Made in 1977, The Spy Who Loved Me is the third of seven expensive luxury James Bond film to star Roger Moore, and of those seven this is the one that most resembles an archetypal Bond film, with everything that cats around the world associate with the franchise: chases, explosions, gadgets, masterminds with plans for world domination, secret bases, quips, innuendo, and Jaws.
Every subsequent Bond film can be compared to The Spy Who Loved Me, and almost all of them will be found wanting, because it is almost the purrfect Bond film. Almost, because the one thing it is lacking is an expensive luxury cat.
A submarine on which both DCI Roy Galloway and Boba Fett are both W-wording undercover starts getting into difficulties. Tiberius Caesar (recently returned from his stint as Number Two in the Village) gets a telephone call from somebody to tell him that they have lost one of their nuclear submarines. In Moscow, Chief Constable Cullen has successfully infiltrated the highest echelons of Russian Intelligence only to be given the bad news that they too have lost a submarine.
Not really of course, this is the first appearance of Walter Gotell as General Gogol, who will go on to be M's best frenemy in five further expensive luxury James Bond films after this. He telephones "Agent Triple X" and puts her on the case. She was having kiffs with Colonel Paul Foster (who can blame her, purr) who we were obviously supposed to think was Agent Triple X for a moment as an audience fake-out, but we cats aren't so easily fooled because we have seen this film before.
In a scene that is obviously intended to parallel what we have just seen the Soviets doing, M orders James Bond to be put on the case, telling him to "pull out" of his current mission. Of course Bond is busy having kiffs with a lady, so "pull out" has a double meaning, lol, these films are so smutty! Bond gets dressed, and the lady says
"But James, I need you."
He replies
"So does England."
So as far as he's concerned the rest of the UK can obviously get to fuck.
As soon as he is gone, the lady turns out to be a baddy and telephones her henchmannys to chase after Bond. This is an iconic ski chase, with Bond and his stuntmanny taking on four henchmannys single-pawedly. Bond skis off a cliff to escape, and the incidental music suddenly cuts out, making it seems as though Bond is in deep trouble. But then he deploys the famous Union Jack parachute (though if all he cares about is England, really it should have been a St George's flag, mew) and the music bursts back in with the James Bond theme.
This segues into the "Nobody Does it Better" theme song and title sequence. This is probably the apex of the nude-mannys-in-silhouette titles, which was a trope for the Bond films for quite a while, but always makes me think that the filming of these sequences must have been a really weird experience for all those mannys involved - nude or otherwise.
The lyrics of the theme song are worth examining - it is clar from context that James Bond is the manny that "nobody does it better" than, but what is the "it" that nobody does better than him at? My suspicion is that there is a naughty double-meaning there (or maybe I just need to recalibrate my expectations because the innuendo level in the previous Bond theme, The Manny with the Golden Gun, was so high), with the first meaning being that he is best at spying, but the second that he is best at kiffs. Couple this with the line
# "Though sometimes I wish someone could" #
and I don't think it is a coincidence that, within a year of this film's release, Blakes 7 started on TV.
I must conclude that this song is responsible for wishing Avon into existence!
Post-titles, the first scene is set in Moscow, because in an interesting reversal of the normal briefing scene between Bond and M, we instead see General Gogol briefing Agent Triple X, Major Anya Amasova. This deepens the parallels already established, showing us that she is Bond's Russian counterpart, but it is still very unusual to present a briefing from their point of view first, almost as though Amasova is the protagonist of the film instead of Bond. Gogol also tells her that Agent Sergei Borzov (who Paul Foster was pretending to be) has been killed, although clearly he must have only faked his death to go back to SHADO.
At Bond's briefing is more than just M. Q is there, as is Tiberius, Dev Tarrant representing the Federation, the Minister of Defence (who, like Gogol, is making his first of six appearances in the Bond films), and Future M Admiral Hargreaves. Things must be serious if they need more than one M in the same film! Or maybe it's just inflation - this was the late '70s after all. We see another example of this when the Minister tells Bond the missing submarine had 16 nuclear missiles on board. In Thunderball SECTRE only stole two, and that was serious business enough. Bond is sent to Egypt to look at pyramids for clues.
We get our introduction to the film's baddy, Stromberg (played by Curd "General Vladimir" Jürgens), when he is having noms. He meets with the two henchmannys who have invented the submarine-finding machine for him, one of whom is played by the Shapmeister himself, Professor Cyril Shaps. Stromberg establishes his Bond villain credentials by dropping his assistant into a shark tank for betraying him.
He also has a giant underwater base, although if I didn't know better I might say
As well as sharks and exploding helicopters, he also has unusual henchmannys to do his killing for him, and he sends them to kill anyone trying to discover his plans. His main henchmanny is someone who loved Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark film so much he even changed his name to
Jaws
In Cairo we get a scene that is almost too much a parody of the sort of thing you expect to see in a Bond film that even most send-ups wouldn't play it as straight as this: Bond is having kiffs with a lady who is secretly in league with the baddys, a henchmanny aims his gun at Bond, but the lady switches sides, screams "No!" and gets shot instead of Bond.
The manny Bond is looking for is out by the pyramids, because of course he is. Also there are Amasova and Jaws. They are all watching a strange show that lights up the Sphinx and the pyramids at random intervals and, even more randomly, has narration provided by Blofeld. So what seems to have happened is that, after the events of Diamonds are Forever, he sold his SECTRE world-domination business to Stromberg and then got a job here.
Jaws catches up with the manny and bites his neck like a vampire. I'd make a joke about it being too soon after Christopher Lee played Scaramanga for them to recast him in this as Jaws, but I genuinely don't think that would have stopped them.
Bond and Amasova meet again at a Cairo club, where they are both looking for the next clue. They recognise one another, and order each other's trademark drinks:
"The lady'll have a bacardi on the rocks.""For the gentleman, vodka martini shaken not stirred."
The film is doing very well so far in giving the impression that this is a crossover event starring two equals, and not the 10th in the film series for one of them, while the other has never been seen before this film and will never be heard from again after the end credits have rolled. It isn't even clear which one of them is "the spy" of the title, and which is the "me."
Bond meets with Vernon Dobtcheff, who was in so many things over the years that it is astonishing that it took this long for him to appear in a Bond film. He was in The Assassination Bureau with Telly Savalas and Diana Rigg in 1969, so he must have been considered for a part in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, surely? It turns out Amasova also wants to meet with Dobtcheff, since they have the same mission to obtain a microfilm from him, but before he can decide which of them he will give it to, Jaws kills him and takes it.
Bond and Amasova both chase after Jaws and hide in his van. They aren't as stealthy as they think, because they can't resist chatting and Jaws hears every word they say. Jaws takes them to a place in the Egyptian desert where they can have a fun game of Cat and Mouse. But who is the Cat?
Bond tricks Jaws into bringing some scaffolding down on his own hed, while Amasova gets the microfilm and runs away. Bond quips
"Egyptian builders, tut."
but this joke doesn't W-word at all, because surely if Egyptian builders are famous for anything it is the pyramids which have stood stable for thousands of years? Although I suppose 'tutting' at anything to do with Ancient Egypt has to W-word on at least some level, so I'll give him that. Mew.
Escaping on a boat at night, Bond and Amasova start having kiffs under the pretext of keeping warm, and then Amasova takes out a trick cigarette and gases Bond with it. When he wakes up she is gone, and has taken the microfilm with her.
Bond goes to a secret underground HQ, equipped with electric doors that sound suspiciously Village-like, where he meets Miss Moneypenny. When he goes in to see M, he is surprised to instead see...
General Gogol. He has teamed up with M so that they can send Bond after the real baddy, Stromberg. Bond has to team up with Major Amasova again, and they are both sent on a train to Sardinia. There's a long, quiet scene of them in two adjacent cabins ignoring one another, which seems like it is just there to build up the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, but really it is so that it is a surprise when Jaws bursts out of Amasova's wardrobe (he took a shortcut through Narnia?) to attack her.
There's a tense fight (made more tense by the lack of incidental music) that ends when Bond electrics Jaws and then defenestrates him. Jaws survives this, and we see him dust himself down and straighten his tie, which is the sort of thing that Bond himself might do after a fight. Jaws is a superb subversion of the usual tropes of henchmannys we see in other Bond films - it is like instead of a succession of henchmannys who attack Bond one at a time before getting killed by him, instead they have all been replaced by Jaws, who always survives.
There's a scene in which Q delivers a car to Bond, which is necessary so that we aren't surprised when the car turns out to have gadgets in it. But they take a boat out to see Stromberg in his lair, not the car.
Bond meets with Stromberg and introduces himself as
"My name is Stirling, Robert Stirling."
because even when he's in disguise Bond can't help but use the 'surname, firstname surname' format. Stromberg shows Bond his collection of fish (making us cats very hungry) and also his sharks. He pretends not to know who Bond is until he has gone, then he meets with Jaws and tells him to kill Bond and Amasova. Although Jaws was probably going to try and do that anyway, seeing as he has spent the better part of the film so far trying to do just that.
Time for a car chase. A motorbike chases after Bond's car, but when it crashes off a cliff it turns out it was being driven by a really obvious dummy. Jaws and some henchmannys start chasing them in their own car and shooting at them. I love the way Jaws just takes the guns off the other henchmannys instead of reloading his own gun when he runs out of bullets. When their car inevitably crashes, Jaws once again walks away unharmed.
Next a helicopter chases Bond and Amasova, piloted by Naomi, a manny that Bond was perving over back at Stromberg's base, and so confirming that Stromberg must be the baddy (as if we didn't know already). The helicopter chases the car into the water, where it turns into a tiny submarine. Bond then shoots the helicopter with a missile, although it is unclear why he waited until now to do this - presumably he was intending to take the car underwater anyway, so he thought he would troll Amasova by not telling her about it in advance. This backfires when she reveals she knew all about it:
"I stole the blueprints of this car two years ago."
They take the underwater car back to Stromberg's base, and use it to have a look in through some of Stromberg's windows. Then there's an underwater chase... oh noes, these slow-motion underwater chases have become something of a chore in Bond films ever since Thunderball, we cats usually just sleep through them without risking missing much. At least this one has some funky incidental music over it.
When the car drives out of the water onto a beach, we get the first appearance of one of the most insignificant recurring Bond characters, Double-Take Manny. Still a better recurring character than Sheriff J. W. Pepper.
Amasova thinks that Bond killed Paul Foster, based on Bond having a lighter from the place where Colonel Foster was supposed to have died (oh, and Bond claiming that he did kill him), and so says
"When this mission is over, I will kill you."
This means she hates him now, so there is a dramatic possibility that this might interfere with their joint mission to save the world.
They go on an American submarine, where Shane Rimmer, king president of the rentayanks, is in command, and where Jeff Ross from The Sandbaggers is undercover for the CIA. Stromberg's tanker has a front bit that opens up in order to capture the submarine, in a very - one might say suspiciously - similar way to how SECTRE's spaceship captured the American and Russian rockets in You Only Live Twice. Yet more evidence that Stromberg is using a plan that SECTRE just never got around to.
When all the captured submacrewmannys are taken out of the submarine, Bond and Amasova are recognised by Stromberg, which he is happy about because it gives him somebody to explain his plan to. What does he want with all these captured submarines and nuclear missiles?
"At 12 noon they will have reached firing positions. Within minutes, New York and Moscow will cease to exist. Global destruction will follow. A new era will begin."
Bond asks what Stromberg's price "for not firing those nuclear missiles" will be. He's probably thinking it's bound to be higher than Blofeld's price, what with all the inflation since SECTRE's heyday. But here Stromberg's plan differs from Blofeld's Operation Thunderball goal of extortion - he wants to destroy the world, so that he can create "a new and beautiful world beneath the sea."
I don't think he has thought this plan through. But he has clearly given it more thought than Blofeld did that time when he tried to start World War 3, because at least Stromberg has a plan for where he will keep his Blakes 7 DVDs after the world has been blown up.
Stromberg sends the submarines on their way, then leaves for his underwater base, taking Amasova with him. I don't know why, but it could be because, as a Bond villain, he has to take the protagonist with him to his lair to put in a deathtrap, and he has mistaiken her for the protagonist and Bond for her sidekick. He does say to Bond before he leaves:
"'Farewell' Mr Bond. That word has, I must admit, a welcome ring of permanancy about it."
As villainous quips go that one is poor, but then you wouldn't waste your best lines on a sidekick, would you? Stromberg and Amasova leave on a monorail, which is frankly the clincher that this base was designed by the same manny that did SECTRE's bases for them.
Bond quickly escapes and rescues all the friendly submacrewmannys. A big fight breaks out, with both sides shooting submachine guns and throwing grenades at at each other. Fortunately all the baddys are wearing red so we can easily tell the two sides apart. This goes on for quite a while, since it is clearly the film's big action set piece, and it is just like (and I do mean 'just like') the ninja attack on SECTRE's volcano lair in You Only Live Twice.
There is quite a good bit when Bond hitches a ride on top of the thing that used to be a henchrobot for Ming the Merciless. After defeating all the baddys in their control room, Bond sends new orders to the two baddy-controlled submarines so that they blow each other up with all the power of stock footage of nuclear explosions. Bond and his friends then escape in the third submarine.
The sumbarine is ordered to blow up Stromberg's base, with Shane Rimmer saying his orders coming from "the top." He must mean from Ceiling Cat! Bond wants to rescue Amasova, and he has only one hour in which to do it before the submarine will attack. This is an unusual Bond film in which the goodys have essentially already won, and can finish off the rest of the baddys whenever they want, including the main baddy Stromberg. Except that they haven't won completely until Amasova is saved.
Stromberg sees Bond as soon as he gets into his base, and says the classic line
"Good evening Mr Bond, I've been expecting you."
Bond gets into the lift that we saw near the start of the film, which has the secret trapdoor to drop mannys into the shark tank.
"Goodbye Mr Bond."
says Stromberg and presses the button to drop Bond in it. But Bond is too clever for him (or else Bond has by now noticed all the reused SECTRE plans and so knew what to expect) and didn't fall for it. So to speak. Mew.
Stromberg tries to shoot Bond, but Bond dodges out of the way and returns fire. I think it is supposed to be implied that Bond's first shot hits Stromberg in the willy, but he then shoots him a few more times just to make sure that Stromberg goes
Bond isn't safe yet, since he now has to have another fight with Jaws. Bond finds a highly convenient magnet that he uses to capture Jaws.
"How does that grab you?"
he quips, before dropping Jaws into Stromberg's shark tank. Any other baddy would be done for, but this is Jaws so he noms the shark instead.
Bond rescues Amasova just before the submarine blows up the base, so they have to escape through the explosions and, even worse, the base filling up with wets. They find Stromberg's expensive luxury escape pod and do an expensive luxury escape in it.
Amasova looks like she is about to shoot Bond like she said she would earlier on, but instead she shoots the top off the bottle of expensive luxury Dom Perignon '52. She must be a fan of The Avengers.
They are still having kiffs when a ship finds them. What are the chances of it having their bosses on board?
"Bond, what do you think you're doing?""Keeping the British end up, sir."
Curtain.
Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury
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