Live and Let Die (1973) | Villains

In the novel, Mr. Big is a brilliant, ruthless villain. He may work for SMERSH, but he's created his own criminal empire that's arguably more powerful in its hemisphere as SMERSH is in Europe. The movie version has similar dreams, but he's much less smart. Dr Kananga is prime minister of his island nation and has used his influence to build the foundations for a criminal empire, but he's not quite there yet. And the US and British governments are both on to him before the movie even starts.

I keep going back to Fiona's advice to Largo in Thunderball about how killing Bond will only let the authorities know they're on the right track. That's so smart, but we've seen Blofeld fail at it in You Only Live Twice and Kananga does the same thing in Live and Let Die. The whole way that Bond gets put on the case is that Kananga simultaneously kills three British agents who have been investigating him. Dumb. He's failed before Bond even shows up.

That's all in the writing though. Like with Solitaire, Live and Let Die casts an excellent, charismatic actor over this flimsy role. Yaphet Kotto can be as charming as he is menacing and we see both sides in Kananga. He seems much smarter than he's written and I love every second he's on screen. As foolish as he is, he's one of my favorite Bond villains.



The movie makes pretty good use of Big's array of henchmen from the novel, but with some changes. Fleming's giggling Tee Hee becomes a merely grinning character with a claw for a hand (perhaps an homage to the hook that Felix Leiter gets after what happens to him in the book). Julius Harris (Super Fly, Shaft's Big Score) is great in the part, but I wish the claw effect worked better. Later in the movie we see that the prosthesis replaces most of his arm, but the prop only covered Harris hand and he keeps bending his wrist when he uses it.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Live and Let Die is almost like a reboot of the series. I'm not sure what I meant by that, but I do see a lot of reminders of the first couple of Connery films. The Caribbean setting and Quarrel Jr call back to Dr. No and Bond's final fight with Tee Hee in the train is clearly supposed to evoke From Russia with Love (though it's a severely watered down version).



Whisper is another character from the book, but he's been promoted from communications officer to assassin and generally handy dude to have around. He kills Bond's chauffeur, checks in on Bond at the San Monique hotel, and he's hanging out with Kananga in the villain's HQ at the end. He's not great in a fight, but his size and his quietness make him an interesting, memorable henchman.



The best villain in the movie is Baron Samedi, played by dancer/7-Up spokesman Geoffrey Holder. In the novel, Mr Big keeps his organization in line through fear of voodoo and the belief that Big himself is Samedi, the loa of the Dead. In the film, Big's dual identity is that he's actually just a disguise for Kananga, but the movie still keeps the voodoo influence and the character of Baron Samedi. Freed from Mr Big, though, Samedi is free to be as supernatural as he wants and the movie uses that really well.

Like everything else about the script, Samedi's not really fleshed out, but it works to his advantage this time. It keeps him mysterious. We get a sense of his role in Kananga's organization, but not for how Kananga keeps control over him or if, in fact, Samedi is actually pulling Kananga's strings somehow. Some of Samedi's abilities are revealed to be tricks, but not all of them can be explained, including his final appearance in the movie. I've always wanted to see Samedi come back for another Bond film, but as the full-blown villain. He has the potential to be a better nemesis even than Blofeld.

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. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
5. Doctor No (Dr. No)
6. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
7. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
8. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
9. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (You Only Live Twice)
10. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Diamonds Are Forever)

Top Ten Henchmen

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

White Zombie (1932)

Who's in 't?: Th' scurvy Bela Lugosi

What's 't about?: A lily-livered swabbie hires a pox-faced bilge-rat (Lugosi) in Haiti t' enslave a beautiful lass t' his will. Th' lass' husband objects.

How be 't?: Thar be only two good things about this movie. First, th' sets an' matte paintings create a fine, cliff-top castle fer Lugosi`s character t'inhabit an' make a pleasin' spot fer th' climax. Second: Lugosi's beard's a right beauty. Other than that, th' story be straightforward an' dull, th' actin' be horrid, an' th' editin' be non-existent. None o' th' characters act like real swabbies an' th' scenes drag on longer than a list o' Blackbeard's wives. Some o' th' zombies be a'frightenin' t' eyeball, but others be downright comical. None o' them be as sound as th' ones in Night o' th' Livin' Dead.

Rating: Mutinous Bad.

(Today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day, that's why)

Pass the Comics: Cowwitches and Voodoo Cave Girls

Geronimo Jones is not welcome in The House of Revenge!



Cowboy vs. Witch! [The Charlton Story]

Dr. Spektor must rescue the Bride of the Walking Dead



I like how the traditional "bridal outfit" for Voodoo is a Cave Girl costume. [Diversions of the Groovy Kind]

Art Show: L'Esclave Blanche

Human Torpedo Strike



By Mort Künstler. [Illustrateurs]

Aquaman



Photo by Kimli. From the ceiling of a bar she visited. She's also got some video where you can see the rest of the ceiling.

The Glory of Tiki



Artist Unknown [Discovered during the travels of Admiral Calvin]

After the break: a jungle girl, Hellboy vs. Silhouette, a voodoo warrior, Frankenstein vs Dracula, robots, their space girl, and mythological maidens.

Confronting an old Ghost Story

When I was five-years-old, I was terrified of fire. I couldn't even be in the same room with birthday candles, much less a candlelit dinner (which burned longer) or - God forbid - around a campfire. I had horrible visions of our house (or campground or whatever) burning down.

I knew exactly where that fear came from too. It was an episode of a horror anthology show on NBC at the time called Ghost Story. I'm not sure what possessed my parents that they allowed me to watch it. They were usually very careful about what I watched and erred on the side of strictness, but we were faithful Ghost Story viewers.

I couldn't remember the name of the show until several years ago when I described the episode to a friend who had great Web Fu and figured it out for me. The episode was called "House of Evil." It was written by Robert Bloch and developed by Richard Matheson and IMDB describes it this way:

When Grandpa (Melvyn Douglas) arrives for a visit, he has two special gifts for his granddaughter, Judy (Jodie Foster), a deaf mute. One is a very special doll house that is an exact replica of the one Judy lives in with her family. The other is the ability to "hear" his thoughts without speaking. But Grandpa's intentions aren't as benign as they seem.

Outside of the creepy, mute granddaughter and her malevolent grandfather, the only things I remember about the episode are the dollhouse (I think I remember that they made voodoo dolls out of cookies or something, one for each member of the family) and what happens to it at the end. Whatever happens to the dolls and the dollhouse also happens to the corresponding family member (Richard Mulligan is also in the episode, perhaps as the father?). Somehow, the dollhouse catches fire, which of course spreads to the real house. The last thing I remember from the episode was the image of the burning house. That was the one that seared itself into my mind and made me pyrophobic for the next year or so.

I bring this all up now because I just found a place that sells old Ghost Story episodes on DVD. I'm sure they're bootlegs, but if they were available commercially I'd buy it that way instead. I've ordered the "House of Evil" one and I'm frankly a bit nervous about watching it. I can't imagine that it'll renew my phobia, but it made such a huge impression on me 38 years ago that I still recall certain images from it. Psychologically, watching it again - confronting it again - will be a pretty big deal. So, before I do that, I wanted to jot down these memories about it in the interest of comparing notes afterward.

They're shipping it to me tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have it by the end of the week.

The Princess and the Frog

Speaking of New Orleans and capturing its flavor, The Princess and the Frog does a mighty fine job in its Disney sort of way. From the main character's dream of opening a Cajun restaurant to the fairly-tame-but-still-spooky voodoo doctor to the adventures in the firefly-lit swamp, the movie does what Disney is so good at by emphasizing the locale's magical qualities while eliminating the negative aspects.

Even Mardi Gras looks like a fun, family-friendly celebration with all its parades and costumes and no one having to show anything in exchange for beads. Voodoo isn't exactly played up as a positive thing, but there's little blood in the way the Shadow Man practices it or any disturbing trances or mind-control. It's all skull-paint and spooky shadow-creatures; living voodoo dolls and talking masks.

The story itself is pretty good. Tiana is a young girl who's working hard to fulfill her father's (Terrance Howard) dream of opening a fancy restaurant. I appreciated - as I'm sure Disney expected me to - the focus on hard work and doing your part to meet your goals. In contrast to that ideal, Tiana's childhood friend Charlotte is the spoiled - but likable - daughter of John Goodman's character, a wealthy plantation owner (the movie's set in the '20s, so slavery isn't an issue; race-relations in general are never brought up either). Charlotte's never had to work a day in her life and fully believes in wishing upon stars. Tiana's father, on the other hand, always taught her that wishing only gets you so far, a message that Tiana's taken to heart. Unfortunately, she's now in danger of missing out on important things like love and friendship by neglecting to spend time with people. The message of the movie is about balance, and I can get behind that.

Voodoo, frogs, and what didn't work after the break.

Dead Men Link No Blogs

On Stranger Tides



Artist James Gurney talks about how he created the new cover to Tim Powers' 1987 pirate novel On Stranger Tides. Publishers Weekly describes the book as a dark fantasy about a puppeteer who's forced to join a pirate crew and eventually encounters Blackbeard, voodoo, and the Fountain of Youth.

Yep. I'll be getting that.

"Pieces of 8ight"

Another shanty to sing around the tavern.

Compensation for Missing Limbs

When you get a break in your singing, please take a moment to review our corporate guidelines on financial remuneration for lost appendages.



The Ghosts of Pirate Cove

You still have about a week to get to Newport, Kentucky (right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio) for the Newport Aquarium's Ghosts of Pirate Cove event. I have but three words for you: Underwater Sword Fighting.

Booty Juggler



Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds. Just in a completely different way. You're an octopus and you have to keep a bunch of pirate treasure in the air.

Homemade Pirate Haunted House

I love those families who turn their homes into haunted houses and let people come through. They're even better when they're pirate-themed.

Treasure Island art



Golden Age Comic Book Stories has a ton of Frank Godwin's illustrations for Treasure Island.

Awesome List: Indy stuff, Next Men, super hero cartoons, and more.

"And you're a crazy, flying fool!"

I wish I was a member of the Aviator's Club that Link Thorne belongs to. Their cigarette girls are Awesome.



Custom-made Indiana Jones DVD case



I wish there was a picture of it open, but even so... holy mackerel that's cool.

Indy Voodoo doll


As long as I'm wishing, I wish this was a replica and not the actual prop from the movie. Then I might be able to afford it.

John Byrne's Compleat Next Men

IDW is collecting the entire series of John Byrne's Next Men, including the 2110 prequel one-shot and a bunch of extras. I hope it does well and attracts a lot of new readers because Byrne is not-quite-promising that he'll continue the story if the collections do well.

Joanna asks if that kind of promise is a sort of blackmail and sums it up as, "Buy my old unfinished series — and if enough of you do, maybe I’ll finish it." I don't think it's quite as nefarious as that. Next Men works beautifully well just like it is. It doesn't need to be finished to get a complete story.

But, as someone who really loved the series - it's the best thought-out time travel story I've ever read, and it features the first appearance of Hellboy (pre-dating even "Seed of Destruction") - I'd love to see more of it. I interpret Byrne's statement as wishing-out-loud, not blackmail. Buy it because it's good; not because Byrne may or may not make a sequel if you do.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

...is live.

Haven't seen The Dark Knight yet

Would've fought the midnight crowds if the movie was going to be more like this...



Actually, I'm getting more and more excited about it. Or maybe "curious" is a better adjective. Looking forward to Thursday when I'll finally be able to see it.

Spectacular Spider-Man: Attack of the Lizard

Now this I'm looking forward to. My son is going to freak.

Cartoon Network Saturday nights

Cartoon Network announced its Saturday evening programming block that will include the Clone Wars cartoon, Ben 10, and "a new animated incarnation of Batman." Presumably the Brave and the Bold series that'll team him up with different superheroes each week.

Hallmark's Nerdaments



Hallmark has unveiled its line-up of nerd-themed ornaments for the year. Topless Robot - as always - has the right perspective on it in their post title.

Art of the Day: The Voodoo Murders

When I can, I'll always credit the artist and make this an Artist of the Day feature, but I recently discovered a fantastic site called Pulp of the Day and I don't have any idea who the artists are who created these great covers. The art's too sweet not to share though. I'll definitely link to them again, but browse the whole site. It's full of awesome.