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Comments
Personally though I think this film is better than LALD and Roger gives a better, tougher performance as Bond with some great lines such as 'Speak now or forever hold your piece' and 'That would be pity because they are very, very expensive.'
The cast just seems very sparse on this film and that magnificent Scaramanga Island is crying out for a big battle between hordes of guards in brightly coloured boiler suits. Instead we get just five actors for the last half hour, it almost would work better as a stage play. Killing Scaramanga 10 minutes before the end is another error as the sense of threat is lifted and the removal of the Solex Aggitator holds little sense of excitement.
Christopher Lee is great casting and his Scaramanga is a vast improvement on Fleming's gangster hit-man, Herve Villechaize's Nick Nack is a pathetic henchman and carries no real sense of threat or menace, though Maud Adams Andrea Anders makes a interesting character who would of served the film better by being the lead Bond girl. Brit Eckland's Mary Goodnight character is especially irritating when you consider this is one of Fleming's reoccurring characters and should of been treated with more care.
I hate the way the poor PTS is practically repeated scene for scene for the big final duel, and the cheap sets used for this are terrible when you compare them to say YOLT volcano set.
The flying car looks stupid and thoroughly deserves to have to share it's scenes with the equally worthless J W Pepper, and the great car roll sequence is totally ruined by that whistle slide sound effect.
I would rate this film very low, but in my opinion it still has enough good points to place it above LALD, AVTAK and of course DAD.
And @BAIN123, I found myself agreeing with you almost word-for-word there. You're right about Sir Rog in this one, he doesn't feel right. They were experimenting with his Bond, I guess; mixing the light with the heavy. He hit his stride with Spy, surely, when Lewis Gilbert rightly hit upon the notion of directing him as 007 as if he were a 'Cary Grant-like hero', almost self-knowlingy above the action. Moore would act darker as Bond again in the '80s, of course, but by then he was more settled in the role and probably needed less direction to get the mix right (the editing may've been better too, who knows).
And, sadly, you're right about the Goodnight character; however, I would reiterate the point I made further up, for me both Adams and Ekland add some truly much needed beauty and glamour to Golden Gun, however good or bad their characters...
You're right that DAD - overall - has more colour and energy to it and, at one point I probably would have put Die higher in my list.
Upon thinking about it now however GG edges it as I think Lee and Adams are more memorable (for the right reasons) than Stephens and Berry.
Brosnan still makes the better 007 though IMHO (though I do like Moore).
Mind you, thinking on it, I might rank DAD higher than TMWTGG. Think I have in the past. Just... ;)
As far as "TMWTGG" goes, it is a very fun film, but I think it could have been a lot better. For instance, Scaramanga's facilities would have looked a lot better with more people in them like we saw in "YOLT" and "TSWLM". Why not have Lt. Hip lead a raid into Scaramanga's power plant and have a huge kung fu battle with explosions and machine guns?! This could have led to Bond chasing Scaramanga into the fun house instead of having the dissapointing "non-duel" that leads to the fun house.
I know the film's goal is to lead us to the fun house, and that is fine with me, but I think there are better ways to have taken us there.
Other problems include Britt Ekland, Roger Moore's "ruthless" scenes (they come off as being contrived), and Bond being ditched by Hip and his nieces as an excuse to move the film into stunt and fight sequences. This film suffers from very choppy segues.
I can get past all the negatives because the film has spirit. It wants us to have fun, and there certainly is a lot of fun to be had.
The best parts of the film are Maud Adams, Christoper Lee, Moore when he's allowed to be himself, the sets, and the beautiful islands. Oh, and controversially, J.W. Pepper is one of the film's highlights. Might as well have fun with him if you are going to have a film with so much nonsense!
6/10
Sure, the whole idea of the character revolves around the, er, high-concept notion of casting a dwarf as a threatening henchman and, although often played for laughs, on the whole it works, as he's a convincingly menacing, cruel little b*gger for me. One of the series' most well recalled 'lighter' characters - and arguably one of its best...