The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

**BoG** on Sat May 01, 2010 1:10 am

BOND#10: Can't Do it Much Better Than This

ROGER MOORE as James Bond 007 in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
starring BARBARA BACH * CURT JURGENS * RICHARD KIEL * CAROLINE MUNRO
with
WALTER GOTELL as Gogol * BERNARD LEE as M * DESMOND LLEWELYN as Q * LOIS MAXWELL
Directed by LEWIS GILBERT

This is easily my favorite Roger Moore Bond film. I just can't help it.
Everything about it works to near perfection. It's got the best teaser sequence (when I saw this in the theater back in '77, the audience gasped & whooped at the end of it). It's got the near-perfect henchman, the unstoppable 'Jaws' (you'd have to go back to Goldfinger for a comparable super-henchman); a great femme fatale (Bach): this was the first Bonder to acknowledge the female liberation movement, though, again, Goldfinger had the ahead-for-her-time Pussy Galore; previous Bonders, especially the previous two Moore Bond films, presented females as total airheads; Bach was presented as healthy competition for Moore's Bond and even more, a possible threat. There's even a 2nd femme fatale (Munro) - wowza!
The song over the spiffy credits is by Carly Simon.

On top of that, it's got a grand scheme by the master villain (Jurgens), straight out of some crazy science fiction novel. Most of the previous Bonders were pretty low-scale by comparison: even SPECTRE, the evil organization of the Connery Bonders, usually fell back on the tired extortion gambit while they were stealing nuclear warheads or whatnot. This guy, Stromberg, he's not going to bother with anything petty like that; no, he'll simply reshape the world in his own image, a psychotic god-complex carried to an ultimate extreme. Wild, just wild. His stronghold, that huge complex that rises out of the ocean, is just flat-out science fiction, let's not even wonder about it. Even the music score is terrific in this one.

But the best thing may be the pace - this Bonder just moves along at a great pace, always interesting, sometimes astounding, the equivalent of great page-turner of a pulpy adventure novel. And it has the style - how about that scene where Bond meets his female KGB counterpart amid the shadows of the pyramids? What a great use of atmosphere & the music score. The Spy Who Loved Me was so great, they tried to copy everything about it in the next one, Moonraker, and, unfortunately, ended up with a pale imitation. Well, I just can't help it; just writing about it now makes me want to watch The Spy Who Loved Me yet again. I check it out at least once a year.

BoG's Bond Scores: Bond:9 Villain:9 Femme Fatales:9 Henchman:10 Fights:9 Stunts/Chases:9 Gadgets:7 Auto:9 Locations:9 Pace:10 overall:9

**BoG** on Sat May 01, 2010 1:41 am

I found these diagrams of the submersible automobile in an old magazine.

The underwater modification enabled it to cruise submerged at 7.2 knots speed and
at a depth of 45 feet.

It was converted by Perry Oceanographic Company, a Florida-based company.

**BoG** on Sat May 01, 2010 1:48 am

Declassified photos of the dangerous females who occupied The Spy Who Loved Me, notably of Barbara Bach and Caroline Munro; these were taken at the time of the film:

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Spy Who Loved vehicles

The Spy Who Loves