, The Voice or Bay FM.  So it's difficult to know exactly where the listeners are going, and how BBC Radio Devon should respond.

But even if they did know, they are hamstrung by the dictats from London which limit what BBC local radio can actually do.  The BBC Local Radio formula which was devised back in the early 1990s might have seemed like a good idea then, but the audience profile has changed so significantly, that BBC Local Radio these days sounds ridiculously old fashioned and out of date, a museum piece that needs to be brought up to date.

Whilst it's admirable to commit to local journalism, nothing that BBC local radio does in journalism terms even comes close to being worthy local journalism.  This is a similar problem that has been facing local NPR stations across America, and they've come up with many different applications but the basic guiding principle has been the same.  Don't go for the easy stories, the ones that are important, but basically dull.  Also, don't go for the standard commercial fare, high on the interest scale, but lacking any importance at all.  Find stories that are both interesting and important, and find new, more interesting, more compelling ways to tell them.

Indeed, I found one such story that I brought onto my own show, which had so many angles that I needed to give the whole story a lot more time.  The basic story was the local food bank was having a public fundraising appeal to help pay for the bigger premises that they had to move into, because of increased demand for the food bank's help.  But the food bank wasn't the only community service that was in the new location, there were other services that were sharing that building, so it made sense to me to cover the basic story, but also to talk about each of the services that were at that location.

The story also played into the two higher tiers in the Public Radio News Director's Guide.  There are four tiers of news, according to the guide.

Tier One: Commercial
Tier Two: Staged
Tier Three: Local Impact/National
Tier Four: Local Meaning.

The story was a local impact of a national trend, the growing use of food banks since 2010, so it fitted in tier three.  But it also fitted in tier four.  It was about something that was truly making a difference in the local community.  It made perfect sense to do that story, and to give it more airtime than BBC or commercial radio would ever give it.

Unfortunately, most BBC local reporting still fits into Tier one or two on the scale.  Very little comes under tier three or tier four.  Also, a lot of the reporting can be summed up as worthy, but dull, and that does nothing for the appeal of BBC local radio.

Whilst it's understandable that commercial radio would stick pretty close to tier one and tier two, and indeed mostly does, there are occasions when even commercial radio will touch on tier three or tier four, and those are the times commercial radio genuinely surprises.  BBC local radio on the other hand, rarely does surprise.

So, what does BBC local radio need to do?

Well, its local journalism needs to be more interesting, better presented and produced, and it needs to be less commercial, and more tier three and tier four, more relevant to the local area, more local impact and local meaning.

The music needs to be generally broader, and at times, there does need to be more music than talk.  Not every hour should be more music, or more talk, or even all talk.   What it needs to be is right for the time of day.  Breakfast should always aim to be more informed, but that doesn't necessarily mean music has to be completely excluded.  By enforcing a strict 70:30 ratio of talk to music during daytime and evening, it means that far too often, BBC local radio is just talking about stuff to fill airtime, stuff that really shouldn't be taking up that airtime, and stories that deserve more time, just aren't getting it.

Let the balance of music and talk work itself out for each station.  Also, BBC local radio's reliance on phone ins to help fill the airtime doesn't help matters as often, the contributions go on way too long, and leave you begging for a producer to pull the plug on a phone call because somebody's spoken for far too long and said very little if anything of any use to the station or the listener.

What BBC local radio needs is a complete overhaul, but unfortunately, I don't see any such overhaul coming.

The Viewpoint Blog's Ranking of the best James Bond Films. 20: A View To A Kill

So, we hit the top 20 in our countdown of the best James Bond films ever, and at number 20, we have quite possibly the weirdest film in the official series, although the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale outdoes it in the weirdness stakes overall, and also Roger Moore's final Bond adventure.  A View To A Kill.

That was the teaser trailer, and this is the theatrical trailer...

It's notable that for all these trailer promotions for the film, they're still using the same gun barrel style footage that was first shot back in 1973 for Live & Let Die, even though the films since 1977 had used a different gun barrel.

After the success of Octopus, Roger Moore had been persuaded to do just one more film and this was to be his Bond swan song.  He was 58 at the time, and was regarded by a lot of people as being too old for the role really.  But, he'd pulled it off quite well in Octopussy, so how was he going to fare here?

Time to find out.

THE PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE

So after the same gun-barrel sequence that we've seen since The Spy Who Love Me, with the same arrangement that we've heard before in Moonraker and Octopussy, the circle opens out to reveal an icy landscape with a helicopter flying over it, and the pilot speaks to the person in the other seat, in a language we don't understand, but we guess is probably Russian.  Okay, I guess we're setting up the enemy here.  We then, barely, see an individual against the snow, who is frantically searching through the snow for something, or as it turns out, someone, as we see a dead body being uncovered in the snow. 

There's one moment where I really cringe, and that is the moment when the helicopter suddenly flies over this guy, and the sound just comes out of nowhere.  That never happens.  You'd have heard that coming a long way off, and the sound just wouldn't suddenly appear out of nowhere.  Such an obvious mistake to make, so early in the film, but one that really just shouldn't have been made.

Anyway, we see that the man in the white coat is in fact, our man James Bond.  Information reaches other Russian skiers, and they set off after our hero.  Bond finds a locket, which inside has a microchip.  But he is then spotted, and he has to get away, starting a ski chase, which is something the Bond films seem to have done a lot, ever since On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  It was in fact the 4th such ski sequence in the Bond films, and like the previous 3, this one was directed by Willy Bogner, who seems to be brilliant at getting ski footage on film.  

The first part of the ski chase is interesting, if a little standard, but not in a bad way.  It gives us a good start.  But Bond can never just ski, and so he ends up losing a ski.  But Bond hijacks a Russian skimobile and tries to make his escape on that.  But he is quickly spotted, and dives aside, just before the skimobile is blown up.  But one piece lands near Bond and he improvises with it, to make his escape, to the worst selection of music ever, not just in a Bond film, but in movie history.

It comes in at about 3:30 in this video of the entire pre-title sequence.

Now, a lot people think that the recording of California Girls used in the film is done by The Beach Boys.  That is, in fact, a myth.  The version used here sounds way too 80s to be The Beach Boys.

Here's the real recording of The Beach Boys' California Girls, and you'll notice the beat is slower here than it is in the version the film uses.

The actual version used in the film, is a cover version by Gidea Park with Adrian Baker, which had been released in 1982, as part of a medley track, called California Gold.  You can hear it here, and you'll hear that is sounds exactly like the version used in the film.

Okay, so the version used in the movie has been settled definitively.  But why was it used in this improvised snowboard scene?  Trying to evoke surfing thoughts?  It's inappropriate for the film, no matter what you're trying to do.  Thankfully, they only use it for about 40 seconds or so, before they go back to proper John Barry music for the climax as the helicopter tries to kill Bond, but Bond uses a signal flare to take the helicopter down and signal for pick up from his hidden submarine, and he seduces an MI6 operative who is piloting the craft, and has sex with her.  Seriously?  The woman is young enough to be his daughter.  I get that some women like older men, but this feels cringeworthy.  Bond looks old here, and not in a good way either.  

This is a common theme that will crop up at other points in the movie, and I know it is present in other Bond movies too, but in this one, it feels particularly bad.

THE TITLE SEQUENCE

Okay, these title sequences are all good in their own way, and this one is no different, but in a way, that's exactly the point.  There isn't much about this title sequence that particularly stands out, for either good or bad reasons, other than perhaps the woman skiing on the spot, but that's a minor quibble really.  

It's just okay, there isn't a lot special about it.  I can't say much more than that.

THE PLOT

So the film itself opens up with an exterior shot of Universal Exports, before we cut inside to the outer office of Miss Moneypenny, only no sign of Moneypenny.  Did Penelope Smallbone from the previous film, Octopussy, replace her?  Bond comes into the office and goes to throw his hat onto the hatstand, but stops when he sees the hat that's already there.  It looks like something that might be worn at Royal Ascot.

Moneypenny appears from the inner office, and she is dressed in a very fancy dress.  Bond asks if it's a little over the top for the office, and it's setting up something that will happen later on.  But we get a little banter between Bond and Moneypenny, before M interrupts over the intercom, and tells Moneypenny to "Omit the customary pleasantries..." which is a line we haven't heard for a while.  Nice touch.

Bond goes in to find M, Q and the Minister of Defence, as well as a robot dog.  Have we just strayed into Doctor Who territory here?  Is K9 making a guest appearance in the Bond franchise?

It turns out that the mission in the pre-title sequence, actually has some relevance to the plot.  Q gives a briefing detailing how one of their contractors came up with a chip totally impervious to magnetic pulse damage.  Huh, they should have been using those in Goldeneye.

The chip recovered by 007 in Siberia in the pre-title sequence is exactly the same as one that came direct from the manufacturer.  That indicates that the KGB has a pipeline into that company.  Just 6 months earlier that company had been taken over by Zorin Industries.  The Minister of Defence is wary about investigating a man who he understands to be a staunch anti-communist with influential friends in the French Government, and informs M that they have to be discreet about this.  

Bond is then told to get properly dressed, and we cut to what looks like Royal Ascot.  It might be Glorious Goodwood for all I know, but it's certainly a major horse racing event.  Whilst most of the crew, Moneypenny included, good to see her out of the office, she hasn't done any field work since Diamonds Are Forever, watch the race, M & Bond are watching our antagonists in this film.  Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, and May Day, played by Grace Jones.  Zorin's horse wins the race, and Zorin is presented with the prize, a gold cup by the looks of it.  Huh, was this the Ascot Gold Cup?  Or maybe it's silver, I'm not too sure.

We are introduced to Sir Godfrey Tibet, played here by Patrick MacNee, who is best known for playing John Steed in the Avengers TV series of the 1960s and The New Avengers of the 1970s.  Sir Godfrey is a racehorse trainer, who has a french detective friend called Aubergine investigating Zorin's horses on behalf of the French Jockey Club.  Bond arranges to meet up with Aubergine and Aubergine tells Bond what he knows over a dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant.

Okay, at this point, apart from the robot dog and the California Girls music in the pre-title sequence, everything seems pretty normal so far, but it's from this point onwards, that everything starts getting a little weird.

During dinner, they are treated to some 'entertainment', and I use the term loosely, which allows May Day to come into the restaurant in disguise, and kill Aubergine, using a poisoned butterfly prop of some kind.  Don't ask me to explain it really, I don't really get it.

This leads into a chase sequence up the Eiffel Tower, which is quite well shot considering all the obstructions and structure.  But I have to admit, running up the Eiffel Tower to escape Bond is just about the dumbest move you can make.

Which gives me an excuse to talk about the action sequence direction here.  Arthur Wooster was doing his third Bond film as second unit director, so what's happening with the action sequences here isn't being done by someone new, and also the writing team of Michael G Wilson and Richard Maibaum were also on their third film, so everything should have been coming together.  Instead, we seem to have a sequence that seems to have been put together purely for the purpose of having someone parachute off the Eiffel Tower.

In story terms, it makes no sense how we get to that point.  If I'm an assassin, who's just killed someone, I am not going to go running up the Eiffel Tower, to get away from a pursuer, you are effectively cornering yourself.  You will run wherever you can, to make an effective ground escape.

So that is my first problem with the sequence.

The second is the taxi part of this sequence.  The sequence plays far too comedically, especially at the start with the driver that Bond ejected from the car, running after it.  His reactions are way over the top, and badly dubbed too, which doesn't help.

At the end of the chase sequence, Bond is arrested, by what looks like a couple of chefs with meat cleavers.  Yet, we saw him fall into a wedding cake.  You don't need meat cleavers for a wedding cake...

Anyway, there was a sequence cut from the film here, where M arrives to bail out Bond.  Having watched the sequence, it is intended to be a light hearted sequence, and we get a guest appearance of Red Grant's garrotte watch from From Russia With Love, which would have been nice to see, nice touch of continuity, but overall, the sequence is probably better out.  John Glen says it more resembled something out of a Pink Panther film, than a James Bond film, and whilst the guy playing the French policeman here is no Clouseau, it does feel somewhat wrong in tone.  It was just one of many moments in this film that were wrong in tone and this was rightfully cut.  To me it felt like a scene out of a Bond parody, rather than an official James Bond film.

So, the next scene we see is Bond being driven away from the police station, and being reminded that this is meant to be a discreet operation, and arranging with Sir Godfrey to attend a sale at Zorin's stables.

Bond and Sir Godfrey go undercover to the event, Bond under the name St John Smith, pronounced Sinjon Smythe, and we are introduced to Scarpine, head of security, played by Patrick Bauchau in his first major Hollywood production.  He makes a good henchman here, but nothing special.  There isn't really anything about him that makes him stand out.

We're also introduced to Jenny Flex, played by Alison Doody.  She really only has this scene where she speaks at all, and a couple of shots elsewhere and that's it.  It's almost pointless to introduce her here, other than for a cheap gag, and really that's all she gets.  This is her first role in her career, and she would later make a more substantial appearance in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade.

We get a nice little moment where Bond and Tibbett find a bug in their room, and their interaction actually in this film is one of the highlights.  Patrick MacNee is a great actor, if you never saw his John Steed in The Avengers, you missed someone who was in many ways, a pre-cursor for the film version of James Bond, especially how he developed from Goldfinger onwards.  It makes the Ralph Feinnes version in that disastrous late 90s film, look all the worse.  In a way, it's kind of appropriate here to have him as part of the Bond universe, you almost want it to be James Bond and John Steed together, rather than Bond and Tibbett, but the moments with them are good and helps raise the film up a bit.  After the farce of the chase in Paris, this feels much more Bondian.

There's also some wonderful solo moments with Tibbett with his investigation of Pegasus' stable.  It's nice that we get a little bit, just a flavour, of John Steed in this film, even if he isn't called John Steed.

As a helicopter arrives at the mansion, we are introduced here to Stacey Sutton, played by Tanya Roberts, although we know nothing about her at this point.  She could be another wealthy horse owner, or something else entirely, we really don't know.  There's a party scene, which I know is meant to help move the plot along, but really, it just feels like an excuse to have Bond in a tuxedo, it really doesn't do much for me.  I'd prefer a different way of him finding out who all these people are, than photos taken with a camera the size of a ring, that's just ludicrous, even for today's technology, so back in 1985, it was even more ludicrous.  We also get a moment where Bond meets Zorin.  Like the rest of the party scene, it's weak and really feels slightly contrived.

Bond also meets Stacey Sutton here, but doesn't get her first name, he only knows her as S. Sutton from a cheque that he managed to obtain via some strange photocopying device.  Again, it feels weak and isn't even referenced later on.

That night, Tibbett goes to check out the stable where Pegasus disappeared from earlier, only to encounter Bond in a strangely suspect way.  Anyway, they discover an underground lab, where the doctor, who we discovered at the party was called Dr Mortner, has performed surgery on Pegasus to implant a small capsule of natural horse steroid into Pegasus, controlled by a remote device, that could fit into the tip of a jockey's whip, or a cane.

Anyway, a security team discovers the stable has been breached and go down to check it out, but beneath the lab is something even weirder.  It looks like a factory/warehouse, where boxes of microchips are being hoarded by Zorin.  This is never explained in the film, why he is doing this.  We can figure it out based on other things in the plot, but it's a setup without a payoff, and I'm afraid brings the film down a bit.

Anyway, the security team find their way down to this area, and a fight breaks out.  It's not as bad as the cable car fight in Moonraker, but it's pretty weak.  Neither Roger Moore nor Patrick MacNee were young guys at this point, and the whole fight feels very contrived as though the filmmakers are having to work around this, and it doesn't make for a great fight sequence.  Not bad, but not great, just okay really.

We're about 2 reels in and there's been nothing really that was particularly good, and a couple of moments that have been really cringeworthy, and some slightly non-sensical things, but nothing that jumped out at me as particularly awful.

Anyway, we get a sequence here that really feels awful.  May Day is training Max Zorin in martial arts.  Okay, I guess I can go with this.  It kind of presents her as maybe a bodyguard-type, but doesn't really fit in with the outfit she wore at the race.  An outfit like that one didn't really say bodyguard.  But Zorin ends up on top and looks like he's turned on by this, and he kisses her.  It's weirdness without purpose, really.  What is this scene in the film for?  Is it meant to show that he's not quite right in the head?  There's better ways of doing that.

Anyway, Zorin gets notified of a break in at the plant, and they decide to check in on St John Smith.  Finding him not there, May Day remembers that he was the man chasing her at the Eiffel Tower.  Obviously facial recognition and memory were not things the good Dr Mortner thought were important... you'll understand what I'm saying later...

May Day goes to get properly dressed and discovers St John Smith/Bond in her bed waiting for her.  This is perhaps the most cringeworthy part of this film yet.  Bond beds May Day, instead of May Day immediately trying to kill Bond?  Holy non-sequitur, Batman!  Oops, sorry, wrong franchise...

Next morning, Bond meets up with Zorin, with Zorin pretending to be searching for a horse in his database.  In fact he's using a KGB computer link to discover St John Smith's real identity.  Bond sends Tibbett into town to get a message to London, whilst he goes riding with Zorin.  Err, okay...

Tibbett is killed in a car wash.  It's a shame really that he dies here, it was good seeing Moore and MacNee together like this.  Meanwhile, Zorin tries to eliminate Bond using many elaborate traps on a practice course.  Again, this makes little sense.  This really is nothing more than an elaborate excuse to have Bond riding a horse.  Bond spies the Rolls Royce and thinks he's about to escape, not realising that Tibbett is dead and they plan a similar fate for him.  Bond is knocked unconscious.  Why they don't kill him there, I don't know, but oh well.  They drive the rolls to a lake, and May Day pushes the car into the lake.  Okay, so she's super strong, we've seen that before various henchmen, but this just feels tired now.

I gotta give them some credit though for actually hanging around once the car has gone down, to make sure 007 is dead.  But Bond survives by some ingenuity, of breathing air from one of the tyres.  It's actually a nice touch.  In past films, he's used a small rebreather device, but without such a gadget here, Bond is having to use his wits to survive.  It's a good touch and goes a little way to helping the film feel better, but there's been too many downright weird and plainly stupid moments for that to make up all the ground.  But it does help.

We then get a scene that I'm completely convinced was written just to get Walter Gotell, or if you prefer, General Gogol, into the movie.  Apart from two other small moments in the film, this is his only substantial appearance in this film, and to be honest, it feels kinda forced in at this point, because there really isn't any other point in the film it could go.

Apparently, Zorin is still regarded by the KGB as being a member of their organisation, but Zorin is convinced he's left all that behind, despite having used an obvious KGB computer link earlier.  Zorin did not request permission before his attempt to eliminate 007, even though they think he did.  Zorin doesn't seem to care, and we get a face off between the KGB agents and Zorin's forces.  I do love Gogol's last line in this sequence.  "You will come back to us, comrade.  No-one ever leaves the KGB."

This is kinda the halfway point, alright, it's a little short of halfway, but it feels like a dividing line.  The first half has felt kinda 'meh'.  Not good, not bad, just indifferent really, apart from some slightly and not so slightly cringeworthy moments.  Some things like having Bond rely more on his wits in certain situations actually helps, but it feels like too little really, and can't really save this film from poor scriptwriting and some non-sequiturs.  Even the quips that there have been, and there haven't been too many, haven't been bad, or good, but at least, they've been on tone.  Also, Bond feels a lot more intense here in certain scenes, something we don't normally see a lot of from Roger Moore's Bond.  Heck, in some ways, he comes across as very Dalton-esque, in the film before Dalton is cast as Bond.  This is similar in fact to Diamonds Are Forever, where Sean Connery does a very Roger Moore style film, before they'd cast Roger.

Having seen so many Bond films, I notice that there's a fairly consistent structure to the films, no matter who is writing or directing.  The first hour will always be fairly quick, getting a lot of exposition out of the way, scenes are shorter, there's often little in the way of excess footage in these films, not much filler or padding but when there is filler, it is particularly noticeable.  The second hour will be longer scenes, more action, and less compression, what that means is the scenes are more often following on from each other with less time jumped between scenes, or sometimes no time at all.  In the first hour, you could have up to a week of real time, compressed to the hour of film.  In the second hour, it's more likely to be a day at most that is compressed down to that second hour, and sometimes a lot less than that.

Anyway, back to the plot, and we cut to a meeting that is taking place in a conference room, in a blimp, a large blimp.  Okay, that's a little weird, but not totally unbelievable, as daft as that might sound.  I mean, these guys including Zorin are operating a secret cartel, but they are working against the might of the Silicon Valley behemoths, so whilst not being good, it's hardly evil either.  I do like this in a way, it helps give us a little bit of depth to Max Zorin.  Nice touch.

It's in this scene that Zorin reveals his 'dastardly scheme', to end the dominance of Silicon Valley.  Okay, that's not much of a scheme, kinda weak actually.

Anyway, one man decides that $100 million is too much money to be part of Project Main Strike, and wants out.  He gets dropped, literally out of the craft, and falls into the sea.  Gotta say, the dummy that is used here for this gag, is way too floppy, it looks so fake.  They surely never thought they could get away with that?

Anyway, Bond is in San Francisco.  Wait, how did he get here?  How did he know Zorin was coming here?  I know that filmmaking is about deciding what parts of the story to tell, and what parts to move right through, but heck, when I said that the Zorin/Gogol scene felt like a dividing line, I didn't mean it quite so literally.  It's almost like they've put two films together in one, and not well.  I do feel like we've made a big jump here, and this bit feels disconnected from what we saw before.

We meet up here with Chuck Lee of the CIA, played by David Yip, better known to most of us in the UK back then as Detective Sergeant John Ho, aka The Chinese Detective.  He had previously been in Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom.

The scene between Bond and Lee is meant to help tie the first half of the film to the second, but to be honest it could be done better.  The photos from Bond's ring camera at the party play a part here, as we are introduced to various characters who we saw at the party and get a little more background on them.  It turns out Dr Mortner, is actually Dr Hans Glau, and ties back to the Nazis.  We get some background, and a little bit of setup here for the next big sequence.  We are introduced to a Mr O'Rourke, a local crab fisherman who has an issue with an oil pumping station nearby.  Apparently it ruined one of the best crab fishing areas.

There was a scene, that was cut from the movie, where Bond, Lee and O'Rourke check out the pumping station in the midst of a protest by boat.  Quite honestly, the scene did nothing story wise, added nothing to the film at all, and was quite rightly cut.  Any scene that does nothing for a movie has to be cut and this was one of those scenes that just added nothing really.

So our next scene is the oil pumping station at sunset apparently, or just after sunset.  We see a number of guards, but we know that Bond is very good at penetrating heavily guarded facilities.  I mean, look what happened with May Day earlier in this film...

Sure enough, Bond makes his entrance unseen.  Although it is also clear from this scene that he's not the only one...

This sequence with Bond and the KGB working separately against Zorin is kinda weird and kinda non-sensical.  After all, they worked together against a common foe in The Spy Who Loved Me.  Or do the KGB actually see their problem as an internal matter?  Actually that kind of makes sense too.

In fact, that seems to have been somewhat of a theme here, in every film since For Your Eyes Only.  Bond and the KGB, working separately on objectives, usually the same one, sometimes against each other, sometimes not.  This has been a theme as much as the animal jump scares that John Glen has done in these films.  This theme would incidentally continue into the next film in the film series, The Living Daylights.

I'm not totally sure what to make of it in this film, but all I know is that something feels kinda weird here and that ain't a good thing in this film.  There's been too much weird stuff going on in this film, and we actually need to tone the weirdness down by several degrees.

Zorin and co are doing some testing by pumping sea water through their oil pipeline.  This is kind of important point here.  This plays in to some other stuff later on in the film, which is actually good.  A setup that has payoff later on.

We get a slightly stupid scene where Bond checks out a pipe and goes inside, only for it to start sucking in sea water, and pulling him towards the blades.  Honestly, the stupidity of this scene is mind-numbing.  Bond escapes by using his air tanks to stop the blades and swimming to safety.  But a KGB agent gets captured after planting a bomb, which he is later forced to defuse before he is killed, quite brutally, by throwing him down the pipe into the blades.

Meanwhile Bond has escaped undetected and meets up with Pola Ivanova, played by Fiona Fullerton, a KGB agent who was recording material at the same time that Bond was there.  There then follows a really awkward, cringeworthy scene in a japanese style spa, with Bond and Ivanova reminiscing on how they first encountered each other.  Okay, I get this scene fulfills two roles.  One, to move the plot along by having Bond learn about Project Main Strike from the recording Pola made.  I get that.  I also get that this also establishes that this Bond is old, and is a slight nod to the fact that this is his last film, so having him reminisce about past adventures is a good way of setting that up.  But really, this scene should have not have been in the film.  There are better ways to have the plot move along, and Pola Ivanova is a character that really didn't need to be here.  I like Fiona Fullerton, I have no problem with her being in a Bond film, and heck, I'd have preferred Pola Ivanova to have worked alongside Bond on a mission, not been a supporting character with no real plot relevance.

And to make matters worse, General Gogol is outside, in a car, waiting for her.  The head of the KGB, in San Francisco, waiting for an agent.  Too many times in this film, there have been moments that have taken me right out of the film, because of their silliness, non-sensicalness, many factors.  I don't normally get taken out of the movie this many times in films, except if I'm being critical of a B movie, but normally with a B movie, I'll be watching it purely for the enjoyment of the ludicrousness, not to be carried along by a plot and story that I hope is going to be keeping my interest up throughout the movie.

And A View To A Kill, does feel like a B movie, the B movie of the James Bond franchise.  If you forget about the story, and just go with the action, the quips, the individual moments, without being too focused on the story and the plot, it is enjoyable, just like a good B movie should be.  But for me, this should be an A film, where the story, the dialogue, the plot all make sense and you're able to follow the story of the film, without wondering "Why the hell have they just done that?"  That's not something I can do here.  Even Moonraker wasn't quite this much like a B movie, although it did have certain moments that were very much out of a B movie, but this film does stray way too much into B movie territory.  Yes, there are good moments that are way better than any B movie, but there are too few of them to rescue it from the B movie 'quicksand of doom'!

Anyway, we get through the necessary plot points, and we cut to San Francisco where Bond is posing as a journalist from the London Financial Times, called James Stock.  Okay, that is just lazy.  James Stock, of the Financial Times, a paper that covers the "Stock" market???  The only stocks going up in this film are the laughing stocks...

He is interviewing a guy, who I think at the start of this scene is the Mayor, because he behaves and talks very much like a politician, but he is Stacey's boss at the Division Of Oil & Mines.  Really, it's not that important, it plays into stuff later, but I really dislike this whole scene, it feels like a waste of screen time really.  It does allow Bond to see Stacey briefly talking to the Mayor character.  Bond hangs around at City Hall, and waits for Stacy to leave before following her.  We arrive at an old style house in a rural location, and Bond gains entrance.  We then get the most ludicrous gadget of the movie so far, a card that is slid in to unlock a window, an old style window.  Jeez, I'm taken out of the movie again, by something so small and insignificant really, but so glaring an error that you can just can't not be taken out of the movie by it.

For such a big house, the inside is surprisingly empty with very little actual stuff at all.  In fact, the only place this house really seems to have anything is a bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom, and that's it.  Stacey ends up pointing a shot gun at Bond, but some Zorin stooges turn up to intimidate Stacey and Bond and Stacey fight them off in a not bad fight sequence, but again, too little too late.

There is one rather glaring error in this sequence though.  The shotgun fires 4 times before Bond discovers it's loaded with Rock Salt.  It then fires 2 more times right at the end of the sequence.  Sorry, but that is just complete bunkum.  There is no way you could get it to fire with just rock salt in it.  Surprisingly though, this doesn't take me straight out of the movie again, partially because the actual fight sequence is well shot, well edited, has a good pace to it.  It's probably one of the best sequences in the movie, but again the scripting here leaves much to be desired.

We then get a really odd sequence where Bond cooks a Quiche for Stacey and himself.  It helps to have quieter moments in between the action, and certainly this scene gives us some backstory for Stacey and Zorin, and actually adds a little bit more to the Bond character, he can actually cook for himself and not badly either, but again, it just feels a little too weird here, and the last thing this film needs is more weirdness.

The other noticeably weird thing, is Bond doesn't bed her, not right away, this is a little strange, but also good, and doesn't make me cringe, so I'm kinda happy to go with it.  My goodness, he's already bedded 3 women in this film, and he will bed Stacey later, but at this point, I'm good with him not bedding her, it gives us a new angle.

We then get some minor stuff with a small earth tremor, Stacey being fired from her job at City Hall, and meeting up with Chuck Lee of the CIA, most of this is actually pretty irrelevant, except for a small moment, where Chuck is killed in his car.  Bond doesn't know about this, as he only see Chuck's car driving away.

Bond and Stacey infiltrate City Hall and discover where Main Strike is, only to be disturbed in their investigations by Zorin and May Day, setting up the whole City Fire on Fire sequence.  Howe, the man who fired Stacey, and the same guy Bond interviewed earlier, is killed by Zorin.  Why he does this, I don't know.  Nothing about this bit makes any sense.

The whole sequence from the moment the fire actually starts is genuinely tense and exciting, it's well shot, well edited, but again, it's trying to rescue this film from the depths of silliness and craziness that we've already been subjected to, and we can't really rescue a film like this, the best we can do is just prevent it from falling further, and maybe make up a little ground.

There is a weird sequence, where some of the local police have managed to get ahold of Bond's gun, that was left behind in Howe's office.  How were they allowed to be in the building whilst it was on fire?  This makes no sense at all.  The scripting here is horrible.

Bond and Stacey have to make an escape and Bond commandeers a fire truck, and the local police give pursuit.  The whole sequence feels like it's out of a Keystone Kops movie, or Police Academy.  The main police character is vaguely reminiscent of Sherrif J W Pepper.  We don't know his name, he's just a Police Captain on the credits, and he makes another short appearance later, but as enjoyable as Sheriff J W Pepper was, this, whilst being funny, just feels weak and lazy and not well written at all.

Anyway, we cut to somewhere out in the wilds of California, at something that looks like a quarry or mine.  I guess this is Main Strike, with Bond still driving the fire truck.  Bond commandeers another truck, this one carrying explosives.  Bond and Stacey manage to secretly get inside the mine, and we get introduced to the setting for our big set piece.  It really looks impressive.  To think this is not actually an inside of a mine but only a movie set, is a credit to the talents of Peter Lamont and the movie's Art Department.  The only thing slightly amiss here is the "table"/display that shows how the plot would work if Zorin achieved his aims.  It just feels too sci-fi for this, but it's not the biggest thing wrong with this film, and doesn't take me right out of it, unlike other things in this film, so I give it a pass, but considering how much else I can't give a pass to, it just adds to the whole "out-of-syncness" that this film has.

Bond and Stacey are discovered but manage to escape, with May Day, Jenny Flex and someone else who we were never introduced to, but saw briefly a couple of times, in pursuit.  May Day sends her colleagues down an easier route, whilst she follows the same route Bond and Stacey took.  Zorin then floods the fault, and then shoots everybody who isn't himself or Scarpine.  Meanwhile May Day, who was in pursuit of Bond and Stacey catches up to them and we get a small confrontation, but May Day and Bond end up falling into the water, whilst Stacey makes it out.  Zorin then goes to a portakabin which converts into a blimp.  At this point, I think I'm going to give up trying to explain the holes in this plot, there's been more holes in this plot than there is in the average block of Swiss Cheese.  It seems that Zorin's inner circle is himself, Scarpine and Mortner/Glau.

Bond and May Day somehow manage to survive the flood and manage to take the bombs that was planted earlier by Zorin and company, out of the explosive filled geological lock,  Minor point here, the explosives are AMFO, so they always need a blasting agent to set them off.

Bond and May Day place it on a trolley to roll it out of the mine, but the brake slips.  May Day sacrifices herself to get the bomb out of the mine.  This is quite a moving moment actually, and genuinely does help to raise the film out of the badness it has mired in.  Stacey then gets kidnapped by blimp.  Seriously?  Bond grabs onto a mooring rope, and hangs on for a long time really, much longer than he'd be able to in real life, and Zorin heads for the Golden Gate Bridge.  Not really sure what Zorin is trying to do here, but Bond manages to use the mooring rope to tie the blimp to the bridge.  Stacey helps by attacking Zorin, and the blimp's cabin crashes into the bridge structure.

Mortner is out, Zorin is in his seat, but Scarpine and Stacey are floored in the crash.  Zorin orders Scarpine to go get him, meaning Bond, in a moment that channels the previous film in this series, Octopussy.  But Stacey knocks him out with a fire extinguisher.  Zorin then decides that if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself.

The final fight between Bond and Zorin is kinda weak actually.  It's meant to be tense, the music is telling us that, but the actual fight itself is poor, and I can't blame the stunt people either, it's really difficult to have a believable fight on a pipe that is only a few feet wide.  I have to put this down to the scripting again.

Anyway, Zorin falls of the bridge.  We get a nice character moment where Zorin laughs at the seeming ludicrousness of his own destiny, which probably actually in a way kind of sums up the film.

Mortner comes to, and tries shooting Bond, but unsurprisingly is a poor shot.  So he gets some dynamite, as though that's going to help.  Bond cuts the rope with the axe that Zorin bought into the fight, and the blimp moves away from the bridge causing Mortner to drop the explosive in the cabin.  Scarpine and Mortner fight over getting rid of the dynamite, before they and the blimp is blown up.

Gogol shows to M and the Minister of Defence a medal that is to be awarded to James Bond.  The Order of Lenin.  A rare thing for a non-Soviet citizen.  Bond is revealed at this point to be missing, and we get a last shot of Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, a nice touch, and the movie closes with Q and his robot dog, discovering that Bond is alive and making love to Stacey in a shower.  Okay, we're going to end the movie like that?

THE VILLAINS

I really have to describe that Zorin and May Day are the main villains of the piece, even though May Day turns to Bond's side later on.  They are memorable villains, very well played by Christopher Wallken and Grace Jones.  I remember hearing about her casting when I was younger and I had serious doubts about her acting ability.  But she pulls off the role very well, without being too cartoonish, which this film kinda flirts with more than once.

Walken is great as Zorin.  He is surprisingly calm and nonchalant at certain points like shooting W G Howe, and shooting all the men, and plays the psychotics of the character well.  I just feel sorry for the fact that these characters are hamstrung by a really poor script.

THE BOND GIRL/WOMAN

Stacey Sutton is definitely more in the Solitaire mould than in the Anya Amasova mould of Bond Girl.  It is fair to say that Tanya Roberts gets quite a pass as a geologist, mainly because she doesn't really have any really stupid dialogue to say, unlike Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough.

Stacey's screams are annoying and she really doesn't appear that much in the film.  Honestly there is more time spent in the film without her than with her.  I think she is utilised enough to make her a presence, but not too much that she becomes totally annoying.  She's not my favourite Bond girl by a long way, but she's not the worst either.

THE HENCHMEN

Whilst I'm pleased with the main villains here, the rest of the crew feels very weak.  Scarpine is not much of a henchman.  He doesn't have any real character to him.  Jenny Flex is okay when we meet her but she really doesn't have anything more to do in the film, other than make silent appearances, she really doesn't do much.

The woman I mentioned earlier who was with Jenny in the mine when the flood happened, is called in the credit Pan Ho, and she's another henchman, but again, she isn't utilised well in the film.  She has one line of dialogue, and that's it.  She's silent after that.  I think it's nice that we have female henchmen in that respect in this film, but they are used appallingly, and not allowed to have any real character to them.

Mortner is kinda weird here and I think is meant to be a mad scientist and father figure for Max Zorin, but again he doesn't have anything really that helps you give real insight into his character.  He has one moment when he calls out to Max just before Max falls off the bridge, but again, too little to really make a difference.

The last henchman here is Bob Conley, the geologist who Zorin employs.  Zorin kills him in the mine.  I really again don't get a hell of a lot of character out of this character, we're given very little for the supporting cast here, nothing to help us understand their motivations, their reasons for being, not even much about their character.  Ultimately, these guys are little more than props in the film, Mcguffins really, just designed to move the plot along at certain points, and not much more than that.

STUNT AND ACTION SEQUENCES.

I have to mention this here, because once again, like Moonraker, the action sequences aren't quite up to par, and mostly it's because of the writing.  May Day's leap off the Eiffel Tower is a stunning moment, but in one shot, you can see the platform that was used for the stuntman to jump off of, and that moment takes you out of the film.

The fights are generally also weaker, mainly because of Roger Moore's age in this film.  It would look ludicrous if Moore was fighting people half his age, so most of the fights are with older guys, but it just looks silly.

The sequence in the pipe that I mentioned earlier was particularly stupid and really bad, and the horse racing sequence where Zorin tries to dispose of Bond was also very lame.  I almost wonder if the producers set themselves a challenge to have as many different kinds of action sequences in one film as it was possible to do, and it didn't really work at all.

THE SCRIPTING

I have to mention this separately, even though I've mentioned it a lot in the writing up of the plot, but it bears repeating once more.  This was an incredibly badly scripted film.  There was one huge plot hole, in getting Bond from France, which I believe is where the stables were, to Bond arriving in San Francisco.  That hole is practically Grand Canyon sized, and yet most people just seem to not notice it.

There are other points where you can tell the writing between plot points is very weak, badly covering up what could have been plot holes, but the writing is so bad that you almost think that the plot holes might not have been noticed by most people, considering how few people mention the Grand Canyon sized plot hole of Bond arriving in San Francisco and knowing Zorin is there, despite having had nothing in the previous part of the film to tell Bond that San Francisco was where he was going.

And there's the moments like James Stock of the Financial Times, and San Francisco's almost Keystone Kops-like police force.  Some of that is just lazy writing and whilst you might get away with one of those moments in a film, any more than that, you are pretty much asking for trouble.

The script is the meant to be the blueprint for the film, or at least, a good starting point, a solid foundation, but here, the script is undermining the whole film and dragging it down.

OVERALL

I know I've been very critical of the film, but it is more enjoyable than any of the ones I've reviewed up to now.  It has a sense of being aware that it's not a great film, and has some fun, and you can go along with that and enjoy the film for the ride that it is, but overall, it's not a good film at all.  And I think Roger Moore knew that, as he retired from the role.  Some good characters, some good moments, but let down by a poor script, and didn't have any major high points to help raise the film out of the mire.  What high points there were were still undermined by too many factors to make them really great, but they were good nonetheless.

If I want to watch a Roger Moore Bond film, I have 4 films I will go to before this, and they are higher up the list, and we have some way to go before we hit the first of them.

Before that, we hit number 19 next time, and the first Pierce Brosnan film on the list, and it will probably as no surprise to you, when I reveal which of his films I rank as the worst...

The Viewpoint Blog's Ranking of the James Bond Films. 22: Live And Let Die.

We're onto day 4 of our countdown of the James Bond films from worst to best and at number 22, we have Roger Moore's first James Bond film, Live And Let Die.



Now, some Bond purists, look down on Roger Moore's portrayal and characterisation of James Bond as being too light hearted, too jovial, too comedic.  But I know that many others, such as Calvin Dyson, absolutely love the Roger Moore era, because it didn't take itself too seriously.

What do I think of Roger Moore?  Well, he's not my favourite Bond, but he's not my least favourite either.  I always ranked George Lazenby below him, and as time as progressed, I think time has actually been kind to Roger Moore's portrayal, and generally, it's no longer viewed as the worst, but why?

Well, I already felt that even in the worst Bond film on this list, Moonraker, that Roger Moore gave a good performance as 007, and he had a pedigree for this kind of role, after playing Simon Templar in The Saint, and as Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders.  So, I never felt, even as a kid, that Roger Moore wasn't a good actor for the role, but as I already stated from Moonraker, the worst aspects there was not Moore's performance, but the scripting, and especially how the villains were utilised and portrayed.

So, did Live And Let Die suffer in a similar way, well, let's begin the review to find out.

THE PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE

After the gun barrel, we open up in New York at the United Nations, where a speech is being made by a Hungarian delegate.  We then cut to a shot of an English translator at work, providing translation for a number of different delegates, including the UK's delegate there.  Suddenly, a mysterious hand removes the wire from the United Kingdom's audio slot, and replaces it with another wire attached to a plunger device of some kind.  And then, somehow, the UK delegate winces in pain, and slumps on the desk, dead.  At this point we are introduced to the two people who will become the focus of this film.  The main villain, Dr Kananga, played by Yaphet Kotto, and the Bond girl, Solitaire, played here in her film debut, by Jane Seymour.  The shot introducing is only a few seconds, and is played as part of a group of shots, of people staring at the dead guy.

We then cut to New Orleans, where a man is stood outside a "Fillet Of Soul" restaurant, watching it.  Suddenly, a funeral procession turns into the street, and another man comes up beside our guy.  The first guy asks who's funeral it is, only to be told it is his, as the other guy sticks a knife in him.  Whereupon the coffin bearers walk either side of the body, put the coffin down over it, and when they lift it up, the body has been picked up inside the coffin.  How, I have no idea, but that's a neat trick.  Then the whole tone of the procession changes, and everybody starts dancing, as the band leading the procession switch from downtempo to upbeat.  Believe it or not, this is not made up, this kind of jazz funeral, really does happen in New Orleans, although they don't usually pick up dead bodies on route...

We then cut to San Monique in the Caribbean, where another guy is tied to a steak and is facing a man holding a snake.  No prizes for guessing what happens next.  Yep, the snake bites the guy, and he dies.  Wow!  less than 5 minutes in and the body count is already at 3.  At this rate, we'll have about 72 deaths in this film if this keeps up.

After this we cut to the titles... huh, wait a minute!  We haven't seen Bond yet.  How can you cut to the titles here, we haven't been introduced to our new James Bond.  We've had a brief introduction of Bond girl and villain, so brief that you wouldn't realise that they are meant to be Bond girl and villain, but no introduction to Bond?  Come on, now.  That's poor.

I don't mind the fact it has basically set up the plot, but this is a James Bond film, and where is James Bond?

THE TITLE SEQUENCE.

The titles for this movie are visually quite striking, and they're basically using a theme of skulls here, to evoke the voodoo element in the movie, and also evoking death.  They're nice titles, but the fibre optic backdrop does kinda date them a bit, and why is that woman waving formlessly at something or someone that we can't see?  Also, those red, blue and green arms and hands look a little bit weird.



The music though, from Paul McCartney and Wings, is excellent, and actually stands up on its own without the titles.  That is one of the things that I use to define whether or not a song or a score that is created as a film theme, is actually any good, does it stand up just as music?  Some don't, some do, that one stands up very well indeed.

THE PLOT.

The film proper opens up with a shot of a sleeping female, and she's in the bed of a man, who at this point, we hadn't seen before in the prior films.  I can only guess that this must be our new Bond.  Not much of an intro though.  We here a persisting buzzing sound, but it's not an alarm clock, it's actually the front door bell.  Our mystery man gets up, puts on a robe, and quips back at our mystery woman, "Not married, by any chance, are you?"  We see a familiar face at the door, a rather grizzly looking M, who when our mystery man opens the door says, "Good morning, 007."  Well, when Bond checked his watch, it was 5:48, so it's early, but M paying Bond a visit, in his apartment???  Sorry, that just doesn't add up.  In Doctor No, Bond was called into the office and it was gone 3am.  I cannot imagine that M would ever do this to one of his agents.

The rest of this sequence, as it seems to become somewhat "Carry On"-esque.  Bond using a couple of machines to make M some coffee, and M's quip about "Is that all it does?" is kinda funny, but Moneypenny's arrival and the Italian agent trying to avoid being spotted by M, and the whole thing with the watch, really feels kinda out of place, or perhaps I should say out of situ.  It feels wrong that all this happens in Bond's apartment.  We should have Q explaining the watch to Bond, not Bond explaining the watch to M.  So much about this scene feels wrong in so many ways.  The slightly conspiratorial smile that Moneypenny gives Bond after M leaves, and her line "...or should I say, ciao, bello." and the sequence with the magnet watch pulling down the zip of her dress do work kinda well, but it's not enough to save the sequence, from being one of the worst in Bond history.  I'll do that full list after the reviews.  That'll be one of several lists that I will do later in the month.

There's an odd little scene where someone, who we're not sure at this point, is dealing out tarot cards, and saying some things, as a plane flies Bond to New York.  I think we're supposed to believe these are connected, but honestly, the film would be better without it.  I know it's setting up a theme that will play into the movie, but I really think it's unnecessary.

Bond arrives in New York, and a car is waiting for him.  The car has a phone in it, and we get what should have been a scene that would have intercut between Bond in the car, and Felix Leiter, played here by David Hedison, in a building somewhere in New York, but we get all of Bond's dialogue first and then all of Leiter's.  It really felt like somebody forgot to do the editing on that bit.  A white car pulls up alongside the car that Bond is riding in, and his driver is shot with a poison dart from out of a wing mirror.  Like, really?  That is a pretty big buy for me to make in this film, and it's made worse by the fact that the driver, puts his foot down, all the way on the accelerator.  Somehow, I don't think a dead man is going to put his foot down like that.  We get a tense moment out of it, as Bond has to try to bring the car to a stop, whilst somehow not removing the dead guy's foot from the accelerator.  But the un-believability of it just takes me right out of the film.

We have a moment where Kananga returns to his embassy, and seemingly is dictating a letter to his secretary, but in fact, he is playing an audio tape of the letter, whilst he, the girl we saw earlier, and his goons change their clothes.  Err, why?  It just comes across as silly.  The clunk of the reel-to-reel tape player starting up, would be obvious to anybody who was listening in.  You can get away with some ludicrous things as long as you play it straight, but this is beyond ludicrous.

Meanwhile, Bond visits the address where the white car we saw earlier was registered to.    It's a shop called the Oh Cult Voodoo Shop.  I get this is probably a Tom Mankiewicz touch, but it's so lame, it ought to be put out of it's misery.

Bond does some investigating, whilst in the embassy, Kananga's goons and the lady, make preparations to leave, but we don't see Kananga.  We then cut to Bond checking out the white car, before he becomes aware that a lift is arriving, and ducks out of sight.  Now we saw 4 people at the top end of the lift and Kananga was not one of them, but there are clearly 5 sets of shoes seen walking to another car.  We don't know who the 5th person is.  Bond watches the car leave and hails a taxi to trail it.  Meanwhile the woman inside the shop is talking to someone on a radio.  All she says is "He's tailing."  We then cut back to another car outside and another person "I've got him in my sights."  All in all, it's all very suspicious and we think that Bond is caught between a rock and a hard place.

This is the start of the infamous "Bond in Harlem" sequence, and basically the whole sequence is just painful, watching James Bond walk blindly and blithely into Harlem without a clue in the world what will happen, is just painful.  There is nothing mitigating about this whole sequence, though to be fair, it doesn't degenerate like the Bondola sequence from Moonraker.  It just starts off very painful to watch, and never gets any better, never gets any worse.  Just remains painful until we get to the moment when Felix's voice emirates from... a car cigarette lighter.  Oh, why don't you just turn the corn all the way up to 11??? Oh, you just did...

It's also during this sequence that we see Mr Big for the first time, looking rather suspiciously like Dr Kananga in some bad prosthetics...

Anyway, Kananga leaves New York to return to San Monique and Bond follows.  We have a scene where a snake enters Bond's hotel room, and we get a moment that feels like it's trying to evoke the spider scene from Dr No.  Bond disposes of the reptile by using his cigar to light some flammable hairspray or deodorant, I'm not entirely sure what it is, and apparently the hotel added Flame Grilled Snake to the menu that night...

Oh yeah, one thing that this film does do well, is echo From Russia With Love, in the fact that Bond checks out his room as he arrives with a gadget and also transmits something to someone, but we never see who receives it, which is a dropped "bolas"...

Oh yeah, I guess I ought to mention this here too, but in this film, and in The Man With The Golden Gun, Bond doesn't smoke cigarettes, he smokes cigars, big long cigars.  Roger Moore was a cigar smoker back in those days, but seeing James Bond lighting up a cigar feels wrong and out of character.  We hadn't seen Bond smoke since On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and even then it was fairly brief.  But cigars? No, that's not very Bondian at all.

It's just after this that we are introduced to CIA Agent Rosie Carver, played by Gloria Hendry.  She is the most inept agent we've ever seen in the Bond films, even worse than the double identity 'James Bond's of the Casino Royale spoof, worse than Felix Leiter in Goldfinger.  Her whole presence in the film is cringeworthy, and marks her down as being one of the worst characters in James Bond film history.

I know what you're saying, there's a worse character than Rosie coming up later in this very film, and we'll get to that when he makes his appearance.  I must mention that after we are introduced to Rosie, Bond receives a tarot card with his breakfast the next morning, the card is the Queen Of Cups, and Bond goes to a local tarot establishment to find out what that means.

Anyway, Bond and Rosie hire a boat, and we are introduced to Quarrel Jr, played by Roy Stewart.  In the books, this was Quarrel, because Live And Let Die was written before Dr No.  Rosie's ineptness is on-display here as well, which makes the whole scene worse.  I like Quarrel Jr, he's quite good actually as an ally of Bond.  He's a contender for the Top 10 Bond Allies list.

I think we need to make something clear here.  I'm not blaming Gloria Hendry, the actress, for Rosie Carver.  She is doing what she is required to do by the script.  My problem with Rosie is the way she is written.  Tom Mankiewicz wrote her so badly, that her whole presence in the film feels like a waste of time.  On the other hand, Quarrel Jr is well written, mostly due to the fact that it is actually meant to be Quarrel, except for the fact that Dr No was shot 11 years before Live And Let Die and Quarrel died in Dr No.  So, the way Quarrel Jr is written, is mostly due to Ian Fleming.  As far as I know, Rosie Carver was never in the original book, so she is written by Tom Mankiewicz and the difference in the writing quality shows.  Also, in the film, Solitaire's real name is never mentioned, why I don't know, but her real name is Simone Latrelle.  I don't know why this detail was omitted, but I would have prefered it to be included, if only towards the end of the film, so that Bond had a name to use other than Solitaire.

The writing has always been up and down when it comes to Bond films.  At best, even with changes, it still tells the story well.  At worst, it can be massively detrimental to the film, and I guess that how well I feel a film has been written, influences how I feel about the film.  Many would go for the action sequences, the jokes, the visuals, but for me, a good film is grounded in a good, well written story, and without that base, there's nothing to support the rest of the film.  Oh, I would add that also, you need to believe in your main character, without that, the rest of the film struggles.  And at least in this regard, Roger Moore is doing better than George Lazenby did.  I believe in him as Bond, whereas I didn't with George Lazenby, but it is fair to say Moore's best performance was yet to come.

Anyway, enough distractions, back to the plot.  Bond checks out Solitaire's house from the boat, and the boat docks somewhere, but we don't see exactly where in relation to the house.  Bond and Rosie check out the area and Rosie leads Bond to an area, where they get it on, but Bond reveals that he knows Rosie Carver is a double agent, and threatens to kill her if she doesn't talk.  But she chooses to run, and is killed by one of the many scarecrow-type things on the island.

We see a rift starting to develop between Kananga and Solitaire, whilst Bond is on a hand glider, tethered to Quarrel's boat.  At a signal from Bond the tether is released, and Bond floats down to land outside Solitaire's house.  Solitaire finds Bond playing with her Tarot cards and is much miffed.  This is the scene where Bond dupes her into making love to him, giving him her virginity and removing her 'gift'.  It is an uncomfortable sequence, and one that leaves me feeling cold.  Bond has done some very ungentlemanly things before, but this feels worse than anything else up to this point in the film series, even making love to Domino before telling her of her brother's death.

I have to confess, I have little care at this for most of the characters, and we're not even halfway through the movie yet, though again, it has already felt much longer than the 53 or so minutes the film has been running.  Bond leads Solitaire across the island, and we get a scene with Baron Samedi which is just strange.  Also strange is the way the music builds up as though Bond is about to discover something major, but all we get is a peaceful meadow scene.  That feels really poor actually.

However, Bond does discover that poppies are being grown under camouflaged netting, so that they won't be discovered.  Now that works for aerial surveillance obviously, but Bond was on foot, so that didn't really help.

And as a helicopter fires on Bond and Solitaire, we begin a big action sequence, which normally would be a good thing.  However here, the sequence feels a bit lame in general.  Let me explain. After evading the helicopter, Bond commanders a bus, and is chased by three motorcycles and two police cars.  A wet patch deals with the motorcycles, and Bond's weaving of the bus puts one police car out of action.  The bus is diverted onto a road with a low bridge by a roadblock, and Bond drives straight underneath, with the top deck of the bus being sliced right off and landing on the remaining police car.  Yep, lame, really.  Nice technical trick, but lame in story terms.  And we still have an hour to go.

The bus pulls up on a dock, where Quarrel Jr is waiting with his boat and they make their escape, much to the chagrin of Kananga.

Bond arrives with Solitaire in New Orleans, and they get into a cab, but Bond recognises the driver from New York.  Turns out he's an associate of Mr Big's.  He takes them to an airfield where some of Mr Big's hoods plan to drop Bond out of a plane without a parachute.  Hmm, he would end up actually doing that 3 films later...

Solitaire has a strange moment where she attacks Bond with her handbag, but this somehow manages to allow Bond to escape.  This is weird writing really.  It makes no sense.  Hmm, I've been saying that a lot since reviewing Casino Royale 1967...

Bond spots an small airplane waiting, and goes to commandeer it, and we're introduced to an old woman who's obviously a learner pilot, and the sequence degenerates here.  The woman is completely unnecessary and she adds nothing at all to the film.  It would have been far better if she hadn't even been there.

Anyway, Bond meets up with Felix in a New Orleans hotel, and we see one of his fellow CIA agents, the one who helped Bond escape from Harlem, meet the same fate as the guy at the start of the film, but they don't show him being killed, which is kinda odd.  Bond and Felix take a seat at the New Orleans Fillet Of Soul restaurant, where we get a performance of Live And Let Die from B J Arnau, and it's not a bad one, but it does feel kinda shoehorned in.  Felix is separated from Bond, and Bond gets lowered into some villain's lair.  In New York, he chose the booth that swung round, here, he gets the sinking feeling.  Some of these moments are a little too convenient.  Especially, the fact that they replace the table, chairs, and drinks, before Felix gets back, very convenient...

Bond is in a room, where everybody else is a silhouette at first.  We're re-introduced to Mr Big here, and Mr Big tries to intimidate Bond into answering his question, the question being did he fool about with Solitaire.  Bond says he will only answer when he sees Kananga.  At this point Mr Big removes the prosthetics to reveal, that he is Dr Kananga.  Gee, I never saw that coming, I mean he so didn't look like he was wearing obvious prosthetics... ok, I'm being sarcastic.

The most predictable reveal in the film, and indeed, in all of Bond-dom.  When it comes to disguises, the Bond films are horrible at it.  Whether its Bond turning Japanese in You Only Live Twice, Bond being Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, or the dual identity of Dr Kananga and Mr Big here, every attempt at disguise flops, horribly.

This next bit isn't too bad, as we basically get the villain's scheme, and it's actually not completely over the top, but is a big deal.  Putting all other dealers out of business, by giving away free heroin at his chain of restaurants, and then when they're all out of business, charging exorbitant prices for it.  It quite nicely brings all the various elements together that we've been introduced to during the film.  This is the point where the film actually gets kinda good for a little while.  What a shame it's taken over 70 minutes to get here.

Bond is knocked out and taken to a crocodile farm, here he is going to be left as crocodile food.  This part of the film actually plays well.  As TeeHee shows Bond around the farm, it builds the tension nicely.  We see that the farm also doubles as a Heroin refinery, so it has plot relevance too.  When we get to feeding time, then the tension actually increases and as Bond is left on the island to become a feast for hungry crocs, it pitches up the tension again.  The slow moving crocs create a real sense of menace too, the whole thing plays really well.  What a shame it comes this far into the film.

The music isn't too bad here either.  But such a shame that the musical score for this film is so 70s.  George Martin cleverly cuts the music when Bond realises that the boat he is trying to attract to the island via his magnet watch is tethered and won't get to him, and just letting the natural sound play, adds another level to the growing tension.  It's one of the few bits that George Martin got right in this film.  For some reason, John Barry wasn't available to do the score, and they hired George Martin, the famous Beatles producer to do it.  But the score is so 70s sounding, that even when I first saw it about 10 years after its initial release, the score sounded horribly dated, and time has not been kind on the music.  Other than the title song, the rest of the score is pretty forgettable.

In fact, when it comes to this whole film, it is very dated, not just in score terms, but in visual terms too.  Blaxploitation cinema was big at this time, and it's clear that the producers were using some of those elements in this film.  But the problem is, it does make the film very dated, very quickly.  Even before the end of the 1970s, Blaxploitation films were looking very dated and had fallen out of favour with viewers and the studios.

Anyway, Bond escapes by using some of the crocs as stepping stones, and proceeds to destroy the refinery, with a mixture of luring one of the crocs into the refinery with some of the meat that was left, petrol and fire.  Bond then escapes the place by stealing one of the villain's boats, and we begin the pursuit through the canals and bayous.  It's also here that we're introduced to probably the most incompetent policeman since the Keystone Kops, Sheriff J W Pepper, played by Clifton James.  There is nothing Fleming-esque about him, and I know that rankles the purists, but J W is a highlight of this film, along with the whole chase sequence.  J W is a southern racist of the old Jim Crowe school, but that actually makes the character funnier.

The whole chases sequence is intercut with hilarious moments from J W Pepper, and the various people we encounter on route.  It's a well done sequence, and the most entertaining bit of the movie, but again, I have to say it, it comes too late in the movie really to save what had been before this, a really dire movie, but at least the sequence goes some way to redeeming it.

I particularly like the bit at the end, where Bond is puttering in New Orleans harbour, at least I think it is, and Sheriff J W Pepper turns up and looks at Bond and says, "What are you, some kind of doomsday machine, boy?"  and then his response to being told that Bond is a secret agent.  "SECRET AGENT?!?!?  ON WHO'S SIDE?!?!?"  He is quite funny, and just the right kind of light relief needed before the film gets serious again.

The final reel of this film takes place on San Monique, and is basically Bond rescuing Solitaire whilst Leiter and Quarrel Jr plant bombs to destroy the poppy fields.  We get a coffin full of snakes, and various bits, but after the excitement of the crocodile farm and the boat chase, this feels like an anti-climax.  Yeah, the poppy fields get blown up and Bond rescues Solitaire and kills Baron Samedi via a lot of snake bites, and uses the same elevator that Baron Samedi came up to escape into the villain's lair, and they manage to avoid most of the guards, but the whole sequence feels anti-climactic.

Bond and Solitaire run into Kananga, and captured.  Kananga asks about the unusual gun he has.  It turns out it fires compressed gas pellets, which Kananga proceeds to demonstrate by shooting one into the sofa that his henchman Whisper is sitting on.  The sofa inflates aggressively and then blows up when it can no longer contain the pressure.  I know they're setting up the villain's demise later, and the moment with the inflating sofa is actually quite funny, but the whole sequence here feels lame and lazy.  There's a really over the top demise planned for Bond and Solitaire, via being drowned and eaten by a shark.  I really find this whole sequence to be exemplifying all the worst things about this film, and about the Bond franchise in general.  For instance, Bond using his watch to pick up a compressed gas pellet that had been left lying around.  No magnet can work that well from that kind of distance.  Even the most powerful magnets, Neodymium magnets, only really work at close range, but they pull about 500lbs equivalent each.  So, they would easily pull a little pellet like that, though not at that range.

The watch also has another feature.  The outside dial has a seated edge, and spins like a circular saw.  This is much more believable, but since this hadn't been mentioned at all up until this point, this really feels sonic screwdriver-esque.  We get a bit of a fight between Kananga and Bond, before they end up in the water, and Bond forces Kananga to swallow the compressed gas pellet, leaving Kananga to die via an explosion of compressed gas.  The idea is lame, and the execution is even worse, as we get the most obvious balloon pretending to be Kananga exploding, and yet there is no blood.  You'd think that everywhere would be splattered with blood and guts.

Anyway, we cut to Bond and Solitaire leaving by train, as Felix sees them off, and we see some post sacks being loaded on.  Anyhow, TeeHee was in one of those sacks, and he pops up again to have one more pop at Bond, in a sequence that is rather obviously meant to evoke memories of From Russia With Love here, in the fact that it is the henchman's own gadget, his metal pincer arm, that is his own undoing.  Bond grabs a nail clipper and manages to cut the wires that control the pincer, locking TeeHee to the window, and he then throws him out the window.  We end with a shot of Baron Samedi apparently riding on the front of the train.

The whole thing feels weak and feeble, like they're trying too hard, and not succeeding.

THE VILLAIN

I have to say that Dr Kananga/Mr Big is probably the worst written villain in Bond history.  Heck, even Hugo Drax was better written than this, and he was let down by a poor portrayal.  I can't dog too much on Yaphet Kotto, he does well with what he's got, but most of the dialogue feels like the stuff of Bond parodies.

His demise is equally lame, and is probably one of the worst villain demises in Bond history, as well as being one of the worst moments in Bond history, only topped in this film, by the whole Bond in Harlem sequence.

THE BOND GIRL/WOMAN

Solitaire is played brilliantly here by Jane Seymour.  Yes, she does seem to be the typical damsel in distress, but having her being one of the villain's mob at the start is just brilliant actually and Jane Seymour plays it well.

She isn't one of the best Bond girls, but isn't one of the worst either.  Just generally solid and enjoyable to watch.

THE ALLIES.

M and Moneypenny are played well, but it just feels wrong that they are visiting Bond's apartment, rather than calling Bond into the office.  There's no Q here, but the watch means his presence is felt.

Felix Leiter here is much better than he's been since Dr No, but he's still not much more than a cipher character.  He has little action of his own, and isn't well used.  But David Hedison puts more character into him in the moments he's on screen, than Cec Linder, Rik Von Nutter and Norman Burton put together.

Harold Strutter, the guy who comes to Bond's aid in Harlem, and appears again in New Orleans, is pretty good in the scenes he's in, and Lon Satton gives him some great character, but it's a shame that he's killed, even though we don't see him being killed.

Quarrel Jr, I've already mentioned earlier on, as being one of Bond's best allies, even though he isn't a major part of the film, but Roy Stewart plays him well, and gives him some character too.  I would have loved to have seen Quarrel Jr make some other appearances, but that was not to be.

SUPPORTING CAST

I'm utilising a 'supporting cast' section here to highlight a couple of people.

First, Sherrif J W Pepper.  He is a comedic highlight in this film, and I know some of the purists will hate me for saying this, but I liked J W Pepper in this.  Clifton James played him beautifully giving him such energy and character that it makes the scenes a joy to watch.

Secondly, there is another appearance here, by Roy Hollis, who appeared as a Las Vegas Sheriff in Diamonds Are Forever.  I don't know if it's meant to be the same character, as he's a Louisiana Sheriff here but it's a nice touch.  

THE HENCHMEN

Tee Hee is the main henchman here, played by Julius Harris, and Tee Hee is actually a lot more memorable than his boss.  The metal arm with the pincer gives him a nice villainous touch, and his smile and laugh just add to the sense of menace that he has.  In the Crocodile farm scenes, Tee Hee has some real character to him, and he really comes across well.  It's a shame that he got paired with such a lame villain.

The rest of the crew don't come off so well.  Whisper is interesting but ultimately not that good.  Baron Samedi is completely over the top without any real character to him.  Most of Mr Big's goons, including the guy J W Pepper catches up to, are pretty forgettable, none have any real character to them, and just don't add anything to the film.

STUNTS AND ACTION SEQUENCES

The best sequence in the film, is from the crocodile farm to the end of the boat chase, and that contains some of the best stunt work in the film, and the boat chase is far and away the best action sequence.

The sequence with the top deck of the bus being shawn right off was an amazing technical trick to pull off, but that whole sequence felt kinda weak all the way.  It just wasn't strong enough to help what was already a weak film.

THE SCORE

I haven't really mentioned the score in the previous three entries, mainly because they're solid but nothing special.  John Barry's Moonraker score was good, Burt Bacharach's Casino Royale score was okay, if a little weird in places for not really playing the right emotional cues but where it worked, it worked very well.  David Arnold's Quantum Of Solace score was good, but trying to avoid using the Bond theme was a small mistake, not a big one, but enough to make some of the scoring more difficult than it should have been.

But here, as I previously mentioned, the score was done by former Beatles producer George Martin and is generally weak, and dated.  It comes across as very 70s and always has done, which meant it dated very quickly.  John Barry's scores have a much more timeless feel about them, but this I'm afraid didn't do the film any real favours.

George Martin's version of the Bond theme is a little weird too.



It's okay, but it's nothing special.

OTHER NOTES

It's weird that this goes back from 2.4:1 to 16:9 aspect ratio.  Not sure why, but after watching Thunderball onwards in the wider ratio, this feels weird.  Maybe that's because they realised the first three were the best films in the series so far and they thought that going back to the aspect ratio of those films would help, but really it didn't have anything to do with the aspect ratio.

It was weird how they made a conscious effort to avoid the 'Connery tropes' as if they were doing all they could to avoid making reference to Connery.  Bond drinking Bourbon, not having a hat, smoking cigars, it was like they were looking over their shoulder at the shadow of Sean Connery, and were afraid of it.

But that wasn't the only shadow they were aware of, as they were also aware of the shadow of one of Roger Moore's previous characters, Simon Templar, aka The Saint.  Even though Roger Moore had filmed The Persuaders between The Saint and Live And Let Die, it seemed that they were desperate to avoid comparison between Bond and Templar.  It has to be said though, there are moments that feel somewhat Templar-esque, but they were desperate to avoid the eyebrow raise which was almost considered a Roger Moore trademark.

It would be fair to say that James Bond and Simon Templar do share some character traits, but generally, Moore does sell himself as James Bond in this film, which is important.  If you can't believe in the actor playing the character, then the film does tend to fall apart.  It happened to a degree on On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Roger Moore managed to avoid that trap here.  He is Bond, albeit a different aspect than we saw in the Sean Connery films, but there is enough there to make you believe in him, and that's what matters.

OVERALL

The film overall is mostly pretty weak.  There's a 25 minute or so block around reels 4 & 5 where the film does well, but the rest is pretty awful.  Kananga is a weak villain, though the scheme is pretty good.  They would do the drug dealer angle far better many years later.

The voodoo theme is meant to help the story, but often seems to hinder it.  But at least the croc farm and the boat chase are enjoyable, and you can get a good laugh from Sheriff J W Pepper.

Next time, number 21, where we take our second and final entry into the unofficial films.