Question: "What was the stupidest attempt to kill James Bond?"
Scott's Answer: In Thunderball when Count Lippe tries to kill Bond by cranking the spinal traction machine up to 11. Seeing Bond flail around on the table is a flat-out cringe-worthy moment in an otherwise fine film.
Andrew's Answer: The killer hockey players in For Your Eyes Only are pretty stupid. So is leaving Bond to the alligators in Live and Let Die. But for my money, the dumbest attempt to kill Bond is leaving him in a pipe in the desert in Diamonds Are Forever. Did they just forget to shoot him?
24 comments:
Scott - I always thought the Count Lippe attempt was pretty cool in the book, but agree, it didn't come across too well on film. As good as Connery was, some of the effects in the early films were pretty lame. I do love the Tarantula attempt in Dr. No, but hey, that is a different question now isn't it. So ... Andrew, it is hard to argue with the alligators. Do we coun't the bolo to the gootch in Casino Royale as an attempt to kill? ;)
I'm going to call the unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism from Live and Let Die, if only because it was the first to get sent up in an Austin Powers movie.
tryanmax... with fricken laser beams! LOL!
I love that scene with Scotty trying to tell him, "I've got a gun... in my room... we can shoot him!"
Jed, The thing about the alligators is that in my experience, they are lazy, lazy creatures who would just watch Bond walk away.
I do like the tarantula. That was a good one. And you can explain that as them wanting to make it look like an accident.
Jaws trying to bite through the cable on the cable-car in Moonraker.
shawn wins. I can think of nothing lamer than that in the entire franchise.
Q: Which henchman is cooler than Oddjob?
A: Definitely not Jaws!
Shawn, That is a pretty bad attempt. I've never liked much about Jaws at all for that reason -- that's all he does... bite you.
K, That would seem to be the worst!
Thank you Pop Quiz. LOL!
Jaws biting through the cable is really stupid; why not just set a simple explosive charge to sever it?
The buzzsaw yo-yo hit in OCTOPUSSY was pretty dopey, too.
The slow, easy-to-escape perils in LIVE AND LET DIE were ripe targets for parody. I want to like the film, because it has some good elements, but it ultimately fails for me because of the heaping helpings of stupid and lame.
THUNDERBALL's spinal stretcher doesn't bother me much when I'm watching it, but then I think, "Why would the machine have a 'danger zone', other than for exceptionally short men, which Connery/Bond clearly isn't?"...
Hey, it's been over a month since the last 'Bond Ranking'... is it a struggle to decide among the least of the merely tolerable, Andrew? LOL
I have no comment (except the stretching conversation makes me think of the torture in The Princess Bride) - BUT
I caught The Saint TV show on METV - Roger Moore was actually interesting and debonair. Not how I see The Saint from the books exactly, but interesting. Since I've only caught him as pieces of sad Bond before, that was a change...
back to the regularly scheduled conversation.
Backthrow, Nope. It's more a factor of the day job eating all of my time and making it hard to keep up. It will return next week.
I didn't like Octopussy blade thing either. Who brings that kind of a weapon? You need to assume that there's going to be an upper walkway and you can get on it while everyone else remains below.
rlaWTX, Moore is really different in his first two films than he becomes later as well. He very quickly stopped taking the role seriously and did it more for satire.
Hmm, how about Cubby Brocoli in 1984 saying, Get Roger's agent on the phone, I know he's almost 60, but we have a great plot here about a genetically altered superman trying to take over Silicon Valley and Bond gets to do it with Grace Jones, and oh yes old chap, there's an exciting high speed blimp chase.
I for one, enjoy fall pruning, despite the instructions that come with the solution.
The hockey game in For Your Eyes Only was incredibly stupid, a blight on an otherwise nearly flawless film. I mean seriously, a hockey player charges a guy riding a Zamboni? But in context, it gave the bad guys time to kill Ferrara, the Italian agent with whom Bond was working. (Note to self: NEVER wait in the car for a secret agent to just pop in someplace for a moment.)
Another bad one was in Goldeneye when they destroyed the helicopter. Really? They steal an advanced military prototype which means they know how it works and what systems it has. But they forget to disable the ejection system? It only works if Janus wanted Bond to escape and attempt to foil his plan.
But the cake-taker is the tarantula in Dr. No. Someone should have told the Bad Guys that while tarantulas are scary-looking, they aren't poisonous.
Pike, Yeah, that was a mistake all around. What a horrible film from all angles.
djskit, I take it you are talking about some of the spam we are awash in today? We seem to have been hit by several hundred posts so far.
Dave, The hockey thing is just horrible. I don't even see how they plan to kill him rather than just rough him up. Not to mention, what keeps him from just shooting them? Really bad planning.
The less accurate the weapon, the more powerful it needs to be... a concept spectacularly misjudged by Silva in Skyfall, who tried to aim a commuter train at Bond by blowing a hole in a tube tunnel. How did he come up with such a nonsense idea?
John, It sounds like a reasonable way to kill someone. LOL!
Skyfall also took a fall on Questionables 15, among many other flaws.
Yep, I saw that. I had nothing to add really.
Post a Comment