Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: For Your Eyes Only

After having gone into space in Moonraker, where could James Bond go next? This was the challenge facing the filmmakers in 1981 when they came to make the next expensive luxury James Bond film.

Thinking they couldn't go bigger, they chose to go smaller, but at the same time brought back some of the elements of earlier Bond films that had perhaps been lost along the way: the Cold War, baddys who didn't want to take over the world, and, of course, henchmannys that aren't Jaws.

Mew, I'm not sure that last one wasn't a terrible mistaik.

The result was For Your Eyes Only, the fifth of Roger Moore's seven expensive luxury James Bond films.

It starts with Bond putting flowers on the grave of Teresa Bond. The gravestone says

"TERESA BOND 1943 - 1969 Beloved Wife of JAMES BOND We have all the time in the World"

which, apart from the irregular capitalisation which suggests a cat was in charge of the engraving, all but insists that the James Bond of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the same as the current James Bond, despite the former being played by George Lazenby and the latter by Roger Moore. Unless, that is, the new James Bond is putting flowers on the grave of another manny's wife as part of an elaborate, decades-spanning ruse. Hmm, no, I don't  think this proves anything conclusively one way or the other, mew. Also, a full third of the gravestone is taken up with being sarcastic.

A helicopter arrives and Bond gets on it. As it flies away the camera cuts to...

SECTRE Number One!

This immediately makes this the most expensive and luxury James Bond film since we last saw Number One in Diamonds are Forever. As usual, he has a new Blofeld with him, who is a bald (classic choice there, Number One!) manny in a wheelchair with a lot of controls in front of him. He uses the controls to electric the helicopter driver and the helicopter starts to crash, but then it turns out that Blofeld has the helicopter under remote control.

Blofeld flies Bond around for a bit while taunting him. Bond gets out of the helicopter and climbs along the outside. He spots Blofeld and Number One sitting on a roof. Bond gets in the driver's seat and unplugs Blofeld's remote control. Number One hisses, because he has realised that Bond is about to turn the tables on this Blofeld so soon he is going to have to start looking for another one. Bond gets control of the helicopter and Number One does a mew. He jumps out of Blofeld's lap and, sadly, that is the last we see of him in this film.

Bond flies the helicopter to pick up Blofeld and his wheelchair. In his panic at being captured, Blofeld improvises a very strange poem:

"Mr Bond! Mr Bond!

We can do a deal.

I'll buy you a delicatessen

In stainless steel!"

Bond drops Blofeld down a very long, tall chimney (long chimney is long!) and then it cuts to the opening titles.

The title sequence is unusual in that we can see one of the ubiquitous nudey ladies is actually singing the song. Other than that it is pretty standard for the era - there seems to be an underwater theme to it, which if we are lucky means that this will be as expensive and luxury as The Spy Who Loved Me. Or if we are unlucky then it will only be as expensive and luxury as Thunderball.

This would seem to be borne out by the first scenes after the titles, which start with the camera rising out of the sea to show a ship. Some mannys are catching lots of nomable fish, meanwhile inside the ship some other mannys are doing the far less interesting job of secret spy stuff. 

The mannys doing the fishing accidentally catch a bomb (silly mannys! A cat would never mistaik a bomb for tasty fish, mew) which explodes and sinks the ship. We might have expected this, seeing as they were British mannys doing spy things but neither Bond nor any other of our regular characters were on board.

The Minister of Defence is visited by the First Sea Lord (played by Graham "Soldeed" Crowden), who has come to tell him how many Nimons electronic surveillance ships they have lost today: one, called the St Georges, which by the law of conservation of narrative details was most probably the one we saw sink in the previous scene. He is accompanied by a Vice Admiral, played by Noel "Charles Grover from Invasion of the Dinosaurs" Johnson, and since they both played baddys in Doctor Who we have to suspect that they are secretly up to no good in this film too.

When last we saw Colonel Preston he was in charge of the British soldiers who were held captive in Colditz castle. Since the war he has moved to Greece to become an archaeologist which, as the film Pimpernel Smith made clear, gives perfect cover for espionage. But somebody has obviously found out his secret, because they shoot him from a plane and then fly away, leaving his daughter Melina (Carole Bouquet) and his parrot Max as surviving witnesses. They don't say how many days he was away from retirement, but I'm guessing it wasn't many.

Bond arrives for his briefing in M's office, where he meets the Minister and the Chief of Staff (as played by James Villiers, an actor so posh that he only rarely condescended to play anybody less important than a lord). They already know who killed Colonel Preston, a hitmanny called Gonzales. Bond's mission is to find out who hired Gonzales.

The Chief gives Bond a folder which says "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" on the cover. It probably contains the script, lol.

Bond drives to Gonzales's house in an inconspicuously fancy car and then spies on him for a bit. Bond doing actual spy stuff? Well it has to happen sometimes, mew. He sees Gonzales get a suitcase full of moneys from a manny, which may as well be conclusive proof by the standard of most clues Bond normally has to go on.

Bond gets captured, but then another manny shoots Gonzales and he goes

Bond escapes in the confusion and meets up with the manny that shot Gonzales, who turns out to be Melina. The rest of Gonzales's henchmannys chase them. Two of the henchmannys find Bond's car and try to steal it, but it explodes for no adequately explored reason except that it means Bond and Melina have to escape using her car instead. This increases the peril for Bond since it means he doesn't have access to any of his usual array of car-based gadgets.

A car chase ensues, with Bond using their car's small size to his advantage over the normal-sized cars of their pursuers. This chase manages to be both exciting while also containing moments played for laughs, and the last car full of baddys ends up stuck in a tree, lol.

Like Bond, Melina has a mission to find the manny who paid Gonzales to kill Colonel Preston, only she has given herself the mission, for revenge. Bond tells her:

"The Chinese have a saying: before setting out on revenge, you first dig two graves."

The Scottish have a similar saying: Before setting out for Perth, you first make two sandwiches.

Bond visits Q to see if he can help him identify the manny he saw paying Gonzales, by using technology. This scene with Q is an outright komedy scene, with Q being portrayed as an absent-minded professor who, while he may have invented all these gadgets, can't actually use them properly without Bond's assistance.

But after some silliness along the way they are able to identify the manny as Emile Locque, a known baddy. Bond sets out to find him. which naturally means going on a skiing holiday. There Bond makes contact with Luigi Ferrara, whose job it is to get killed off in a few scenes' time. Ferrara introduces Bond to Kristatos, played by Julian "Scaroth" Glover, another former Doctor Who baddy who will turn out to be the baddy here as well. One does not simply get Julian Glover in to not be the baddy, even Blakes 7 managed that.

Kristatos pretends to be friendly and helpful to Bond, telling him Locque W-words for Columbo. On the face of it this seems implausible at best, since Columbo is an American police lieutenant and not a Bond villain, but it turns out he does not mean that Columbo.

As they say goodbye Kristatos gives Bond a manly handshake, which is surely a bit racy for 1981. Ferrara also wants a manly handshake but Kristatos evidently isn't into threesomes since he turns away from and ignores Ferrara instead.

Bond turns down an offer of naughtiness from Bibi Dahl, Kristatos's ice-skating "protégé", which might be because Bibi is on the young side even for Bond, or (since that doesn't always stop him) it could be because he only just recently had a manly handshake with Kristatos. She tries kiffing him anyway, but Bond is wise to that old game, having used it himself many a time. They do go skiing together, and while doing that they spot Erich Kriegler, played by John Wyman who was the fake Cancer in Assassin. 

Here the twist is that he actually is an assassin, and he shoots at Bond. Bond loses his gun, so he has to escape from Kriegler and his henchmannys on his skis. Locque himself joins the chase, in case it wasn't obvious enough that Kriegler was on his side. This is another great chase sequence, which again mixes the dramatic with the comedic - the latter mainly involves innocent bystanders falling over on their skis, but we also see a manny getting a slapstick cake full in the face, and the blink-and-you'll-miss-it final appearance of Double-Take Manny.

They decided to get him back but not Jaws? Mew!

Bond finds that Ferrara has been killed and a dove badge placed in his paw. This is supposed to be the symbol of Columbo which, very conveniently, the baddys have all started wearing ever since Kristatos told Bond that Columbo was the baddy.

Bond hasn't been to a casino for a while, so he goes there to play Baccarat. Also to meet Kristatos again, to get more manly handshakes clues about Columbo. Columbo is also present, played by Topol "only Dr Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA" Topol. He has been listening to Bond and Kristatos's dialogue.

No more manly handshakes for Kristatos, next thing we know Bond is after some naughtiness with "Countess Lisl" who he spied arguing with Columbo. The next morning they are walking on the beach when Locque and his henchmannys turn up and attack them. Locque runs over Lisl who goes

and then they capture Bond. This is only for a moment because then some other mannys turn up, scare away Locque, and they capture Bond instead. These new mannys W-word for Columbo.

Oops, wrong picture!

Columbo tells Bond that Kristatos is really the baddy (what a twist!) who is secretly W-wording for Russia - the biggest baddys of all (except when they aren't). Columbo takes Bond with him to see what Kristatos's evil plan is. This immediately turns into a big fight between Columbo's mannys and Locque's mannys.

Locque tries to blow them all up with a bomb, so Bond chases him and makes Locque crash his car. The car ends up at the edge of a cliff, and before Locque can even say "hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea" Bond helps push the car the rest of the way off.

"He had no head for heights."

Bond quips, though best not think about that one too hard or you might notice that it doesn't make sense.

Bond visits Melina on her ship and he meets Max. They go looking for the wreck of the St Georges.

They know they have found it when they see a very convenient sign telling them.

Bond wants to go inside in order to stop any secret intelligence that might have been left on board from falling into Kristatos's paws, because then he might give it to his Russian friends. They find the ATAC machine is there, which is a top secret coding machine of the kind that Blake was always trying to steal from the Federation so we know it must be important. Also "ATAC" sounds a bit like "Orac".

They are just in time because the baddys have also sent mannys to try and steal it and they have a fight with Bond. The slow-motion nature of underwater fight scenes mean they are never as exciting as the filmmakers want them to be, but they have obviously learned a lot since the days of Thunderball because these are much better than they used to be in the '60s, with an emphasis on making the baddys visually distinctive so that we can always tell which side is which.

Bond and Melina get away with the ATAC machine, but as soon as they get back to the ship they are captured by Kristatos and Kriegler. They are thrown into the water where Kristatos hopes that sharks will nom them, but obviously they escape and Kristatos is too lazy to check, saying

"Ah, the sharks have them. Make for port."

It becomes clear to us viewers that Kristatos and Kriegler do not trust each other, and Kristatos will not let Kriegler take the machine to Russia until after he has ben paid for it. They agree a neutral place where they will exchange the ATAC for the moneys. But it turns out that we weren't the only ones that saw and heard their plan - Max the parrot also heard it, and he tells Bond and Melina that the baddys will be taking the

"ATAC to St Cyrils."

Max would later be recruited by British Intelligence and we will see him again when he returns in a later Bond film. Just the one so far, sadly, but there is still time for him to get his own spinoff since he is clearly one of MI7's more competent agents.

At St Cyrils, Bond goes to a church where he meets Q disguised as a priest. This is only an excuse for a weak joke:

"Forgive me father for I have sinned."

"That's putting it mildly, Double-Oh Seven."

It turns out that this is the wrong St Cyrils. Bond decides that Columbo will be of more help than Q in finding the right one.

Columbo takes them to the St Cyrils that would be the most cinematic location for the film's big climax - he's no fool is this Columbo, perhaps he takes after his namesake?

Bond climbs up the mountain (why is he climbing the mountain?) to get into a fight with Kristatos's henchmannys - one of whom is Ferguson from Smiley's People, the traitor! They try to push him off the mountain but he stays on using a cunning arrangement of ropes and pulleys. Bond is followed up the mountain by Melina, Columbo and some of Columbo's own henchmannys.

They try to be stealthy but inevitably this turns into a big fight. Bond fights with Kriegler until the baddy falls off the mountain. But with General Gogol about to arrive to collect the ATAC from Kristatos, Bond doesn't even have time to make a quip at Kriegler's demise. Or maybe this shows Bond's level of disdain for Kriegler was such that he didn't even consider him worthy of a quip - after all, he was hardly a henchmanny of the same stature as Jaws, was he? Mew. 

Kristatos and Columbo have a fight while Bond nicks off with the ATAC. Melina is about to shoot Kristatos when Bond tells her that killing for revenge is not the answer she really wants. This ties back to the way the film opened with Bond at Tracy's grave. He got his revenge on Blofeld by tipping him down a chimney, but he knows that it wasn't the end of the story for him because the film didn't end there and he still had to do a whole other mission afterwards. Melina decides to shoot Kristatos anyway, but then Columbo gets there first when he throws a knife at Kristatos and Kristatos goes

General Gogol arrives and wants Bond to give him the ATAC machine, but Bond smashes it instead, saying

"That's detente, comrade. You don't have it. I don't have it."

Knowing the embarrassment that Bond will shortly cause to the British Prime Minister will easily outweigh any advantages he might get from killing Bond now, Gogol just laughs and goes back to his helicopter. Also, Gogol is by now an established regular character in these films, so killing Bond would be bad for his chances of coming back for the next one.

For the now traditional final komedy scene, Q telephones Bond just as Bond is about to get up to naughtiness with Melina. She says

"For your eyes only, darling."

Clang! Naughty Melina - dropping the title as well as her clothes.

They leave the telephone with Max, so it is Max that ends up speaking to the Prime Minister. For some reason Q, the Minister and the Chief of Staff all mistaik Max for Bond and so they do not stop this from happening. Although another theory might be that they all well knew this was Max and did it on purpose to troll Mrs Thatcher, lol.

For Your Eyes Only has many great moments, including Roger Moore's only encounter with Number One, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The relatively low rating that Expensive Luxury Cat gives it should not be taken as a judgement that this film is bad, only that there are several other expensive luxury James Bond films that do it better... and not just The Spy Who Loved Me, lol!

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive but not Luxury

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Moonraker

Recent news about the expensive luxury James Bond films having been bought by the Amazon Corporation of America has reminded us cats that back in 1979 James Bond already fought against a baddy who was a megalomaniac, space-obsessed billionaire with a secret lair in the Amazon.

This was Moonraker, the fourth of the seven expensive luxury James Bond films to star Roger Moore. It had the unenviable task of following on from the iconic Bond outing The Spy Who Loved Me, and it did this by going even more Over The Top than its predecessor - thanks to a little inspiration taken from the late-70s zeitgeist, a.k.a. the post-Star Wars era.

In the first scene some baddys steal a space shuttle off the back of a plane and then the plane blows up. It cuts to M in his office talking on a red (i.e. serious business) telephone asking

"What happened to the Moonraker?"

Clang! Well that didn't take long.

Bond is having kiffs with a lady in a different plane when she pulls a gun on him. Oh noes, she is really a baddy! This is exactly what happened with the lady Bond was having kiffs with at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me, except this one didn't even wait for him to leave before turning out to be a baddy. She has a manny with her for Bond to have a fight with. That manny ends up falling out of the plane, and then Jaws turns up and pushes Bond out too.

We cats love Jaws, he makes any Bond film he is in (all two of them) even more expensive and luxury than they would have been without him.

Bond doesn't have a parachute, and unlike cats he cannot expect to land on his feet, so he sends his stuntmanny to have another fight with the manny over the one parachute between them. Jaws arrives to have a mid-air fight with Bond, but Bond uses the parachute to escape from him. Jaws then lands on a circus tent for some reason.

This leads in to the title sequence. The theme song for Moonraker is rubbish, and would be much better if they had just reused the Goldfinger song but replaced the word "Goldfinger" with the word "Moonraker." The lyrics wouldn't make sense, since the baddy is called Drax and not "Mr Moonraker," but when has lyrics not making sense ever stopped them?

The titles are followed by the traditional Bond briefing scene. Bond gets sent to look for the missing Moonraker space shuttle (what do mannys want to rake the moon for, anyway? Silly mannys, always making W-word for themselves for no reason) and he also gets given a gadget by Q - a watch that can fire darts that will either explode or be poisonous. We can look forward to both of these types coming in useful for him, in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail.

Bond goes to visit Hugo Drax at his French chateau in California. A bit like Columbo, Bond has immediately identified the main baddy as being the richest, most obnoxious manny in the film in order to save time. Drax, the ultimate snob, is played by Michael "Grigoriev" Lonsdale, still three years from his role of a lifetime when this was made - and I'm presuming he got that part because they were practically rounding up former Bond Villains to be in Smiley's People.

Bond and Drax have a superficially friendly first meeting but, as soon as Bond leaves, Drax says to his henchmanny

"Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him."

Lol, this is a classic Bond Villain line.

Bond goes to meet Dr Goodhead, who turns out to be

"A woman!"

This bit would have been... how shall we put it... old-fashioned (to be rather more polite than it deserves) in a '60s Bond film, never mind one made in 1979. However the film quickly makes it clear that it is Bond who is being sexist, not the film itself, since Dr Goodhead soon gets her own back by patronising him for his lack of knowledge about her. She claims to be a trained astronaut

"On loan from NASA... the Space Administration."

Her explaining things to Bond as though he is thick as shit, and then Bond trying to salvage some dignity by showing off about the few things he does know about, is actually quite a clever way of getting exposition to casual viewers who may not be as knowledgeable about space as Monkeys With Badges us cats.

Dr Goodhead dares Bond to have a go in a machine that spins mannys round and round really fast. Presumably for the lols. Once it has started the henchmanny sabotages it so that it won't stop when Bond presses the stop button.

Bond makes a face to let us know he is in trouble, then uses his gadget to shoot the machine with an explosive dart - breaking the machine's main rivet, I presume, and therefore stopping it.

Bond decides to kiff some information out of Corinne Dufour, whom he met when he first arrived, on the grounds that as a named character she must have a clue for him. The henchmanny sees them, but he doesn't do anything about Bond yet.

In the next scene we see Drax and some henchmannys hunting and shooting at some birdys for no reason, just in case we hadn't realised that they were the baddys yet. Drax invites Bond to have a go, but instead of shooting a birdy he shoots a henchmanny that was about to shoot him.

Drax: "You missed, Mr Bond."

Bond: "Did I?"

After Bond has left, Drax sacks Corinne for helping Bond. He the sends his two doggys to chase her. The incidental music for this bit is very dramatic, verging on sinister, although I'm quite sure the doggys are well-behaved doggys who only want to play. The last we see of Corinne is when the doggys catch up with her to give her friendly cuddles and licks. Maybe Hugo Drax isn't so bad after all?

The scene changes to Venice, where Bond is here following up the clue he got from Corinne. He sees Dr Goodhead is also there and decides to follow her through the streets of Venice. That doesn't take long so then he decides to talk to her about why she's here. Each of them thinks the other might be a baddy, so they don't trust one another.

Bond is sitting in a gondola minding his own business when a manny hiding in a coffin starts throwing knives at him. Bond throws one back and kills the manny - the punchline to this bit being that the manny is already in his coffin when he goes

A speedboat starts to chase Bond, and it turns out that his gondola is really a speedgondola. We know by now that Roger Moore's Bond loves a chase scene almost as much as Jon Pertwee's Doctor, so this is a good bit which successfully blends the exciting peril with a number of komedy moments.

Bond escapes the speedboat by turning his speedgondola into a hovergondola and taking it across the land. This provokes a number of amusing reaction shots from the bystanders, including Double-Take Manny (returning from The Spy Who Loved Me to make his second appearance in the film series), and even one of Venice's world-famous double taking pigeons.

At night Bond stealths into Drax's base where he discovers a secret room that you can only get into by playing the music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wonder if Drax has other rooms that use different late-70s sci-fi themes as their keycodes? I expect there must be at least some, because if you only had one then Blakes 7 would obviously be your first choice.

This secret room is a laboratory where some mannys are doing experiments on mouses... or possibly the mouses are doing experiments on the mannys - Double-Take Manny does look an awful lot like Douglas Adams, after all. Thanks to Bond's meddling, the mannys get poisoned when they release some gas, but the mouses are unharmed by it.

Bond is trying to get away when he gets attacked by Drax's main henchmanny, leading to a big fight. They quickly take the fight into a glass museum, where they do their best to ensure that everything that could be smashed gets smashed. In the midst of the fight, Bond finds a clue - a lot of boxes addressed to Rio de Janeiro.

After winning the fight by throwing the henchmanny through a big clockface into a piano, Bond visits Dr Goodhead. He finds she has gadgets because she is also a secret agent, although hers are concealed inside lady things like perfume and a pawbag instead of a manly thing like a wristwatch. Dr Goodhead W-words for the American CIA, and now they team up in a reversal of the UK-USSR team-up of the previous film, only with even less trust on both sides.

Bond takes M and the Minister of Defence to see the secret laboratory (presumably this is meant to be the next day, although it is unclear how much time has passed - clearly it must have been enough to allow M and the Minister to travel from London to Venice, but we don't know if they did that as soon as Bond said "come and see this secret laboratory what I have found"), but Drax has already replaced the entire room with more chateau-type stuff. The Minister orders M to take Bond off the case, and so Bond says he is going on holiday to Rio.

Drax needs a replacement for his main henchmanny, so he telephones an unseen manny to arrange it. This cuts to a scene where we see Jaws getting on a plane to Rio. It is not often that we see the process of henchmannys getting employed and sent on missions - normally they just turn up and attack Bond - so this is a nice little peek behind the curtain.

Obviously there's a carnival going on in Rio when Bond gets there and starts looking for clues. There's a superbly sinister scene as his MI7 contact Manuela is waiting for Bond in a dark alley with carnival going on around her. A manny in a giant clown mask approaches her, then takes off his mask to reveal it is Jaws.

This scene helps to re-establish Jaws as looking like a credible threat after his last few appearances have all been unsuccessful attempts to kill Bond - particularly the pre-titles sequence which was mostly played for lols. Jaws is about to nom Manuela when Bond sees them and jumps on Jaws for a fight. The carnival then carries them apart, delaying their eagerly-awaited rematch.

Bond meets Dr Goodhead again. They are in a cable car when Jaws stops it and noms his way through the cable to make sure it stays stopped.

This is an iconic scene for Jaws, and is followed by a great fight sequence as he goes out to try and kill Bond on the roof of the cable car. Bond and Dr Goodhead escape as Jaws gives chase, his henchmanny (henchhenchmanny?) controlling another cable car and sending it after Bond. As Bond and Dr Goodhead get out of the way in time, Jaws crashes into the building below.

Jaws is rescued from the wreckage by Dolly and, as the incidental music informs us, they fall instantly in love.

Some mannys arrive to capture Bond and Dr Goodhead, and take them away in a fake ambulance. Bond escapes, but falls out of the back of the ambulance before he can rescue Dr Goodhead, so she is taken away still a prisoner.

The next scene sees Bond arrive at a monastery dressed as a cowboy. Bond is dressed as a cowboy, I mean, not the monastery. Mew. Sorry, but this is a very silly bit. Bond sees Miss Moneypenny and Q. Q is testing some experimental gadgets, which is not too unusual for him (save that he doesn't normally do it in a monastery), but one of them is a pewpewpew gun - foreshadowing all the mannys having pewpewpew guns later on. Q has found out that the poison gas Bond found in Venice was made from a rare orchid found in the Amazon jungle, so now Bond's task is to go there to look for his next clue.

Bond is travelling along the river in a boat when he gets attacked - yes, that looks like a clue to me! Several other boats chase him, one of which has Jaws aboard. They shoot at Bond's boat, but naturally it has gadgets on board which Bond uses to fight them with - mines, torpedoes, and one simply labelled as "roof." Obviously Bond uses each of them in turn, and the last of them releases a hang-glider that he uses to glide away and thus escape from a waterfall. Jaws isn't so lucky and his boat goes over the edge - he makes a great "oh noes!" face as it does so.

In a scene that would make Barry Letts proud, Bond hang-glides about for a bit in front of a greenscreen, until he crashes in the jungle. He then follows a scantily-clad lady who leads him to Drax's secret base. There he sees so many scantily-clad ladies that his eyebrow can hardly cope.

Bond has been in too many SECTRE lairs to fall for the old bridge-turning-into-a-trapdoor-while-you're-walking-over-it ploy, but he is then caught out by the unassuming-rock-tips-you-into-the-water trap and gets wet. Oh noes! The baddys send a snake to try and nom Bond, but he escapes and is instead captured by Jaws.

Drax comes in and explains why he - and by extension most if not all of his fellow evil masterminds - always tries to kill Bond in overly elaborate ways:

"Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you."

Bond is taken from the ancient temple part of the secret lair to the futuristic space part. He sees Drax launch multiple "Moonraker" shuttles into space, and learns that the Moonraker that was stolen at the start of the film was needed by Drax to replace one of his secret shuttles that had become borked.

Bond is put into a room where he meets Dr Goodhead again. This turns out to be directly underneath the next Moonraker that will be launched - Drax's plan being that when the shuttle takes off, they will be killed by the fire. This bit is lifted from the original Moonraker novel, which is good because it prevents The Girl Who Was Death from otherwise being an inarguably better adaptation of the book than this film is.

Bond uses his gadget to explode open a door and so they escape. After stealthing around the base for a bit, they steal some henchmanny costumes and use them to get on board the next Moonraker scheduled for lift off. Bond has disguised himself as a spacemanny before, and it didn't go so well for him then, but there's no Number One here to spot him this time.

Bond and Dr Goodhead launch into space and fly after the shuttle with Drax and Jaws aboard - an exceptionally elaborate way of chasing after the baddy, even by Bond's standards. Luckily for him, Dr Goodhead knows what all the space buttons do - Bond is like a cat, getting her to do all the W-word.

A bit like this, really:

They fly towards 

"An entire city in space."

(thanks Dr Exposition Goodhead) and dock with it.

Now that they're in space, all the actors get to do lots of pretend slow-motion weightless acting, which is the closest thing this film has in it to padding. 

Drax makes a pretentious speech to his assembled henchmannys which lays plain his megalomania:

"First there was a dream. Now there is reality. Here, in the untainted cradle of the heavens, will be created a new super-race. A race of perfect physical specimens."

Does he not know that cats already exist? Oh, wait, he's talking about mannys, isn't he? As if they could ever be as perfect as cats, mew. He goes on:

"You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in other capacities in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens."

He thinks he can be Ceiling Cat!

Bond and Dr Goodhead disable the city's radar jammer so that the mannys still on Earth can spot it. We get a fleeting appearance by General Gogol as the Soviets and Americans communicate with each other to find out that neither of them is responsible for making the city in space, so therefore it must have been a Bond Villain! The Americans launch a shuttle of their own to investigate and, if necessary, have a big space battle for the climax.

Meanwhile Drax starts launching his poison gas bombs at the Earth.

Jaws captures Bond and Dr Goodhead and takes them to see Drax, who says

"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."

Great though this line is (and delivered in such a deadpan way by Lonsdale), I have to wonder which season he's talking about? It can't be any of Blakes 7's four seasons, that's for sure. Drax is such a snob he's probably taking about Doctor Who's 24th season, even though it is actually much better than its reputation.

Another great bit is how Bond escapes from his predicament - pointing out how Drax will kill anyone "not measuring up" to Drax's "standards of physical perfection" within earshot of Jaws and Dolly. Jaws realises this means Dolly, because she is too tiny. He refuses to kill Bond when Drax orders him to, and Drax has a classic moment of realising his previously loyal henchmanny has turned against him:

"Jaws! You obey me!"

Bond pushes a button that turns off the gravity, and all the mannys start floating around. 

Drax's spacemannys and the American spacemannys start having a pewpewpew fight in space. Anyone who tells you that "in space, no one can hear you scream" obviously hasn't watched this bit, since here the mannys clearly scream whenever they get pewed.

The Americans get on board the city and team up with Bond, Dr Goodhead and Jaws. Bond chases after Drax when he tries to run away from the fighting, but then Drax gets his paws on a pewpewpew gun and aims it at Bond.

"At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery."

he quips. But then Bond shoots Drax with a poison dart from his gadget watch. Bond puts Drax in an airlock and outquips him with

"Take a giant step for mankind."

Dr Goodhead asks Bond

"Where's Drax?"

"Oh he had to fly."

With Drax ded it can be safely assumed that his henchmannys will be defeated offscreen by the Americans. However Drax had already launched three poison gas bombs at the Earth that will "kill millions" (thanks again Dr Exposition). Also because Drax is ded his space city starts to suffer from a lack of ontological inertia, so Bond and Dr Goodhead have to dodge explosions and the set falling down around them.

They escape in one of the Moonrakers, while Jaws and Dolly search for each other in the wreckage. As the last two mannys on board, they sit and drink a toast. We hear Jaws's only line of dialogue in either of the films he's in:

"Well, here's to us."

Bond tells Dr Goodhead (and the viewers at home)

"Don't worry, they'll make it. It's only 100 miles to Earth."

While I can understand them not wanting audiences to think Jaws is ded because he is such a great character that they might want to bring him back in later Bond films (although they didn't, mew), surely he is the one character who can be safely assumed to somehow survive offscreen, like he has done multiple times already? This line of Bond's smells to me of a late addition to the film, perhaps after test audiences were too sad at Jaws's final scene.

Dr Goodhead flies the shuttle and Bond pews the three bombs. For the last one the targeting computer can't hit the bomb, so Bond has to use the Force pew it manually. While one could see this as re-establishing the superiority of mannys over machines, really it is just ripping off the ending to Star Wars.

On Earth, the NASA mannys hack into the shuttle's on-board cameras to see Bond and Dr Goodhead having kiffs and getting up to naughtiness with no clothes or gravity on. M, Q and the Minister are also there, and M just says

"Double-Oh Seven!"

in a disappointed tone of voice that makes Bond's code number sound like a rude word. And then we end on an absolutely stone-cold classic James Bond double entendre moment as the Minister asks

"My god, what's Bond doing?"

Even though this was presumably a rhetorical question, Q replies

"I think he's attempting re-entry, sir."

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury

Moonraker!

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Six

Robin challenges Guy of Gisbourne to a duel. Guy tries to say "I do not duel with vagrants" but Marion says

"You may tell him that Sir Guy is afraid."

and this convinces Guy to accept the challenge.

Litle John worries that Guy won't fight fair, and he wonders why Robin is so confident. This prompts Robin to tell him of the prophecy from back in part one that he can only die by a woman's paw. This also reminds the viewers at home about this, because otherwise we might not remember it because it hasn't been mentioned since then. John asks

"Did she say by a woman's hand, or for a woman's hand?"

since he knows Robin is fighting for Marion's sake more than just to avenge the death of her uncle Sir Kenneth.

Robin and Guy have a big fight in a wood while the Merry Mannys and some soldiers look on. As one would hope for a big climactic fight in the final episode of the series, this is the best choreographed fight so far, so even though it goes on for a while it does not get boring. Eventually Robin wins, and Guy lies down as though to have some sleeps.

Robin rescues Marion and takes her to her uncle's house, which is now her house.

Meanwhile, Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham have been off in their own plot, which involves having noms with a bishop. The bishop bores them senseless by going on and on about how good King Richard is, which is a shortpaw way of letting us viewers know that he is a goody bishop and not a baddy bishop, so he refuses to team up with them.

It is the law that any series about heroic outlaws has to have a plot where the baddys pretend to be the outlaws in order to discredit them - a typical (though hardly good) example of this can be seen in The Water Margin episode 13 When Liang Shan Po Robbed the Poor. Since we haven't had that plot in this series yet, and this is the last episode, we get that now. Some fake Merry Mannys ambush the bishop and murder him, but let his friends escape thinking this was done by Robin Hood. Previously friendly villagers start turning against the Merry Mannys and helping the soldiers to capture them. Zzzzz.

With the bishop ded, Prince John now has enough power to take over as regent, so he has the current regent arrested. He just has time to sit on the throne and try on the crown before his mother and King Richard arrive to take it away from him.

Some scenes of Friar Tuck walking around while being ill go on for waaaaay too long, and seem calculated to undo the goodwill for the episode we got from the high standard of the earlier fight scene. Between this and the fake Merry Mannys plot this episode has really nosedived in quality.

Fortunately the fake Merry Manny who robbed and killed the bishop is caught when using the items he stole to pay for his drinks, and he admits to Robin that the Sheriff made him do it, so at least this plot is being dispensed with. But I am disappointed in the Sheriff for resorting to such a dreadfully clichéd scheme, mew. Maybe he was just doing it to troll us?

King Richard rounds up all of Prince John's supporters, until only the Sheriff and his henchmanny-of-the-week Sir Brian are left. The Sheriff decides to escape from the castle using the secret passage from part five.

At the same time Robin tells the king about the secret passage, so that when the Sheriff comes out he is immediately captured. The king says the Sheriff has done so many crimes that "the pity is you can only die once" - yet another reason why mannys (even ones played by Paul Darrow) are rubbish and cats are best.

This is the last we see of the Sheriff of Nottingham, but at least we know Paul Darrow will be back the next time the BBC decide to make a series about outlaws. The king pardons Robin, and there is a happy ending if you turn the DVD off at this point.

Robin goes to his house at Huntingdon now that he has been made the earl again, but then he gets ill with the same sickness as we saw Friar Tuck had earlier on. Guy of Gisbourne's sister comes in and gives him poison instead of medicine.

This is followed by another tedious scene of Robin staggering around, which clearly seems to be the director's preferred method of padding out an episode to reach the required length. Eventually Robin goes

This series is very variable in quality. Every scene with Paul Darrow in it is great (as you would expect), and the bits where he has his top off even more so, but you have to sit through a lot of padding and questionable story choices to get to the good parts.

Made in the mid-70s, this series was clearly a reaction against earlier versions of the legend of Robin Hood (clang!), most obviously the superb Disney animated movie made only a couple of years before this. Generally these earlier film and TV adaptations featured larger-than-life characters and swashbuckling adventures, so perhaps this was an attempt to make a down-to-earth, realistic version by way of contrast.

Unfortunately, I think they went way too far in that direction, and the decision to kill off many of the main characters - starting with Will Scarlet and finishing with Robin himself - was a mistaik because it made the series much less fun to watch. Not to mention greatly reducing any chances of there being a second series with further adventures of the Sheriff of Nottingham Merry Mannys, possibly with them getting in a new manny to be Robin Hood.

What was really needed was a middle ground between the OTT heroics of the earlier Robin Hoods and this all too grim and gritty interpretation of the 12th century. Perhaps ITV would have more success with their retelling of the legend of Robin Hood when it was their turn to have a go in the 1980s...

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Legend of Robin Hood: Part Five

The news from the crusade is that King Richard has been captured by Leopold of Austria, who is demanding 150,000 moneys as ransom. This sounds like quite a lot, if only there was a well-known idiom to describe it, mew.

The Merry Mannys find out that Prince John has been keeping the taxes for himself instead of sending them on to the Chancellor.

Prince John tells the Sheriff of Nottingham his latest scheme is to pay Leopold even more moneys to keep the king prisoner forever. The Sheriff says

"Such skill. Such a simple plan. And so watertight.

The future begins to look very bright."

He's a poet and he know it.

Sir Kenneth has finally realised what a baddy Sir Guy of Gisbourne is, and regrets getting Marion engaged to him. He summons Robin to meet him, and swears Robin to secrecy before bringing in Queen Mother Eleanor (last seen by us in part two). She asks Robin to help her raise the ransom moneys for Richard, and he tells her about the moneys that Prince John has been keeping. Eleanor makes Robin her deniable agent and gives him an mission to steal the money for her, if he chooses to accept it.

One of Sir Guy's spies tells him about Eleanor and Robin's meeting, and Sir Guy tells the Sheriff, who quickly deduces what the meeting was about, making Robin's mission even more impossible. When the Merry Mannys find out about the increased security that Sir Guy puts on the moneys, Friar Tuck deduces that they know that they know about it.

Little John knows about a secret passage into Nottingham Castle, so the Merry Mannys sneak in. Robin captures the Sheriff and Sir Guy, and the Sheriff makes an "oh noes!" face, lol.

The Merry Mannys escape with the moneys in sacks, and leave the Sheriff and Sir Guy tied up. As soon as they are gone, one of the henchmannys frees the Sheriff and he shouts

"Guards! Guards!"

The guards, guards chase the Merry Mannys and have a fight with them, but we don't see much of the fight because it is dark outside.

Most of the Merry Mannys escape, but Little John gets captured. The Sheriff tries to seduce Little John into betraying Robin and the others, and I use the word "seduce" advisedly...

"You're a big, strong, healthy fellow, well able to enjoy the pleaseures of life, I'll wager. They will be yours, in abundance, when you tell me what I want to know."

Purr. Well I'd be convinced, but somehow Little John resists the temptation.

Sir Guy has a different plan to find out where the Merry Mannys are headed with the moneys. He kidnaps Marion to try to force Sir Kenneth to tell him, but all this results in is Sir Kenneth having a swordfight with him. This ends with Sir Guy stabbing Sir Kenneth, who goes

The rescue attempt for Little John involves the Merry Mannys infiltrating the castle grounds in a variety of disguises, including a couple as women for some good old-fashioned komedy hijinks when one of the guards takes a fancy to them.

Before sending him to be hanged, the Sheriff asks Little John one last time if he will tell him where the rest of the Merry Mannys have gone, and it seems as though Little John has finally succumbed to the Sheriff's charms (well... he's only a cat manny) because he says he will tell him.

Sheriff: "Excellent! Where have they taken the money?"

Little John: "Next time you see a rainbow, run as fast as you can. They're going to bury the money at the end of it."

Lol, he totally pwned you there, Sheriff! This makes the Sheriff very angry, and so he demands that the hangmanny make Little John dance.

The hangmanny is revealed to be Robin in disguise, and he rescues John instead of making him dance (or hanging him, mew). When they get back to their base, they find out about what happened to Sir Kenneth and that Marion is still Sir Guy's prisoner.

This is a proper cliffhanger, what with it even ending on a sudden cut to Robin's mildly concerned-looking face.

This instalment feels like a proper Robin Hood story, and on top of that it has loads of good scenes for the Sheriff in it, so this is comfortably the best episode since part two.