Tuesday, 16 March 2010

My Tribute To Desmond Llewellyn as Q























1. From Russia With Love (1963): In a mansion garden at night, James Bond is seen alternately stalking and being stalked by a tall, blond assassin. Bond is captured and strangled violently to death by a man named Red Grant, using a garrote wire. Suddenly, floodlights switch on and the dead person turns out to be a man wearing a Bond mask, in a scenario that completes a SPECTRE training exercise. Kronsteen, a chess grandmaster, and SPECTRE's expert planner, has devised a plot to steal a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets and sell it back to them while punishing MI6 (the British Secret Service) for killing their agent Dr. No. Ex-SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb is put in charge of the mission by the megalomaniac Number 1. She has already chosen a pawn: Tatiana Romanova, a cypher clerk at the Soviet consulate in Istanbul. Klebb departs to SPECTRE Island, the organisation's secret training base, where she assigns Grant to be the assassin. In London, M tells Bond that Romanova has contacted their "Station 'T'" in Turkey, offering to defect with a Lektor, which MI6 and the CIA have been after for years. She has said that she will only defect to Bond, whose photo she has allegedly found in a Soviet intelligence file. In fact she is following orders from Klebb, who pretends she is still working for SMERSH and that this is a SMERSH deception. Bond flies to Istanbul to meet station head Ali Kerim Bey. He is followed from the airport by an unkempt man in glasses and by Red Grant. The next day, after Kerim Bey's office is bombed, Bond and Kerim Bey spy on the Soviet consulate using a periscope from an underground tunnel beneath the consulate. Seeing rival agent Krilencu, Kerim Bey takes Bond to a rural gypsy settlement, where Kerim Bey plans to lie low while deciding how to deal with Krilencu. While two jealous gypsy girls fight over a lover, the camp is attacked by Krilencu's men. From concealment Red Grant saves Bond's life from Krilencu's men. Although he is wounded in the attack, Kerim Bey kills Krilencu the next night with Bond's sniper rifle. When Bond returns to his hotel suite, he finds Romanova in bed waiting for him, unaware that they are being filmed by Grant and Klebb. The next day, Romanova heads off for a pre-arranged rendezvous at Hagia Sophia. Bond follows her and stalks the bespectacled man who had followed him at the airport. The man attempts to intercept Romanova's floor plan of the Soviet consulate, but he is killed by Grant. When Bond finds the body, he takes the floor plan. Kerim Bey and Bond set up a plan to steal the Lektor and smuggle it back to Britain. On the appointed day, Bond enters the consulate lobby. Kerim Bey then sets off an explosion under the building, which releases tear gas. In the resulting chaos, Bond finds Romanova and escapes with the Lektor on the Orient Express. Kerim Bey and a Soviet security officer named Benz, who spots Romanova, also board the train, but Grant later kills both of them, making it appear as if they killed each other. The train crosses southern-central Europe to Belgrade. There Bond arranges for agent Nash from "Station 'Y'" to meet him at Zagreb. When the train stops, Grant finds and kills Nash. Grant boards the train once again, meeting Bond as Nash. He drugs Romanova at dinner, then overcomes Bond. Grant taunts him, boasting SPECTRE has been pitting the Soviets and the British against each other. He also claims that Romanova thinks that "she's doing it all for mother Russia" when she is really working for SPECTRE. Bond tricks Grant into opening Bond's attaché case, which releases tear gas. In the ensuing struggle, Bond eventually manages to stab Grant with the knife hidden in the attaché case, and strangles Grant with his own garrote. At dawn, Bond and Romanova leave the train, hijack Grant's getaway truck, destroy an enemy helicopter, and drive to a dock, eventually boarding a powerboat. Number 1 is very unhappy, and summons Kronsteen and Klebb. He reminds them that SPECTRE does not tolerate failure; they blame each other. Number 1 promptly brings in Morzeny to then execute Kronsteen with a poisoned spike in the toe of his shoe. Number 1 tells a frightened Klebb that she has one last chance. Klebb sends Morzeny after Bond with a squadron of SPECTRE's boats. When stray bullets puncture several barrels of fuel stored on his boat, Bond throws them overboard. Pretending to surrender, he fires a signal flare into the fuel, engulfing all the enemy boats in flames. Bond and Romanova reach Venice and check into a hotel. Rosa Klebb, disguised as a maid, attempts to steal the Lektor. In the climax, Klebb gets the drop on Bond, and holds him at gunpoint but the gun is knocked away by Romanova. Klebb releases her poisoned toe-spike, but Bond pins her to the wall with a dining chair. Romanova grabs the gun and shoots Klebb. Riding in a gondola, Bond throws the film of him and Romanova into the water, and they sail away.

2. Goldfinger (1964): In the pre-title sequence, James Bond (Sean Connery) infiltrates a Mexican drug lord's base by water wearing a dry suit with a snorkel camouflaged as a seagull. He destroys a hidden building with plastic explosives and electrocutes an assassin in a bathtub. The main story begins in Miami Beach, Florida, at the Fontainebleau Hotel with Central Intelligence Agency agent Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) delivering a message to Bond from M to watch Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). Bond foils Goldfinger's cheating at gin rummy by distracting his employee, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton). After blackmailing Goldfinger into losing, Bond and Jill consummate their new relationship in Bond's hotel suite. Following an unflattering remark concerning The Beatles (the entire production was filmed and released during the height of Beatlemania), Bond is knocked out by Goldfinger's Korean manservant Oddjob (Harold Sakata), who then covers Jill in gold paint, supposedly killing her by epidermal suffocation. In London, Bond learns that his true mission is determining how Goldfinger transports gold internationally. Prior to his assignment he is issued an Aston Martin DB5 from Q modified with several gadgets, including an ejector seat much to Bond's amusement, but is later used during a chase scene. He plays and wins a high-stakes golf game against Goldfinger with a recovered Nazi gold bar at stake. Goldfinger, who was caught cheating during the game, warns Bond to stay out of his business by having Oddjob decapitate a statue by throwing his steel-rimmed top hat. Undeterred, Bond follows him to Switzerland, where he unintentionally foils an assassination attempt on Goldfinger by Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) to avenge the death of her sister, Jill. Bond sneaks into Goldfinger's plant and overhears him talking to a Red Chinese agent about "Operation Grand Slam." Leaving, he encounters Tilly as she is about to make a second attempt on Goldfinger's life, but accidentally trips an alarm. Bond and Tilly attempt to escape, but Oddjob breaks Tilly's neck with his hat. Bond is soon captured and Goldfinger has Bond tied to a table underneath an industrial laser, which slowly begins to slice the table in half. Bond then lies to Goldfinger that British Intelligence knows about Grand Slam, causing Goldfinger to spare Bond's life in order to mislead MI6 and the CIA into believing that Bond has things well in hand. Bond is transported by Goldfinger's private Lockheed JetStar, flown by his personal pilot, Pussy Galore, to his stud farm near Fort Knox, Kentucky. Bond escapes and witnesses Goldfinger's meeting with US mafiosi, who have brought the materials he needs for Operation Grand Slam. At the end of the briefing, one of the mafiosi asked Goldfinger to pay him immediately, rather than wait a few days for the larger return from Operation Grand Slam, as Goldfinger has just outlined. Goldfinger accepts and leads him out of the conference room. The rest of them are killed by a gas Goldfinger claims could render people unconscious for 24 hours. The dissenting mafioso is escorted to the airport in a Lincoln Continental driven by Oddjob, who kills him before continuing on to a wrecking yard where the car is crushed into a cube with the body inside. Bond is recaptured after hearing the details of Operation Grand Slam, but soon learns additional information from Goldfinger himself. He intends to irradiate the US gold supply stored at the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox with an atomic device, thereby rendering it useless for 58 years and greatly increasing the value of his own gold. This will also give the Chinese increased buying power following economic chaos in the West. Operation Grand Slam begins with the women pilots of Pussy Galore's Flying Circus spraying the nerve gas over Fort Knox to dispatch its garrison. However, Bond had seduced Pussy and persuaded her to contact the CIA, who replaced the poison with a harmless gas. The military personnel of Fort Knox convincingly play dead until they are certain that they can prevent the criminals escaping the base with the bomb. They choose this plan because Goldfinger had earlier suggested that if thwarted at Fort Knox, there was no telling where he might explode the device, so the CIA knew their scheme had to trap both Goldfinger and the bomb beyond any reasonable hope of escape. After following the rest of the operation, Goldfinger's Chinese agents gain entry to the vault. Oddjob handcuffs Bond to the atomic device and lowers both into the vault. As Goldfinger and his men prepare to leave, the Army troops surround them and all but wipe them out. Goldfinger has planned for every contingency, however: he takes off his coat, revealing a US Army uniform and kills Mr. Ling and the troops seeking to open the vault before escaping. Goldfinger's henchman Kisch, forced to retreat to the vault, intends to shut off the bomb but Oddjob throws him off a balcony to his death. Bond retrieves the man's keys and unlocks his handcuffs, but before he can disarm the bomb, Oddjob races down the stairs and attacks. Bond manages to duck under Oddjob's lethal hat and the ensuing fight proves that Oddjob is the superior combatant. A second hat-throw by Oddjob also misses and cuts an electrical line, with one of the severed cables lying loosely on the floor. Finally, Bond retrieves the hat and tries to throw it himself without success. It wedges in between two of the vault bars. When Oddjob tries to recover it, Bond reaches the severed cable and brushes the exposed wiring with the metal gate, electrocuting Oddjob because of the metal in his own hat.Turning to the bomb, Bond manages to force the lock by hammering on it with a pair of gold bars, but the mechanism inside baffles him. With the clock winding down, Bond tries to yank one of the cables, but an atomic specialist comes over and turns off a switch seven seconds before detonation, the American troops having forced entry into the vault in the meantime. The stopped clock is shown stuck on "007", Bond's own code number.With Fort Knox safe, Bond is invited to the White House for a meeting with President Lyndon B Johnson. He boards a military Lockheed JetStar for Washington, D.C., but Goldfinger has forced Pussy Galore to hijack it and fly to Cuba. Bond and Goldfinger struggle for the latter's gold-plated revolver and accidentally shoot a window, creating an explosive decompression of the aircraft. Goldfinger is blown out of the cabin. Bond rescues Galore, and they parachute safely from the aircraft before it crashes.

3. Thunderball (1965): In the pre-title sequence, James Bond (Sean Connery) attends the funeral of Colonel Jacques Bouvar, a SPECTRE operative (Number 6), who had murdered two British spies. Bouvar is actually disguised as his widow but is identified by Bond. Following him to a château, Bond kills him and then escapes flying a jetpack to his Aston Martin DB5 parked outside. Bond is sent by M to a health clinic to improve his health. While massaged by physiotherapist Patricia Fearing (Molly Peters), he notices Count Lippe (Guy Doleman), a suspicious man with a criminal tattoo (from a Tong). He searches Lippe's room, but is seen leaving it by Lippe's clinic neighbor who is bandaged because of plastic surgery. Later, Lippe tries to murder Bond with a spinal traction machine, but the attempt is foiled by Fearing, whom he then seduces and spends an intimate evening with. Bond soon finds a dead bandaged man, and survives a second murder attempt. The dead man is François Derval (Paul Stassino), a French NATO pilot deployed to fly aboard an Avro Vulcan jet bomber loaded with two atomic bombs for a training mission. Derval has been murdered by Angelo, a SPECTRE henchman surgically altered to match his appearance. Angelo takes Derval's place on the training flight, gasses the crew, and sinks the plane near the Bahamas. He is killed underwater by Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) (SPECTRE No. 2), however, for trying to extort more money from the organization than he had been promised. Largo and his henchmen then steal the atomic bombs on the seabed. The theft summons Bond and all other double-0 agents to Whitehall. En route, Lippe chases Bond but is killed by SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) for failing to foresee Angelo's greed. At the meeting, Bond recognizes Derval from a photograph as the cadaver he encountered in the health clinic. Since Derval's sister, Domino (Claudine Auger), is in Nassau, Bond asks M (Bernard Lee) to send him to the Bahamas. Domino turns out to be Largo's mistress. Bond will exploit this knowledge to get to Largo via Domino. Bond goes out via boat to where Domino is scuba diving, after saving her life, he asks her to take him back to shore as his boat won't start. She agrees and they end up having lunch together. Later Bond goes to a party, where he sees Largo and Domino gambling. Bond gets into the game against Largo, and not surprisingly Bond wins. Bond and Domino leave the game and dance together. Bond returns to the Hotel and instead of entering his room, he enters the room next to it and goes through a corridor into his. He listens to a tape recorder and notices someone has entered his room. Felix comes to the room and is about to say 007 when Bond winds him and makes him be quiet. Bond enters the bathroom, and attacks and disarms the henchman who came into his room. He tells the henchman to report to his superiors.The henchman returns to his superior Largo who isn't pleased to hear the news, so the henchman is thrown into a pool of sharks to meet his untimely demise. Bond goes into town with Felix where they meet two friends who lead them to meet Q. Bond enters the building, where upon Q starts giving him the needed collection of gadgets. Including an underwater infra-red camera, a distress beacon, underwater breathing apparatus, a flare gun and a geiger counter. Bond attempts to scuba under Largo's boat to gain information and is nearly killed by grenades. After narrowly escaping death, he is picked up by Fiona and driven back to the hotel. Bond's assistant Paula (Martine Beswick) is eventually abducted by Largo for questioning; she kills herself just before Bond can rescue her.At a Junkanoo celebration in Nassau, Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) tries to kill Bond but is shot by her own bodyguard. Soon, Bond and CIA case officer Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) search for the Vulcan by helicopter, eventually finding it underwater, along with the crew corpses and Angelo the counterfeit NATO observer pilot. Afterwards, Bond tells Domino that Largo killed her brother, pleading for her help in finding the atomic bombs. She tells Bond where and how to replace a SPECTRE agent on a mission with Largo, who is retrieving the bombs from a submarine hiding place. Disguised as Largo's henchman, Bond uncovers his plan to detonate the bombs in Miami Beach. En route to the cave where the bombs will be temporarily stored, Bond's cover is blown by Largo. After an underwater battle with Largo's men, Bond is rescued by Leiter who orders a unit of United States Coast Guard sailors to parachute to the area for underwater battle against SPECTRE frogmen. Bond joins the fray, killing several SPECTRE frogmen with high tech submarine weapons, and his knife and hands. The surviving henchmen surrender. Finally, Largo escapes to his ship, the Disco Volante (Italian: Flying Saucer), which still has one bomb aboard; Bond follows him and sneaks aboard. During a hand-to-hand fight, Largo gains the upper hand and is about to shoot Bond, however, Domino shoots a spear into Largo's back. With the dying Largo death-locked to the uncontrolled yacht's wheel, Bond and Domino jump overboard as it runs aground and explodes. A sky hook-equipped U.S. Navy Boeing B-17 airplane rescues Bond and Domino from the sea.

4. You Only Live Twice (1967): An American Gemini spacecraft is hijacked from orbit by a carnivorous spacecraft; a similar fate next befalls a manned Soviet spacecraft. With each country thinking that the other is the cause of its loss, the world is thrown to the brink of World War III. The United Kingdom's government, however, believes the spacecraft landed in the Sea of Japan, thus suspecting Japanese involvement. The pre-title sequence depicted 007 (Sean Connery) faking his murder in Hong Kong, allowing Bond more freedom to operate. He is sent to Japan to investigate the British suspicion, in conjunction with the Japanese secret service leader "Tiger" Tanaka (Tetsurō Tamba). At a Tokyo sumo wrestling match Bond contacts Tanaka's assistant Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), who takes him to meet with a local MI6 operative, Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray). Henderson claims to have critical evidence for the rogue craft originating in Japan, but is murdered before he can reveal it. Bond kills the assailant and steals his identity. He is brought to their headquarters, which turns out to be Osato Chemicals. Once there, Bond breaks into an office safe of the Japanese corporate head, Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada), and steals some documents after triggering the alarm. As Bond flees, Aki picks him up in her car. However, Bond becomes suspicious when she avoids his questions and flees to a secluded subway station. When Bond chases her, he falls through a trapdoor and slides into Tanaka's office. After identifying each other, they examine Bond's documents. The main item of interest is a tourist photograph of a cargo ship called the Ning-Po and a microdot on it containing a message that operatives "liquidated" the tourist who took the photo as a security measure. The following morning, 007 goes to Osato Chemicals under the guise of Mr. Fisher, head of Empire Chemicals, to have a proper meeting with Mr. Osato himself. Once the industrialist arrives by helicopter with his secretary, Helga Brandt (Karin Dor), he introduces himself to Bond and they discuss Bond's affairs with Empire Chemicals. As Bond leaves, Osato orders Helga Brandt to "Kill him [Bond]." Outside the building, a carload of assassins pursue 007 after being rescued just in the nick of time by Aki in her Toyota 2000GT. The couple are chased to a highway as a Japanese SIS helicopter literally picks up the assassins' car with a huge magnet, and drops them into Tokyo Bay. Bond and Aki continue driving to Kobe and the city's docks, where Ning-Po is docked. After being discovered by many more SPECTRE henchmen, they give chase but Bond eludes them until Aki gets away and Bond himself captured by one thug. He awakens tied up in Helga Brandt's cabin onboard Ning-Po. She briefly interrogates Bond, who manages to bribe his way out of imprisonment. The next day, Brandt flies Bond to Tokyo, but she drops a flare into the plane and bails out. As the plane dives to annihilation, Bond manages to land, just before the plane explodes. He then returns to Tanaka and his crew with information. Interested in what was worth killing for in that photo, Bond investigates the company's dock facilities and discovers that the ship was delivering liquid oxygen, an oxidizer for rocket fuel; the document used the term LOX, which Bond states is an American name for smoked salmon, providing a convenient cover. Together, Bond and Tanaka learn that the true mastermind behind this is Osato's boss Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his organization SPECTRE, who had recently killed Helga Brandt for her failure to eliminate Bond. After the spies learn from surveillance photos that the Ning-Po unloaded its cargo overnight at the island, Bond investigates the area in the air with a heavily armed autogyro called Little Nellie. While in midflight and having no luck finding the SPECTRE base, Bond is attacked by four armed helicopters, but he destroys them all. Preparing to conduct a closer investigation of the island, Bond trains with Tanaka and his elite ninja force. Tanaka suggests that the best disguise for Bond is as a Japanese fisherman. Pretending to live with Aki as husband and wife, Bond narrowly escapes being poisoned by an assassin, who kills Aki instead after she and Bond shared a passionate night together. Bond receives training in Japanese culture and stages marriage to Tanaka's student, Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama). To make matters worse, Bond and Tanaka learn that the United States has moved up their next space mission, which means it will likely be hijacked by SPECTRE and a world war will likely be triggered before they can stop the plot. However, they gain a major clue when Kissy mentions that a local woman had just mysteriously died after rowing her boat into a cave in the area where Bond's aerial battle took place. Bond and Kissy set out on a reconnaissance mission into that cave and discover that SPECTRE has a secret rocket base hidden in a hollow volcano. Bond slips in through the crater door, while Kissy returns to alert Tanaka. Bond locates and frees the captured Soviet and American astronauts, and with their help, he steals a spacesuit in attempt to infiltrate the SPECTRE craft (code named "Bird One"). Before he can enter the craft Blofeld personally notices Bond mishandle the air conditioning unit of his suit and is caught. Kissy has her own difficulties when she is sighted and attacked by SPECTRE guards in a helicopter, but she uses her considerable experience as a pearl diver to hide underwater long enough to trick her pursuers into thinking that she drowned. Bond is taken to Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) for interrogation, while Bird One is launched with the backup astronaut aboard. Soon after, Kissy leads Tanaka's troops to the crater entrance, but are detected and attacked by the crater's sentry guns on Blofeld's order. Meanwhile, Bird One closes in on the American space capsule and US forces prepare to launch a nuclear attack on the USSR. In response, Bond asks for a cigarette, which conceals a small rocket. Killing the guard next to the crater hatch controls, Bond manages to open the door and allow in Tanaka's troops to storm the base. In the course of the fighting, the control room is evacuated, and Osato is shot by Blofeld for his failed attempts to kill 007. Bond, after escaping Blofeld, rejoins Tanaka and Kissy, proceeds to the control room, where there is a self destruct switch for the spacecraft. After fighting Blofeld's bodyguard, Hans (Ronald Rich), Bond manages to get the destruct key from him and detonates Bird One, seconds before it reaches the American craft. The Americans stand down after learning their spacecraft is safe. Blofeld escapes along a secret passage, but before leaving he activates the base's self-destruct system, killing several dozen more of Tanaka's men. Bond, Kissy, Tanaka, and the surviving ninjas escape through the tunnel which Bond and Kissy had previously investigated. Safe from the now erupting volcano, the survivors board air-dropped lifeboats, and Bond (along with Kissy) is personally picked up by M's personal submarine.

5. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969): The pre-title sequence shows Miss Moneypenny, M and Q discussing the whereabouts of Bond. Bond is actually in Portugal, driving on a coastal highway when a woman in a Mercury Cougar overtakes him. Bond follows the woman to a beach where she attempts suicide by drowning in the waters. Bond drives down to the shore, saving the woman's life by carrying her back to the beach. As he brings the woman back to consciousness and introduces himself, two thugs try to kill Bond. After a fight with the thugs, from which Bond emerges the victor, the woman jumps into Bond's car, driving it back from the beach to the road, then transfers to her car and speeds away. Retrieving her discarded shoes, George Lazenby as Bond, looks at the audience and notes that "This never happened to the other feller" (a nod to previous James Bond Sean Connery). Bond later encounters the same woman in a casino where she places a bet; a bet which she is unable to cover. On her behalf, Bond rescues the woman by paying her bet. The woman, Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo invites him to her hotel room to thank Bond for his deed. When Bond later visits Tracy's room, a thug emerges behind Bond, Bond knocks him out then goes back to his room where he finds Tracy. Tracy threatens to kill Bond "for a thrill"; however, Bond disarms Tracy and questions her about the thug in her room. Tracy has nothing to say about that. The next morning, Tracy leaves the hotel, and later, as Bond leaves the hotel, several men kidnap him and take him to meet Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the European crime syndicate Unione Corse, whom Bond recognizes immediately. Draco reveals that Tracy is his only daughter and tells Bond of her troubled past, offering Bond a personal dowry of one million pounds if he will marry her. Bond refuses, but agrees to continue romancing Tracy under the agreement that Draco reveals the whereabouts of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. Bond returns to MI6 but is told by M that he has been relieved from the task of hunting Blofeld, prompting Bond to resign. After M accepts the letter, Bond learns that as Moneypenny was recording his dictation, she had changed the wording to request two weeks' leave instead. Realizing he can pursue Blofeld on his time off and not quit MI6, Bond thanks Moneypenny and heads for Draco's birthday party in Portugal. There, Tracy discovers Bond's deal with her father and strong-arms him into providing Bond with the information he requested. Draco tells Bond that his next line of pursuit should be a law firm in Bern, Switzerland. After a brief argument, Bond and Tracy begin a whirlwind romance. Bond and Tracy go to Bern with Draco to investigate the Swiss lawyer, Gumbold's, connection with Blofeld. Searching the law office, Bond finds Blofeld's correspondence with the London College of Arms: Blofeld is attempting to claim the title 'Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp'. His College of Arms correspondent is genealogist Sir Hilary Bray. Bond visits M at home and is granted permission to recommence investigation of Blofeld. Posing as Bray, Bond travels back to Switzerland where he visits Blofeld, who has established a clinical research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. In disguise, Bond meets ten young women, the "Angels of Death", that are patients of the institute's clinic. After having an uneventful dinner with them, Bond later that night, sneaks out of his room and meets one of them, named Ruby, in her room for a romantic encounter. But at midnight, Bond sees that Ruby and apparently each of the other ladies go into a sleep-induced trance while Blofeld gives them audio instructions for when they return to the civilization. In fact, the women are being brainwashed to distribute bacteriological warfare agents throughout various parts of the world. In that same night, Bond meets another woman named Nancy, who sneaks out of her room to visit his. The next day, Bond meets with Blofeld again to persuade him to leave Switzerland to visit Augsburg outside Switzerland where according to the College of Arms, the ancestral home of de Bleuchamp, a royal family which may have historical research for Blofeld as his title of a Count. Bond knows that if he lures Blofeld out of Switzerland, the British Secret Service can arrest him without violating Swiss sovereignty. But Blofeld refuses, for he is busy with work at his research facility. Bond's lasciviousness betrays him to Blofeld's henchwoman Irma Bunt, who captures him during a second visit to Ruby. Blofeld identifies Bond after he had made a small slip earlier that the real Sir Hilary Bray would not have made. (Bond had explained to Blofeld that the de Bleuchamp tombs are in the Augsburg Cathedral, which are actually located in the St. Anna Kirche.) Bond escapes imprisonment, skiing down Piz Gloria while Blofeld and many of his men give chase. Arriving at the village of Mürren, Bond is almost trapped at a carnival by Irma and her men, when Bond encounters Tracy. After another long car chase through the town and the nearby town of Grindelwald, they escape. A blizzard forces them to a remote barn, where Bond declares his love for Tracy and proposes marriage to her. Tracy accepts Bond's marriage proposal. The next morning, Blofeld captures Tracy while leaving Bond to die in a man-made avalanche, which Bond survives. Blofeld holds the world to ransom with the threat of destroying its agriculture using his brainwashed women, demanding amnesty for all past crimes and that he be recognized as the current Count de Bleauchamp. Bond enlists Draco and his forces to attack Blofeld's headquarters, while also freeing Tracy from Blofeld's captivity. The following day, while Blofeld is proposing marriage to Tracy, Bond and Draco's men appear in a fleet of helicopters to raid the mountain fortress. The raid is successful as Bond and Blofeld are the last to escape before the institute is destroyed. The pair engage in a furious bobsled chase down Piz Gloria, culminating with Blofeld becoming snared in a tree branch, breaking his neck, while Bond drives away in the bobsled. Bond and Tracy marry in Portugal, then drive away in Bond's Aston Martin. Bond pulls over to the roadside to remove flowers from the car. Tracy thanks Bond for marrying her and having a future away from the British Secret Service. As this happens, Blofeld (wearing a neck brace) and Bunt in a Mercedes-Benz 600 drive past the couple's car, then Bunt sprays the car with bullets from an MP40. Bond dives behind the car and survives the drive-by attack, only to discover that Tracy has been killed by a shot to the forehead. A police officer pulls over to inspect the bullet-riddled car, prompting a stunned Bond to mutter that there's no need to hurry to call for help by saying, "We have all the time in the world," as he cradles Tracy's lifeless body. On that sad note, the movie comes to a close.

6. Diamonds Are Forever (1971): n the pre-title sequence, James Bond (Sean Connery) is pursuing Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray). After interrogating several of Blofeld's associates worldwide, Bond traces him to a Central American facility where he is surgically creating look-alikes. Bond kills a test subject who is lying in a mud bath, drowning him, but is captured by the 'real' Blofeld. After a brief fight, Bond overpowers and kills Blofeld by throwing him into a pool of superheated mud. Suspecting that South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping, and convinced that Blofeld is now dead, M (Bernard Lee) orders Bond to go undercover as smuggler Peter Franks and unveil the smuggling ring. Meanwhile, Blofeld's henchmen Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith) systematically kill several diamond smugglers involved in the ring. Posing as Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet his contact, Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), at her apartment where he is to pick up the diamonds. However, the real Franks shows up and tries to contact Case. Bond intercepts and kills him and sabotages the attack to make it seem like Franks is actually James Bond. The two then smuggle the diamonds to Los Angeles hiding them inside Franks' corpse. At the airport Bond meets his CIA ally Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) and transports the body to Slumber Inc., a funeral home where the body is cremated and the diamonds passed onto the next smuggler, Shady Tree. Bond (still posing as Franks) collects his $50,000 fee for smuggling the diamonds but concludes that the money is counterfeit after Wint and Kidd try to assassinate him (and destroy the fake money) in Slumber's cremation furnace. When Tree and Slumber find that the diamonds in Franks' body were fakes planted by Bond and the CIA they save Bond from incineration and demand that Bond delivers the real diamonds in return for the real $50,000. Bond tells Leiter to ship the real diamonds while he relaxes at Las Vegas in the Whyte House, a casino-hotel owned by the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean), where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. There, Bond discovers Tree has been killed by Wint and Kidd, who do not know that the diamonds were fake. Bond goes to the craps table in the Whyte House casino. He deliberately shows Bert Saxby (Willard Whyte's assistant) the Slumber envelope containing the fake $50,000 to use as collateral for gambling. Later, Bond meets an opportunistic woman named Plenty O' Toole (Lana Wood). She cheers him on as he gambles and "wins" $50,000 at the craps table - the perfect way for the real payout for the diamond smuggling to be laundered, and, in a deleted scene, they have dinner together. She invites herself up to his room, but after Bond undresses Plenty she is quickly thrown out to the hotel pool by the smugglers already waiting in his room, who have now come for the real diamonds. They leave Bond to spend the rest of the night with Tiffany Case. In another deleted scene, Plenty returns to Bond's room to retrieve her clothes. She sees Bond and Tiffany in bed together, and takes a card from Tiffany's purse, later to show up at Tiffany's house. Tiffany tries to get Bond to reveal the location of the real diamonds by offering to help him steal the diamonds for themselves. Bond pretends to give in and arranges for her to retrieve the diamonds at the Circus Circus Las Vegas casino. At the circus, Tiffany picks up the diamonds in a soft toy, unaware that she is under the surveillance of Felix Leiter and his men, but she reneges her deal with Bond and flees, shipping off the diamonds to the next smuggler. When Tiffany returns to her operation residence she finds Bond waiting for her and finds the body of Plenty, who was killed when mistaken for Tiffany. Having survived the attempt on her life, the initially reticent Tiffany tells Bond where the diamonds are. Posing as a lab worker, Bond enters the apparent destination of the diamonds – a research laboratory owned by Willard Whyte, where he finds laser refraction specialist Professor Dr. Metz (Joseph Fürst) constructing a satellite. He escapes by stealing a moon buggy and the first TV appearance of a Honda ATC90 (US90) and reunites with Tiffany in a car chase with security and the local police. They go to a suite in the Whyte house where Bond later scales the walls to the top floor of the Whyte House to confront Willard Whyte. Inside 007 is confronted by two identical Blofelds who are posing as Whyte using an adapted telephone to mask their voice — Bond had previously killed a look-alike. Not knowing which to kill, Bond kicks Blofeld's cat into the arms of one of the pair and shoots him. However, Bond chose the wrong man, killing a look-alike. Bond is rendered unconscious and then left to die inside a pipeline by Wint and Kidd. He escapes and contacts Blofeld, posing as one of Whyte's employees and Blofeld's right-hand man, Bert Saxby. He finds out Whyte's location and rescues him, but in the meantime Blofeld abducts Case. With the help of Whyte, Bond raids the lab and uncovers Blofeld's plot to create a laser satellite using the diamonds, which is now already in orbit. Blofeld destroys nuclear installations in the United States, Russia, and China, then proposes an international auction for global nuclear supremacy. Bond identifies an oil rig off the coast of Baja California as Blofeld's base of operations. Arriving at the rig, he switches the cassette containing the codes which control the satellite with a music tape, giving the coded one to Tiffany who is living there as a hostage. However, trying to be helpful, she re-switches the tapes, gets caught trying to fix her mistake and is sent down to the brig. At this point, Leiter and the CIA have already begun a heavy attack on the oil-rig. Tiffany manages to escape amidst the chaos and regroup with Bond. Blofeld tries to escape on a mini-sub, but Bond gains control of it, and crashes the sub into the control room, defeating Blofeld and destroying the satellite control along with the rest of the base. Bond and Tiffany then head for home on a P&O ship Canberra, where Wint and Kidd also aboard disguised as waiters. Bond sees through their ploy, and disposes of them overboard when they try to assassinate him. The film ends with Tiffany asking Bond how they can get all the diamonds from the laser satellite back down to Earth again.

7. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974): In the pre-title sequence, Rodney (Marc Lawrence), a hired hitman can be seen arriving on Francisco Scaramanga's island. The assassin receives his instructions from Scaramanga's dwarf servant named Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize), who later has the two of them pursue each other through Scaramanga's funhouse. The assassin is startled by automated gun firing mannequins of a western gun slinger, Al Capone and his gang from the 1920s (which the assassin was revealed to be an admirer of Capone), and of James Bond. Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) eventually kills the gangster in the hall of mirrors and jokingly says that Nick Nack will have to try harder to inherit his fortune. He then shoots the fingers off the mannequin of Bond. In London, a golden bullet with Bond's code "007" etched into its surface is received by MI6. It is believed that Scaramanga has been hired to assassinate Bond (Roger Moore) and has sent the bullet to intimidate him. Bond's mission revolves around the work of a scientist named Gibson, thought to be in possession of information crucial to solving the energy crisis by inventing a new technique of harnessing the sun's power. But because of the perceived threat to the agent's life, M (Bernard Lee), his boss, forces him to go on a leave. Bond sets out unofficially to find Scaramanga. After tracking the bullet via a Saida (Carmen du Sautoy), a belly dancer in Beirut and Lazar (Marne Maitland), an expert gunsmith in Macau, Bond sees Andrea Anders (Maud Adams), Scaramanga's mistress, collecting golden bullets at the Macau casino. Bond follows her to Hong Kong and after encountering her in the shower and a brief fight, pressures her to tell him about Scaramanga, his appearance and his plans. He is led to a strip club but unbeknownst to him, this is the location of Scaramanga's next 'hit'. The target is Gibson (Gordon Everett) who is shot while leaving the club. Before Bond can assert his innocence, however, Lieutenant Hip (Soon-Taik Oh) whisks him away from the scene as the police arrive. Nick Nack steals the "Solex Agitator" needed for operating a solar power plant from Gibson's pocket. Bond is ferried out of Hong Kong; inside the shipwreck SS Seawise University, formerly the RMS Queen Elizabeth, he meets M and Q and also learns that Hip is their ally. Bond's mission is now to retrieve the solex agitator in the face of the energy crisis and assassinate Scaramanga. He travels to Bangkok to meet a Thai entrepreneur, Hai Fat (Richard Loo), who is suspected of hiring Scaramanga to murder Gibson, speculating that they never met personally. Bond uses a fake, synthetic nipple to make him look as if he has three nipples (Scaramanga is known to have three himself) and meets Hai Fat at his estate. Hai Fat, however, having already met with Scaramanga, captures and places Bond in his personally owned dojo, instructing his fighters to kill the agent. Bond escapes with the aide of Lt. Hip and his karate-adept nieces, who defeat the entire dojo. Bond speeds away by boat on a Bangkok canal and reunites with his British assistant Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) during dinner. Later, Anders enters his room, revealing that she had sent the bullet to London and wants Bond to kill Scaramanga. In payment, Anders promises to hand over the Solex to him at a boxing venue the next day. Instead of spending the night as he promised with Goodnight (whom he hid in a closet), Bond spends the night with Anders. At the match, Bond discovers that the mistress has been quietly shot and meets Scaramanga for the first time. Bond is able to smuggle the Solex from Anders' purse away to Hip, who passes it to Goodnight waiting outside. Attempting to place a homing device, she is locked into Scaramanga's car, an AMC Matador, as he drives away. Bond follows him in an AMC Hornet 'X' with Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) at his side — whom he encounters when acquiring the vehicle — and a car chase across Bangkok ensues, concluding at a barn in the countryside outside the city with Scaramanga's car transforming into a plane and flying away to his island in the Yellow Sea near China. Picking up Mary Goodnight's tracking device, Bond flies a Republic RC-3 Seabee into Red Chinese waters low under radar, and lands in his seaplane at Scaramanga's island. On arriving, Bond is welcomed by Scaramanga and is shown the high-tech solar power plant that Scaramanga has taken over by killing Hai Fat. Scaramanga intends to show off his technology built by Hai Fat to the world superpowers; and sell the technology to the highest bidder. That bidder will be able to build hundreds of the solar energy plants as well as sell franchises. As a result there will be a monopoly on solar energy, and the oil sheiks will be forced to pay Scaramanga millions to keep it off the market. He is also shown the solar gun operated by the Solex, which "comes with no extra charge" that is powered by a receptor hidden in a mushroom-shaped rock nearby. Bond's plane is destroyed by the gun, much to his annoyance and Scaramanga's enjoyment. They then enjoy a brief meal prepared by Nick Nack, until Bond becomes angered by Scaramanga's belief that they both enjoy killing in their profession. Scaramanga proposes a pistol duel with Bond on the beach, a "duel between titans". The two men stand back to back and are ordered by Nick Nack to take twenty paces, but when Bond turns and fires, Scaramanga has vanished. Nick Nack leads Bond into the Funhouse. After a few minutes, Bond poses as the mannequin of himself while Scaramanga walks by, taking him by surprise and killing him, but not before Goodnight, in way-laying a henchman into a pool of liquid helium, upsets the balance of the solar plant, which gradually goes out of control. Bond retrieves the Solex unit at the last moment just before the island explodes, and they escape unharmed in Scaramanga's Chinese junk ship. While trying to take some relaxation on the ship, however, they are attacked by Nick Nack, who is out for revenge for being deprived of his inheritance. He is put out of commission by Bond, who stuffs him into a wicker cage strapped to the mast, and the ship sails off into the sea.

8. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): Nuclear submarines carrying ballistic missiles from the Royal Navy and the Soviet fleet mysteriously disappear. Bond (Roger Moore) is summoned to investigate. On the way he escapes an ambush by Soviet agents in Austria, killing one of them in a downhill ski chase that concludes when he skies off a cliff to fake his death and uses a Union Jack parachute to save himself. Bond learns that the plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system are on the market. He travels to Egypt. While there Bond narrowly escapes assassination when a gorgeous young woman distracts him, while one of Stromberg's henchmen aims a gun at him. However, the henchman accidentally shoots the girl, killing her and allowing Bond to escape. Whether the girl is an accomplice or innocent is not revealed. After this, Bond attempts to contact the prospective seller near the pyramids, where he first encounters Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) (codename "Triple X") of the KGB, his rival for the plans. Together, they travel across Egypt tracking the microfilm plans, meeting the seven feet-tall steel-toothed assassin Jaws (Richard Kiel) along the way. Ultimately, they partner due to a truce supported by their respective superiors (M from MI6 and General Gogol from the KGB) and identified the person behind all the thefts as Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens), a shipping tycoon. While traveling to Stromberg's base in Sardinia, Bond saves Amasova from Jaws and their rivalry changes into affection. Posing as a marine biologist and his wife, they visit Stromberg's base and learn of his mysterious new supertanker, the Liparus. With Q's help, they figured that the "Liparus" has never come into port. After they leave the base, Jaws and other henchmen, including a helicopter pilot named Naomi (Caroline Munro), chase them, but all attempts fail due to Bond's driving skills and the fact that his car—a Lotus Esprit from Q Branch—can convert into a submarine that is capable of firing missiles and torpedoes and planting mines. As a result, Bond is forced to fake both of their deaths by driving off a pier dock and destroys Naomi's helicopter with a surface-to-air missile. Amasova learns Bond killed her lover in Austria when she saw the lighter that he bought from Austria during the time that Amasova's lover was killed. Amasova says that she will complete the mission with him, but kill him when it ends. Assisted by an American submarine, Bond and Amasova examine Stromberg's underwater Atlantis base and confirm that he is operating the tracking system. The two board an American submarine in pursuit of the "Liparus." The submarine in which they then attempt to pursue the Liparus is captured by the supertanker itself. Stromberg sets his plan in motion: the launching of nuclear missiles from the previously captured submarines were going to be used to destroy Moscow and New York City. This would trigger a global nuclear war, which Stromberg would outlive in Atlantis, and subsequently a new civilization would be established. He leaves for Atlantis with Amasova. After managing to escape, Bond frees the captured British, Russian, and American submariners and they battle the Liparus' crew. Bond reprograms the British and Soviet submarines to destroy each other, saving Moscow and New York. The victorious submariners escape the sinking Liparus on the surviving American submarine. Bond insists on a final confrontation with Stromberg and the rescue of Amasova before the submarine has to follow its orders and destroy Atlantis. Bond confronts Stromberg in a dining room. He kills Stromberg but again encounters Jaws. Bond lifts Jaws using an electromagnet (which attracts Jaws' metal teeth), dropping him into a tank with a shark inside. Bond reunites with Amasova and they flee in an escape pod as Atlantis is sunk. In the pod Amasova reminds Bond that she has vowed to kill him and picks up Bond's gun, but admits having forgiven him and havng fallen in love with him and the two engage in sexual intercourse. They are unknowingly picked up by the Royal Navy and their escape pod is opened in front of everyone, much to the consternation of their superiors, M and General Gogol (Walter Gotell). Jaws is shown ironically biting the shark to death, before swimming to freedom (to return in Moonraker).

9. Moonraker (1979): A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in mid-air, destroying the carrier plane. Bond is recalled from Africa to investigate. En route in a small plane, on an unrelated case, Bond is attacked by the pilot (Jean-Pierre Castaldi) and crew (Leila Shenna) and is pushed out of the plane by the mercenary assassin Jaws (Richard Kiel), whom he has met before. Bond survives by stealing a parachute from the pilot in mid-air, whilst Jaws lands on a circus tent. Bond reports to MI6 headquarters in London, and is briefed by M (Bernard Lee) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn) about the hijacking. He begins his investigation at the Drax Industries shuttle-manufacturing complex in southern California. At Drax Industries, Bond is coldly greeted by the owner of the company, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), and henchman Chang (Toshiro Suga). Bond meets an astronaut, Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), and survives an assassination attempt via a centrifuge chamber. Bond is later inadvertently aided by Drax's personal pilot, Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery), as he finds blueprints for a glass vial made in Venice. Bond then foils another attempt on his life, shooting a Drax sniper with a hunting shotgun. When Drax discovers that Dufour assisted Bond in his investigations, Drax fires her, then has his hunting dogs fatally maul her. Bond again encounters Goodhead in Venice. He is chased through the canals by Drax's henchmen but his gondola, with the ability to transform into a hovercraft, allows him to escape across the Piazza San Marco in a comic fashion. Bond discovers a secret biological laboratory; by accidentally poisoning the scientists there, he learns that the glass vials are to hold a deadly nerve gas. Chang battles Bond and is killed. During the fight, Bond sees evidence that Drax is moving his operation to Rio de Janeiro. Rejoining Goodhead, he deduces that she is a CIA agent spying on Drax (Bond pointedly notes, "I have friends in low places," an oblique reference to his CIA friend Felix Leiter). They promise to work together (and consummate their alliance), but quickly dispense with the truce. Bond has saved one of the vials he found earlier, as the only evidence of the now-empty laboratory, giving it to M for analysis, who permits him to go to Rio de Janeiro. In Rio de Janeiro, Bond meets and seduces his Brazilian contact Manuela (Emily Bolton). Drax hires Jaws to finish Chang's job of eliminating Bond. Bond meets Goodhead at the top of Sugarloaf, where they are attacked by Jaws on a cable car. After Jaws' car crashes he is rescued by Dolly (Blanche Ravalec)—a petite blonde girl with super strength—from the rubble, and the two fall in love. Bond and Goodhead are captured by henchmen, but Bond escapes. Bond reports to a MI6 base in Brazil and learns that the toxin comes from a rare orchid indigenous to the upper catchments of the Amazon jungle. While deadly to humans, it is harmless to all other life. Bond travels the Amazon River looking for Drax's research facility, and soon encounters Jaws and other henchmen again. Bond escapes from his boat just before it hits the Iguacu Falls, and finds Drax's base. Captured by Jaws again, Bond is taken to Drax and witnesses four Moonrakers lifting off. Drax explains that he himself stole the Moonraker because another in the fleet had developed a fault during assembly. Bond is reunited with Goodhead; they escape and successfully pose as pilots on the sixth shuttle. The shuttles dock with Drax's hidden space station. Drax plans to destroy all human life by launching fifty globes containing the toxin into the Earth's atmosphere. Before launching the globes, Drax also transported several dozen young men and women of varying races, which he regarded as genetically perfect, to the space station. They would live there until Earth was safe again for human life; their descendants would be the seed for a "new master race." Bond persuades Jaws and Dolly to switch allegiance by getting Drax to admit that anyone not measuring up to his physical standards would be exterminated (Dolly's glasses and Jaws' metal teeth, as well as their odd heights, being traits that exclude them both) and Jaws starts to brutalise Drax' guards. Bond and Goodhead disable the radar jammer hiding the station from Earth. The U.S. sends a platoon of Marines in a military shuttle. A laser battle ensues in which Drax's guards as well as his new master race die. During the battle, Bond pushes Drax into an airlock and ejects him into space. The space station, heavily damaged in the battle, disintegrates. Jaws helps Bond and Goodhead escape in Drax's space shuttle. In celebration, Jaws opens a champagne bottle and he and Dolly toast (in his only spoken line: "Well, here's to us!"). They too escape the space station as their module breaks away before the station explodes. Before the battle Drax launched three of the globes towards Earth, which Goodhead and Bond destroy from their shuttle. The two make love in space (prompting the memorable exchange between Sir Frederick Gray and Q: "My God, what's Bond doing?" Gray demands, and Q, not looking at the visual monitor but instead reading a tracking scanner, replies, "I think he's attempting re-entry, Sir."). Goodhead has the penultimate line, with "James, take me around the world one more time," to which Bond simply replies, "Why not?" Moonraker 5 then soars past the camera high above the Earth and out of view.

10. For Your Eyes Only (1981): n the pre-title sequence, Bond is picked up at his wife's gravesite by a helicopter; he escapes after being trapped in the aircraft. It is remotely controlled by someone who is presumed to be Blofeld - who was accomplice to Tracy's assassin Irma Bunt. The unknown man pilots the helicopter around various parts of London before Bond manages to gain control of the helicopter and turns it on his enemy, who is in a motorized wheelchair; picking him up, Bond then drops him into a smokestack, presumably killing him. The film then turns its focus to the fishing trawler St Georges of Valetta on the Ionian Sea, which is revealed to be a British spy ship equipped with Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC), the system used by the Ministry of Defence to communicate with and co-ordinate the Royal Navy's fleet of Polaris submarines. The ship dramatically sinks when an old naval mine becomes entangled in the fishing nets and pulled into the hull, causing it to explode and flood the lower compartments of the ship. Sir Timothy Havelock (Jack Hedley), a marine archaeologist based in Greece, is contacted by the British government to secretly locate the St Georges. However, before he can give a report, he and his wife are shot down by a Cuban hitman, Hector Gonzales (Stefan Kalipha), who passes their yacht in a machine-gun equipped floatplane. Havelock's daughter Melina (Carole Bouquet) survives and vows revenge. The British Minister of Defence and his Chief of Staff summon James Bond (Roger Moore) and assign him the task of recovering the ATAC. They explain that if the transmitter were retrieved underwater by another superpower the Polaris submarines' ballistic missiles could be used against major western cities. Bond is sent to Spain after Gonzales to find out who hired him. Melina kills him before Bond can find out. Melina owns a Citroën 2CV which proves to be very resilient in the following car chase by two bigger and more powerful cars driven by Gonzales's henchmen; they manage to disable both of the other cars in the Spanish highlands with a series of clever manouveres. After identifying a hitman (Michael Gothard) in Gonzales's estate (Locque) who appeared to be paying him, Bond is led to a well-connected Greek businessman and intelligence informant, Aris Kristatos (Julian Glover), in Cortina d'Ampezzo, a resort in northern Italy's Dolomites. He later tells Bond that the man he saw is employed by Milos Columbo, a Greek Smuggler. Kristatos's 15-year-old niece Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson), a figure skating champion, attempts to seduce Bond who refuses, acknowledging she is a minor (at the time of filming, Johnson was in her early 20s and Moore was in his mid-50s). Bond is also forced to contend with Eric Kriegler (John Wyman), a German biathlete. Kriegler attempts to kill Bond with his biathlon rifle, and pursues him on a machine gun armed motorcycle, over a chalet balcony, bobsled track, and into a farm where Bond escapes. He and two other men also attempted to kill Bond on an indoor ice rink, but he manages to fend them off once again and after discovers that Ferrara was murdered. When Bond is eventually captured by men working for Columbo (Chaim Topol) (who have saved him from being killed by Locque and Locque's accomplice Claus) it emerges that Locque is actually in the employ of Kristatos who himself is in the employ of the KGB. Kristatos is attempting to recover the ATAC for the KGB, and had set up Columbo as the villain as the latter knew too much about Kristatos's KGB leanings. Columbo proves this connection to Bond by allowing Bond to take part in a raid on one of Kristatos's warehouses in Albania, where they find Locque. In this factory, Bond discovers false rolls of paper containing poppy syrup, and additional naval mines similar to the one that sank the St. Georges, suggesting that the sinking was not an accident. Locque places explosives to destroy this evidence and flees as the building explodes into a fierce inferno, destroying all the heroin which was stored there. He then loses control of his car when Bond wounds him by shooting him through the car's windshield, and ultimately ends up teetering on the edge of a cliff. Bond approaches him there and gives the car a solid shove, sending Locque plunging to his death. Bond and Melina later recover the ATAC from the wreckage of the St Georges, but Kristatos is waiting for them when they surface, and he takes the ATAC from them. He attempts to dispose of them by dragging them behind his yacht while sharks circle in the water; however, Bond effects their escape. They discover Kristatos's rendezvous point when Melina's parrot repeats the phrase "ATAC to St. Cyril's". With Columbo's help, Bond, Columbo's team, and Melina break into a mountaintop monastery, St. Cyril's, being used by Kristatos to meet KGB chief General Gogol (Walter Gotell) where he will turn over the ATAC. Bond climbs up the sheer face of the mountain and, upon reaching the top, gains control of the lift basket and brings the rest of the team up. Bond eventually retrieves the ATAC system and talks Melina out of killing Kristatos after he surrenders. Kristatos tries to kill Bond with a hidden weapon, but Columbo throws a knife at him from behind and kills him. Gogol arrives by helicopter to collect the ATAC, but Bond throws it over the cliff and it is dashed to pieces on the rocks below, with the quip, "That's détente, comrade. You don't have it; I don't have it." General Gogol gives Bond an understanding smile and leaves. Bond and Melina later spend a romantic evening aboard her father's yacht. When a call from the office comes in (which is patched through to the home of prime minister Margaret Thatcher), Bond passes it along to the bird while persuading Melina to undress and join him for a night swim.

11. Octopussy (1983): he pre-title sequence involves Bond with a beautiful agent named Bianca (Tina Hudson) on a sabotage mission in Air base commanded by the Coloner Luis Toro (Ken Norris) in an undisclosed Latin American country (probably Cuba) and features him flying a nimble homebuilt Bede BD-5J aircraft. The pre-title story has no relevance to the main story. When a fatally wounded British agent 009 (Andy Bradford) stumbles into the British Embassy in East Berlin with a fake Fabergé egg, MI6 immediately suspects Soviet involvement. When the real egg appears at an auction in London, Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to find out who the seller is and track down 009's murderer. Bond is able to secretly replace the real egg with the fake, and lures exiled Afghan prince, Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), into paying £500,000 for the egg. Bond follows Khan back to his palace in India, and learns that he is working with the regenade Soviet General Orlov (Steven Berkoff), seeking to expand the Soviet's borders through Europe. Orlov has been supplying Khan with priceless Soviet treasures, replacing them with replicas, while Khan has been smuggling the real versions into the west through a circus troop run by Octopussy (Maud Adams), a fabulously wealthy woman who lives in a floating palace in Delhi, India and surrounded by women who are members of her "Octopus" cult. Bond defeats Khan in a game of backgammon, exposing Khan's use of loaded dice. Assisted by his ally Vijay (Vijay Amritraj), Bond foils Khan's bodyguard Gobinda's (Kabir Bedi) attempts to kill them as they race through the Indian streets in an Auto rickshaw. One of Khan's associates, Magda (Kristina Wayborn), seduces Bond and steals the real Fabergé egg, while Bond is captured by Gobinda and locked in Khan's palace. Using a pen containing aqua regia, Bond cuts a window's iron bars and escapes. His Seiko watch, fitted with a beacon, traces the Fabergé egg. He hears through a microphone that Orlov is planning to meet Khan at Karl-Marx-Stadt in East Germany, where Octopussy's circus is scheduled to perform. Khan discovers a microphone in the egg, and orders Bond's death. Posing as a corpse, Bond escapes. Bond infiltrates Octopussy's island and confronts her, only to find out that she feels indebted to him for letting her father, a British Major, commit suicide rather than face the shame of a court martial when Bond was sent after him for smuggling and murder some years before. Bond infiltrates the circus in East Germany as it prepares to leave the Soviet base via train. He finds that while Orlov has shown Octopussy the means of secretly transporting a large cache of Soviet treasures within the base cannon for the Human Cannonball, he and Khan have secretly replaced the jewels with a nuclear warhead primed to explode during the circus show at a US Air Force base in West Germany. The explosion would trigger Europe into seeking disarmament in the belief that the bomb was a US one that detonated by accident, leaving its borders open to Soviet invasion. Bond seizes Orlov's personal car, where the jewels have been stashed, and drives after the train, followed closely by Orlov in another vehicle. When Orlov shoots out Bond's tires, he drives the car on the rails, and jumps onto the train moments before a second train sends Orlov's car into a nearby river. As the train crosses the border, Orlov attempts to follow on foot, but is shot by GDR border guards. General Gogol (Walter Gotell), having discovered the jewels in Orlov's car and having previously denounced Orlov's plan for Soviet conquest of Europe, watches the man die, disgraced. Bond's presence on the train is discovered by Gobinda and twin knife-throwers, Mischka and Grischka (David Meyer and Tony Meyer). Though forced to abandon the train, Bond is able to kill Mischka and Grischka in revenge for the death of 009. Bond commandeers a civilian's Alfa Romeo and races to the Air Force base, chased by police. At the base, Bond disguises himself as a clown and attempts to convince Octopussy that Khan has betrayed her by showing her one of the treasures she was to be smuggling that he took from Orlov's car. Octopussy realizes the double-cross and assists Bond in deactivating the warhead in time. Bond and Octopussy return to India and launch an assault on Khan's palace. Khan and Gobinda flee the palace, capturing Octopussy in the process. Bond follows them as they attempt to escape on an airplane, and jumps aboard before it takes off and disables one of its engines. Bond and Gobinda fight on the roof of the plane, but Gobinda falls to his death. As the plane continues to lose height, Bond rescues Octopussy from Khan, and they jump safely to a nearby cliff moments before the plane and Khan crash and explode into the side of a mountain. While M (Robert Brown) and Gogol discuss the return of the jewelry, Bond recuperates with Octopussy aboard her private boat in India.

12. A View to a Kill (1985): James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to Siberia to locate the body of 003 and to recover a microchip. Upon doing so, he is ambushed by Soviet troops but flees in a submarine built to resemble an iceberg. After Bond returns to England a week later, Q (Desmond Llewelyn) has the microchip analysed and informs M (Robert Brown), Bond and the Minister of Defense that its design is an exact match of a microchip made by Zorin Industries. The retrieved microchip is also designed to withstand the damage caused to other chips by a nuclear explosion. Bond and his superiors visit Ascot Racecourse to observe the company's owner, Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). While at the track, Zorin's horse miraculously wins the race; Sir Godfrey Tibbett (Patrick Macnee), a horse trainer, believes Zorin's horse was given drugs, although when screened prior to the race, it did not show any signs of doping. Through Tibbett, Bond meets a French private detective named Achille Aubergine (Jean Rougerie) to discuss how the horse won. Aubergine informs Bond that Zorin is holding an annual horse sale later in the month. However, during their dinner at the Eiffel Tower, Aubergine is assassinated by Zorin's mysterious bodyguard, May Day (Grace Jones). Bond steals a Renault taxi to chase May Day but fails to apprehend her. Bond and Tibbett travel to Chantilly, France where Bond poses as James St. John Smythe (pronounced "sin-jin-smythe"), a rich dilettante. They break into Zorin's secret laboratory and learn that he is using microchips in his horses to release a drug when prompted by a hidden switch. Their intrusion is discovered however and Tibbett is later killed by May Day, but they fail to kill Bond in an attempt to drown him in a lake. Later, General Gogol (Walter Gotell) from the Soviet Union shows up at Zorin's estate with several other KGB agents, but Zorin, an ex-KGB agent himself, becomes upset with Gogol and forces him to leave. In his airship, Zorin unveils to a group of investors his plan to destroy Silicon Valley in an operation he dubs "Main Strike" in order to gain a monopoly in the microchip market. Bond later learns that Zorin is a psychopath, the product of Nazi medical experimentation during World War II, and later trained by the KGB. 007 goes to San Francisco and spies on an oil rig owned by Zorin. He catches KGB agent Pola Ivanova (Fiona Fullerton) trying to blow up the rig, while recording Zorin announcing his plans. Bond soon meets state geologist Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), whose oil company had been taken over by Zorin, and the two team up to steal documents about his plan from the San Francisco City Hall. Zorin arrives, holding them hostage, and then forces a city official to call the police. He kills the official with Bond's Walther PPK and sets the building on fire in order to frame Bond for the murder. Bond and Sutton escape from the fire but when the police try to arrest Bond, they escape in a fire engine. The next day, Bond and Sutton infiltrate Zorin's mine, discovering his plot to detonate explosives beneath the lakes along the Hayward Fault and the San Andreas Fault causing them to flood. A larger bomb is also on site in the mine to destroy a "geological lock" that is in place to prevent the two faults from moving at the same time. Once destroyed, it would supposedly cause a double earthquake. Zorin and Scarpine flood the mines, nearly killing Bond and May Day and murder all of the mine workers as they attempt to flee. Stacey manages to escape. Because she was betrayed, May Day helps Bond remove the larger bomb that would destroy the lock. They put the bomb on a handcar and push it out of the mine along a railroad line. May Day stays on the car to hold the faulty brake lever, sacrificing her own life as the bomb explodes outside, away from the lock. Sutton is quickly captured by a devastated Zorin, who is escaping via airship with Scarpine (Patrick Bauchau) and his mentor, Dr. Carl Mortner (Willoughby Gray). Bond grabs hold of the mooring rope and clings on as the airship ascends. Zorin tries to kill Bond by flying him into the Golden Gate Bridge, but Bond manages to moor the airship to the bridge framework, stopping it from moving. Stacey attacks Zorin and in the ensuing fracas, Mortner and Scarpine are temporarily knocked out. Stacey flees onto the bridge and joins with Bond, but Zorin comes after them with an axe and engages in a fierce battle with Bond. Bond gains the upper hand and sends Zorin plummeting off the bridge to his death. An enraged Mortner attempts to kill Bond with a bundle of dynamite, but Bond slashes the mooring rope, causing Mortner to drop the dynamite into the cabin. Seconds later, the dynamite explodes and destroys the airship, killing Mortner and Scarpine. In the aftermath, Bond is ironically awarded the Order of Lenin by General Gogol. Q, inside a special van in California, uses his fake-dog surveillance camera to locate 007. He finds him safely making love to Stacey in her shower.

13. The Living Daylights (1987): n the pre-title sequence, Agents 002, 004, and 007 parachute onto the Rock of Gibraltar as part of a war games scenario to test its defenses. 002 (Glyn Baker) is immediately captured by the SAS, while Bond and 004 (Frederick Warder) begin scaling the cliffs to the base. As they ascend, an assassin (Carl Rigg) appears and, after shooting an SAS guard, sends a carabiner-attached tag reading "Smiert Spionam" ("Death to Spies") down the rope before cutting it, killing 004. Bond (Timothy Dalton) chases the assassin, ending in an explosives-laden Land Rover careening down Gibraltar's roads and then into the air. Bond escapes (via his reserve parachute) mid-air from the falling jeep, while the assassin is killed when the Land Rover explodes. Bond lands on a nearby yacht owned by a woman named Linda (Kell Tyler), who on the phone states she is looking for a "real man". Linda subsequently offers Bond a glass of champagne and says "Won't you join me?" Eyeing her and the drink, Bond delays his report time to two hours. In Bratislava, Bond along with Saunders (Thomas Wheatley), another MI6 Agent, conducts the defection of a KGB officer, General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé), covering his intermission escape from a concert hall. He notices a sniper assigned to assassinate Koskov, who is actually a cellist named Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo). Suspecting that she is not an actual assassin, he shoots her sniper rifle out of her hands, instead of killing her, much to Saunders's condemnation. Koskov is smuggled through the Russian gas pipeline into Austria and flown to England. There, at a countryside manor (Blayden House), Koskov informs MI6 that the KGB's old policy of Smert' Spionam, meaning Death to Spies, has been revived by General Leonid Pushkin, the new head of the KGB (heir to General Gogol). He presents them a list of British and American targets of SMERSH. Milovy is immediately speculated as an assassin. The leaders of MI6 leave for London to convene, while Koskov stays at the manor. Some time later, an assassin named Necros (Andreas Wisniewski) infiltrates the building, burns the list of targets, and abducts Koskov by helicopter, killing two staff members and sending another two to the hospital. Bond is assigned to kill Pushkin but first travels to Bratislava, Slovakia to investigate the connection with Milovy. On learning that the bullets in her rifle were blanks, and that Milovy was Koskov's girlfriend, he begins to suspect that Koskov staged his "defection." While taking care to fool the man tailing him while finding Milovy, she and Bond (and her Stradivarius 'cello, the "Lady Rose", escape to Austria - the final leg of this journey involving sledding down a mountain using the 'cello case as their sled (they literally sled through the border customs kiosk). After a brief tryst with Kara in Vienna, he meets up his MI6 ally, Saunders, at the Wurstelprater amusement park. There, he reveals a link between Koskov and arms dealer, ex-American General Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker), whose offer to sell the KGB high-tech weapons in Tangier was declined. Saunders is killed by Necros, who is disguised as a balloon seller; he leaves a balloon marked "Smiert Spionam". Bond infiltrates Pushkin's hotel room in Tangier at gun point. Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies) reveals to Bond that contrary to Koskov's explanation, he had actually been investigating Koskov himself for the embezzlement of government funds. Bond and Pushkin then join forces by Bond faking Pushkin's assassination, allowing Whitaker and Koskov, who now believe Pushkin is dead, to progress with their scheme. Later Bond meets with his long friend Felix Leiter (John Terry) who gives information to Bond. Meanwhile, Milovy contacts Koskov, who convinces her that Bond is a KGB agent. Accordingly, she puts Bond to sleep with a spiked beverage and engenders his capture. They are flown to a Soviet air base in Afghanistan, where Koskov betrays Milovy and imprisons her along with Bond. They escape from the air base's prison, and in doing so free a condemned prisoner, Kamran Shah (Art Malik), leader of the local Mujahideen. Kamran leads Bond and Milovy to the Mujahideen's base, where Bond informs Kamran of Whitaker's plan to sell the Soviets weapons that could be used against the Afghan resistance. The next day, during a mission, Bond discovers that Whitaker and Koskov are paying diamonds for a large $500 million shipment of opium in order to turn a huge profit with enough left over to supply the Soviets with their arms. And, while Whitaker gets rich, Koskov will use newfound fame to take control of the KGB, hence the attack on Pushkin. The Mujahideen help Bond and Milovy to infiltrate the air base. Bond plants a bomb in the back of the cargo aeroplane transporting the opium, but Koskov recognises him just as he is leaving. Bond hijacks the plane, while the Mujahideen attack the airbase on horseback, killing many Soviets in the battle. Milovy joins Bond on a jeep in the back of the plane as they take off and later assumes the controls while Bond leaves to defuse his bomb. Necros, however, had stowed away on board and attacks Bond. Bond throws Necros to his death after a struggle and deactivates the bomb. Milovy flies over Kamran Shah's Mujahideen, who are being pursued by two Soviet armored cars across a bridge. Bond drops his bomb onto the bridge, killing the Soviets and ending their pursuit of Kamran and his men. When their plane runs out of fuel, Bond and Milovy escape on the jeep, while the plane crashes into the hills. Bond returns to Tangier and helped by Leiter arrives at Whitaker's residence as General Whitaker is playing Pickett's Charge on Little Round Top, fighting the Battle of Gettysburg on his terms. When Bond tells him that the opium is burned, Whitaker takes out a submachine gun with a shield of bullet-proof glass. When Bond uses up all of his bullets, Whitaker fires. Bond hides behind a pillar with a bust of the Duke of Wellington, and inserts his explosive key chain on it while Whitaker taunts Bond on how Wellington had to hire German mercenaries to defeat Napoleon. Bond's explosive key-chain, triggered by a wolf whistle, topples the bust onto Whitaker, who crashes onto a diorama of Waterloo, and, as Bond sums it up, "He [dies|meets] his Waterloo." At the same time Pushkin and his bodyguards arrive. Koskov is arrested and ordered to be flown back to Moscow in a "diplomatic bag," indicating that his dead body is what will be making the return flight. The final scene is of Milovy as lead cellist in a London recital, her musical future assured by the British and Soviets cooperating to provide her with travel visas allowing her to perform both behind the Iron Curtain and in the West. Told he is on assignment, Bond surprises her in her dressing room after the recital and together they celebrate their mutual success.

14. Licence To Kill (1989): The story opens with Bond and his friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison), on their way to Leiter's wedding to Della Churchill (Priscilla Barnes). Meanwhile, DEA agents spot drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) flying near The Bahamas, and a Coast Guard helicopter collects Leiter and Bond in an attempt to capture Sanchez. They capture Sanchez by attaching a hook and cord to Sanchez's plane and pulling it out of the air with the helicopter. Afterwards, Bond and Leiter parachute down to the church and make the wedding ceremony on time. Later that day, bribed DEA agent Ed Killifer (Everett McGill) assists Sanchez in escaping. That evening, Leiter and Della are captured by Sanchez's henchmen; Leiter is maimed by a shark as his wife is killed. After hearing the news of Sanchez's escape, Bond returns to Leiter's house to find Della dead and Felix alive but severely injured. Bond begins his revenge by pushing Killifer into the same tank with the shark that maimed Leiter. M (Robert Brown) meets Bond in Key West's Hemingway House and orders him to an assignment in Istanbul, Turkey. Bond refuses the assignment and subsequently resigns. M refuses his resignation, saying, "We're not a country club!" However, he suspends Bond and immediately revokes his licence to kill. Bond quickly escapes MI6 custody and becomes a rogue agent, bereft of official backing but later surreptitiously helped by armourer Q (Desmond Llewelyn). Bond boards a ship run by Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), Sanchez's key lieutenant, where he ruins Sanchez's latest drug shipment and steals five million dollars. In Leiter's records which were stored on a CD-ROM, Bond finds details of a rendezvous in Bimini with Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), an ex-CIA agent-pilot who he meets in a bar. Sanchez henchman Dario and his team arrive at the bar, ostensibly to kill Bouvier. A bar brawl erupts, but Bond and Bouvier escape, with Bond convincing Bouvier to assist him in his mission. Bond and Bouvier journey to the Latin American country of the "Republic of Isthmus" (a fictional country loosely based on Panama, which is known for its Isthmus of Panama), where he finds his way into Sanchez's employ by posing as an assassin looking for work. Bond attempts to kill Sanchez from an abandoned building, using a sniper rifle and C4 supplied by Q. While peering through the telescopic sight, he observes Bouvier talking to Heller (Don Stroud) and handing him an envelope. He detonates the charge, knocking the bulletproof window of Sanchez's office. However, before he can shoot Sanchez, he is attacked and incapacitated by several agents in ninja garb. He awakens tied to a table to find out his captors are, in fact, undercover Hong Kong narcotics agents trying to infiltrate Sanchez's operation. They are joined by Fallon (Christopher Neame), a corrupt MI6 agent who was sent by M to apprehend Bond either dead or alive. Bond is about to be executed via lethal injection and sent back to England in disgrace when Sanchez and his men raid the building and kill the agents. They find Bond unconscious, still tied to the table. Next morning Bond wakes up in Sanchez house where he informs Sanchez that those men were freelance assassins and were worried that Bond would've warned Sanchez of their plans. Later, with the aid of Bouvier, Q, and Sanchez's battered girlfriend Lupe (Talisa Soto), Bond manages to frame Krest, making him appear disloyal to Sanchez. Sanchez traps Krest in a hyperbaric chamber and then suddenly depressurises the chamber, causing Krest's head to explode; meanwhile, for Bond's perceived loyalty, Sanchez admits him into his inner circle. After an overnight stay at his villa, Sanchez takes Bond to his base, which is disguised as a meditation retreat (not before Bond sleeps with Lupe). Bond learns that Sanchez's scientists can dissolve cocaine in gasoline, and then sell it disguised as fuel to Asian drug dealers. The buying and selling are conducted via the American televangelist Professor Joe Butcher (Wayne Newton), working under orders from Sanchez's business manager Truman-Lodge. The re-integration process will be available to those underworld clients who can pay Sanchez's price. In addition, Sanchez has brokered a deal to buy Stinger missiles from the Contras, and has threatened to shoot down an American airliner if the DEA interferes in his operations. During Sanchez's presentation to potential Far Eastern customers, Bond is recognized by Sanchez's henchman Dario (Benicio del Toro), who met Bond in Bimini and knows Bond to be against Sanchez's interests. Trying to escape, Bond starts a fire in the laboratory which spreads to the whole base; despite this, Bond is re-captured and placed on the conveyor belt that drops the brick-cocaine into a giant shredder. Pam Bouvier arrives and helps Bond escape and kill Dario by throwing him into the shredder. The two flee the base as it explodes. Sanchez also escapes, with four tanker trucks full of the cocaine/gasoline mixture and his Stinger missiles, and Bond pursues them by plane with Bouvier at the controls. In the course of a stunt-filled chase, Bond destroys three of the four trucks and kills many of Sanchez' men. An irate Sanchez kills Truman-Lodge (Anthony Starke) in exasperation. Bond and Sanchez fight aboard the final remaining tanker, which ends up out of control and then rolls down a hillside. Sanchez, soaked in gasoline, mocks Bond (who is injured from the fall), telling him that he could have "had everything", and prepares to kill him with a machete. Bond distracts him by asking him if he wants to know why he destroyed his drug empire. Bond produces his cigarette lighter - the Leiters' gift for being the best man at their wedding - and sets the villain afire. Sanchez, burning alive, stumbles into the wrecked tanker truck's cistern, causing its gasoline to ignite. Bond flees before the massive explosion. Pam arrives driving one of the two remaining trucks and drives them back to Isthmus City. That night, a party is held at Sanchez's former residence. Bond receives a call from Leiter telling him that M is offering him his job back. Later in the party, Bond chooses to reject Lupe's advances, suggesting the country's president (Pedro Armendariz Jr.) as a better match, and romances Pam Bouvier instead.

15. Goldeneye (1995): In 1986, MI6 agents 007 (James Bond, played by Pierce Brosnan) and 006 (Alec Trevelyan, played by Sean Bean), infiltrate an illicit Soviet chemical weapons facility at Arkhangelsk and plant explosive charges. Trevelyan is apparently captured and shot dead by Colonel Arkady Ourumov (Gottfried John), but Bond steals an airplane and escapes from the facility as it explodes. Nine years later (1995), Bond arrives in Monte Carlo to follow Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a suspected member of the Janus crime syndicate, who has formed a suspicious relationship with a Canadian Navy admiral. She murders the admiral to allow Ourumov (now a General) to steal his identity. The next day, they steal a prototype Eurocopter Tiger helicopter that can withstand an electromagnetic pulse, despite Bond's efforts to stop them. They fly it to a bunker in Severnaya, where they massacre the staff and steal the control disk for the dual GoldenEye satellite weapons. The two program one of the GoldenEye satellites to destroy the complex with an electromagnetic pulse, and escape with genius programmer Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming). The pulse also destroys three Russian MiG-29 aircraft dispatched to check on the facility; causing one to crash into the complex, utterly devastating it. Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), the lone survivor, contacts Grishenko and arranges to meet him in St. Petersburg, where he betrays her to Janus. In London, M (Judi Dench) assigns Bond to investigate the attack due to circumstantial evidence. She also tells Bond to not go out for revenge against Ourumov when he is found (for Trevelyan's death) and he flies to St. Petersburg to meet CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker). He suggests Bond meet Valentin Zukovsky, (Robbie Coltrane), a Russian Mafia head and business rival of Janus. After Bond gives him a tip on a potential heist, Zukovsky arranges a meeting between Bond and Janus, who reveals himself as Trevelyan. A descendant of those Cossack clans who did collaborate with the Nazi forces in WWII, Trevelyan faked his death, having vowed revenge against Britain for their involvement in his parents' deaths. He ties Bond up with Simonova in the Tiger helicopter programmed to self-destruct, from which the two escape using its ejection system. They are immediately arrested by the Russian police and interrogated by the Russian Minister of Defence, Dmitri Mishkin (Tchéky Karyo). Just as Simonova reveals the existence of a second satellite and Ourumov's involvement in the massacre at Severnaya, Ourumov bursts into the room, shooting Mishkin and dragging Simonova into a car. Bond steals a T-55 tank and pursues Ourumov through St. Petersburg to Janus' armoured train, where he kills Ourumov as Trevelyan escapes, locking Bond in the train with Simonova. As the train's self-destruct countdown begins, Bond cuts through the floor with a laser watch while Simonova locates Grishenko's satellite dish in Cuba using a computer. The two escape just before the train explodes. In Cuba, Bond and Simonova fly a plane over the jungle before they are shot down. As they stumble out of the wreckage, Onatopp rappels down from a helicopter and attacks Bond. As she has Bond in a stranglehold, he manages to use her weapon to shoot the helicopter down. Still attached to the rappel cord, Onatopp is crushed against a tree and dies. Minutes later, he and Simonova watch a lake being drained of its water, uncovering the dish. They infiltrate the control station, where Bond is captured. Trevelyan reveals his plan to steal money from the Bank of England before erasing all of its financial records with the remaining GoldenEye, concealing the theft and destroying Britain's economy. Meanwhile, Simonova programs the satellite to initiate atmospheric reentry and destroy itself. As Trevelyan captures Simonova and orders Grishenko to save the satellite, Bond triggers an explosion with his Parker Jotter pen grenade provided by Q, and escapes to the antenna cradle. Bond sabotages the antenna, preventing Grishenko from regaining control of the satellite, before turning and facing Trevelyan. Bond pushes Trevelyan off the antenna and into the dish before escaping aboard a helicopter commandeered by Simonova. The cradle collapses, crushing Trevelyan. Meanwhile on the surface, Bond and Simonova are rescued by Wade and a platoon of U.S. Marines.

16. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997): MI6 sends James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) into the field to spy on a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Via television, MI6 and the British military identify several wanted men, including American "techno-terrorist" Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay), who is buying a GPS encoder made by the American military. Despite M's (Judi Dench) insistence that Agent 007 finish his reconnaissance, the British Admiral Roebuck (Geoffrey Palmer) launches a missile attack on the arms bazaar. Bond then discovers there are two Soviet nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, the destruction of which would cause potential local radioactive contamination. With the missile already in flight and unable to be aborted, Bond hijacks the L-39 jet and flies it away from the arms bazaar, defeating a pursuing L-39 and a hostile co-pilot by ejecting the co-pilot into the other aircraft. Despite the missile destroying most of the terrorists and weaponry, Gupta escapes with the encoder. Media baron Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), head of the Carver Media Group Network (CMGN), begins his plans to use the encoder to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom. As the existing Chinese leadership is not receptive to giving Carver Media Group Network exclusive broadcast rights in their country, Carver wants to use a war to eliminate them in favor of politicians more friendly to his plans. Meaconing the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the frigate HMS Devonshire off-course in the South China Sea, where Carver's stealth ship and its crew plan to steal a number of its missiles. Carver's henchman, Stamper (Götz Otto), sinks the frigate with a sea drill and shoots down a Chinese J-7 fighter jet sent to investigate the British presence, and then the men aboard the stealth ship kill the Devonshire's survivors with Chinese weaponry. Thinking they have been attacked by the Chinese, Admiral Roebuck deploys the British Fleet to recover the frigate, and possibly retaliate, leaving M only forty-eight hours to investigate its sinking. M sends Bond to investigate Carver after Carver Media releases news with critical details hours before these have become known, and MI6 noticed a spurious signal from one of his CMGN communications satellites when the frigate was sunk. Bond travels to Hamburg and seduces Carver's wife, Paris (Teri Hatcher), an ex-girlfriend; the information she tells Bond helps him sneak into Carver's newspaper headquarters and steal back the GPS encoder. When Carver learns of it, he orders Paris and Bond killed. Paris is killed by Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli), but Bond escapes in his Q division car a BMW 750i. Bond then goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck, discovering one of the missiles missing. He and Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese spy on the same case, are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN Vietnam bureau, but they escape and begin collaborating. They contact the Royal Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force (Red Chinese air force) to explain what is happening, then find and board Carver's stealth ship in Ha Long Bay to prevent him firing the stolen British cruise missile at Beijing. During the battle, Wai Lin is captured. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta, claiming he has "outlived his contract". Bond gets them out of it by setting off an explosive, damaging part of the ship and exposing it on radar, enabling the Royal Navy to attack it. While Wai Lin heads to disable the engines, Bond leads a large battle to the stolen missile against the crew, and Stamper. Carver is killed by his own sea drill after trying to kill Bond on his own. As Bond begins to start the process of destroying the warhead, Stamper shows that he has Wai Lin hostage. A fight ensues when he tries to drown her. Bond traps him in the missile firing mechanism and leaves him to die, while saving Wai Lin as the stealth ship is destroyed by the missile. Bond and Wai Lin survive amidst the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them.

17. The World Is Not Enough (1999): The pre-title sequence finds Bond (Pierce Brosnan) at a Swiss bank in Bilbao, Spain, retrieving a large sum of money that belongs to Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and personal friend of M. In addition to claim the money, Bond decides to find the truth about the death of his partner 0012 and tries to question the banker, but the latter is murdered by his assistant Giulietta da Vinci (Maria Grazia Cucinotta) before he can talk. After the killing of another bank assistant, Bond escapes lest he be surprised in the premises by the Basque police. Upon arrival in London, King (David Calder) is killed by a bomb inside MI6 Headquarters; the recovered money had been rigged to explode, detonated by King's lapel pin. Bond immediately hastens to catch the perpetrator—the cigar girl from the Swiss Bank in Bilbao—in a boat on the Thames. The chase ends at the Millennium Dome, where the assassin attempts to escape via hot air balloon. Bond offers MI6's protection in return for her cooperation, but she refuses and detonates the balloon, killing herself in the process. Bond lets go of the safety line, falling a short distance onto the dome and sustaining a dislocated collarbone as he tumbles down the side. After attending King's funeral in Scotland, Tanner (Michael Kitchen) informs Bond that he is off active duty until he is cleared by a physician. Bond earns his reinstatement in classic Bond fashion (having sex with his female doctor), then sets out to learn who was behind King's assassination. He traces the recovered money to Renard, a KGB agent-turned-terrorist. Following an earlier attempt on his life by MI6, Renard was left with a bullet lodged in his brain; the bullet is gradually killing off Renard's senses, effectively making him immune to pain, although the bullet will eventually kill him. M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter, Elektra (Sophie Marceau); as Renard previously abducted and held Elektra for ransom, MI6 believes that he is targeting her a second time. Bond flies to Azerbaijan, where Elektra is overseeing the construction of an oil pipeline which will travel through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. During a tour of the pipeline's proposed route in the mountains, Bond and Elektra are attacked by a hit squad in armed, paraglider-equipped snowmobiles. After fending off the hit squad, Bond visits a casino owned by his acquaintance, Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), to acquire information about Elektra's attackers; he discovers that Elektra's head of security, Davidov (Ulrich Thomsen), is secretly in league with Renard (Robert Carlyle). After spending a night with Elektra, then stowing away in Davidov's car to a nearby airstrip, Bond kills him and boards a plane bound for a Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There, Bond poses as Russian nuclear scientist Mikhail Arkov (Jeff Nuttall) to enter the silo and find out why Renard's men are there. He is tailed closely by Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), an American nuclear physicist who is suspicious of his identity. Inside the silo, Bond watches as Renard removes the GPS locator card and a half quantity of weapons-grade plutonium from a bomb. Before Bond can kill him, Jones blows his cover and Renard steals the bomb and flees, leaving everyone to die in the booby-trapped missile silo. Bond escapes the exploding silo with Jones in tow, but not before retrieving the locator card. Back in Azerbaijan, Bond discloses to M that Elektra may not be as innocent as she seems, and hands her the locator card as proof of the theft. The pair are interrupted by a surprise attack on the pipeline: the pilfered bomb from Kazakhstan is attached to an observation rig heading toward the pipeline's oil terminal. Bond and Jones enter the pipeline, ahead of the bomb, on a separate rig. In the process of defusing it, Jones discovers that half of the plutonium is missing. Bond, realizing they have been duped, instructs her to jump clear of the rig and wait for the explosion of the bomb. In the wake of the explosion, Bond radios in and learns that M has been abducted. Elektra and Renard rendezvous at Maiden's Tower in Istanbul, where he exchanges the remaining half of plutonium. In return, Elektra presents a gift of her own: M, imprisoned in a small cell. Renard sets an alarm clock a few feet from M, promising she will die next day at noon. That night, Bond accosts Zukovsky at his caviar factory in the Caspian Sea, believing he is working for Elektra. As Bond and Jones interrogate him, the factory is suddenly assailed by Elektra's helicopters, confirming Bond's suspicion. Zukovsky insists their arrangement was in exchange for a Victor III class submarine, currently being captained by Zukovsky's nephew, Nikolai. If Renard were to insert the stolen plutonium into the submarine's nuclear reactor, the resulting meltdown would level Istanbul, sabotaging the Russians' oil pipeline in the Bosporus. Elektra's pipeline is set to go around the ruins of Istanbul, dramatically increasing the value of her own oil. After poisoning Captain Nikolai and his crew, Renard and his men seize their submarine and begin processing the plutonium. M, still carrying the locator card, snatches the alarm clock and uses its battery to power the card's transmitter, revealing her location to Bond. No sooner does Bond detect her signal than Zukovsky's underling, Mr. Bullion (Goldie), leaves behind an explosive to kill him. Bond and Jones emerge unscathed, but are captured by Bullion and several of Elektra's henchmen, who leave Zukovsky for dead. Before leaving, Renard gives Nikolai's captain's cap to Elektra as a farewell gift. Bond is restrained in an ancient Spanish torture device, the garotte, while Jones is taken aboard the submarine. An injured Zukovsky storms into the room where Elektra is torturing Bond, demanding to know where his nephew is. Bond gestures to the table on which Elektra has placed Nikolai's cap; Zukovsky, realizing Nikolai is dead, is fatally shot by Elektra. With his dying breath, Zukovsky uses his cane—a concealed gun—to shoot at one of Bond's restraints, freeing him. Bond chases after Elektra, pausing momentarily to release M, then shoots Elektra dead after she refuses to call off the plan. Afterwards, Bond dives after the submarine, and boards it. Once onboard, Bond has a brief battle with Renard's men and, in the confusion, causes the submarine to dive rather than surface. The submarine hits bottom, driving its nose into the sea floor and causing its hull to crack. Bond catches up to Renard, who is busy shoving the tip of a plutonium rod into the reactor. Bond hoists himself up to the pressure release, then reconnects the pressure hose and causes the reactor to backfire, impaling Renard with the rod. Bond and Jones escape using a torpedo tube, leaving the flooded reactor to detonate safely underwater. That evening, Bond and Jones enjoy some champagne and intimate time together in Istanbul. M, along with the new Q (John Cleese) and others in the Secret Service, spot the two of them in bed together with a thermal imaging camera.

By Richard Moody

For Desmond Llewellyn (1914 -1999)

Friday, 19 February 2010

Bon Scott Of AC/DC (1946 - 1980) 30th Anniversary



















Youth

Ronald Belford Scott was born on 9 July 1946 at the Fyfe Jamieson Maternity Hospital, Forfar, Scotland to Charles and Isabelle Scott, and grew up in Kirriemuir. A younger brother Derek was born in 1949. The Scott family emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1952 where they initially lived in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. It was at Sunshine Primary School that he received his nickname; there was already a classmate with the name Ronald and as he had recently arrived from Bonnie Scotland he was dubbed "Bon" and the name stuck. A second brother, Graeme, was born in 1953.In 1956, the family moved to Fremantle, Western Australia and Bon joined the associated Fremantle Scots Pipe Band, learning the drums. He dropped out of school at the age of 15 and spent a short time in Fremantle Prison's assessment centre and nine months at the Riverbank Juvenile Institution relating to charges of giving a false name and address to the police, having escaped legal custody, having unlawful carnal knowledge and stealing twelve gallons of petrol. He attempted to join the Australian Army but was rejected for being deemed as "socially maladjusted."

Early Career

After working as a postman, bartender and truck packer, Scott started his first band, The Spektors, in 1964 as drummer and occasional lead singer. Two years later the Spektors merged with another local band, The Winstons, and formed The Valentines, in which Scott was co-lead singer with Vince Lovegrove. The Valentines recorded several songs written by George Young of The Easybeats including "Every Day I Have to Cry" which made the local top 5. In 1970, after gaining a place on the National Top 30 with their single "Juliette", the Valentines disbanded due to artistic differences after a much-publicised drug scandal. Scott moved to Adelaide in 1970 and joined the progressive rock band Fraternity. Fraternity released the LPs Livestock and Flaming Galah before touring the U.K. in 1971, where they changed their name to "Fang". During this time they played support slots for Status Quo and Geordie, whose front man, Brian Johnson, became the lead singer of AC/DC after Scott's death. In 1973, just after returning to Australia from another tour of the UK, Fraternity went on hiatus. In this period, Scott began singing in a band named "Mount Lofty Rangers" which was formed by other ex-Fraternity members. However, after leaving a rehearsal with Mount Lofty Rangers, Scott suffered serious injuries from a motorcycle accident and subsequently left the band. Fraternity however, later reformed and replaced Scott with Jimmy Barnes.

With AC/DC

In 1974 Scott was working as a driver and general hand in Adelaide. He then met the touring members of AC/DC, including brothers Angus and Malcolm Young. At that time, AC/DC's lead singer was Dave Evans, but soon the Young brothers decided that Evans was not a suitable frontman for the group as they felt he was more of a glam rocker like Gary Glitter. Scott, who had become the band's driver, expressed an interest in becoming their drummer, but the band kept telling him they didn't need a drummer, they needed a singer. Bon Scott replaced Dave Evans as the lead singer of AC/DC in September 1974. With the Young brothers as lead and rhythm guitarists, drummer Tony Currenti (see AC/DC lineups) and George Young as a temporary bassist, AC/DC released High Voltage, their first LP in Australia in February 1975. Within a few months Currenti was replaced by Phil Rudd and Mark Evans was hired as a permanent bassist, and AC/DC began recording their second album T.N.T., which was released in Australia in December 1975. The first AC/DC album to gain international distribution however was a compilation of tracks from the first two albums, also entitled High Voltage, which was released in May 1976. Another studio album, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was released in the same year, but only in Australia; the international version of the album was released in November 1976 in the U.K. and in March 1981 in the U.S., with a different tracklisting. In the following years, AC/DC gained further success with their albums Let There Be Rock and Powerage. The 1978 release of Powerage marked the debut of bassist Cliff Williams (who had replaced Mark Evans), and with its harder riffs, followed the blueprint set by Let There Be Rock. The album was the last produced by Harry Vanda and George Young with Bon Scott on vocals and is claimed to be AC/DC's most underrated album. Only one single was released for Powerage — "Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" — and gave AC/DC their highest chart position at the time, reaching #24. An appearance at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow during the Powerage tour was recorded and released as If You Want Blood You've Got It. The band's sixth album, Highway To Hell, was produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange and was released in 1979. It became AC/DC's first LP to break the U.S. top 100, eventually reaching #17, and it propelled AC/DC into the top ranks of hard rock acts.

Death

On 19 February 1980, Bon Scott, 33 at the time, passed out after a night of heavy drinking in a London club called the Music Machine (hosted at the Camden Palace, currently known as the KOKO). He was left to sleep in a car owned by an acquaintance named Alistair Kinnear, at 67 Overhill Road in East Dulwich, South London. The following afternoon, Kinnear found Scott lifeless, and alerted the authorities. Scott was rushed to King's College Hospital in Camberwell, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Pulmonary aspiration of vomit was the cause of Scott's death, and the official cause was listed as "acute alcohol poisoning" and "death by misadventure". Scott was cremated and his ashes were interred by his family in Fremantle, Western Australia, the city to which they had moved when he was six. Inconsistencies in media accounts of Scott's death (incorrect spelling of Alistair Kinnear's first name, amongst others) have been cited in conspiracy theories, which suggest that Scott died of a heroin overdose, or was killed by exhaust fumes redirected into the car, or that Kinnear did not exist. Additionally, Scott was asthmatic, and the temperature was below freezing on the morning of his death. Ozzy Osbourne states in the documentary Don't Blame Me that Scott actually died of hypothermia. The coroner had no such doubts based on the medical facts. Shortly after Scott's death, the remaining members of AC/DC briefly considered quitting. However, it was eventually decided that Scott would have wanted them to continue and, after the blessings of Bon's family, the band hired Brian Johnson as the new vocalist. Angus Young stated in an interview with VH1 that Scott's mother, whom all the band members personally knew, heartily approved of the band continuing, and felt that it was the only way to properly remember her son and their bandmate. Five months after Scott's death, AC/DC recorded Back in Black as a tribute to him with two tracks from the album, "Hells Bells" and "Back in Black", dedicated to his memory. The French rock band Trust wrote their hit song "Ton dernier acte" ("Your last act") in memory of Scott in 1980. Ozzy dedicated "Suicide Solution" to him. This song is known for alleged subliminal messages about suicide, but Ozzy stated it was only a tribute to the singer. Scott's ashes were interred in Fremantle Cemetery and his grave site has become a cultural landmark; more than 28 years after Scott's death, the National Trust of Australia decreed his grave important enough to be included on the list of classified heritage places. It is reportedly the most visited grave in Australia. On 9 July 2006, the plaque was stolen from the site.

By Richard Moody

Monday, 8 February 2010

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Richard Moody's Favorite Childhood TV Shows















1. The Addams Family (1964): The Addamses are a close-knit extended family with decidedly macabre interests. They all have supernatural abilities, although no rationale for their powers is ever explicitly given.The very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams is madly in love with his refined wife Morticia. Along with their two children, Wednesday and Pugsley, Uncle Fester and Grandmama, they reside in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire style mansion, attended by their servants, Lurch, the towering butler, and Thing, a hand that usually appears out of a small wooden box. Occasionally, episodes would feature relatives or other members of their weird subculture, such as Cousin Itt or Morticia's older sister, Ophelia. Much of the humor derives from their "culture clash" with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even though their guests often have evil intentions. They are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their good-natured, if extremely bizarre behavior, since they are under the impression that their tastes are shared by most of society. Contrarily, they view "conventional" tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. For example, Fester once cites a neighboring family's meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are "nothing but riff-raff."The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script. Much of the dialog is his (albeit uncredited). As a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit), has been frequently compared to Groucho Marx. In addition, the series often employed the same type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films. It lampooned politics ("Gomez, The Politician" and "Gomez, The People's Choice"), the legal system ("The Addams Family in Court"), Beatlemania ("Lurch, The Teenage Idol"), and Hollywood ("My Fair Cousin Itt").

2. Bewitched (1964): A young-looking witch named Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) meets and marries a mortal named Darrin Stephens (originally Dick York, later Dick Sargent). While Samantha pledges to forsake her powers and become a typical suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed marriage and frequently interferes in the couple's lives. Episodes often begin with Darrin becoming the victim of a spell, the effects of which wreak havoc with mortals such as his boss, clients, parents, and neighbors. By the epilogue, however, Darrin and Samantha most often embrace and confound the devious elements that failed to separate them. The female witches have names ending with the soft "-a" sound (with one exception, "Elspeth," in season 4 episode 15). Their male counterparts are known as "warlocks." The witches and warlocks are very long lived; while Samantha appears to be in her twenties, many episodes suggest she is actually hundreds of years old. To keep their society secret, witches avoid showing their powers in front of mortals other than Darrin. Nevertheless, the perplexing unexplainable effects of their spells and Samantha's attempts to hide their supernatural origin from mortals drive the plot of most episodes. Witches and warlocks usually use physical gestures along with their magical spells, and sometimes spoken incantations. Most notably, Samantha often "twitches" her nose to perform a spell. Modest but effective special visual effects are accompanied by music to highlight the magic.

By Richard Moody, Tanya Ross & Greg Ross

3. The Muppet Show (1976): Since 1969, Sesame Street had given Jim Henson's creations exposure; however, Henson began to perceive that he was pigeonholed as a children's entertainer. He sought to create a program that could be enjoyed by young and old. Two specials were produced and aired that are considered pilots for The Muppet Show. Neither led to the sale of a prime-time network series. However, the prime-time access rule had just been enacted, which took the 7:30 to 8pm ET slot from the networks and turned it over to their affiliates. CBS suggested it would be interested in Henson's proposal as a syndicated series it could purchase for its owned-and-operated stations, to run one night a week in that time slot.Lew Grade, head of the British commercial station ATV, offered a deal to Henson that would see his show produced at the ATV studios in Elstree, England. ATV would network the show to other ITV stations in the United Kingdom, and its distribution arm, ITC Entertainment, would sell the show in the United States and around the world. Henson put aside his misgivings about syndication and accepted.At first, signing guests was a challenge and producers had to call on their personal contacts. The breakthrough was the appearance of the ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev. His appearance on such an unusual show generated such positive publicity that the series became one of the sought-after productions to appear in. The Muppet Show premiered in 1976 and finally, after five years and 120 episodes, it went off the air in 1981 because of Henson's desire to move on to other projects and the sale of ATV's Elstree studios.

By Scott Moody

Richard, James & Ben Favourite Paul Newman Films















1. The Hustler (1961): Small-time pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson (Paul Newman) travels cross-country with his partner Charlie (Myron McCormick) to challenge the legendary player "Minnesota Fats" (Jackie Gleason). Arriving at Ames, Fats's home pool hall, Eddie declares he will win $10,000 that night. Fats arrives and he and Eddie agree to play for $200 a game. After initially falling behind, Eddie surges back to being $1,000 ahead, and suggests raising the bet to $1,000 a game; Fats agrees. He sends out a runner, Preacher (Stefan Gierasch) to Johnny's Bar, ostensibly for a bottle of whiskey, but really to get professional gambler Bert Gordon (George C. Scott) to the hall. Eddie gets ahead $11,000 and Charlie tries to convince him to quit, but Eddie insists the game will end only when Fats says it is over. Fats agrees to continue after Bert labels Eddie a "loser." After 25 hours and an entire bottle of bourbon, Eddie is ahead over $18,000, but loses it all along with all but $200 of his original stake. At their hotel later, Eddie leaves half of the remaining stake with a sleeping Charlie and leaves. Eddie stashes his belongings at the local bus terminal, where he meets Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie), an alcoholic "college girl" who walks with a limp. He meets her again at a bar. They go back to her place but she refuses to let him in, saying he is "too hungry." Eddie moves into a rooming house and starts hustling for small stakes. He finds Sarah again and this time she takes him in, but with reservations. Charlie finds Eddie at Sarah's and tries to persuade him to go back out on the road. Eddie refuses and Charlie figures out he plans to challenge Fats again. Eddie realizes that Charlie held out his percentage and becomes enraged, believing that with that money he could have rebounded to beat Fats. Eddie dismisses Charlie as a scared old man and tells him to "go lie down and die" by himself. At Johnny's Bar, Eddie finds a poker game where Bert is sitting and Eddie loses $20. After the game, Bert tells Eddie that he has talent as a pool player but no character. He figures that Eddie will need at least $3,000 to challenge Fats again. Bert calls him a "born loser" but nevertheless offers to stake Eddie in return for 75% of his winnings. Eddie refuses. Eddie hustles a local pool shark, who breaks Eddie's thumbs. Sarah cares for him and tells him she loves him, but he cannot say the words. When his thumbs heal, Eddie agrees to Bert's terms, deciding that a "twenty-five percent slice of something big is better than a hundred percent slice of nothing." Bert, Eddie and Sarah travel to Louisville, Kentucky for the Kentucky Derby, where Bert arranges a match for Eddie against a wealthy local socialite named Findley (Murray Hamilton). The game turns out to be billiards, not pool. Eddie loses badly and Bert refuses to keep staking him. Sarah pleads with Eddie to leave with her, saying that the world he is living in and its inhabitants are "perverted, twisted and crippled;" he refuses. Seeing Eddie's anger, Bert agrees to let the match continue at $1,000 a game. Eddie comes back to win $12,000. He collects his $3,000 share and decides to walk back to the hotel. Bert arrives first and subjects Sarah to a humiliating sexual encounter. After, she scrawls PERVERTED, TWISTED and CRIPPLED in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. Eddie arrives back at the hotel to learn that she has killed herself. Eddie returns to challenge Fats again, putting up his entire $3,000 stake on a single game. He wins game after game, beating Fats so badly that Fats is forced to quit. Bert demands a share of Eddie's winnings and threatens Eddie over the issue, but Eddie, invoking the memory of Sarah, shames Bert into giving up his claim. However, Bert warns Eddie never walk into a big-time pool hall again.

2. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969): Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), the leaders of the Hole in the Wall Gang, are planning another bank robbery. As they return to their hideout in Hole-in-the-Wall, they find out that the gang has selected a new leader, Harvey Logan (Ted Cassidy). He challenges Butch to a knife fight, which Butch wins, using a ruse. Although Logan is defeated, Butch quickly embraces Logan's idea to rob the Union Pacific Flyer twice, agreeing with Logan that the second robbery would be unexpected and likely to involve even more money than the first. The first robbery goes very well and the marshal of the next town (Kenneth Mars) cannot manage to raise a posse. Butch and Sundance listen to his attempts from mere yards away, enjoying themselves on the balcony of a nearby brothel. Sundance's lover, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), is introduced; both men vie for her attention as she also goes bike-riding with Butch during a dialogue-free musical interlude, accompanied by the Oscar-winning song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." The second robbery goes wrong. Not only does Butch use too much dynamite to blow the safe, but a second train arrives, which is carrying a posse that has been specially outfitted by E. H. Harriman to hunt Butch and Sundance. The gang flees in multiple directions, with the posse following Butch and Sundance. They try hiding in a brothel but are betrayed. They try riding double on a single horse in the hope that the posse will split up, but that fails. They then try to arrange an amnesty with the help of the friendly Sheriff Bledsoe (Jeff Corey). But he tells them they have no chance of getting one, and that they will be hunted down until they are killed by the posse. Still on the run the next day, they muse about the identities of their pursuers. They fixate on Lord Baltimore, a famous Indian tracker, and Joe Lefors, a tough, renowned lawman, recognized at a distance by his white skimmer, or straw hat. After reaching the summit of a mountain, they find themselves trapped on the edge of a canyon. They decide to jump into the river far below, even though Sundance cannot swim and would prefer to fight. Later they arrive at Etta's house and learn that the posse has been paid to stay together until they kill the two of them. They decide it is time to leave the country and head to Bolivia, a destination Cassidy had spoken about earlier. They head to New York, then board a passenger ship, eventually arriving by train in a small Bolivian village. Sundance already resents the choice. Their first attempted bank robbery stops before it gets off the ground, as they are unable to speak Spanish. Etta teaches them the words they need. Their next robbery is clumsily executed, as Butch still needs his cribsheet. After more robberies, the duo, now known as the Bandidos Yanquis, are sought by the authorities all over Bolivia. In spite of their success, their confidence drops one evening when they see a man wearing a white straw hat on the other side of the street, and fear that Lefors is once again after them. Butch suggests going straight, so as to not attract Lefors's attention. They get their first honest job as payroll guards in a mine, directed by an American named Garris (Strother Martin). However, on their first working day, they are attacked. Garris is killed, and Butch and Sundance are forced to kill the Bolivian robbers, the first time Butch kills anyone. They decide to return to robbery. That evening, Etta decides to leave them, sensing that their days may be numbered. A few days later, Butch and Sundance attack a payroll mule train in the jungle, taking the money and the mule. When they arrive in the nearest town San Vicente, a stable boy recognizes the brand on the mule's backside and alerts the local police. While Butch and Sundance are eating at a local eatery, the police arrive and a climactic gun battle begins scaring away the nearby people. The two of them find shelter in a nearby empty house, but they're soon low on ammunition. Butch makes a run to the mule to fetch the rest of the ammunition while Sundance provides cover fire, but during his return they are both wounded. While tending to their wounds in the house, about 100 soldiers of the Bolivian cavalry arrive and surround the place. The pair, unaware of the cavalry's arrival, discuss their next destination, with Butch pushing the English-speaking and wide-open continent of Australia. Butch tells Sundance that when they get outside and get to their horses to remember one thing. Before he can say it, Butch asks Sundance if he saw Lefors "out there". Sundance says that he did not and Butch replies "For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble." The film ends with a freeze frame sepia tone shot of the pair exiting the house firing their guns, while a voice is heard ordering: "¡Fuego!" (Spanish for "Fire!") accompanied by the sound of dozens of rifles being fired in three consecutive volleys.


3. The Sting (1973): (See Below)

The Players (0 min)

At the opening, after a 1930s-era Universal logo complete with bejeweled circling globe adorned with the text, "A Universal Picture," the movie credits the actors with extracts from the movie, in a style reminiscent of films from the 1930s.Johnny Hooker (Redford) is a small-time con man (a "grifter") from Depression-era Joliet, Illinois. Hooker and his accomplices Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones) and Joe Erie (Jack Kehoe) manage to swipe $11,000 in cash from an unsuspecting victim (a "mark"). In the wake of this apparent success, Luther tells Johnny that he's retiring from his life of crime and moving to Kansas City, Missouri to work in a "mostly legal" business with his brother-in-law. He advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago, who can teach him the art of the 'big con'.Unfortunately for the three con artists, the mark they robbed was a numbers racket courier named Mottola (James Sloyan), transporting the money to Chicago for crime boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder (Charles Durning) confronts Hooker, demanding a $2,000 cut of the $11,000 and revealing Lonnegan's involvement. Realizing that he and his partners are in danger, Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills, having already spent and gambled away all of his share of the money. Hooker goes to warn Coleman, but he arrives too late to save him from Lonnegan's hit men. With nowhere else to turn, Hooker flees to Chicago to ask Gondorff for help in avenging Coleman's murder. Note: The film is divided into seven sections, each introduced with a title card accompanied by music. The titles are used to structure this synopsis.

The Set-Up (24th min)

Gondorff (Paul Newman) is a seemingly broken-down con artist on the run from the FBI, living in the back of an amusement park that doubles as a tavern and brothel. He's initially reluctant to take on Lonnegan because "revenge is for suckers," and also because the New York gangster/banker has a reputation for ruthlessly killing his enemies. Gondorff nevertheless agrees to help Hooker run a sting on Lonnegan, since he's touched when Hooker says that he'll take Lonnegan on anyway "because I don't know enough about killin' to kill him." Since Lonnegan is a shrewd man of few vices ("Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and doesn't chase dames") and won't be taken in by a simple confidence scheme (he is a banker and knows the market), Henry resurrects an elaborate ruse that involves casting Hooker as the inside man in an off-track betting scam known as "the wire." The con men believe that this is ideal, since "the wire" is considered an out-of-date scam, and therefore unlikely to be recognized. A large number of con artists are required to create the atmosphere of the betting parlor; they are recruited from the drinking den of Duke Boudreau (played by Jack Collins), where they congregate.

The Hook (40th min)

First, Gondorff's lover and partner in crime, Billie (Eileen Brennan), picks Lonnegan's wallet aboard the famous 20th Century Limited train en route from New York to Chicago. Gondorff poses as boorish Chicago bookie "Shaw" and buys his way into Lonnegan's private high-stakes poker game on the train with the latter's own money. He bursts into the game late, feigning drunkenness and insulting and taunting the other players. Gondorff, a cardsharp, and brilliant cheater, wins the first few hands and, through "Shaw"'s obnoxious behavior, goads Lonnegan into cheating with a cold deck to "bust that bastard bookie in one play." Anticipating this, Gondorf out-cheats a shocked Lonnegan, who loses $15,000 in a single hand and, without his wallet, cannot immediately pay the debt. Surrounded by a table full of upper-crust (and purportedly legitimate) business magnates, Lonnegan cannot call Gondorff on his cheating, since he only knew Gondorff cheated because he cheated as well.Gondorff tells Lonnegan that he will "send a boy" to his room to collect the money, who turns out to be Hooker, posing as a disgruntled employee of Shaw's, and calling himself "Kelly."

The Tale (67th min)

"Kelly" plays on Lonnegan's desire for revenge by asking for his help to break Shaw and take over his business. Johnny convinces Lonnegan that he has a partner in the Chicago Western Union office (portrayed at a meeting by "Kid Twist," played by Harold Gould), and that he can use this connection to win large sums of money in Shaw's off-track betting (OTB) establishment by past-posting. All of this, including the OTB parlor itself, is really an immense hoax crafted solely for hoodwinking Lonnegan: the supposed play-by-play comes from a surplus tickertape wire, which an accomplice in the back ("J.J.," played by Ray Walston) reads into a microphone to make it sound as if it were live on the radio; meanwhile, Erie manages to prove his own worth as a con man, posing as a regular gambler to help convince Lonnegan of the reality of the place. Lonnegan's "tip" horse wins, of course, and Hooker and Gondorff hope that it convinces Lonnegan to bet a large amount on his next attempt, but Lonnegan is cautious, and "wants to see it again", resulting in "The Shut Out", below, on his second attempt.

The Wire (83rd min)

In addition to luring Lonnegan into this con (as Kelly), and eluding the assassins Lonnegan has sent to kill him (as Hooker), Johnny must continually avoid Snyder, who has followed him to Chicago, looking for either his cut of the original $11,000 or revenge on Hooker for cheating him. Snyder's efforts are derailed when FBI agents make their presence known to him and Hooker. Snyder is brought into a warehouse serving as a front for FBI operations. Special agent Polk is discussing strategy with another agent in the foreground, heard plainly by the film audience though not necessarily by Snyder at first. Snyder observes while special agent Polk coerces Hooker into helping them capture Gondorff (by threatening to arrest and prosecute Luther's widow), but agrees to let the con be completed first. Snyder is to be part of that operation also.

The Shut-Out (93rd min)

Meanwhile, Hooker begins a romance with a local waitress named Loretta. Unbeknownst to Hooker, Lonnegan has grown frustrated with his men's inability to find and kill Hooker, so he arranges for a professional killer, "Salino," to finish the job. (Not having previously met Hooker, Lonnegan is unaware that Hooker and "Kelly" are the same person). A mysterious figure with black leather gloves is soon seen following and observing Hooker. The title of this act comes from "shutting out" Lonnegan from the betting window when he intends to place a bet much bigger than the phony wire set-up can cover, so the window is closed as the race begins, just as Lonnegan is stepping up to bet. His intended horse does "win", however, further convincing him of the effectiveness of the method.

The Sting (112th min)

All the pieces of the elaborate puzzle come together on the morning of the sting that is planned to swindle Lonnegan. Various players are seen making preparations for the day. Then the action begins:‎
• After Hooker spends the night with Loretta, he wakes up alone and begins walking to work. He sees Loretta coming toward him, but not the black-gloved man behind him, aiming a gun in his direction. The bullet hits Loretta in the forehead and kills her instantly. It turns out that the hired killer was "Loretta Salino", who was carrying a concealed gun and preparing to kill Hooker at that moment. The gloved man, hired by Gondorff to protect Hooker, drives him to work. The reason Loretta had not killed him in her room is that the nosy old lady next door had seen Hooker go into her room.
• After getting word from Kid Twist to "place it" on a particular horse, Lonnegan brings a briefcase containing a half-million dollars to bet on the horse to win. Lonnegan/Gondorff argues that the bet is too large, for which Lonnegan calls him a "gutless cheat." Shaw/Gondorff, feigning stung pride, accepts the bet.
• Kid Twist (in his Western Union persona) arrives and quietly asks Lonnegan how it's going. Lonnegan smugly informs him that he has a half-million on the horse to win. Kid Twist feigns shock and tells him he was supposed to bet on the horse to "place", as it's going to finish second. The panicked Lonnegan rushes to the window and demands his money back from mild-mannered con man "Fast Eddie" Niles (played by John Heffernan), who argues that, as the race has (supposedly) begun, it is against the rules.
• Just then the FBI and Snyder burst in and order everyone to freeze. In the noise and the chaos, Polk steps up to Shaw/Gondorff and quietly (compared with the ambient noise in the room) says, "Hello, Henry — it's been a long time."
• Polk then gestures to Hooker and says, "You can go," revealing to all that Hooker had betrayed Gondorff to the FBI. Hooker starts walking toward the door, but Gondorff pulls a gun and shoots him in the back; Polk then shoots Gondorff in the gut and orders Snyder to get Lonnegan out of there. Lonnegan realizes that, for the sake of his reputation, he can't be involved in this incident, but he's conflicted, because he's left a half-million dollars inside, as he tries to explain to Snyder while the detective whisks him away.
• With Lonnegan and Snyder safely away, Polk leans over Hooker's body and says, "He's gone!" Hooker opens his eyes and gets up, as does Gondorff, to the cheers and laughter of the rest of the group. Not only have Lonnegan and Snyder been "stung", so has the film audience. Gondorff expresses as much as "Polk" helps him up: "Nice con, Hickey. I thought you were Feds myself, when you first came in." Hooker and Gondorff then proceed to nonchalantly walk out of the alley way, as the rest of the players and members of the Sting strip the room of its contents before Snyder and/or Lonnegan and his men can come back to retrieve the money.
• As Hooker leaves, Gondorff offers him his share of the take. Hooker refuses, saying "Na, I'd only blow it".

4. The Color of Money (1986): In the book version of the sequel, Felson is no longer a professional pool player, but now owns a pool hall. He takes up a cue again to go on tour versus Minnesota Fats -- the fictional character from The Hustler, not the real-life Rudolph "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone -- for a cable TV sports show. Eddie finds he must cope with becoming skilled at the now-prevalent game of nine-ball, as opposed to straight pool, which he had mastered decades earlier. While losing to Fats, he regains some of his lost competitiveness and pride. In the film version, Felson is a liquor salesman. He misses the action and goes back on the road as a stakehorse for a skilled but unfocused protégé, Vincent, travelling with the latter's manipulative girlfriend, Carmen. Eddie teaches them how to hustle significant amounts of money. But he also becomes increasingly frustrated with them and with himself, until an explosive falling-out results in a parting of the ways. Eddie resumes competitive play himself, first hustling on "the road" and later in the professional tournament circuit, eventually coming head-to-head across the table with the now-successful (and far more treacherous) Vincent. Eddie wins their match, only to find out that Vincent lost deliberately, having had money riding against himself. Vincent gives Eddie $8,000 as a cut from the bet. Eddie procedes to forfeit his next match and give the money back to Vincent. He requests a private rematch, but states that if he doesn't beat Vincent now, he will in the future because, after all, "I'm back." Subplots involve antagonism with a cocaine-abusing pool hustler named Julian; an up-and-down romance Eddie is having with a bar owner, Janelle, and sexual tension between Carmen and Eddie. Only minor references are made to the original movie (a returned character, Eddie's nickname, his formerly being shut out of the pool-hustling sphere, his preferred brand of whiskey, J.T.S. Brown, etc.), and Fats is not mentioned in the story.

By Richard Moody, James Conlon & Ben Lindley

Richard Moody's Mixture Of Favorite Movies












1. The Emperor’s New Groove (2000): Kuzco (David Spade) is the self-centered teenaged emperor of a mountainous jungle nation. One day, he summons Pacha (John Goodman), the headman of a nearby village, to inform him that he is building his summer home, Kuzcotopia, on the site of Pacha's home. Pacha attempts to protest, and is dismissed. Kuzco's ancient, power-hungry advisor Yzma (Eartha Kitt) and her easily-distracted lackey Kronk (Patrick Warburton) then attempt to poison Kuzco so that she can take control of the empire. However, the attempt is flawed, as the supposed poison turns out to be a potion which turns Kuzco into a llama. After knocking Kuzco unconscious, Yzma orders Kronk to dispose of him, but conscience-stricken Kronk loses the sack holding Kuzco. Kuzco ends up in Pacha's village, and after discovering that he has been changed, demands that Pacha help him return to the palace. Rebuffed, Kuzco attempts to return on his own and ends up surrounded by a pack of jaguars, only to be saved when Pacha has a change of heart. Pacha offers a deal to Kuzco—that he will help Kuzco if Kuzco will build his summer home elsewhere; Kuzco pretends to agree but only truly begins to change after the pair of them must work together to survive the collapse of a rope bridge. Yzma assumes command of the nation, but when Kronk reveals he never killed Kuzco, the two search the jungle for him. Kuzco, Pacha, Yzma, and Kronk finally arrive at the same roadside diner, where Kuzco is glad to see Yzma until he overhears that she is out to kill him. He and Pacha realize the only way to prevent this is to return to Yzma's laboratory and find a potion to return Kuzco to normal. A race between Kuzco, Pacha, Yzma and Kronk begins, with the latter pairing finally getting hit by lightning and falling into a chasm. Kuzco and Pacha arrive at the laboratory but find, inexplicably, that their pursuers somehow got there first. Kronk changes sides after a vicious tongue-lashing from Yzma, and gets dropped down a trapdoor. Yzma summons the palace guards, forcing Kuzco and Pacha to grab all of the transformation potions they can and flee. After trying several formulas that convert Kuzco to other animals, and then back to a llama, they escape the guards (but not Yzma) and find they are down to only two vials. Yzma accidentally steps on one of the two, turning herself into a tiny kitten. She still almost manages to obtain the antidote, but is thwarted by the sudden reappearance of Kronk. Kuzco becomes human again and sets out to redeem himself, building Kuzcotopia on the hill next to Pacha's home. Meanwhile, outdoorsman Kronk becomes a scout leader, with kitten-Yzma forced to be a member of the troop

2. Dinosaur (2000): The film revolves around the life of an Iguanodon named Aladar who is taken from his nest as an egg and after a long and precarious flight via a Pteranodon, his egg lands on Lemur Island where he is adopted by the family of lemurs; consisting of Plio, her father Yar, and her son, Zini. Years on, Plio has had a daughter named Suri and the family takes part in mating season which Zini fails to accomplish and goes without a mate. Moments after the mating season ends, a huge meteorite destroys the island and leaves only Aladar and his closest family members alive. The family move on and come across a herd of various dinosaurs, led by igunandon Kron and his lieutenant Bruton. Other herd members include elderly Brachiosaurus Baylene, Styracosaurus Eema, dog-like Ankylosaurus Url, and Kron's younger sister Neera.
Aladar and the lemurs accompany the herd across a desert to reach a nearby breeding ground the herd has visited before. However, they are stalked by Velociraptors and later Carnotaurus, referred to as "Carnotaurs" in the film. The herd stops at a lake that appears to be dried up, but the water is revealed to be underground, by Aladar hearing it underneath because he had been trying to get Baylene and Eema across. Carnotaurs attack, sending the herd into a panicked flurry. Aladar, the lemurs, Eema, Baylene, Url and Bruton are all left behind and regroup in a series of caves. The Carnotaurs attack them, but Bruton sacrifices himself to allow the others to flee, one of the Carnotaurs killed in the process. The group flee to the back of the caverns, then smash down a wall to reveal a path straight into the breeding ground. Eema spots that the usual entrance has been blocked off, prompting Aladar to find Kron and the rest of the herd. Kron, Neera and the herd are on the other side of the blocked off entrance, Kron ordering that the herd climb impossibly over the wall. Aladar arrives and suggests the route through the caves due to a sheer drop on the other side that would kill the herd, which Kron objects to and accuses Aladar of stealing his role as leader. The two fight until Neera steps in and defends Aladar, deciding to go with him and the herd through his route. The surviving Carnotaur appears, causing the herd to go into a panic. Aladar convinces the herd that the only way they can survive is by standing together. They fend off the Carnotaur and get past it, but the Carnotaur then notices Kron, who had refused to follow Aladar, and decided he would climb the wall to get to the nesting grounds. The Carnotaur begins to chase Kron down. Neera notices this, and rushes to try to aid her brother, soon followed by Aladar. In the fight that ensues, Kron is fatally wounded by the Carnotaur. Aladar forces the Carnotaur onto a cliff edge that collapses, sending it plummeting to its death. Neera comes to Kron but it is too late. The herd reaches the breeding ground, led by Aladar. Aladar and Neera have children as well as the rest of the herd, and the lemurs find more of their kind.

3. Bedazzled (2000): Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser) is a geeky and overeager young man working a dead-end job in a San Francisco call-center. He has no real friends, other than his co-workers who manipulate him for their own amusement, knowing he'll do anything for acceptance. He has a crush on his colleague, Alison Gardner (Frances O'Connor), but lacks the courage to ask her out. After Elliot is ditched at a bar while trying to talk to Alison, he says that he would give anything for Alison to be with him. Satan (Elizabeth Hurley), in the form of a beautiful woman, hears this wish and offers Elliot a contract. She will give Elliot seven wishes, and in return Elliot will give her his soul. As might be expected of a bargain with Satan, there is a catch to the deal. No matter what Elliot asks for himself, Satan grants each of his wishes, but each time also giving him something he didn't ask for.

• As a test wish, he wishes for a McDonalds Big Mac and a Coke. Satan takes him to McDonalds and places the order on his behalf. Elliot has to pay for it, because as the saying goes, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." After taking Elliott to her nightclub in Oakland in her black Lamborghini Diablo, Satan gets Elliott to sign her substantial contract, and delivers his further wishes:
• As his first wish, he wishes to be rich and powerful, with Alison as his wife. Satan makes him a Colombian Drug Lord whose wife despises him and is having an affair with her language tutor Raoul who was secretly working with Elliot's business partners to take Elliot's place in business. Satan points out that he never wished for Alison to be in love with him.
• Secondly, he wishes to be emotionally sensitive, but Satan deliberately makes him so sensitive he spends much of his time crying at how beautiful the world is. Alison then contradicts herself and says she wants to be with a man who is strong and shallow and soon leaves Elliot for another man which is strong, rude and completely different from romantic and emotionally sensitive Elliot.
• For the third wish, wishes to be a superstar athlete who would be a magnet for girls. Satan makes him an unstoppable seven-foot-plus tall basketball star, but also gives him an extremely small penis and equally low IQ (as evidenced by a limited vocabulary), which causes Alison to lose interest in him.
• As his fourth wish, he wishes to be intelligent, witty and well-endowed. Satan grants this by making him a famous writer with whom Alison immediately falls in love. When they arrive to Elliot's place to make love it is revealed that Elliot is actually gay, living with a male partner.
• Lastly, he wishes to be President of the United States to try to do the world some good. Satan, however, makes him Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination.

In each wish, his co-workers are his nemeses, thwarting each one.

After each wish is renounced (by dialing 666 on a pager), Elliot returns for a meeting with Satan in which she blames him for not being specific enough in his desires and prompts him to try again. These meetings take place in a variety of locations, with Satan each time in a different role, in which she carries out a variety of everyday evil acts - dismissing a class full of students from their lesson without any homework other than to remember not to take any interest in being educated, swapping the medication on a hospital trolley for candy (although she explains that those were placebos), forcing parking meters to expire, and writing tickets for parked cars. The roles she plays (teacher, nurse, police officer, cheerleader) can be viewed as objects of typical male sexual fantasies. In one of the deleted scenes she also wears a French maid outfit. Eventually he goes back to work, taking time to think on what would be best to do with the two last wishes. Appearing to him once more, Satan points out that on their first meeting he asked for a Big Mac and Coke, although she explicitly stated earlier on that it was a mere test wish and did not count. This counts against his total, leaving just one wish remaining. Elliot finally loses patience with Satan and storms out of his office. He visits a church looking for God's help, where he briefly confesses to a priest who seems sympathetic. However the priest, upon being asked whether he thinks asking Satan for a Big Mac and Coke counts as a wish, has Elliot arrested. The sergeant decides to book him, and Satan, now dressed as a police officer, throws him in a cell, telling him that she really does like him, and it wouldn't hurt to have her as a friend. In prison, Elliot's cellmate (Gabriel Casseus, as an angel) tells him that he cannot possibly sell his soul as it belongs to God, "that universal spirit that animates and binds all things in existence" and although Satan may try to confuse him, in the end he will realise who he truly is, and what his purpose is. Mistakes are to be expected, but with an open heart and mind, eventually he'll get it right. Elliot questions the man as to his identity, but the response is simply "a really good friend". Elliot returns to Satan and asks her to cancel their contract. When Satan refuses, Elliot states that he will not use up his final wish. Satan angrily teleports both Elliot and herself to her domain, Hell, where she transforms first into a black horned monster, then into an enormous giantess, who is much bigger than the terrified Elliot in comparison. When Satan pushes him to make a final wish, Elliot blurts out that he wishes that Alison could have a happy life. Satan heavily sighs and Elliot falls into the depths of Hell. Elliot wakes up on a marble staircase, wondering if it is Heaven. Satan tells him that it is merely a courthouse and that, by the terms of his contract, a selfless wish voids the entire deal, so he gets to keep his soul. Before they part ways Elliott admits that despite her manipulation of him he has come to like Satan and regards her as a best friend, something she does not object to. She simply says that Heaven and Hell can be found on Earth; it is up to humans to choose. Elliot finally approaches Alison directly and asks her out, only to find that she is already dating somebody. He accepts this with good grace and continues with his life, but with a better understanding of who he is and renewed confidence. Later he is confronted by Bob, one of his "friends" at the office, who makes fun of his former attempts to be cool. Elliot finally loses his temper and grabs Bob by the shirt, but lets him go, simply saying "Nice talking to you." A threatening look sends his other coworkers scurrying. At home, he soon meets a new neighbor, Nicole Delarusso, with a striking resemblance to Alison personality traits and dressing styles similar to his. He offers to help her unpack and they presumably begin a relationship (though it is hinted that this is Satan's doing). While the two are walking along the boulevard, Satan and the cellmate, both dressed in white, are seen playing a friendly game of chess (Satan, true to form, tries to change the pieces while the man watches Elliot and Nicole), confirming some kind of bond between the two. The movie closes to the lyrics of "Change Your Mind" by Sister Hazel, and reveals that Elliot 'drinks from the carton', and Nicole 'hogs the covers'.

4. The Flintsones: Viva Rock Vegas (2000): Fred Flintstone (Mark Addy) and Barney Rubble (Baldwin) share a trailer while trying (unsuccessfully) to find girlfriends. They meet a little green alien called the Great Gazoo, who was exiled to Earth by his species in order to study the human mating and reproduction cycle (his own people reproduce asexually). Gazoo, whom only Fred and Barney can see, decides to follow Fred and Barney to gather information, even though his superior knowledge and personality annoys them. Wilma, meanwhile, is living in a mansion with her wealthy parents. Her control-freak mother, Pearl, thinks that her daughter's wish to do common things such as bowling are silly and wants her to marry rich smooth casino-owner Chip Rockfeller. After a fight with her mother, Wilma angrily storms out of the house and goes to a Bronto Burger King in Bedrock, where she is waited on by Betty. Betty mistakenly thinks that Wilma is a "caveless" person and offers to share her apartment with her. Wilma is also given a job at the restaurant. When Fred and Barney go to the restaurant for dinner, they are smitten with the girls and manage to talk them into going to a carnival with them. Fred goes with Betty and Barney goes with Wilma, but they later exchange girls. Wilma later takes Fred, Barney, and Betty to her father's birthday party, where Fred intends on proposing to Wilma. Once they get there, they are all shocked to find out that Wilma comes from a very wealthy family, when they all thought that she was poor, and Fred changes his mind about proposing to her after he meets Chip and realizes what he is up against. Fred and Barney humiliate themselves and Wilma at the dinner, but Wilma tells everyone that she is proud to be friends with them and they walk out of the mansion. Chip, however, devises a plan to get Wilma back by inviting the foursome to stay at his resort in Rock Vegas, believing that Fred will become caught up in gambling and Wilma will leave him. The four of them enjoy the start of their trip. Chip gives them a huge comfortable suite at his resort, and access to the pool, and spa treatment for Wilma and Betty. Fred decides to start gambling, but never bets any high amount. Chip and his girlfriend Roxie are visited by two men who reveal that Chip owes their boss a lot of money. Chip tells them that he will soon be married to Wilma and will use her family's money to pay off his debt, and Gazoo witnesses the entire conversation. Chip then invites Fred to play poker with the high rollers, and make more money, but Barney tries to prevent Fred from agreeing. Chip then tells Barney about the All-You-Can Eat buffet, and gets Roxie to seduce him into escorting her there. Fred gets caught up in gambling that he forgets that he and Barney were supposed to meet Wilma and Betty for dinner. While looking for Barney, Betty sees him wiping cream off of Roxie's chest and mistakenly believes he is touching her breast. She begins crying by a fountain and is approached by Mick Jagged, who is attracted to her. She tells him that her boyfriend was cheating on her and he comforts her, then invites her to go out on a date with him, which she accepts. Fred and Wilma get into an argument over Fred's obsession with gambling and Wilma breaks up with him. Chip then arranges to have Fred lose all of the money he won so he will be left with nothing. Wilma is walking around the resort and runs into Chip and she tells him about her breakup with Fred. He then tells her that there have been burglaries around the hotel and keeps her pearls in a safe. Fred, who has lost all his money, goes to Chip for help, and Chip puts Wilma's pearls in Fred's pocket. He then announces to the entire resort that someone has stolen the pearls, and tells Fred to empty his pockets, and shows all of the guests that Fred has the pearls. Security comes to arrest Fred and Barney as well when he tries to help Fred. Wilma and Chip get back together. While in prison, Fred and Barney are visited by Gazoo, who tells them about Chip's plan to use Wilma's wealth to pay his debt. Then once they think that they can not stop him, they realize that Barney can slip through the bars and he steals the guard's keys and unlocks the cell. The two disguise themselves as dancers and accidentally run into Jagged's dressing room and see Betty. Barney tells Betty he loves her, and they get back together. Chip proposes to Wilma just as Jagged comes on stage to sing, but once he turns around, it is revealed to be Fred. He sings to Wilma, and she realizes that she still loves him. He comes off stage and confesses his love for her and proposes to her. She rejects Chip and agrees to marry Fred. Fred and Wilma get married in the Rock Vegas Chapel of Love. Mick Jagged sings "Viva Rock Vegas" at a party. Wilma throws back her bouquet of flowers and Betty catches it and looks at Barney with a smile on her face and they kiss.

5. The Adventures Of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000): In 1964 saw the cancellation of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and life became rather miserable and melancholy for Rocky (voiced by June Foray) and Bullwinkle (voiced by Keith Scott). Rocky lost his ability to fly, their home Frostbite Falls was thrown into a deforestation of environmental issues and the two received rather cheap paychecks for re-runs of their old show. Even the show's old narrator (voiced by Keith Scott) has been forced to move in with his mother (voiced by June Foray) where he narrates the events of his own life. However, for the old villains of the show, Fearless Leader, Boris Badenov (both voiced by Keith Scott) and Natasha Fatale (voiced by June Foray), things seem to be looking up for them. After the Iron Curtain literally falls on them, and their country of Pottsylvania is freed from their dictatorship, the villains dig underground, popping up in a television set in Phoney Picture Studios in Los Angeles where they goad an executive Minnie Mogel (Janeane Garofalo) into producing the new Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie. She signs a contract and pulls it out of the television, bringing the villains with it who become live action characters. Six months on, FBI Director Cappy Von Trapment (Randy Quaid) and bungling but beautiful agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) visit President Signoff (James Rebhorn) at the White House, showing him that every single block of American cable programming has been bought by Fearless Leader (portrayed by Robert De Niro) and formed into a single network called RBTV - or Really Bad Television. Cappy explains that the television programmes will be so terrible, that they can "zombify" the entire country and make them vote Fearless Leader as the new President of the United States. Cappy sends Karen to summon Rocky and Bullwinkle from the cartoon world to save the country. She succeeds using a special green lighthouse, which she uses to literally greenlight them, summoning Rocky, Bullwinkle and the unseen Narrator to the lighthouse, Rocky and Bullwinkle becoming CGI characters, and the Narrator somehow turns invisible (seeing as how he is not even seen when they spin inside the bulb of the lighthouse). The trio head out across the country to save the day, but Fearless Leader hears of their return from a literal mole in the White House and he sends Boris and Natasha (portrayed by Jason Alexander and Rene Russo) to stop them. Armed with a truck of typical cartoon weaponry and a laptop called the CDI (Computer Degenerating Imagery) that can destroy cartoon characters, Boris and Natasha try to defeat the heroes with a safe, sticks of dynamite and a cannon, but the heroes steal their truck. Luckily, the villains locate a helicopter and secretly follow the heroes. Natasha, impersonating Karen, warns the state troopers of Oklahoma of their stolen truck. A trooper (John Goodman) arrests Karen and takes her to a woman's prison. Rocky and Bullwinkle continue on their own. Both are picked up by Martin (Kel Mitchell) and Lewis (Kenan Thompson), two students at Wossamotta U., Bullwinkle's old university where he was a football player. Bullwinkle heads to his old university to receive an "Honorary Mooster's Degree" after Boris and Natasha sent the university's chairman a money paycheque in Bullwinkle's name. Rocky spots Boris on a recently built water tower trying to kill Bullwinkle using the CDI, but the squirrel's old flying ability kicks in and he saves Bullwinkle's life. The crowd gathered to protest against Bullwinkle's degree are distracted by Rocky's heroics and applauds, although Bullwinkle (who has been gasbagging this whole time) mistakes them for liking his speech. The two leave Wossamotta U. using Martin and Lewis' convertible. Karen escapes from jail by tricking a lovestruck Swedish prison guard named Ole (Rod Biermann), leaving him waiting for her at a cinema while she drives off in his pickup truck. Boris and Natasha pursue Rocky and Bullwinkle through the city streets of Chicago. Boris and Natasha accidentally degenerating their helicopter with the CDI causing Boris and Natasha to land on a travelling mattress salesman (Billy Crystal). However, they rent a car from the Cheap-O Rent A Car Company. Rocky, Bullwinkle and Karen coincidentally are reunited only to be arrested by a bunch of policemen and put on trial with Judge Cameo (Whoopi Goldberg) presiding. Bullwinkle acts the lawyer which doesn't go well for Karen. Upon recognizing Rocky and Bullwinkle when she puts on her glasses, Judge Cameo freaks out and dismisses the case claiming to the prosecutor that "celebrities are above the law." Later, the trio of heroes buy an old bi-plane from Old Jeb (Jonathan Winters) and head back to New York, Boris and Natasha's attempts to stop them are thwarted by the car company employees. The two consider giving up their job and think about getting married and having children. Fearless Leader calls them and they lie that they killed Rocky and Bullwinkle. The bi-plane the heroes are in begins to lose altitude due to too much weight. Rocky airlifts Karen to New York while Bullwinkle flies the bi-plane to Washington DC to address Signoff about the deforestation of Frostbite Falls. Rocky and Karen break into the RBTV headquarters but are captured when they try to stop Fearless Leader. They are soon turned into vegetables, something of which was done to three other FBI agents (portrayed by Mark Holton, Doug Jones, and Jane Edith Wilson) previously. Meanwhile at the White House Bullwinkle, whom is revealed that his stupidity is immune to RBTV's zombificaton, is e-mailed to the RBTV building by Cappy at the White House. As Fearless Leader broadcasts to the American public to try and make himself President, pandemonium breaks around him as Bullwinkle pops out of a computer and disrupts the signal of the Quality Control, the device that is zombifying the American public. Rocky and Karen are restored to normal and fight the villains, defeating Boris and Natasha easily while Bullwinkle charges upon Fearless Leader, defeating him too. Bullwinkle broadcasts to the country, asking them to vote for whoever they want and for the winning candidate to replant the trees in Frostbite Falls. Karen destroys the Quality Control, freeing the country. Bullwinkle messes with the CDI to send thanks to Cappy, zapping the villains, sending them to the Internet forever. In the end, President Signoff wins the election, RBTV becomes Rocky and Bullwinke Television, Karen goes out with Ole to the cinema where they watch the Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie produced by Minnie Mogul. The Narrator is reunited with his mother, and Rocky and Bullwinkle's home has been restored. Bullwinkle concludes the film, remembering how they went to "New York to meet President Washington".

By Richard Moody & Tanya Ross

1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005): Charlie Bucket is a poor boy who lives near the Wonka Candy Company. The company's owner, Willy Wonka, has for long closed access to his factory due to problems concerning industrial espionage that led him to fire all his employees, among them Charlie's Grandpa Joe. One day, Wonka informs of a contest, in which Golden Tickets have been placed in five random Wonka Bars worldwide, and the winners will be given a full tour of the factory as well as a lifetime supply of chocolate, while one ticket holder will be given a special prize at the end of the tour. Wonka's sales subsequently skyrocket, and the first four tickets are found fairly quickly. The recipients are Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, a very spoiled English girl; Violet Beauregarde, a competitive gum chewer, and Mike Teavee, an arrogant television and video game addict. Charlie tries twice to find a ticket, but both bars come empty. After overhearing that the final ticket was found in Russia, Charlie finds a ten-dollar note, and purchases a Wonka Bar at a newsstand. At the exact moment it was revealed that the Russian ticket was forged, Charlie discovers the real fifth ticket inside the wrapper. Charlie first considers an offer of $500 for the ticket, but decides to keep it, and bring Grandpa Joe to accompany him on the factory tour. Charlie and the other ticket holders are greeted by Wonka outside the factory, who then leads them into the facility. During the tour, each of the bad children disobey Wonka's orders after being tempted by something related to their individual character flaws, and suffer various consequences: Augustus is sucked up a chocolate extraction pipe after falling into a chocolate river from which he was drinking, Violet is turned into an oversized blueberry after chewing unstable three-course-meal gum, Veruca is pushed into a garbage chute by worker squirrels after she tries to take one as a pet, and Mike is shrunk with a teleporter that he uses on himself. Wonka's employees, the Oompa-Loompas sing a song of morality after each elimination. The children later leave the factory with an exaggerated characteristic or deformity related to their demise – Augustus covered in chocolate, Violet blue-colored, Veruca covered in garbage and Mike overstretched. Wonka then invites Charlie to come live and work in the factory with him, and reveals that the purpose of the Golden Tickets and the tour was to make the "least rotten" child the heir of the factory itself. The only catch is that Charlie must leave his family behind, because Wonka believes family is a hindrance while a chocolatier needed creative freedom – a philosophy Wonka developed due to his dentist father, Dr. Wilbur Wonka, denying his son candy because of the potential risk to his teeth. After sneaking over a piece of candy, Wonka was instantly hooked, and ran away to follow his dreams. As his family is the most important thing in his life, Charlie refuses Wonka's offer. Charlie and his family are living contently a while later, however Wonka is too depressed to make candy the way he used to, and turns to Charlie for advice. Charlie decides to help Wonka confront and reconcile with his estranged father; Wonka finally realizes the value of family, while his father learns to accept his son for who he is, and not what he does. In the end, Charlie has the chocolate factory, and Wonka has patched up with his family.

2. Alice In Wonderland (2010): A retelling of Lewis Carroll's original story, the movie has Alice Kingsley, now 19, attending a party at a Victorian estate, only to find she is about to be proposed to marriage by a rich suitor in front of hundreds of snooty society types. She runs off, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited many years before, though she doesn't remember it. The White Rabbit claims to have come back for Alice because she is the only one who can slay the Jabberwock, the beast who guards the Red Queen's empire. Alice remains completely unaware of why she is in Wonderland, and is confused about the fact that she had once visited Wonderland years before. She then embarks — assuming both large and small sizes — on an adventure of self discovery and to save Wonderland from the Red Queen's reign of terror with the help of her Wonderland friends.


By Richard Moody & Bill Ross


1. Wallace & Gromit in the Curse Of The Were-rabbit (2005): Tottington Hall's annual Giant Vegetable Competition is approaching. The winner of the competition will win the Golden Carrot Award. All are eager to protect their vegetables from damage and thievery by rabbits until the contest, and Wallace and Gromit are cashing in by running a vegetable security and humane pest control business, "Anti-Pesto". However, they are faced with two problems: the first is Wallace's growing weight and the second is inadequate space for the captured rabbits. Wallace comes up with an idea — use his Mind Manipulation-O-Matic machine to brainwash the rabbits, allowing them to run freely without harming everyone's gardens. While performing the operation, he kicks the switch and something goes terribly wrong, leaving them with a semi-intelligent rabbit who (in a slow metamorphosis) starts to behave like Wallace (down to his fondness for cheese) and whom Wallace names "Hutch". Soon the town is threatened by the "Were-Rabbit", a giant rabbit-like monster which eats vegetables of any size. During a chaotic yet hilarious town meeting, Anti-Pesto enters into a rivalry with Lord Victor Quartermaine to capture the Were-Rabbit and to win Lady Tottington's heart. After the first night of the Were-Rabbit, the townsfolk start to argue about what to do. After a hectic night-time chase, Gromit discovers that the Were-Rabbit (whom he assumed was Hutch at first) is, in fact, Wallace, suffering from the effects of the accident with the Mind Manipulation-O-Matic having caused him and Hutch to each take on aspects of the other; Hutch even displays Wallace's knack for inventions and regularly repeats some of Wallace's old phrases. Victor corners Wallace during the night, jealous of Lady Tottington's growing fondness for him because of his humane practice of pest control (whereas Victor thinks it's more effective to shoot and kill them). But then Wallace falls into the path of moonlight and transforms. Victor, having identified the Were-Rabbit, goes to Reverend Clement Hedges and gains access to "24-carrot" gold bullets - supposedly, the only things capable of killing a Were-Rabbit. During the final showdown, Victor and his dog Philip capture Gromit, who subsequently escapes and decides to make the ultimate sacrifice by using the marrow he had been growing for the competition as bait for Wallace who, in his rabbit form, has burst in upon the vegetable contest, causing panic. Victor tries to shoot what is apparently the monster, but Gromit is one step ahead of him, using a rabbit costume he and Wallace had created prior to the discovery of the Were-Rabbit's true nature as a trap. Unfortunately, the marrow cannot keep Wallace's attention as Victor tries to take the golden carrot award from a distressed Lady Tottington (The only vaguely bullet-like object left to him after he exhausted the gold bullets provided by the vicar). Wallace ascends to the rooftops, holding a screaming Lady Tottington in his hand. Discovering his identity, she promises to protect him, only to be interrupted by Victor. Meanwhile, in a mid-air dogfight in toy aeroplanes, Philip chases after Gromit. Gromit forces his foe out of the air in a fiery crash and explosion - but Philip manages to hold on to Gromit's plane and the two grapple with each other. The fight rages on and in the end, Gromit releases Philip, ironically, through the bomb doors and into a bouncy castle. On the roof of Tottington Hall, Gromit's toy biplane circles Wallace, who clings onto the flagpole at the top of the building for dear life. Victor, wielding the Golden Carrot trophy inside a blunderbuss he finds at an antiques table at the fair, tries one last time to shoot Wallace, but Wallace is saved by Gromit, who grabs onto a rope from a flagpole and swings his plane into the path of the improvised bullet. The enraged Victor throws down the blunderbuss and stamps on it screaming out "Potty poo!" Unfortunately, since it is a toy plane not intended for flying, when Gromit accidentally lets go of the rope, the plane begins to descend rapidly. Wallace jumps from the flagpole and catches the plane, thereby breaking Gromit's fall into the cheese tent below. Victor gloats, but is knocked unconscious by Lady Tottington, using a giant carrot. He falls into the tent too, where Wallace lies unconscious and seemingly dying of his injuries. To protect Wallace from the angry mob outside, Gromit dresses Victor up as the monster (using a marionette he used earlier as a lure for the Were-Rabbit), and throws him out of the tent. Philip, believing Victor to be the beast, bites his master, and the angry mob chases Victor away. Gromit and Tottington tend to Wallace who, seconds later, breathes his last and morphs back into his human form. Gromit, the rabbits, and Lady Tottington are saddened by their loss, but Gromit is able to revive Wallace with a slice of Stinking Bishop cheese. Gromit, for his bravery and his "brave and splendid marrow", was awarded the (now somewhat battered) competition trophy, and Lady Tottington turns Tottington Hall into a wildlife refuge where all the rabbits, including Hutch, can live in peace.


By Richard Moody, Greg Ross & Tanya Ross