Bond and B-E-Y-O-N-D

I can't get the James Bond theme music out of my head.

Now I admit I've had a lot on my mind lately, from the upcoming start to rock paper scissors season in Philadelphia to my birthday this Saturday.

Somewhere in between, I've had Bond on the brain to an alarming degree. It isn't a total surprise; Encore has taken to frequently airing the James Bond movies, and I can't help but watch when they're on.


Since childhood, I've been in love with the cinematic adventures of Agent 007, through five lead actors, countless exotic locales and an army of gorgeous women. I had the You Only Live Twice board game at eight years old, and obsessively played James Bond: The Duel on the Sega Genesis during my preteen years.

While my favorite Bond movie is From Russia With Love, it's my first Bond flick that still holds a special place in my heart. To me, it represents everything mind-blowingly awesome about Bond.

Of course it's The Spy Who Loved Me.


My parents would sometimes let me stay up late to watch television. Here and there, it would be Carson on weeknights, but often, it was the Million Dollar Movie on our local ABC affiliate, WPVI Channel 6. Most nights saw made-for-TV fare or low-budget schlock, but on weekends, they'd run fairly major flicks. That's where I first watched Superman: The Movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and The Spy Who Loved Me, usually with one or both parents. My mom was a 007 fan herself, so she stayed up for the latter film with me.

And what a film it was!




Up to that point, Roger Moore was unimpressive in the franchise's title role. While his debut in Live and Let Die received some positive notices, and was financially successful, his second film, The Man With The Golden Gun, was a critical and commercial failure. Make no mistake, Golden Gun is a bad film, despite the presence of Christopher Lee. While Lee's performance was, and still is fondly regarded to this day, most disliked the camp and overt comedy. Apparently, you can make a movie with Tattoo from Fantasy Island that does suck.

Who knew?


The failure of Golden Gun was one of the driving forces for longtime Bond film producer Albert Broccoli to create the best Bond ever. With The Spy Who Loved Me, Broccoli had, for the first time ever, complete license to begin directly from scratch, using only the title of author Ian Fleming's novel and nothing else. To be fair, he always had license, outright owning the film rights with partner Harry Saltzman.

After all, You Only Live Twice shared some key elements--such as its Japanese setting and characters--with its source material, but otherwise had an entirely different plot. On the other hand, Ian Fleming was no fan of his novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, and specifically asked that only the title be used if it were ever adapted to film.


Saltzman departed the franchise after Golden Gun, having sold his share to Broccoli in order to pay off various debts. On his own for the first time, Broccoli had his crew work in elements of earlier Bond movies. You Only Live Twice was a prime example, as he hired that film's director, Lewis Gilbert, for this, the tenth Bond feature. Gilbert was actually the third choice, after Steven Spielberg and Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton both passed it up for other projects, Jaws and Superman, respectively. (Of course, Guy Hamilton never directed Superman. His status as a tax exile from England prevented him from returning when producers realized shooting in Italy was going to be too expensive.)

The original drafts of the script used that film's villain, longtime archfoe Ernst Stavro Blofeld, as the primary antagonist, but legal issues surrounding the character for years forced his exclusion, and a new character was crafted in his stead.

All of the above meant nothing to a six-year-old watching a movie late at night on his couch, but it goes some way toward describing just why the movie is so superb.

In the movie, James Bond must discover the cause of a series of nuclear submarine thefts. As the Soviets are also affected by the problem, sympathetic forces within both governments agree to cooperate, and team Commander Bond with the top Russian agent, Major Anya Amasova, codenamed Triple X (former Mrs. Ringo Starr, Barbara Bach, long before Vin Diesel claimed the title). The film plays with expectations in Anya's first scene, as she is seen in bed with another Russian spy. A communicator goes off, calling for agent Triple X. Her lover gets up and out of the way, revealing her to be the renowned Russian spy.




The twist is that her lover is already on a mission, to kill a certain British agent. During the pre-credits sequence, he attempts to kill Bond during a masterfully shot ski chase, but is fatally shot by 007. Anya deduces the truth after James reveals a recent location, and asks him if he killed the Russian agent. James' defense is one of my favorite lines in the series: "When someone's behind you on skis at 40 miles per hour trying to put a bullet in your back, you don't always have time to remember a face." Anya, whose initial antagonism gave way to mutual respect and even some affection towards James, vows to kill him once the mission is finished.

The main villain is Karl Stromberg (played to murderous perfection by Curt Jurgens), the maritime industrialist masterminding the submarine thefts. In the grand tradition of villainous entrances that usually involve someone else's cruel demise, Stromberg casually tells two of his scientific associates that someone has been betraying his secrets. He identifies his beautiful dinner partner as the culprit, and drops her into a shark tank. Moments later, he kills the departing scientists by means of a booby-trapped helicopter. In another long-standing Bond tradition of villains with abnormal physical traits, Stromberg has webbed fingers, explaining in a way his heightened identification with life underwater.

Stromberg's main henchman is the nigh-indestructible giant Jaws, by now a legend in Bond lore. Jaws, inspired in part by a character in Fleming's novel named Sol Horror, has metal teeth, allowing him to bite through anything, although his fists can punch through most things as well. His first real appearance, a close-quarters attack on a train harkening back to From Russia With Love, is memorable if only for the fact that he grabs Bond by the junk and tosses him across their compartment.


As for Stromberg's main plan, it is revealed that he wants to use his captured submarines to launch nukes at both Moscow and New York, fooling both nations into believing the other is attacking. The resulting retaliation would trigger World War III, and Stromberg intends to create an undersea master race from the ashes (echoing Blofeld's earlier plan in You Only Live Twice, that time launching nukes from space capsules).

Ultimately, as it frequently does, it comes down to a giant-scale firefight between an American submarine crew led by its captain and Bond, and Stromberg's forces on board the supertanker Liparus, beautifully realized--like Stromberg's fortress--by stunning, detailed minatures and other practical effects. Though not as certifiably insane as You Only Live Twice or as brutal as On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it's a bold, intense sequence leading to Bond's one-man assault on Stromberg's fortress to rescue Anya. It takes little imagination to really figure out whether Bond defeats the bad guys and gets the girl, but the climax is still pretty astounding, shot on huge, fantastic Ken Adam sets and featuring a bruising brawl with Jaws.

Out of all of his Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me features Roger Moore at his most Bondlike. He still has the light touch and disarming sense of humor which distinguished him from Sean Connery--his Bond really is more lover than fighter--but the jokey self-awareness is toned down, and he delivers a more sober performance. This is really where he peaked, which is sad in away, considering he made four more movies before retiring from the role. (The following film, Moonraker, is actually The Spy Who Loved Me in space.)


I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the gadgets, which include a razor-sharp tea tray, machine-gun hookah, a motorcycle with a sidecar that doubles as a missile, and Bond's tricked out Lotus Esprit. I prefer it when Bond drives an Aston-Martin, but one can't argue with an amphibious sports car.

My only complaint with the movie is Marvin Hamlisch's score, which is too often disco-flavored and easily dated. I might have enjoyed the film even more had John Barry returned as composer, but one can't have everything.

To me, revisiting a favorite movie is like spending time with old friends. You remember how they act, complete their sentences, and marvel at how effortlessly they can entertain you, but at the same time, you can always find something you've never seen before. The Spy Who Loved Me is always comfortable viewing for me, but also just as unpredictable. (I hadn't even noiced Stromberg's webbed fingers until rewatching it this time.) In terms of scale, as the trailer boasts, it really is "the biggest and the best. It's Bond and beyond!"

In this case, that's enough to earn a spot in the Vault.