In 1974 Roger Moore returned to star in his second James Bond film. It would turn out to be the most expensive and luxury of his era, because what it lacked in expensive luxury cat masterminds, it made up for by having one of the best, most memorable, most iconic baddys of the whole film series - so iconic, in fact, that the whole film is named after him: The Manny with the Golden Gun.
The pre-titles sequence introduces us to the main baddy of the film, Francisco Scaramanga, as played by Christopher "Scaramanga" Lee, along with his two henchmannys Nick Nack (Hervé "Nick Nack" Villechaize) and Andrea (Maud "Octopussy" Adams). This is all in the first scene, so the film obviously has No Time To Waste. We see that Scaramanga has only three nipples instead of the normal amount, which is his second most distinguishing feature after being Christopher Lee.
A manny comes to try to kill Scaramanga on his private island in his private funhouse. Despite the assassin getting the drop on Scaramanga when he has no gun, Scaramanga uses the layout of the funhouse to confuse and outwit his opponent until he can get to his golden gun and shoot him.
James Bond does not appear until after the titles, but his presence is felt both from the statue of Bond that Scaramanga keeps in his funhouse, as well as a cowboy that looks like Roger Moore in a moustache.
The theme song is famously the most innuendo-laden of all Bond songs, but it can't be denied that it is a banger. So to speak. Mew.
Bond properly enters the story right after the titles to get a briefing from M. Instead of being given a mission, he is taken off his current mission because M thinks Scaramanga is after Bond (not in that way, naughty cats!) but Bond, knowing that Scaramanga is "the man with the golden gun" (clang!) who charges "a million dollars" a kill (he must have been listening to the theme song, lol) asks who would pay that much to have him killed.
"Jealous husbands; outraged chefs; humiliated tailors. The list is endless."
quips M. Bond and M agree that to stop Scaramanga from killing Bond, Bond will have to find and kill Scaramanga first.
Bond goes to the last place Scaramanga was thought to be, Beiruit, to look for a clue. He finds a squashed up golden bullet (Scaramanga's trademark) in the belly of a belly dancer, and then he accidentally noms it when some mannys come to have a fight with him for no readily apparent reason other than Bond hasn't been in a fight yet.
Q and his friend Colthorpe (James Cossins, who was Count Hoyos in Fall of Eagles the same year as this film was made) analyse the bullet (once Bond has pooed it out again, lol) to find out where it came from, sending Bond off to look for the next clue in Macau.
There Bond meets the manny who made the bullet, Lazar. He is pleased to meet Bond, at least until Bond starts asking him pointed questions about Scaramanga. This leads Bond to Andrea, collecting the next lot of gold bullets for Scaramanga, so he follows her to Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong he meets Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) who is assigned to be his komedy sidekick for the rest of the film. She shows some early signs of competence by tracing Andrea to her hotel, but is mostly here to be clumsy and get in Bond's way.
Bond goes into the hotel and twists Andrea's arm to get some information from her - literally. While not out of character for Bond to do this, it seems strange to see Roger Moore's version do it since he normally downplayed that side of the role. This makes it feel gratuitously aggressive and out of character for him, even though it isn't really.
With Andrea's information Bond goes looking for Scaramanga, but misses him. He sees Nick Nack instead, but doesn't recognise his importance since he is only looking for Scaramanga. Meanwhile Scaramanga doesn't miss when he shoots a manny. Bond pulls his gun out when he hears the shot but this only gets him arrested. Bond gets suspicious that the policemanny isn't a real policemanny, but don't worry - it isn't an Auton, it's just another example of Bond getting captured by somebody who then turns out to be on his side.
He is taken to meet M and Q on board a sunken ship that is really a base for British Intelligence, who have finally decided to get in on having their own secret lair - why should the baddys have all the fun, mew? The fake policemanny is really Lieutenant Hip, who along with M and Q give Bond the exposition about what has been going on in another plot that has now coincided with Bond's plot - the manny Scaramanga shot was W-wording for a multi-millionaire called Hai Fat, but had planned to sell his "solex agitator" (a solar energy device) to the British.
Bond suspects Hai Fat is responsible, so goes to his house disguised as Scaramanga. This disguise consists of putting on a fake third nipple and then taking his top off at the earliest possible opportunity in order to show it off. As soon as Hai Fat counts Bond's nipples he knows this is somebody pretending to be Scaramanga and so he goes along with it, and invites Bond back for dinner later like a good Bond villain should. While Bond thinks this plan was a complete success, we see the real Scaramanga watching him leave from Hai Fat's house.
When Bond returns for dinner he walks straight into a trap. Not a great trap, though, consisting as it does of two sumo wrestlers to distract him while Nick Nack hits him on the hed with a trident, but it is enough to capture Bond, who was probably anticipating something more elaborate involving sharks.
Nick Nack is about to stab Bond when Hai Fat stops him, realising this is no way for a Bond villain to behave - he needs to put Bond in an overly elaborate situation from which he can escape. So he arranges for Bond to be put in one of the most blatant examples of this trope ever to appear in an actual Bond film and not a Bond parody.
Bond wakes up at a martial arts "school" for no real reason other than martial arts films were quite popular at this point in the 1970s. He watches two mannys fight to the death for no reason (or, at best, this is to show that this is serious business), then is made to fight a manny who likes bowing a lot. Bond defeats him easily by kicking him in the face while he is doing a bow, so the baddys send in a henchmanny dressed in black so that we know he is even more serious business than the last one was.
After a bit of fighting this henchmanny, Bond runs away. He gets rescued by Lieutenant Hip and his two nieces, who just happen to be driving past at exactly that moment. They have a martial arts fight with some of the baddys, then run away when the henchmanny arrives with some reinforcements. Hip drives himself and his nieces away, leaving Bond to have a boat chase instead of a car chase. This is a bit like the long speedboat chase in Live and Let Die, but at least this one doesn't have Sheriff J. W. Pepper in it...
Oh noes. Still, at least his presence (here on holiday) is little more than a cameo and a bit of light comic relief, it's not like he's right in the middle of one of the film's main action set pieces and shitting it up with his unfunny buffoonery. Mew.
Bond escapes, so Hai Fat is worried about his plan being jeopardised by Bond's investigation. Scaramanga shoots him and takes over as the main baddy, coolly saying
"Mr Fat has just resigned. I'm the new chairman of the board."
Bond is about to get up to some naughtiness with Goodnight when Andrea comes in to swap sides. She thinks Bond is the only one who can defeat Scaramanga and save her. Bond wants her to get the solex from Scaramanga, which she does, but then Scaramanga kills her while she is waiting to paw it over to him.
Scaramanga sits down next to Bond and introduces himself.
"My name is Scaramanga, Francisco Scaramanga."
It's no coincidence that he uses the same 'surname, firstname surname' style that Bond himself uses, since the film is implying that Scaramanga is an evil version of Bond. While Scaramanga monologues about his backstory, Bond slips the solex to Lieutenant Hip under Scaramanga's nose. Hip passes it to Goodnight, but she gets captured by Scaramanga and Nick Nack who drive away in their car.
Bond steals a car to give chase in, but it already has another manny in it...
Oh noes! Even Bond says
"Oh no."
when he recognises Sheriff Pepper. It's a testament to the high quality of the rest of this film, including the phenomenal finale that we still have to look forward to, that The Manny with the Golden Gun manages to be one of the most expensive and luxury of all the James Bond films in spite of the baffling decision to have Sheriff Pepper return from Live and Let Die in order to be really annoying all through the ensuing chase sequence.
Scaramanga and Nick Nack get away when they attach some wings to their car to turn it into a 'plane
Scaramanga is expecting Bond and sends Nick Nack out to welcome him with a bottle of expensive luxury Dom Pérignon. Scaramanga then shoots the top off the bottle like he is Mrs Peel at the start of an Avengers episode, which is suggestive of the kind of relationship he feels he has - or should have - with Bond.
Scaramanga shows Bond around his lair, where has lots of technology, including a giant pewpewpew gun.
"This is the part I really like."
says Scaramanga, then he pews Bond's 'plane so that it explodes.
Bond and Scaramanga have noms with Goodnight, who is there in a bikini. Scaramanga justifies this by saying
"I like a girl in a bikini - no concealed weapons."
Bond wouldn't need any such excuse, lol. This scene is a classic of the 'Bond having polite noms with the baddy' trope, possibly the best one we have seen since the original in Dr. No. Scaramanga explains why he hasn't killed Bond before now:
"You see, Mr Bond, like every great artist, I want to create an indisputable masterpiece once in my lifetime - the death of 007, mano a mano, face to face, will be mine."
Bond accepts, leading us in to the final act, the duel between Bond and Scaramanga.
Of course Scaramanga doesn't fight fairly, and slinks off to his private funhouse where he has all the advantages. We have seen this before, when the pre-title sequence carefully foreshadowed this climax, and this fight is full of callbacks to that first duel - and Scaramanga, at least, is hoping it will end the same way too.
Nick Nack tries to get Bond to waste all his bullets on the funhouse tricks and traps, while Scaramanga hunts Bond, but Bond manages to get 'off the grid' to an area where he cannot be seen by Nick Nack on the CCTV.
Even we in the audience lose track of Bond, and for a while we only see Scaramanga and Nick Nack as they search around for him. At the same time the music helps build the suspense, until we see Bond has replaced the funhouse statue of himself with...
...himself. Scaramanga looks really surprised when he gets shot and goes
Goodnight knocks a henchmanny into a vat of liquid helium, which starts a chain reaction to blow up the base. This is a rare case of a base having a fairly good reason to blow up, not just a single self-destruct button or a magical failure of ontological inertia. Bond has to recover the solex in a hurry, and is hindered by Goodnight's clumsy attempts to help him. This scene still manages to be suitably tense, as is the following scene of the two of them escaping from the exploding base.
They get away in Scaramanga's junk (no, you naughty cats, it's a type of ship!) and are getting down to some naughtiness when Nick Nack attacks them. Bond defeats and captures him pretty easily, but the slow deescalation of threats at the end of the film makes it one of the most satisfying - instead of a big climax followed only by a brief (often comedic, especially in the Roger Moore era) coda before the end credits, here we go from main baddy defeated, to exciting escape, to short henchmanny fight, to brief comedic coda with Bond saying "Goodnight" to M over the 'phone, to the end credits.
Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Very Luxury
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