Over the past few months, a mysterious commentator named “Slammerworm” has been watching all the James Bond movies and leaving his own take in the comments below each of my Bond movie reviews. Impressed by his diligence and thoughtfully funny comments, I compiled them all into this huge post for future reference (with permission, of course). Slammerworm ranked all 23 Bond films (including the oddities Never Say Never Again and Casino Royale [1967]) into a mega-list from best to worst.

Feel free to compare to my own James Bond Reviews and list of Best and Worst Bond movies. I have to say, Slammerworm’s list is much funnier and better written.

1) Casino Royale (2006). A goodly dose of the right stuff.

After the four increasingly OTT Pierce Brosnan movies, it was again reboot time. Casino Royale brought the franchise movies right back down to brass tacks; no supervillain with a private army esconsed in a fantastic sci-fi lair, no “get out of jail free” gadgets, no tacky special effects, no gorgeous pushover chicks. It cost a full $40m less to make than Die Another Day. This is that rare thing; a big budget, highly commercial movie which is actually good. Very good in fact, and with box office returns totalling $594.1m, officially the highest-grossing James Bond movie ever.

Plot-wise, we’re in prequel land, with Bond as raw, green, newly-minted “OO” agent. Financed by treasury agent Vesper Lynd, he must thwart the efforts of a desperately indebted international financier of terrorist operations to refinance himself via a poker game with enormous stakes. CR06 is a tough, hard, stripped-down movie, ditto Daniel Craig’s Bond. We’re introduced to him with a particularly vicious fight in a public toilet. He makes mistakes, gets hurt, admits he’s scared but he kicks ass. This being a conscious departure from fantasyland Bond, there are virtually no campy “humorous” moments, but then again seeing a guy recreate the famous Ursula Andress “Venus” shot is somehow much more amusing than seeing Halle Berry doing it.

Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) is one of the few Bond Girls who combine intelligence, beauty and acting ability. She’s got the lot. Ultimately it’s a tragic role, which is not-so-subtley telegraphed by the gothy eyeliner she sports when all spruced up for the casino scenes. While Dr No’s straightforward narrative style and gadgetless hero are a definite influence, there are obvious echoes of OHMSS in that Bond falls for Vesper and then loses her as a consequence of his occupation. He’s hardened for the experience, but still vulnerable. Also reminiscent of OHMSS (and perhaps more so, LTK) is the realistic violence.

The only thing which mars the movie is the silly jumping sequence in which Bond and his quarry make a series of ridiculous leaps and drops during a chase straight out of a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon. Also, Craig can fight, quip and such, but he could perhaps work on the charm factor a little more next time. Anyway, so far so yes please. Hope it’s a long, long while before they send Jaws after him.

2) From Russia With Love. Oh, those pesky double-crossing Russians.

Robert Shaw as Red Grant was one of the all-time best Bond villains, too. He’s one genuinely scary dude, and that fight on the train was excellent cinema. Bond hasn’t become Fonzie (i.e. a superhero) yet either, and there’s still a bit of grit to both the character and the movie. Classy stuff, and easily one of the top five Bond films.

3) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Mrs Peel, James Bond and the best storyline of the lot.

Well yes, we can only wonder how this movie might have turned out had Connery been along for the trip. He wasn’t, though, and so we have the movie we have. For my money, Lazenby was fine, just a little stiff, perhaps, but then Roger Moore took a while (too long!) to settle into the role. Had he not been a stereotypically headstrong Aussie Larrikin, Lazenby could have gone on to combine the credible action of Connery with the suave charm of Moore to become the Bond of the 1970s (of course, there may well have been the same varying quality of script). Anyway, OHMSS is a top three Bond movie, mostly for eschewing the by-then rampant sci-fi/superhero cliches and presenting a streamlined (if a little bit Our Man Flint) narrative with the emphasis on character. There is also a stark, visceral grittiness which has more in common with Dr. No and the down-to-earth 1970s than the intervening phantastic psychedelic 1960s.

Going back to conjecture, it is tempting to see the 1960s Bond movies as a canon unto themselves, with credible “naivety-to-disillusion” bookending episodes. Connery’s subsequent reprisal of the role was a mistake; he was far too old to be a believable Bond. The ensuing Moore movies were an increasingly-cartoonish retreat from “real” violence and suffered badly in comparison with edgier contemporaries like Dirty Harry, Mean Streets, Scarface or even TV shows like The Sweeney. OHMSS was an curious one-off, and an excellent, though premature “farewell” to the 1960s “superhero” Bond, which posited a tantalising set of indications as to how the franchise could have progressed.

4) Die Another Day. Convention-busting Brosnan triumph.

AKA “The One With Madonna.” We Kiwis are understandably a little embarrassed by director and occasional ersatz good-time “gal” Lee Tamahori for a couple of reasons, not least of which was turning in what many allege to be one of the all-time worst Bond movies (but then Martin Campbell did Goldeneye and the 2006 Casino Royale, so hopefully that kind of cancels out the deficit). It was a shock to find that DAD was actually one of the good ones.

Okay, there are things wrong with it; it’s at least 20 minutes too long, the invisible car is indefensible, as is much of the obvious CG work (but then haven’t we seen everyone from Sean Connery onward teetering in front of filmed snow?), and the use of the Clash song was a bit jarring. Everything electronic makes a noise when working, the villain’s electrical “Robocop” suit was a completely unnecessary plot additive, and despite the common knowledge that sound doesn’t travel in space, things still explode noisily up there just like they did back in Moonraker. Yep, Madonna’s in it, but only for a minute or so and she’s actually fine, very Pussy Galore. If you don’t like her though, that’s another deficit. And Halle Berry isn’t very good.

Having said that, pretty much everything else adds up to not only the best Brosnan Bond movie, but one of the franchise’s best, full stop. The plot had some nice post-modern twists; who’d have thought we’d ever see a James Bond who resembled heavy-alcohol-period Jim Morrison (irony; George Lazenby was taken off the OHMSS US publicity tour for looking just like that). John Cleese was far better than in TWINE, there was a good Bond Girl/Bad Girl (Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost), and an excellent grotesque villain in Zao. The script was slyly witty throughout, but the scene when the other, non-grotesque villain Gustav Graves explains that he based his obnoxious new personality on James Bond was priceless.

Not unlike initially cocky and confident Wile E. Coyote firing up the ACME jet-pack, Brosnan’s tenure began reasonably well with the frenetic Goldeneye. Then a slew of bad writing, substandard direction and poor casting rapidly sent “Brosnan Bond” hurtling furiously out of control. With this controversial final installment, he was written a role which allowed him ample room to do some real acting, which he did. A pleasant surprise and a keeper for sure.

5) Dr No. The primal text, with Connery at his most likeable.

Absolutely agree. This is the purest statement of movie-form Bond, and everything else derives from here. Seems like the Bond movies which “reset” away from encrustations of doodads and gimmickry to a simple, character-driven plot and believable action (eg On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the latest version of Casino Royale etc.) use this as a point zero. They’re also the best movies. Unfortunately, even here there’s just a little bit of that naggingly ubiquitous Bond script racism: check the unfeasibly abandoned dancing by one or two of the native Jamaicans. It’s up there with the “hopping” Chinese soldiers in Goldfinger.

6) For Your Eyes Only. Sir Roger’s one real Bond movie.

Nicely down-to-earth, but a little too much so to buy a conspicuously aged Roger Moore as James Bond. Intended to introduce a “new” incarnation of Bond (hence the jarringly comic despatch of the unnamed “Blofeld” character in the pre-credit sequence), this is the movie which (in a ideal world) should have followed OHMSS, and starring an increasingly-comfortable George Lazenby. Instead it was made twelve years later and features a good performance by Moore, believable characters and, in the wake of the ludicrous Moonraker, a plausible plot and minimal “humour.” The theme is a good one, but while the soundtrack music is fine when intended to convey suspense, it suddenly Jumps The Shark when action scenes are accompanied by distractingly bad disco music. Still, with a gritty “UK TV Hard-Man Cop Show” feel, this was the first “proper” Bond movie after years of self-parody. The only thing wrong with it is the grandfatherly leading man.

7) Goldeneye. Dragster-paced human manga novel.

James Bond’s 1995 Comeback Special. You take an established canon, up the tech, throw in a smidgen of Batman (1989) here, a hint of Dick Tracy there, and here’s another graphic novel made flesh. Opening stunt silly, but eh. Natalya The Bond Girl was pretty good, as was dependable grotesque Robbie Coltrane and Judi Dench’s wily-old-cat M but agreed, the customary Villain’s Psychotic Henchperson (Fiona Volte from Thunderball telepodded with Magenta from Rocky Horror) stole the show. She should have had the Grace Jones slot in A View To A Kill, and for once Roger Moore’s Bond could have been stuck for a quip. Otherwise yep, the computer nerd character was a pain and Brosnan’s incarnation slightly bland compared with all previous Bonds (particularly his immediate predecessor Timothy Dalton), but since Goldeneye was so (knowingly) cartoonish, all in order. One of the better ones. Clever homage to Peter Hunt’s 1960s Bond “speed-editing” in there, too.

8: The Spy Who Loved Me. You Only Live Twice sneaks back into the theatre with added Jaws.

Roger Moore was good in this one. He still can’t carry off a fight scene for toffee, but he seems a lot more likable, and genuinely appears “involved” in the general plot. The main title theme was a good one, too. Not at all to one’s own personal taste in music, but in context as a Bond theme, one of the best. Unfortunately, like Bond in the bad blue-screen shots which assault the pre-credit sequence’s believability, we’re off downhill from there. Jaws wasn’t scary enough. What was wrong with doing a wee in-joke like introducing him bit-by-bit, a la the shark in the Spielberg movie? Way scarier than seeing him all at once.

Barbara Bach sure was one hot tamale to look at, but acting was all too evidently beyond her capability. Then again, maybe she simply thought that essaying “Russian” was equal to “talking zombie with a well dodgy accent.” Evidently the director did. Same old “mad scientist/would-be dictator with a superweapon and a secret base” plot from back in the day, too.

We got a little of that dear ‘ol Bond Film Racism as well, with the painful Lawrence Of Arabia references and white people painted brown dancing in a bizarre “Dervish” manner at an Egyptian nightspot which apparently hosts only Caucasian guests. Listen out for the toe-curlingly approximated “Moslem singing” just before you get there, too.

Oh, and towards the end, note the evil submarine crew in the campy red uniforms. They just can’t get enough of that pink blusher and lipstick. Oh well, it’s Stromberg’s operation and if he wants his sub crew to look like the Pet Shop Boys, then nobody’s going to argue. One reads the books, goes scanning the blogsites and emerges with the widely-held opinion that this was the best Moore Bond movie. Haven’t seen them all, but yes, that is true so far. Moore was good, but little else about it was.

9) Goldfinger. Vodka Martini with a dash of campy pink lemonade, sweetie-darling.

This was the first really big Bond blockbuster, but success was a two-edged sword. It’s a bit like enjoying a really good local band’s early albums, then they get signed, the budget goes up, the edge comes off, and while it’s great that they’re so popular, one wishes they were lean and hungry and passionate again.

Goldfinger has a classically slinky title song and some truly iconic moments, but as a satisfactory movie experience it didn’t gel as well as its two predecessors. This one was more about situations than character interaction, so while there are famous set pieces like the laser episode, there was nothing as tense or compelling as say, Rosa Klebb’s instruction/seduction of Tatiana in FRWL. Moreover, a burgeoning wave of campiness was just breaking shore, evidenced by Oddjob’s silly lethal hat, Pussy Galore’s squadron of Jayne Mansfield-breasted pilots, the Oriental soldiers’ fluorescent white puttees (all the better to accentuate their high-stepping “hopping” gait) and so on.

Connery seems a little distant this time around, too, and while the introduction of the (in)famous Bond Gadgets was admirably low-key (and that cool Aston Martin car was an inspired addition, hidden weapons notwithstanding), it removed the character slightly from a previous crucial vulnerability. While the previous two Bond movies were set in a near-believable world, utilising the immediacy of the “space race” and the overarching Cold War climate, Goldfinger was a small, but in retrospect significant step in the direction of campy fantasy. The collection of “Mafia Dons” all use comic-book speak (we’re a long way from Goodfellas here), everyone’s just a little too eager to fall over when the Flying Circus gasses Fort Knox and so on.

On the plus side, the villain was memorable, the girls were exemplary (agreed; the assassin-sister of the Golden Girl was the Hottie Of The Film and her exit was actually quite shocking), and the action scenes were fine. The director was Guy Hamilton, who later gave us similarly patchy efforts like Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With The Golden Gun in the 1970s. ‘Nuff said.

10: Never Say Never Again (non EON production). Second Coming of Thunderball fails to enrapture.

The remake of Thunderball was an “unofficial” rival Bond movie to Octopussy for 1983. They’re actually good mates in real life, but if Sean Connery and Roger Moore were to duke it out, my money’s on Connery. He looked damned good for a 50-something, and although the Scottish brogue is more to the fore, he’s back to being interested (and thus charming and charismatic) in the project.

Thankfully, main villain Klaus Maria Brandauer as Largo is also excellent (Max Von Sydow makes a fine cameo as Blofeld, but he doesn’t get much screen time); he does seem genuinely mad, driven and disarmingly urbane at the same time. They should have used the guy in the official EON Bond movies. Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) was a classic Psycho Bad Girl, though she pales in comparison with Famke Janssen’s bravura turn as Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye. She’s pretty good, though.

There are a few surprisingly clever moments in the script, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot else on offer here. This is a remake of Thunderball, and while it is arguably a streamlined improvement (there’s a lot less underwater stuff), it’s still boring old Thunderball. Ok, so they couldn’t legally use the original James Bond themes, but did the incidental music have to be so bad? The soundtrack (thank you messrs Cheap and Nasty) utilised horrible cheesy synths to approximate a real orchestra. Rowan “Mr Bean” Atkinson’s cameo is overplayed and cringeworthy, as is Edward Fox as the new head of MI6. Felix Leiter was far too young, and Kim Basinger as Domino? That blonde sleepwalker with the wee piggy eyes? Nuh. Why was Bond dressed in dungarees for one small, near-insignificant scene? He looked like a Village Person.

The video game duel between Bond and Largo is no substitute for a tense casino scene, and that silly “electronic” voice makes one cringe. Watching other people play video games is invariably tedious. Still, it was more convincing than those cartoon-y animated missiles. Writing-wise there were several flat areas, and some ghastly skit-show level dialogue (Fatima: “I made you all wet!” Bond: “Yes, but my Martini’s still dry”), and an overall feeling that money was a little tight. It doesn’t look as glossy as even the lesser EON Bond productions.

Nevertheless, as to which movie wins the Battle Of The Bonds; regardless of Octopussy’s superior box office take, it’s this one. It’s not a keeper but there are worse Bond movies. Oh, and watch for the marvellous little moment at 5:03 during the scene in M’s office when Connery nonchalantly reaches into his trouser pocket to scratch his testicles. He’s the man.

11) The Living Daylights. Bond returns to basics, but at a walking pace.

Seems like the writers and director could have tried just a bit harder to retool the Bond franchise here. Good points: A believable Bond girl. Sure, she’s a looker really, but next to Barbara Bach or Britt Ekland, Maryam D’Abo appeared positively mousy (and doesn’t even get her kit off). She does indeed look like a cello player, and what’s more, she only succumbs fully to James’ charms at the end. A psychotically enthusiastic henchman-assassin? Check, and Necros had a brain, too.

Good debut performance by Timothy Dalton as Bond, although in retrospect the character’s incarnation was written as slightly too emotionally fragile to be such a seasoned agent (particularly in Licence To Kill). The opening pre-title sequence was excellent stuff, and some of the fight scenes were surprisingly violent, particularly Necros’ kitchen cutlery set-to with a guard. Pity the rest of the movie wasn’t as good.

Bad points: Basically down to dodgy writing and lame direction. Though distinctly muted, the shadow of Roger Moore’s “comedy” Bond movies loomed ominously over this one in moments like Bond’s dropping in on the yacht in the pre-title sequence (the woman’s reaction was unrealistic and Dalton himself didn’t seem too confident with the quip), and that cringeworthy disco dolly in the big glass at the end of the title credits. Also the entirety of the car/ski stunt sequence which culminates in Bond and Kara escaping on the cello case was pure Moore and his cast of stuntmen. Necros aside, the villains just weren’t nasty enough this time around, either.

However, the main problem with the movie was the workmanlike, pedestrian direction by John Glen. Too much middle-distance filming-range sapped the action sequences, and while at least the writers tried to update matters to the mid-1980s, Glen was content with the old ways of film-making to the point of stodginess (one imagines - not that it would have happened - what someone like David Lynch or Michael Mann might have made of the story).

So, while The Living Daylights was on the one hand an attempt to move on from slapstick’n’smirk, there was too much foot-dragging and the result didn’t go far enough. Next to A View to A Kill, this one looked almost hardcore, but in the Bondian scheme of things it was one of the more mediocre offerings. Did Dalton deserve another try? Maybe, but only if the writing/production/direction team had been cleared of the dead wood. Then again, unfortunately for Dalton, he was ageing pretty quickly (witness his well-lined, follically-challenged appearance in Licence To Kill just two years on from this), and we may have been back to square one with an unbelievable Bond, only without Moore’s self-deprecating charm.

12) Diamonds are Forever. Bond goes to Vegas, but we’re out of luck.

Anybody notice how “glam rock” this film is? You’ve got athletic female assassins camply named Thumper and Bambi, two ridiculously fey gay assassins (Mr Wint and Mr Kidd), and future Rocky Horror narrator Charles Grey dressing in drag to evade Bond. Also there’s the space connection with the moon buggy (”Ground Control To Major Bond…”). All of which would have been way more fun with a different actor as Bond. Connery was old and pudgy and looked a little like Clark Gable by the time he was recalled to duty. Even with all the fashionably louche early 1970s distractions, the screenplay and direction weren’t up to the standard of the 1960s Bond movies, and this amusingly odd entry is one of the more middling ones.

13) You Only Live Twice. Michael Myers was watching very closely.

Absolutely concur. Some further observations: An utterly sublime theme song; the opening credits actually make a good music video in their own right. The first half-hour or so of the movie was fine, with Connery doing more real acting than his last two Bond appearances put together. There’s some good writing, too (check that gem of a scene with Moneypenny), but then off we go to sillyville with a plot so whacked-out only Austin Powers could do it justice.

So, SPECTRE’s space program is more advanced than anyone else’s and boasts spacecraft which can swallow the command modules of US and USSR space missions alike? That’s not unlike Dick Dastardly from “Whacky Races” being well ahead of the other drivers and stopping to set a trap instead of just going ahead and winning. A bit of wayward eyeliner, a stooping walk, a Vulcan hairstyle and Sean Connery becomes “Japanese.” Oboy. Moreover, he learns how to be a Ninja in a couple of weeks. The villain’s secret lair is a hollowed-out volcano complete with a rocket base and a private army, and is accessed via a colossal metal “crater” lid. Yeah. Guess everybody in the vicinity was looking the other way when all the construction was going on. This was Connery’s Moonraker. Donald Pleasance was a great villain, though.

14) Live And Let Die. Warmed-over gumbo with cheese.

Yep, agreed; this is one of the least “Bondian” movies of the lot. Oddly colourless performance by Sir Roger in his first Bond outing, he seemed like he was still doing an episode of The Saint. Jane Seymour was the true revelation here; an extraordinarily attractive woman who also managed to inject some real personality into what was essentially just another “Bond Girl” role (they generally start off powerful and confident and then go all “help me, James” once they succumb to his libido. To be fair though, in this movie Solitaire arguably succumbed to her own). She was the best thing about it.

The “Blaxploitation” idea was not bad, but it really only worked in the urban Harlem environment, where Bond is an uncomfortable fish out of water. He might as well be in Moscow. Once down in de Bayou however, the gritty urban vibe disappeared to be replaced by a garish cartoon of dumbass Southern lawmen, hokey “voodoo” trappings and a speedboat chase during which one had time to make a coffee, check the email, reminisce with friends of times past, etc. Continuing on from Diamonds Are Forever both the “Americanisation” of the Bond films and the creeping tide of “comedic” content are patently obvious. Silly moments abound; a table sinks below the floor in a nightclub and no-one notices? The villains didn’t so much as point in the other direction and shout “hey, what’s that over there” before it happened. Also, all the people in the “funeral parades” are in on the plot? Oh yeah. Where did Bond get an entire tarot deck of “The Lovers” card? Q? Kananga’s explosive yet bloodless death would have been a lot less cartoonish in real life (but there’s a PG rating to be kept in mind), and so on.

Oh, and a Bond movie plot with actual supernatural elements? We’ve sure moved on from the “dragon” in Dr No. Then again, Baron Samedi did look quite cool riding that train at the end…

15) Tomorrow Never Dies. Licenced to bore.

The villain’s role is that of an evil media magnate, and it would have been wise to have underplayed the role and presented a cold, businesslike protagonist; after all, there was a perfect real-life “evil tyrant” role model in Rupert Murdoch. Instead, Jonathan Pryce hams it up and chews the scenery like he’s the Batman villain of the week (as my Bondsesh mate said; “a bit Willy Wonka, isn’t he?”). Michelle Yeoh is attractive enough and well versed in chop-socky moves, but is fed some terrible lines and can’t even carry those off convincingly. And Teri Hatcher? What were they thinking?

On the plus side, Brosnan (a very good actor) is allowed some room in which to display emotions other than Goldeneye’s one-size-fits-all steely determination. Unfortunately, no-one he interacts with except M, Moneypenny and Q are capable of returning dialogue with equal acting skills, so he ends up wanting for a worthy foil to bounce off. Moreover, there are frustratingly few such “quiet” scenes amid some extremely overblown (but admittedly exciting) stunts; best was the “video game” car chase. Brosnan was better than in Goldeneye, but yeah, the movie wasn’t quite as much fun.

16) The Man With The Golden Gun. James Bond stars in his own Bond parody.

Oh dear. This really is where everything went undeniably pear-shaped for the Bond movie franchise. Ham-fisted direction (that cutesy pennywhistle soundtrack for the bridge jump, for instance), two oddly unappealing Bond Girls, and a badly miscast villain (Christopher Lee just wanders around on “looming menace” autopilot, phoning it in all the way. He plays his makeout clinch/grope-scenes like a bored physician conducting an examination). Moreover, the entire production boasted a cast with a conspicuous lack of chemistry, and the over-familiar “mad scientist with secret hideout and super weapon” plot was strictly 1966 bond parody. Scaramanga’s “psychedelic shooting range” was pure Batman, and Herve Villechaize (behold, a strange, mysterious dwarf! Lazy casting shorthand since whenever for an automatically “exotic, weird, slightly sinister” henchman) with his annoyingly affected “wind-up toy” walk was a whacky swingin’ Sixties trope too far (wasn’t there a guy like that in Patrick McGoohan’s 1967 TV show The Prisoner? [Yes, that would be the midget butler - editor]).

The Eastern locale is squandered by a stupidly racist script (oh yeah, big, white Bond can beat up any and all trained martial arts types), and the Southern baccy-chawin’ Good ‘Ol Boy light relief was similarly overplayed and odious. In short, this was actually a mid-1960s Bond parody movie made half a decade too late. By the release of The Man With The Golden Gun, James Bond had gone from inspiring Derek Flint to becoming him.

17) Licence To Kill. Impassioned Dalton in post-good Miami Vice season opener.

In which the Bond franchise plays Miami Vice and loses almost everything. Timothy Dalton sorely lacked the charm, sophistication and campy comic edge needed for the James Bond character, and saddled with a patchy script and indifferent direction, Licence To Kill emerges as one of the worst movies in the canon. The villains walk away with all the credit. Robert Davi and Benicio Del Toro really are sinister (gangling, psycho Del Toro could easily have been another Red Grant figure), but utterly wasted in a “Bond movie” which sought to emulate a TV show (unfortunately not to the point of utilising Miami Vice’s revolutionary music video-influenced direction).

Even Wayne Newton’s well-realised serio-comic “evangelist” could have used more screen time, if only to inject much-needed comic relief. James Bond may be working as a loose cannon for the sake of his own revenge, and Sanchez may be mixed up in Central American politics, but ultimately it’s a sordid little cops-and-robbers story. James Bond as a vice cop? Frankly, as a premise that’s a little underwhelming. The incompetently staged nightclub fight scene was straight out of the 1967 Casino Royale and, along with the poor story-flow and lack of suspense, represents five-time Bond director John Glen’s franchise nadir. Hard to believe the same guy had once directed a taut thriller like For Your Eyes Only.

The two Bond Girls were unengaging (except when Carey Lowell is all dolled up for the nightclub scenes, when she suddenly becomes a convincing character), and the final “big rigs” truck stunt sequence is fine, but worked better in its original setting of Mad Max 2. Last Bond movie for six years, and not hard to see why. Nice opening theme, though.

18) Thunderball. Long, lingering, lukewarm sog with remote-control Connery.

This was the biggest Bond box-office hit of the 1960s and along with its predecessor Goldfinger largely fuelled the popular culture “spy boom” which captured the imagination and wallets of millions over 1964-67. Odd, considering the movie’s actual quality. Agreed, it has an undeniably classic theme song (though is “…strikes like Thunderball…” supposed to be a new mild oath?), but otherwise, I’m afraid that we’ve seen two different movies. If Thunderball resembles a Hitchcock movie, it’s Rope. After watching thirteen of them, this is the first Bond movie to invite fast-forwarding. After the cautious camp of Goldfinger, Thunderball was perhaps the first instance of a “back to basics” approach. Well, one can go to the Bahamas, but this is a long way from Dr No’s Caribbean.

Ye Gods, there’s a lot of underwater stuff towards the end. On the face of it, a nice idea; good visuals to be had (ask Jacques Cousteau). Big problem was, everything moves so slowly underwater anyway that even Peter Hunt’s whiplash editing can’t save such footage from becoming cinematic tedium. The pacing was frustratingly uneven. On land, the story started well but ran out of puff long about a quarter of the way through, had a cup of tea and a lie down while everyone was busy underwater, and never quite got up to speed again. There were some quite shoddy plot developments (just how preternaturally fit does one have to be in order to benefit from the highest setting on that wildly thrashing “traction table” at the sanitarium?), and a lack of continuity (Bond’s long time CIA friend Felix Leiter was played by a soap opera-level nobody, and plotwise may as well have been a stranger). The villains were lightweight (oboy. Brief, obscured Blofeld, a foreign guy with an eyepatch and some other geeky guy. Wow), the direction was downright dull and though the girls were indeed very nice looking, none had a personality to speak of. To top it all off, Connery walked through it.

True, his presence was fading in Goldfinger, but here James Bond is reduced further down scriptwise into a mere plot-cipher (admittedly equipped with some of the best one-liners so far), and it was difficult to feel anything for the character. Maybe Connery felt the same way. To succeed on their own terms, the Bond movies must hold to (or else play against) an established set of internal criteria, but at some point Bond also has to be about good cinema. Granted, Bond is all “about” pretty girls, guns, gadgets, villains, danger, urgency, sinister hidden networks, and violent solutions to explosive situations, but plot still is important, character development even more so. In the more intriguing franchise entries, Bond’s is a dark world (though not without its lighter, more pleasurable moments), and one in which he could lose heavily (see OHMSS, For Your Eyes Only, Licence To Kill, Casino Royale (2006) etc). Thunderball was a long, long, languid dip in the briny and not a keeper.

19) A View To A Kill. Golem-like Moore, plot beamed in from Mars.

This movie should really have been directed by Chuck Jones, at least then it could have received the “cartoon” treatment it deserved. In fact, this is so wilfully silly that for sheer “throw yer brain out the window and you’ll be entertained” value it is one crucial rung above the more “serious” Moonraker.

20) The World Is Not Enough. Big empty nothing with some great actors rattling around inside.

Sorry mein Webmaster, but once again we gotta agree to disagree. TWINE is one odd, lumpen effort. The one good idea was to utilise acting talent a bit more this time around, so there are a lot more scenes of people speaking to each other. After being too busy in Goldeneye and only catching his breath in Tomorrow Never Dies, here Brosnan gets to interact extensively with decent thesps like Judi Dench and Robbie Coltrane. Problem is, the writing isn’t up to scratch, the interplay fails to spark and thus the encounters don’t amount to much.

Moreover, the movie is saddled with two of the all-time worst Bond Girls; one-dimensional “bad girl” Electra (she does “smug, smirky smartass” and that’s her reaction to everything) and an even more alarming example of miscasting by which eminent nuclear scientist Dr Christmas Jones is apparently played by a chirpy aerobics instructor in her mid-20s. One could find more convincing impersonators of nuclear scientists working behind the bar at the local pub (or maybe even outside in the gutter. She’s that bad).

Then there’s Renard the villain, who cannot feel pain or other sensations and thus is kind of superhuman. Sorry, but even if you can’t feel it happening your body is still prone to abuse, and will bruise, burn, blister and break just like it always did. The character was interesting (sort of a young Blofeld), but actor Robert Carlyle was badly underutilised, sharing a mere few underwritten scenes with Brosnan.

The gargantuan pre-credits sequence got boring quickly, and the jet boat destruction was straight out of one of Sir Roger’s later, more risible efforts (who cleans the incidental Bond Mission mess up? Does your city have to have James Bond insurance? Surely in some parts of the world he’d be considered a supervillain for causing all that damage). What’s more, Brosnan seemed a bit jaded.

Oh, and introducing “R” (John Cleese) was a bad idea. Cleese comes with far too much baggage to be an acceptable substitute for Q. Why do these things all have to be two hours long? This one felt like that and more.

21) Moonraker. Come back Ed Wood, all is forgiven.

As a Bond movie, it lasts for almost all of the pre-credits sequence, right up until Jaws crashes into the circus tent. Then the real circus begins. One example among many of the sheer silliness which ensues is the outer space fight, where the good guys shoot blue laser-beams, whilst the bad guy shoot red. Ideologically colour-coded laser beams, eh? And good on Jaws for finding love under the most trying of circumstances, but how come she’s up on Drax’s space station with all the beautiful people? Nobody else there is short, with glasses and pigtails. One could go on detailing this sort of thing, but at least it’s not boring. Not when one is laughing so much.

22) Octopussy. Plotless tedium enlivened only by silly bits.

Almost immediately, the quality control on Roger Moore’s Bond movies got the speed-wobbles, vacillating wildly between drama and “comedy.” This one cautiously continued the low-key feel of his previous effort For Your Eyes Only, but the forces of farce were massing for an all-out attack of the sillies (see A View To A Kill). They do make a couple of sorties into Octopussy, most notably when Bond swings on a jungle vine and Johnny Weismuller’s long familiar “Tarzan yell” plays on the soundtrack. There is also an impossible “quick-change” moment when Bond exits a gorilla costume in the time it takes for Gobinda to turn around. Yeahyeahyeah, so far so whatever.

However, what really holes this one below the waterline is poor casting (Maud Adams as the titular character was a bore, Magda looked a bit fish-like, Vijay was a lump of wood dressed as a human and watch out for the scenery, lest the guy who played General Orlov start to chew it up) and a well-nigh unfathomable plotline. We’re in India, but there’s something about fake Faberge eggs, nuclear bombs, a travelling circus, and some sort of secret society composed entirely of attractive women in brightly-coloured leotards.

There’s a big all-in mass punch-up near the end, and Bond defuses a nuclear bomb whilst dressed as a clown (now there’s an extremely effective age-disguising use of cosmetics. They should have utilised the technique on Moore for the entirety of A View To A Kill) but by then I’d long given up trying to follow the meandering storyline. Sir Roger wasn’t trying very hard this time and neither was anybody else, so why should we.

23) Casino Royale (1967) (non EON production). A complete dog’s breakfast.

Over 1964-67 quite a lot of spying had gone on in movies, TV, books and comics, and even James Bond himself had passed into self-parody. For CR67, the original Ian Fleming story (the only one not owned by the EON production company) was recast as a high camp, psychedelic farce played strictly for laughs. Or at least its makers intended it to be so, since it is not very funny.

They shot this with six directors, key cast members coming and going (nominal star Peter Sellers bailed in disgust midway, and his exit in the film was “covered” by inserting a few seconds of outtake material), and uninspired script-shredding improv (not that there was much of a script to begin with), and then overall compiler Val Guest made it worse with an inevitably incoherent assemblage (I couldn’t follow the storyline for more than ten minutes without losing track of why the movie’s events were unfolding in the way they did).

It has a little smidgen of period charm (commercially-produced neo-psychedelic pop-art), but not enough to save witnessing it from being a chore rather than a pleasure. This troubled production had an estimated budget of $12m and grossed $41.7m worldwide; respectable business, but small potatoes by Bond movie standards. What a double bill this would make with Modesty Blaise (1966); “Chaotic Bond Parody Night.” Bring your pillow.

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