"Look after Mr. Bond, See that some harm comes to him."
At the end of The Spy Who Loved Me we were told that James Bond would return in For your Eyes Only but a little film in 1977 called Star Wars changed that and the producers decided to shoe horn a sci-fi/space element in and the result was 1979's Moonraker. Roger Moore returned as 007 along with Bernard Lee as M, Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny and Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Michael Lonsdale played the villainous Hugo Drax with Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead and making his second appearance as Jaws was Richard Kiel.
Moonraker is the name of a US Space Shuttle that is on loan to the UK when it is stolen in mid flight and MI6 set their best man the task of getting to the bottom of it. Bond immediately runs into Jaws who chucks 007 out of a plane and after a mid-air struggle with the pilot Bond nicks his parachute and lands safely. The Moonraker shuttle was built by Drax industries so this is where Bond starts his mission. Bond makes contact with Drax's pilot Corinne Dufour and being a women obviously she ends up in bed with Bond. Next bond meets Dr. Holly Goodhead a scientist working for Drax on the Moonraker program.
Bond finds out that Drax has been developing a poisonous gas and plans to use it to kill mankind and take a selected few he has chosen onto a space station he has hidden in orbit (this plot sounds very familiar) Bond and Goodhead pose as Drax pilots to sneak on board the space station so they can alert the authorities to its presence.
Bond and Goodhead manager to reveal Drax's plan and the US send a platoon of Marines into space on another shuttle (because that is a something they can do in a few hours), there is a space battle and Bond gets the better of Drax to save the day once again.
This film is what I remember the Roger Moore films as to be honest it is not very good. The plot is ludicrous (even for a Bond film) yet predictable, it's almost the exact same plot as the last film. Drax ends up being a generic stock Bond villain and doesn't have the gravitas of Goldfinger, Blofeld or Stromberg. There are some good scenes with Bond travelling the world in his quest to recover the stolen Space Shuttle. Heading to Venice and Rio and then into space the SFX are now dated but were pretty good for the time.
Jaws is the films saving grace, I said in my last Bond review that Jaws is my favourite Bond Henchman and I wish he was in more films. I really love the scene with Jaws and Bond on the Sugarloaf Cable car in Rio and the shot of Jaws biting through the huge cable is one of the most Iconic of all the Bond Villains.
Project Bond will return with For Your Eyes Only.
Well, that's all for now.
S
While I have all the Bond films on Blu-Ray, when I marathon the series every summer as I usually do I skip this one and "From A View To A Kill" easily the worst of all the James Bond movies.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have to admit that I'd rather watch the both of them on a twenty-four hour loop rather than sit through "Spectre" even one more time.