Covert Activity

There's a running joke in my family about my father's memory, specifically when it comes to Bond movies. Since one of the main UK television channels will run a 'Bond Season' at least once a year (traditionally in the run-up to Christmas because, y'know, Bond is full of seasonal good cheer), and the peripheral channels seem to run the movies pretty much all year, it's almost impossible to avoid Bond these days.

Nevertheless, whenever someone is foolish enough to announce that a Bond movie is running on any given day, my father will say "I don't think I've seen that one..." and look most hurt when my mother tells him not to be so ridiculous, he saw it in the cinema when it first came out, and it's been on telly almost every year since.

ITV4 currently seems to be running all the Bond movies and, today, I've been sort-of watching From Russia With Love. What has struck me is that I know for a fact that I've seen each and every one of the Bond films at least once (the other running joke in my family is that, despite our certainty that he's already seen the movies and that there's something we haven't seen on another channel, we almost invariably ended up watching the Bond movie anyway) I can't remember anything about most of them either.

I remember certain scenes - I defy any heterosexual male to forget the scene in Dr. No where Ursula Andress comes up out of the sea onto the beach, and then not cringe at Die Another Day's foul and unnecessary duplication with Halle Berry - some characters, a few gadgets or cars and occasionally a few elements of plot... but, by and large, I don't remember Bond films.

So... everything I remember about the Bond movies, in order:

Dr. No (1962)

• Ursula Andress... Oh my, yes
• "Underneath the mango tree/Ma honey and me..."
• Superstitions about a fire-breathing dragon on an island
• Large, black sidekick, portrayed as loyal but a bit thick
• Dr. No has prosthetic hands and is clearly a caucasian guy with winged eyeliner
• Underground base, possibly in a volcano, where Bond and Ryder are given new clothes and a nice dinner

From Russia With Love (1963)
Watching that now, so that'd be cheating but - honestly - I remembered virtually nothing about it. The only familiar scene was the bit with the couple enjoying their punting on the Thames, and Bond saying "I couldn't agree more" before pouncing on Sylvia Trench, only to be called away by Moneypenny. He tells her he has been "Looking into an old case" and, when Trench intrudes repeatedly on his phone conversation with her, Moneypenny opines that the old case "sounds interesting".

Goldfinger (1964)

• Woman gets painted gold and dies due to dermal asphyxiation. (Myth Busted, thanks to Kari Byron)
• The plot has something to do with gold...
• Bond gets strapped to a table for a laser-castration
• "Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?" "No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die."
• Theme song about "Miss-Tah Goooooldfingaaaaah... he's the man... the man with the Midas Touch"

Thunderball (1965)

• Nowt

You Only Live Twice (1967)

• 'Bond' is killed at the very beginning, but it's not really him
• "You only live twice, Mr Bond" is the villain's comeback to one of Bond's smart-arse remarks

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Only watched this recently, so it's reasonably fresh in my mind... still...

• Bond's informant will only give up the information if Bond agrees to romance his daughter (really?), played by Diana Rigg
• The song "We Have All The Time In The World" turns up in almost every scene
• Multinational cast, none of whom speak very good English apart from Diana Rigg.
• Bond gets married, wife gets shot in revenge, Bond is in denial when the police arrive. "It's alright, you see... we have all the time in the world..." - actually quite a sad moment, and proof that Lazenby wasn't the ruin of the movie.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

• Shirley Bassey theme!
• Diamonds being used for some kind of laser?

Live and Let Die (1973)

• Paul McCartney theme
• Jane Seymour as a fortune teller whose powers only work because she's a virgin
• That is, until Bond comes along with a stacked Tarot deck - every card is 'The Lovers'... and the fortune teller didn't see that coming?
• Roger Moore being smarmy
• Yaphet Kotto as the villain... who gets killed by being inflated by super-compressed air from Bond's secret rebreather?
• Spooky, seemingly indestructible voodoo guy with top hat and no trousers.
• Guy with prosthetic arm, courtesy of crocodiles... Was there a Peter Pan joke? A crocodile that had swallowed a ticking bomb?

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

• Christopher Lee as an assassin who never misses
• He misses Bond. A lot
• A hall of mirrors
• The little guy from Fantasy Island
• In fact, wasn't this one mostly set on Fantasy Island?
• The golden gun is disguised as a cigarette lighter
• Little guy tries to kill Bond as he escapes with Bond Girl. Silly little guy

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

• Nowt

Moonraker (1979)

• Richard Kiel as Jaws - falls in love with cute, geeky looking blonde. "Oh well, here's to us" is the only line he ever speaks, toasting their happiness as the space station collapses around them
• Some kind of Egyptian labyrinth?
• A spacecraft that looks remarkably like the Space Shuttle, in a movie made at least 2 years before Columbia's maiden flight (though, obviously, development of the shuttle had begun long before Moonraker!)
• The villain has a beard

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

• Sheena Easton theme song

Octopussy (1983)

• Bond sneaks into the villain's lair using a submersible modelled on a crocodile - this has since been referenced in the Metal Gear Solid games, where Snake can wear a crocodile head mask and a white tuxedo
• The villain refers to her pet octopus as "my little octopussy"
• Its tank gets shot out
• Is the villain's lair a women-only island?

A View to a Kill (1985)
I remember more about this because it was the first Bond movie to be turned into a multi-platform home computer game which, true to form (broken by Goldeneye on the N64, 12 years later), was shockingly bad... still...

• Christopher Walken overacting as the villain... Riding around in a personal blimp.
• Grace Jones was the scariest Bond Girl ever, but strangely one of the most memorable
• Something about blowing up the San Andreas fault (though I only remember that because of the game!)
• Car chase in Paris with half a Citroen 2CV?
• Oh, God... Duran Duran did the theme!

The Living Daylights (1987)

• Tim Dalton's first outing as Bond
• Shooting Maryam D'Arbo in the hand, then making some quip along the lines of "it scared the living daylights out of her"
• Riding down a snowy mountain in her cello case
• Theme by A-Ha

License to Kill (1989)

• Awesome stunt with the capture of the villain's plane at the beginning, which neatly links to Felix Leiter's wedding, as he and Bond arrive by parachute
• Leiter gets eaten by a shark, and yet somehow survives mostly intact
• "He disagreed with something that ate him" on a note pinned to his body, proving that Bond doesn't have a monopoly on stupid one-liners
• Leiter's new wife isn't so lucky - she's killed, rape may have been implied
• Even so, by the end of the movie, Leiter is having a laugh with Bond from his hospital bed
• Robert Davi is the drug-baron villain, who's moving his cocaine dissolved in petroleum
• Benicio Del Toro is his psychotic sidekick
• Bond's license to kill is revoked, and he's told to stay away from the villain, but has vowed personal revenge
• Features one of very few references to Bond's marriage in OHMSS
• Another loyal-but-thick large, black sidekick, mirroring Dr. No
• Someone gets exploded in a decompression chamber
• Bond Girl had a lazy eye
• Gladys Knight theme song

Goldeneye (1995)

• Tina Turner theme song - almost as good as Shirley Bassey
• Sean Bean as another Double-O agent
• Lots of Russians, one of whom played by Robbie Coltrane
• Some kind of EMP weapon, fired from space
• The tank chase
• OMG - what a twist, the villain is another Double-O agent... why hadn't that been done before?
• Pierce Brosnan was actually quite cool as Bond
• "You're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur... a relic of the Cold War" - Judi Dench as M says what we've all been thinking since Roger Moore took over as Bond, and the movies got steadily sillier
• Judi Dench is the best M evar!!!!111!!!!1!!
• A villain called 'Onatopp'? Really? And she kills by crushing people with her legs, often during sex?

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

• Sheryl Crow theme song - shame the movie wasn't as good as the song!
• Villain is a news mogul who makes his own headlines happen
• Teri Hatcher was only ever seen from the chest up, or from behind, as she was heavily pregnant at the time of filming
• Michelle Yoeh as an awesome, arse-kicking Chinese agent who manages to repeatedly out-spy Bond (weren't there rumours of her getting a spin-off series?)

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

• Shirley Manson theme song, played over a title sequence featuring lots of oily naked women, cluing you in to the fact that oil will be a major part of the plot
• MI6 building gets a hole blown in the side, where a vault is located... which somehow links to the Quartermaster's section so Bond can steal his tricked-out fishing boat and launch it through the hole out to the Thames to give chase to a sniper who - for no obvious reason - was watching from her boat.
• Desmond Llewelyn's final outing as the curmudgeonly Quartermaster: "I've always tried to teach you two things, Double-O Seven. First, never let them see you bleed." "And the second?" "Always have an escape plan." This can actually bring a tear to my eye now, since he delivers the line while going down on a small personal elevator platform, and he died shortly after the film was completed.
• Robert Carlisle was the villain... or was he?
• 3D hologram indicating a bullet lodged in his brain - Bond mimes picking it out
• Denise Richards as Doctor Christmas Jones? Are you taking the piss?
• "I thought Christmas only comes once a year" Ah, right. That's why the stupid name. Grow up, scriptwriter!
• "The world is not enough" is apparently the Bond family motto

Die Another Day (2002)

• Madonna's terrible theme song... that wasn't even really a song.
• Bond had the crap kicked out of him, and had been left for dead when a mission in Korea went wrong
• Long hair and beard is not a good look for Pierce Brosnan
• Halle Berry turns up as Jinx - awesome character, rumours of her own spin-off series
• Innuedo-filled conversation about ornithology on the beach
• Hovercraft used on land
• The invisible car... WTF?
• The ice palace
• The guy with diamonds embedded in his face - caught in an explosion (caused by Bond) during indentity-changing surgery

I won't go on with the new, Daniel Craig ones... but it just goes to show how unmemorable some of these films were. I remember Pussy Galore, but couldn't tell you which movie she was in. I remember Oddjob, but couldn't place him either. I'm pretty sure Jaws was in more than one movie. I remember a climax set on a volcanic island somewhere near Japan, and Sean Connery was made up with winged eyeliner - "Now you look like real ninja!" ('ninja' is actually the Japanese word for 'spy')... A bit where a spacecraft gets swallowed up by a larger spacecraft, where the Russians believe the Americans are behind everything, and the Americans believe the Russians are behind everything... I remember Sean Connery with a jetpack, and a mini-copter. I remember the Lotus Esprit that could turn into a submarine. I remember the bit where Roger Moore's Bond jumps a car over a broken bridge, and it does a barrel roll. Loads of odd little bits that I can't tie to any particular movie.

I suppose you could say that it shows how good an agent Bond was that even eyewitnesses have trouble recalling his exploits... but, let's face it, many of the movies just weren't very good... Once Sean Connery left the series, they got sillier and sillier, focusing more on the cheap innuendo and gadgetry than any kind of spy work. Things got back on a slightly better track when Pierce Brosnan took over, but there was still too much played for laughs and, much as I liked Samantha Bond's Moneypenny, it was all too obviously an attempt at empowering a long-downtrodden and neglected character, and showing up Bond for the dinosaur he was. Part of me rather hopes they bring her back with Daniel Craig, because I get the feeling they could reignite the magic that Connery and Lois Maxwell shared. Maxwell's Moneypenny knew exactly who - and what - Bond was, and her 'pining' was as much a shared joke between colleagues as it was genuine attraction... Probably more so. Daniel Craig and Samantha Bond could bring a new dimension to that, I suspect.