The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Music

For the Man with the Golden Gun title sequence, Maurice Binder took inspiration from the Southeast Asian setting as well as the gold accouterments of the title character. You Only Live Twice was also set in Asia and Binder used volcano imagery from SPECTRE's headquarters. This time, the motif is water: gently rippling, sprinkled with rain, or with strategically placed lilies over submerged, naked women. The water doesn't evoke anything specific from the movie (not like it will in, say, The Spy Who Loved Me); it looks like Binder just chose it as generally evocative of the setting. Into this calmness, he inserts images of the Golden Gun, but also the cigarette box that Lazar uses to deliver bullets to Scaramanga. And of course, silhouettes of naked women.

There's a funny story about shooting the silhouettes that Steven Jay Rubin tells in his book The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia. Binder was filming that bit on the movie stage and Rubin writes:

Conscious of ratings codes and censors, he noted that from a certain angle the woman's privates were a little too noticeable on camera. When the model refused to shave, Binder realized that the only way to make the shot work was to brush her pubic hair into place and use Vaseline to hold it there. "You do it," she said, and Binder dutifully got down on his knees and put things right. At that exact moment, Roger Moore and Cubby Broccoli walked onto the stage. Roger turned to Cubby and said, "I thought you were the producer on this picture." And Cubby replied, "It doesn't seem right, does it?"

By the time The Man with the Golden Gun was made, Harry Saltzman had worn out his welcome as one of the series' producers. He'd always been a voice of dissent, but where that had once spurred people to new, creative solutions, it was now just irritating. He and Broccoli weren't even getting along and had started taking turns producing the films. Saltzman had done Live and Let Die, which partially explains John Barry's absence from that movie. For The Man with the Golden Gun, Broccoli produced and Barry came back.

Barry brought with him Don Black, who'd written the theme songs for Thunderball and Diamonds Are Forever. Saltzman had taken issue with the Diamonds Are Forever theme, saying that it's lyrics were too raunchy. He would have had an even bigger issue with The Man with the Golden Gun. For this song, Black goes back to the Goldfinger/Thunderball approach of just describing the movie's villain, but with lots of innuendo around the gun and how love "comes just before the kill."

Barry brought in Scot singer Lulu (who'd become famous singing Black's theme song from To Sir with Love) to record it. It's a catchy song, but no one's favorite. It feels like it's trying too hard. It's oomph isn't cool; it's desperate. And that goes for Lulu's performance as well as the orchestration.

In general, Barry wasn't happy with the Golden Gun soundtrack. He only had three weeks to do it and he would later say in an interview that it never came together for him. That explains why one musical cue completely ruins an otherwise awesome moment. When Bond jumps his car over a ruined bridge in a perfect spiral, Barry interrupts the Bond Theme with a stupid, comical slide whistle.

One great use of the Bond Theme though is when Sheriff Pepper recognizes Bond in Thailand. It's a great way to show that Pepper knows who Bond is and is remembering their previous encounter in Louisiana.

The Bond Theme also comes up when Bond and Hip are spying on Hai Fat's compound and when Bond is just tooling around the river after losing his pursuers in a boat chase.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Diamonds Are Forever
3. You Only Live Twice
4. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
5. Live and Let Die
6. Dr No
7. Thunderball
8. Goldfinger
9. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)
10. The Man with the Golden Gun

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia With Love
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. Live and Let Die
8. The Man with the Golden Gun
9. You Only Live Twice
10. TBD

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Villains

The highlight of The Man with the Golden Gun is Christopher Lee's appearance as Scaramanga. The brings ruthlessness to the role, naturally, but he also seems to be enjoying himself. It's not just that Lee's having fun, but Scaramanga himself loves his job. One of my favorite scenes is when he shoots the cork out of a champagne bottle that Bond's standing next to. It freaks Bond out, but Scaramanga's grinning ear to ear as he jumps out from behind the rock he was hiding behind. He apologizes, but he's totally not sorry.

He not only loves marksmanship and murder, but he's also never lost his flair for performing. I don't think he cares about entertaining other people, but he finds ways to keep himself amused. Hence the deadly fun house. That also could explain why he kidnaps Goodnight at the end, even though he doesn't know she has the Solex. Finding the Solex has nothing to do with that action; it's all about drawing Bond to the island.

Scaramanga's arrogant conviction of his own invulnerability is of course where he goes wrong. He's actually winning the "duel," which makes him even more cocky. But then Bond makes it to his lookalike mannequin and retrieves its gun. I don't think it's stupidity on Scaramanga's part to leave a loaded gun on the Bond mannequin; it's a calculated risk. An extra chance for his victims and an extra reason for him to be careful. The problem is that he's not that careful and doesn't check the mannequin's fingers.

Like in the novel, Scaramanga begins the story as a glorified henchman, but the movie lets him move past that by killing his employer and taking over the scheme. Which leads us to Hai Fat.



Hai Fat is the film's actual villain for most of the story and he's an excellent one... until he isn't.

The first time we meet him, he's very quick. He sees immediately that Bond is trying to impersonate Scaramanga, but he plays it totally cool. He lets Bond think he's fooled, drawing information from Bond and arranging to have him come back when Hai Fat is more prepared to deal with him.

When Bond does return, I understand why Hai Fat doesn't want him killed on the estate. But I don't understand why the dojo is a better place for it. The dojo is connected to Hai Fat, too, and Bond's dying there would be difficult to explain. It's not necessarily a dumb move on Hai Fat's part - I can see why it's at least preferable to having Bond killed at the house - but it is odd.

Where Hai Fat goes wrong is in turning on Scaramanga. I had to process this a bit, because at first it seems like Hai Fat's anger is misdirected. He's frustrated that Bond has escaped and now knows all about Hai Fat's involvement, but Scaramanga had nothing to do with the escape. However, it was Scaramanga who indirectly led Bond to Hai Fat and Hai Fat knows it. After all, Bond showed up at Hai Fat's house disguised as Scaramanga.

But still, it's Hai Fat's other henchmen who failed to kill Bond (and Hai Fat's wanting to have it done at the dojo in the first place), so he's more pissed at Scaramanga than he should be. I don't know if Scaramanga would have eventually murdered Hai Fat and taken over the operation anyway, but it's definitely Hai Fat's hissy fit that makes Scaramanga do it when he does. And it may even be what puts it into Scaramanga's mind.



Nick Nack is awesome. We get no backstory on him, but I imagine that he met Scaramanga in the circus. He jokes about being disloyal, but never is. In fact, he's so loyal that he becomes another in the line of villains who try to kill Bond after his boss is defeated.

That trend started in Diamonds Are Forever where it didn't make any sense and continued in Live and Let Die where it was more believable. It's most right in Golden Gun, but I'm getting tired of the trope. It's just a way to get a cheap sting in at the end, perhaps trying to recreate the ending of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in some lesser way. I'll be glad when the scripts cut that out.



Dojo-favorite Chula is barely a henchman and not that good, but he's cocky and funny and I like him enough to want to mention him. I just wish his fighting was as good as his set up.



This creepy dude is apparently named Kra, though I don't remember its being mentioned in the movie. He's in charge of running Scaramanga's Solex equipment and leering at Goodnight. His leering actually becomes touching and stroking until Goodnight beats him up and throws him into a vat of liquid helium. I like that she gets her own henchman to beat up and quip about, even if I don't like him.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
8. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
9. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
10. Hai Fat (The Man with the Golden Gun)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
6. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
7. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
8. Tee Hee (Live and Let Die)
9. Professor Dent (Dr. No)
10. Whisper (Live and Let Die)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Women

Andrea Anders is a fascinating, tragic character. Maud Adams plays her with the perfect combination of determination and abject terror. She's a sex slave who's trying desperately to escape. And she comes up with a fantastic idea to do that, sneaking one of Scaramanga's bullets out of his arsenal, having it engraved with 007's number, and sending it to MI6. It's a genius idea and it totally works until Scaramanga figures out that she's "betrayed" him.

Bond treats her badly, but I'm not as critical of him here as I am about the way he treats his supposed allies in Live and Let Die. Anders is in the enemy camp and Bond doesn't trust her. I wish he was more helpful to her instead of just using her as a tool to get the Solex, but that's no one's interpretation of James Bond. He's a screwed up character.

I appreciate how businesslike and passionless the build up is to their having sex. Neither seems all that interested in it, but are going to do it because they assume it's expected of them. I imagine that Bond is more interested than Anders, because he's a horn dog, but I also know that he could have sent Anders home and enjoyed a way more passionate evening with Goodnight who's dutifully hiding in the closet. I mean, I assume that Goodnight would be the preferable partner, because as flighty as she can be, she's pretty awesome.



Goodnight gets a bad rap as an inept agent, but I like her and think she's mostly helpful. She doesn't always think things through, but her instincts are good and she knows her turf.

I also like how she has enough history with Bond to know what he's like, but she still likes him. As a kid, I always assumed that women all wanted to capture Bond and marry him or something, but really I imagine that Goodnight's just looking for a hook up. She gives him a weird, jealous look when he gets in the car with Hip and his nieces, but I have no idea what that's about. Does she think he's going on a date with two teenage girls and that Hip is the chauffeur? If so, Bond has quite the reputation.

Overall, I see Goodnight as a less seasoned Bond. She's attracted to him, but she also wants to be like him. She even has a go at quips; some good ("I laid him out cold" after tossing a bad guy into liquid helium) and some horrible ("I always wanted to take a slow boat from China"). She has a long way to go, but I adore her spirit.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
3. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
4. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
5. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
6. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
8. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
9. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)
10. Aki (You Only Live Twice)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Bond

Actors and Allies



Roger Moore continues to be relaxed and charming as Bond. One of the advantages of his already having a screen personality before coming to the series is that the writers have always been able to write to that. Two movies in and he's pretty much the same Bond he'll be for the rest of his movies (with the possible exception of For Your Eyes Only).

He is a little less creepy this time around than he was in Live and Let Die though. When he meets Andrea Anders (Maud Adams), he smacks her around which is never cool, but he doesn't follow that up by immediately trying to sleep with her. So thanks for that, I guess? And later on, when she's freaked out for her life and desperate to get away from Scaramanga, Bond uses the Solex as his price to help her. Sex is still part of the negotiation, but at least that's not the only thing he's interested in. Baby steps.

While we're on the topic of Bond and women, who are the guys who attack Bond in the bellydancer's room in Beirut? I was going to mention this as a coincidence yesterday since it's odd that they just happen to be there the night that Bond shows up. But then I realized that they really aren't connected to any of the movie's other villains. What are they doing there? Why do they attack Bond? The movie never says!

And speaking of attacking Bond, I mentioned yesterday that we still get cranky M in The Man with the Golden Gun, but that it's tempered with some genuine fondness. On second thought though, M's conspiratorial smile might be pleasure at his own idea and not because he cares about his agent. He likes Bond in the books, so I might have been transferring that relationship to the movies where it really isn't there. There's not a lot of evidence that Movie M has any respect for the philandering know-it-all. For instance, there's his line as he speculates about who might have hired Scaramanga to kill Bond: "Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors, the list is endless." He assumes that others find Bond as irritating as he does. He must respect the work Bond does, but he doesn't appear to take any pleasure in the man himself.

Another thing about M: why does he have the phone number to Scaramanga's boat at the end? That makes no sense.

Moneypenny is mostly just flirty again, but she has a weird line delivery towards the end of her scene. Bond stops her as she's about to go into M's office and she turns around sweetly to talk to him. But when he asks her a question about 002's death, she sounds pissed. Are we supposed to assume she's mad because he wants to talk business instead of flirting some more? If so, that's dumb.

Q is nicer to Bond this time around. We mentioned ballistics expert Colthorpe yesterday from the briefing scene and he's got another scene with Q as they try to figure out where the bellydancer's gold bullet was made. I like Q and Colthorpe's method of working as they bounce ideas off each other and come up with the solution. And that distracts Q from Bond, which is also refreshing.

MI6 agent Lt Hip is pretty cool and I especially dig his butt-kicking nieces. It's stupid that they drive off and leave Bond after rescuing him at the dojo though. That's all to set up the boat chase scene, but there are ways to do that without making Hip seem like an idiot.

The boat chase is where we're reintroduced to Sheriff JW Pepper from Live and Let Die. He's vacationing in Thailand with his wife and runs into Bond a couple of times. On the second one, he's getting ready to test drive a car that Bond steals, so we're graced with his presence for another chase scene.

He's even more overtly racist in Golden Gun, so let's talk about that for a second. Clearly, Pepper is held up as an object of ridicule. In Live and Let Die, he's an ignorant hick. In Golden Gun, he's the Ugly American. Even in the '70s, audiences were meant to shake their heads as they chuckled at him. That kind of humor doesn't hold up well today - at least not to me - but I appreciate that these two films don't mimic the racist attitudes of some of Fleming's books. Instead, they hold racism at a distance as something to be viewed and commented on, however immaturely.

Best Quip



"Goodnight, sir." It's funny even when - or maybe because - you see it coming a mile away.

Runners up: "Not from where I'm standing" (responding to the bellydancer's complaint that she's lost her charm) and "You have no idea what it went through to get here" (referring to the gold bullet he swallowed and later presented to Q).

Worst Quip



"What you might call a Mexican screw-up!" What does that even mean? Are you talking about a Mexican stand-off, James? Is "Mexican screw-up" a British expression?

Gadgets



None, unless you count that fake nipple that Q works up for Bond's Scaramanga disguise.

I read somewhere that the reason Q wasn't in Live and Let Die was that Saltzman and Broccoli were trying to get away from the emphasis on gadgets. That didn't make any sense to me, because people love the gadgets and Saltzman and Broccoli love people's money. It's not like the rest of the series was all about artistic integrity. And besides, even though Q wasn't in Live and Let Die, his gadgets certainly were.

But then we get to Golden Gun and Bond doesn't have a single toy. Scaramanga gets them all, with the golden gun and flying car being some of the best in the whole series. If I was ranking all the gadgets and not just Bond's they'd probably both be Top Five. I'm not sure what to make of this.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
2. Jet pack (Thunderball)
3. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
4. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
5. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)
6. Attaché case (From Russia with Love)
7. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)
8. Rebreather (Thunderball)
9. Camera-tape recorder; mostly because it reminds me of a camera my dad used to use (From Russia with Love)
10. Seagull SCUBA hat (Goldfinger)

Bond's Best Outfit



Scaramanga's black silk kimono looks great on Bond.

Bond's Worst Outfit



I'm surprised by how little I hate Moore's fashions so far. I expected much less from the '70s. I don't think this plaid jacket is particularly dapper, but it sure beats Connery's little pink tie from Diamonds Are Forever.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Story

Plot Summary

Bond learns that a notorious assassin is gunning for him and has to find the killer before the killer finds him. Also: solar power and kung fu.

Influences

After Live and Let Die, Saltzman and Broccoli were down to three Fleming novels, all of which had issues to overcome in bringing them to the screen. The Spy Who Loved Me is a romance/horror book in which Bond doesn't even appear until the final act. Moonraker is more or less an English cozy mystery. That leaves The Man with the Golden Gun, which - except for its exciting opening with brainwashed Bond - repeats a lot of elements not only from previous Fleming novels, but also from the early films.

Of course, by the mid-'70s the movies had already moved pretty far away from the novels anyway. Since You Only Live Twice, only the financially disappointing On Her Majesty's Secret Service stayed close to its source material. Without having to use the plots, all the movies needed were some superficial elements to build a new story around. With The Man with the Golden Gun, the idea of an infamous assassin - an evil version of Bond himself - was appealing.

The novel takes place in Jamaica, but the Live and Let Die movie had just been set in the Caribbean, so the filmmakers moved MwtGG to Southeast Asia. Tom Mankiewicz was brought back to write the script, but he didn't get along well with Guy Hamilton who was still directing the series. He was also reportedly feeling fatigued on Bond, so Richard Maibaum - who had resolved some of his own conflicts with Harry Saltzman - came back for a re-write of what Mankiewicz had turned in.

It was Maibaum who drew inspiration from the energy crisis to come up with the movie's MacGuffin, a massively powerful solar battery called the Solex Agitator. But that wasn't the only contemporary element that the film drew from. The Asian setting made it convenient to include martial arts and hopefully capitalize on audiences' interest in Bruce Lee and the kung fu craze. Kickboxing was also just becoming popular in the US, so Bond attends a bout.

Putting part of the movie in Hong Kong also allowed them to use the wreck of the Queen Elizabeth I, which had sunk in Hong Kong harbor a couple of years before under mysterious circumstances. No one knows for sure how it caught fire, but arson was suspected and the ship burnt to a crisp and then capsized from all the water used to extinguish the flames.

How Is the Book Different?

In almost every way except for there being an assassin who uses a gold-plated gun. In the book, the gun is simply a revolver, but the movie turns it into a much cooler contraption that's assembled from other, mundane-looking objects. The movie also has Bond get involved not as part of a regular mission, but through the machinations of one of the villains' enemies. And as already mentioned, the whole thing is moved from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia. I'll deal with other changes in later posts about Bond's allies and the women and villains he encounters.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



M at first appears to be his typically (for the recent movies) cranky self with Bond. There's a moment of the old camaraderie from the books though when M offers Bond the opportunity to take some leave and go after Scaramanga. Bond's slow on picking up the hint, but I love the glimpse of the M who isn't totally comfortable with freeing up government resources to take care of personal issues, but does it anyway because he respects Bond and it's the right thing.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



In Fleming's novel, Bond gets put on Scaramanga's trail thanks to a coincidence. It would be weirdly awesome to learn that the numerous ridiculous coincidences in the movie are an intentional homage to that, but there's no way that can be true. There are simply too many.

For starters, Bond is called off his investigation of a missing scientist in order to stop Scaramanga... who just happens to have a contract on the missing scientist. When Bond tracks one of Scaramanga's bullets to the weaponsmith Lazar, he gets there just as Lazar is ready to deliver the next package of Scaramanga's bullets. Quite convenient.

Later, after the scientist is killed, Bond is placed under arrest by someone he thinks is a Hong Kong policeman. Bond has many many opportunities to escape, but he doesn't, even when it's obvious that the policeman isn't who he says he is. It looks like Bond's curious about where he's being taken and it's totally in his MO to let himself be grabbed in order to find out who's behind it. But then he makes a break for it when the boat he's on passes the Queen Elizabeth. Where does Bond think he's going on a rusted hunk of metal in the middle of the harbor? It makes no sense and the only reason for it is so Bond can discover that MI6 has set up an office in there.

There are a few others, but they start to get nitpicky and some of them I'll deal with in other sections. Overall it's a really sloppy plot though.

Cold Open



The cold open is tons better than Live and Let Die. It reminds me of a wackier version of the one in From Russia with Love in that it's all about an assassin's practicing and features Bond's likeness even though the actual character doesn't appear. As fond as I am of the literary Bond and the movies that best capture that spirit, I do like things about the silly Moore era and this opener is one of them.

In addition to the crazy fun house sequence, it also does a nice job of introducing the bad guys. We see the deadliness of Scaramanga and the fact that he has a third nipple. Nick Nack is quirky and potentially disloyal, making him a lot more interesting than most of the other henchmen in the series. And we also meet Andrea Anders, a dramatically sad woman who will become much more than the simple gun moll she appears to be.

And of course, it gives us the greatest line in any Bond film: "Nick Nack! Tabasco!" Which Scaramanga never uses. Must be for Andrea.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. Thunderball
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Goldfinger 
4. The Man with the Golden Gun
5. From Russia With Love
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. Live and Let Die
9. TBD
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



We're back in M's office for the briefing, which is nice, but that doesn't mean that M's going to stay out of the field. Both he and Q visit Hong Kong for the last half of the movie, working out their offices in the Queen Elizabeth.

There are two extra guys in the briefing, which is going to become something of a thing as Bernard Lee gets older. Bond calls one of them "Chief of Staff," which I guess means that he's Bill Tanner. Tanner is Bond's best friend in the novels, but they only appear to be work acquaintances in the movies. Bond addresses the other man as Colthorpe and we don't really know why he's there at first. Later on, we discover that he's a forensic expert from Q-Branch, which makes sense because the scene is all about the golden bullet with 007 engraved on the side.

We hear about another Double-O agent for the first in a long time. Bill Fairbanks had been 002 until he was killed by Scaramanga five years earlier.

There's another example of Bond's notoriety when he visits Lazar and the weaponsmith immediately recognizes his name.

And finally, Bond is a know-it-all about a couple of weird things: Scaramanga and liquid helium. It's hilarious that he pretends to have to recollect the details about Scaramanga, but then recites them in nauseating detail.

The Man With the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

Fleming began writing The Man With the Golden Gun in the same month that principle filming began on Goldfinger. Exploring just how much the Goldfinger movie inspired the Golden Gun novel would make a fascinating research paper, but I'm not going to do it. I don't need to quantify the influence in order to know that Fleming's writing was affected by the Bond films in general. Putting aside Ursula Andress' appearance in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as soon as the movies started coming out Fleming immediately started tweaking his Bond. The literary character not only became a Scot like Sean Connery, but a notorious public figure whose life could be read about in the newspaper and speculated upon. Though Fleming died before The Man With the Golden Gun was completely polished, the novel suggests that the book series was going to continue to read more and more like the films.

That's not a good thing. I started writing about the Bond novels with the theory that Bond actually grows as a character over the course of the series. And that's been born out. It's been a great and interesting trip watching the selfish, sullen spy take more and more interest in the people around him. That comes to a head in You Only Live Twice, which would've made a perfect ending to the series if Bond had more say about his fate at the end of that book. Fleming had a wonderful opportunity to wrap up the series with Bond's making a conscious choice to either continue in the Secret Service or stay with Kissy on the island. Either decision would have made a powerful statement about Bond's character and contrasted beautifully with the Bond of Casino Royale. But instead of Kissy's encouraging and supporting Bond in determining what kind of life he wanted, Fleming had her deceive Bond, raising his curiosity and propelling him into another adventure. That's great for the continued potential financial success of the series, but not for its artistic achievement. Fleming gave up a great ending in order to keep the series going.

Not that The Man With the Golden Gun is a bad book. The first chapters resolve the cliffhanger from You Only Live Twice in a really tense and exciting way. From there, the story goes in a direction that's reminiscent of Bond's early adventures, especially Dr. No. Bond is supposed to stop an assassin named Francisco Scaramanga who's working for Cuba and helping Soviet interests in the Caribbean. Bond finds Scaramanga in Jamaica and that's where the rest of the story takes place. While there, Bond does a lot of recollecting about his previous missions there. We learn that he lost touch with Honey Rider, but that last he'd heard she was married to a doctor from Philadelphia and had a couple of kids.

Unfortunately, Scaramanga isn't a great villain. He's really just a glorified henchman. But he's still plenty dangerous and Fleming does a nice job keeping Bond in danger. Fleming's always made Bond squeamish about killing in cold blood (though Golden Gun makes it clear that that's just something Bond finds extremely distasteful as opposed to something he believes is objectively immoral). Because of that, Bond chooses not to assassinate Scaramanga when he has the chance, but decides to go undercover as Scaramanga's personal assistant. It's rooted in Bond's established character, so it sort of works, but it also smacks loudly of dragging out a very thin plot. Even so, Fleming is able to create tense moments all throughout and Golden Gun is a fun, adventurous read.

That's faint praise though, especially compared with how epic the rest of Fleming's later novels are. Instead of building on those, he just seems interested in writing a passable adventure for future adaptation into film. Bond finds Scaramanga not through serious investigation, but purely by luck. His relationship with Mary Goodnight - no longer the admin for the Double-O section and recently assigned to Jamaica - is especially flirty and Connery-esque. Bond even pokes fun at Q-Branch like Connery does and a couple of things feel lifted right out of Goldfinger in particular, starting with the title character's gold-covered revolver. Bond also uses a hollow safety razor as a hiding place for spy stuff and there's a scene where the bad guy murders a squeamish ally who wants out of the caper.

I have such mixed feeling about The Man With the Golden Gun. It's simultaneously a solid little entry in the series and a horrible disappointment. As the final book in Fleming's series, it sucks and I'd prefer if it didn't exist. But as the start of something different - a new chapter in Bond's life - I kind of dig it and wish Fleming had been given more time to convince me he was headed in a worthwhile direction.