Upstream - Episode 8: Live and Let Die

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

You knew it was coming. You knew we would get to it.   It's the Racism One. During the production of Diamonds Are Forever they chose to adapt this Fleming novel next literally as a reaction to the Black Panther party gaining popularity.   We couldn't take on this one alone, so we called in Writer and all-around excellent guy Christopher Caldwell-Kelly to run us through just what the hell was going on when they made literally any of the decisions they made!   Find Chris at https://twitter.com/seraph76   Find us at https://twitter.com/killjamesbond   Bonus episodes every other week at https://patreon.com/killjamesbond  

My name is Names is for Tombstones, baby. Y'all take this honky out and waste it. Hello and welcome back to Kill James Bond. I am Alice Caldwell-Kelly. Names is for tombstones, honky. I forgot the line. I was like, I'm going to do this as a bit. Names is for tombstones, baby.

Take this honky out in the alley and ice it. Ice this mother trucker. That's a lot of ice. Sorry, your name please for the record Alice Caldwell Kelly joining me are Abigail Thorne and Devin and special guest

Christopher Caldwell Kelly I got my husband because I wanted him to talk about the racist movie how you doing Chris the racist movie. How are you doing, Chris? The racist movie, as if there's only one. Although, this is the most racist movie. Yes, I call this the racist movie in a franchise that contains... Now what's the plan for me?

First, you become a Japanese. It's more racist than that. It treats its subject matter with more sensitivity in You Only Live Twice than this fucking movie. Yeah, yeah, it does. That is literally true. We're talking about Live and Let Die, Roger Moore's first Bond movie. And my favorite thing that I've learned about this movie, just to start us off, is the fact that they tried to get Sean Connery back. Fuck off. Again! just to start us off is the fact that they tried to get sean connery back for it again

how old was he looking in diamonds are forever he was like this is too racist i can't do this they offered him five million dollars and five million dollars in 1973 is like 30 million now and he was like no i'm too old i i can't do this you have to get someone else i for one think we were robbed i think we were robbed of flabby sort of 60s sean connery just sort of waddling around just like flipping people through tables and stuff i mean the racism would almost have been more understandable from an older man because it's like oh he's from another time like they could have done something with it but no new year new bond and it's roger moore the the man who in his autobiography said that he had three expressions

when he played bond left eyebrow raised right eyebrow raised and bitten by jaws. I hate the Roger Moore. I hate him with my life. I will see him destroyed. Oh, you don't like Tori Gabbard, James Bond? It's so bad. I was so mad throughout the entire movie. I hate this fucking guy. Genuinely. But we'll get into it. I mean, first of all, we have to start with a little sort of the preamble before the opening credits, which consists of the only scene in this movie that anyone remembers after a while.

We get a couple of people being killed, but like one of them gets killed in a New Orleans jazz funeral. He's watching a restaurant called Filet-O-Sol, and the jazz funeral goes past him, and he goes, Whose funeral is it? Yours. Just stabs him, they bundle him into the coffin, and then the second line goes wild. It's like, I don't know, striking. I was a little like, wow, that's a really subdued jazz funeral till they stabbed like oh there they go although that second line was really off sync

and usually second lines are just completely on beat and normally it's a second line anywhere my great aunt led a second line through a pool using a paper napkin for a handkerchief it started to dissolve she rolled out the other side this one was a little kind of subdued, relaxed. And there's like 40 people in this funeral of Cortege as well. Like, they're all in on this.

It's a big conspiracy. This is a theme that will return. Yes, absolutely. This is a major theme. Every black person in America is in on this, textually. It's very strange.

Yes. Except one guy. Except one guy except one guy but we get our opening our opening credits which has some more like nudity and women turning into skulls which is cool and then we arrive in bond's apartment which still looks like shit oh it doesn't look like shit he lives in like a fucking dracula house now. He's got like a fireplace and like big clocks and portraits and stuff, he looks like a fucking vampire. Except for like the big 70s copper chicken he had on the wall, which like really brought me out of it. We'll get into the 70s decor in this, because he's in bed with this Italian agent who he has seduced, and then M and Moneypenny come and wake him up early in the morning to brief him on his next thing. And we have this sort of household

comedy where he's trying to keep M out of the bedroom where there's this naked girl. He invites him into his kitchen, which is the most 70s room I've seen in my life, and makes him a frothy coffee. He makes him a cappuccino with this incredible new piece of technology, the cappuccino machine. And it's just like, it's a really strange scene. Like time marches on because he makes him a coffee with what would now be a sort of fairly normal coffee machine.

But M is incredulous at it. And also he's like trying to hide from his boss the fact that he has a girl in his bed which is like because at the time of course it would be sort of scandalous for for an mi6 agent to be like shagging but now it's just like well you know if your boss will arrive at your house in the middle of the night then what are they going to expect you know yeah and obviously the the one thing that m's character and Moneypenny know about Bond is that he does not fuck. He's famously not doing any of that shit. He makes M the worst cup of coffee I've ever seen in my fucking life.

Oh, it's spilled all over the fucking gaff. It's like half of it's in the saucer. It somehow already has milk in it. It's just, oh, God god we should sort of take the second two because we mentioned one of the methods through which someone is killed in in the pre-credits scene but there are three specifically yeah the one anyone remembers and they are the jazz funeral yeah and then there's a man at the un who dies from having his headphones feed back too hard. And then...

Yeah, they play 100 gecks at him and he dies. The podcaster's death. Absolutely. Never turn it up to 11. Poor bugger. And then there was another guy who gets voodooed, is the best way I can describe that. He gets stroked with a very plastic snake and then dies.

And it's weird, man. Yeah, he's fully tied up in an audience of black people as the only white person there, and they're doing voodoo on him, and then one of them has a snake bite him and he dies. There's a guy in a weird goat hat for some reason,

which really confused me. Yeah. Is that not a thing? Are there not goat hats in voodoo? I don't think typically a hope god wears a goat hat. You're just feeling like, oh, I've got this goat, may as well. Hey, buddy, if you've got a goat hat, you're like, ah, this is going to round out basically any look, I think. This is Sponsor New Jobs.

Investigate these three deaths Because they were all MI6 guys It turns out Yeah yeah yeah Despite the fact that we heard one of them Talking like an American I guess he was just deep cover They're all MI6 agents

Obviously they think the deaths are linked Bond has to investigate once he's done Getting his Italian slampies out of the way We see Moneypenny incidentally And Roger Moore's Bond is a lot less horny for Moneypen than we've seen either connery or lazen bb which is like really really interesting i don't know if they thought that she was too old now but like it's a weird jump from especially when lazen b was just like fully groping money penny in the office to now she's just kind of this, like, matronly figure who, like,

covers up Bond's transgressions. He didn't even thread the spank. Fucked up. No. Which he fucking did in, um, oh, God, Thunderball. Yeah. But he's got a magnet watch that he uses to fuck around with M's teaspoon.

You see, by pulling out this button, sir, it turns the watch into a hyper-intensified magnetic field. This will come up at every possible opportunity in this movie. My notes for this simply say that this movie is a watch advert with extra pay.

We get this long loving shot of Bond's watch before this. He's wearing a different watch in bed, it's like a digital watch. We get a shot of that, then we get a shot of him's watch like before this he's wearing a different watch in bed it's like a digital watch we get a shot of that then we get a shot of him getting the rolex back and every single time he needs to do something in this movie he will go to the rolex which is fucking great obviously he uses it to magnet the italian lady's dress off oh fuck's sake it doesn't pull the zipper out of the dress it just gently unzips it

but we've seen it like fling things across the room he just like pulls all of her fillings out like an mri oh god his line when he does that is sheer magnetism darling roger moore calls every woman he sees in this movie darling and i hate it i hate him so much i will destroy roger moore i would rather have the sean connery thing where he just like spanks my ass than this kind of oleaginous dickhead just smarming me the smarm scale of this movie is going to be through the fucking roof listeners listeners i'll tell you this is an aside to you one of the other guests who are thinking about having on this episode of the podcast is my cousin who was in fact in life personal friends with roger moore and i'm really really glad now that we did we didn't get him on because i didn't realize just how much how anti-moor this podcast was going to be i completely

wouldn't turn that down just be slagging off his dead friend the whole time. I would not turn that down at all either. Because this is true to life. I am very real on this for the viewers. They get everything. So yeah, first scene with Roger Moore, already more smart and condensed into that one scene than basically any Connery movie.

Like a cube of the stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Neutron star material. It was like swimming through Vaseline. Yeah. He's like all chin, too. He's kind of well-built, because he's young when he does this first movie, but the thing that I remember from this is just like, his face looks like it's 90% chin, and he's got the chin ass, he's got the chin.

Chin ass! 90% chin, and he's got the, like, chin ass. He's got the chin ass. So I'm just sat there looking at this guy's fucking chin ass, being like, this is indecent. Cover yourself. Cover your shame. He's fucked up. Yeah. So, Bond flies to New York to investigate, and

suffers the world's least threatening and most baroque assassination attempt. Why does he go to New York? Because the UN is there. Because the UN guy was spying on the leader of an island nation called San Monique in the Caribbean, a guy called Dr. Kananga. A sovereign nation, let's just make that clear at the offset so the rest of this is very clear,

a sovereign nation over which Bond has zero jurisdiction. And so Bond decides to poke around and start by investigating Kananga. A CIA guy picks him up from the airport, and as they're driving along the highway in New York, a white Cadillac pulls up alongside, and the guy driving uses a special gun in the wing mirror to shoot a dart into the CIA driver's head. Good thing you had the window open. Which kills him perfectly silently. He does not move at all.

Stone fucking dead. And then several seconds after this, his corpse pedal to the metal. And so Roger Moore has to leap forward and try and move the guy's corpse out of the way to avoid a car crash, which is just... it's not that scary! It's really not. They try their best, they put a camera on the front of the car and weave through traffic and stuff, but like... come on, no. Yeah, it's not very perilous.

It's the way that Prince Philip killed Diana. We do get a fun line though because Bond then phones this in to Felix Leiter from the CIA and Felix has a cool line. I got the line. Get me a mega white pimp mobile. Poor thing. What mega model is a pimp mobile?

I don't see that in the catalogue. Just slips right in there. White pimp mobile like i don't see that in the catalogue catalogue just slips right in there white pimp mobile un totally unremarked yeah also felix lyder not italian anymore in this one fucked up or gay not gay not italian boring this is like white bread ass felix lyder for this entire fucking movie very upset felix is spying on on dr kananga, just doing some CIA espionage on an embassy. Fine, whatever. It's a violation of sovereignty, whatever. It's what the CIA are meant to do.

And we see Dr. Kananga for the first time. He comes in with his secretary, this very hot woman named Solitaire. Normal name. And he has her take a letter, and then starts a tape machine going, which is just sort of this like long-winded anti-colonial speech which instantly throws felix leiser off he's just like oh yeah he's like he's knitting a flag in there i mean it could have been a speech about anything right it could have been a boring like normal ordinary business letter that you might hear in an embassy

but it's specifically an anti-colonial speech. They chose to do that. Very glad you flagged that up. For too long, members of our community have allowed themselves to be bullied by United States industry. So says the black leader, Dr. K. It's very subtle, the messaging in this film. Very, very subtle.

This is a fascinatingly racist idea, because as he's doing this, all of the anti-colonialist rhetoric is pure diversion. Because at the time that this is playing, he is dressing into his pimp outfit. Yeah, all of his henchmen arrive dressed as stereotypes, is the word I've written. Yeah, various of his henchmen arrive dressed as stereotypes, is the word I've written. Yeah, various of pimps. If you had central casting in the early 70s and you had just written pimps. I mean, they all look amazing, but in the context of the film, it's very problematic. He's literally, he comes in wearing, I think it might even be white tie. It's certainly diplomatic attire, and looking very sort of stentorian.

And then he changes into a red velour coat and a leopard print scarf, and like, high-heeled boots. Sure? Anyway, it's time for Bond to go to a voodoo shop. Oh boy. Oh boy. The voodoo shop which is next to the embassy of san monique very smart yes very well placed because he's trailed the car there he misdirects the clerk

into the back and he slips in to the back office which is a garage where he finds the white pimp mobile i would like to highlight an instant a fucking fleeting moment in this scene where roger moore is in the fucking voodoo shop the clerk has come out and she's gone do you need any help with anything sir and he goes no no just browsing and turns away from her as he's turning away he gives her the world's most fucking like side eye suspicious glance over his shoulder for textually simply because she isn't white like it's codes it so clearly that every single time a black guy is on screen you're supposed to be like oh shit one of these like you're supposed to be suspicious and moore himself portrays that in like it's just an instant but if you watch that scene it's it screams out yeah blackness

is a threat in itself in this movie and it uses that to do like what's otherwise like the bones of this script are like a fairly standard like spy thriller but it's like every time that that that template would require we need rising threat here they just insert some blackness and just hope that that works as we see because bond he tails them in a taxi he tails the white pimp mobile in a taxi yeah it's almost i can't decide if it's played for comedy but they keep passing other cars i don't think it is and like the clerk in the shop is like radioing in and the implication is that whenever they pass a black person they are all part of this conspiracy and they're like 125th like you've got a honky on your tail like they're all calling it in 125th you got a honky on your tail and it really does go from 125th, you got a honky on your tail, to the Bond theme.

As Bond is fucking gang stalked towards Harlem. He gets into Harlem and when he gets out of a taxi, his taxi driver is also calling it in. He's also part of it. The implication is that every single black person in America is in on this conspiracy and they're therefore all suspicious. In this movie, black people just love lying to white people. Yeah. Right?

Also, I want to flag up the fact that Bond is walking through Harlem in a suit with an overcoat and leather gloves. He looks fully like a nonce. It's full nonce shit. This is like the nonce's uniform abroad. This scene is like the unironic version of the OSS Sandi set guy. I was about to say, yeah. Who just like phones in every time Bond leaves or arrives at a location.

This movie has actually made my opinion of OSS Sandi set better because it's made that joke about five times funnier. I'm just a guy leaning into a phone box and narrating every fucking thing he does he just came into the hotel he just left the hotel everyone in america is in on this he goes into a filet-o-sol restaurant again okay can i stop for a second to talk about filet-o-sol because it really frustrates me it's's got a kind of cool name, right? It's got a pun in the name. And I'm expecting like a you buy, we fry fish place. Yeah, it's a front.

I grew up in plenty of places where the fronts also had amazing food. And you look at the menu on the wall and it's just like burgers. There's no meat in three. And has anybody gone to a soul food restaurant who worked in this movie? Of course not. It's completely baffling. It's just like they're like, American. That's burgers, right?

Yeah. The reason you know that they haven't is the way that they respond to Bond being in their restaurant, right? He goes into their restaurant and he orders a drink. Yours is a bourbon. And it's literally like the piano stops playing in a saloon everybody turns and looks at him nobody has anything else going on he is the only white person who has ever been seen in harlem and like oh god they fuck up his drink order too he has to tell them that NEAT means no ice. And you get a very, like, white man in a hostile land-esque thing where the waiter's doing bits at him about his order. He goes like, oh, no ice, and the waiter's like, that'll

cost extra. It's supposed to be like a very you are not where you belong, my friend sort of situation. One of the guys on the radio says that it's like following a cue also the fact that he orders a whiskey neat was a deliberate choice because they didn't want him to order a fucking vodka martini because they thought that was too too sean connery we wanted this to be a new start for bond a fresh new start in fairness walking into a soul food restaurant and ordering a vodka martini would have been a funny bit about how out of touch Bond is. It's a completely Bond-ass thing to do.

Would have justified some of the, like, love that he gets, but he just, like, aside from being dressed like a nonce, right, he just walks in and makes an order. It's not that weird, but everybody is, like, eyeballed. I really wanted to see Roger Moore wrestle with eating, I don't know, a plate of hot links and grits. That would have been great. It would have been like that photo of Pete

Buttigieg eating the cinnamon roll with his hands, like a little wrath. Ed Miliband baking salmon jams. In my head, he just keeps those stupid leather gloves on the whole time while he's trying to cut his hot lick with a knife and fork. Nonsense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I forgot. There was a bit that I forgot to mention, which is as Bond is traveling to New York, we see his journey reflected in tarot cards. Oh, you're right. Because we see Solitaire narrating what he's doing because she can see through time and space.

The only line that I pulled from this was, A man comes. Which I will be using later. This is going to be one of those movies where every 40 to 50 minutes, I went, that's not what the death card means. It just means a change. She's the worst fortune teller I've ever seen she's like he comes

over water well they're either in san monique or new york which are both islands so yes he's coming over water it's like this means nothing to me i could have said this bond sits in in a booth with his whiskey and he tries to get information out of the waiter this is shot well he's like yeah i want something on the side information he hands the waiter. This is Shotwell. He's like, yeah, I want something on the side. Information. He hands the waiter like a 20. And then the booth that he's in spins around and he disappears into the wall.

And the waiter takes his tip and his drink, which is great. It's very good. And of course, Bond has to now get threatened. Relax, baby. Mr. Big's gonna take care of you in a minute. I could not think of a better name for your gangster kingpin than Mr. Big's gonna take care of you in a minute I could not think of a better name For your gangster kingpin Than Mr. Big

Yeah I really like King of the Hill ass shit I will point out that the reason in the novel Why he's called Mr. Big is because it's his initials And his initials stand for Bonaparte Ignace Gallia Fuck off Ian Fleming was such a good writer Why did they go for that

and not Kanananga to be fair though the actual reason they went for Kanananga was that there was a stuntman working on it and that was his surname which is why they went with that so Bond meets Solitaire for the first time

and he draws the lover's card when he asks her about her future and is like oh yeah we're gonna fuck and she is discomforted by this and he's like well don't care after quinn medicine woman looks like she's 12 in this scene though it is fucked up it's creepy it's really uncomfortable jane seymour looks quite sort of is she wearing some almost brown face? She definitely looks not as white in this scene as she does in later scenes. She gets whiter the more the movie goes on. That is true. And she gets in more and more slinkier, whiter dresses as she gets more imperiled.

That's right. For now, she's supposed to be threatening. Anyway, we meet Mr. Big, which gives us the title drop. My name's names is for tombstones, baby. Y'all take this honky out and waste him, now! I want to talk also about how Bond's response to this is, well, what does waste him mean? Is that good?

Fucking idiot. I mean, Mr. Big has one of the best attitudes towards Bond that we've seen of any villain so far, which is just like, kill him immediately. Yeah, just kill him. Finally, good. Can we talk a little bit about the way that Mr. Big looks? Yes. Yes, please let us discuss this.

Did he put on light dishes or something? Because he turned like three skin tones lighter in that scene. He looks like... Oh god, he looks like- He assy. He looks like if you've tried to use the old FaceApp race filter on a picture of Michael Martin. God, I remember that.

His skin looks fucked up, right? And there is a reason for this. He looks really kind of waxy and unnatural, and it's really uncanny, but he's not meant to. We're meant to just be like, oh, that's a normal guy. That's a normal guy being like, kill this honky. He looks completely fucked up. And we're just like, oh.

Mr. Big is Kananga. He's wearing a rubber mask. But the reason why that was completely spoiled for me is that I watch with subtitles, and he was subtitled Kananga the entire time. I was like, what the fuck's happening here? Why does my man look like that? I didn't realize it was supposed to be a

reveal. How does he have time to administer an entire country and be a drug lord? That's a great question. He has a lot of spare time, which is very strange. I know. He does have a very cool henchman to help him who has a claw for a hand. He has a couple of cool henchmen. Teehee. Teehee fucking

rules. He takes Bond's gun, he bends the barrel with his artificial hand, his artificial limb, which is like a hook. He's got like a Jaws of Life-ass thing attached to his arm, is the way it works. Yeah, yeah, he's called Teehee because he has kind of like a compulsive laugh, because he's the dang joke. He's cool, He's having a good time. He's vibrant. Like, he's my favorite.

Yeah. By a country mile. He seems to really enjoy his work, which is awesome. Yeah, absolutely. He's a highly motivated self-starter. So, but Bond is then, of course, then taken out in the alley to be wasted. He turns it around on the two goons. He like beats them up. One of them makes a perfect Minecraft noise.

I fucking wrote that too! I fucking wrote that too! I fucking wrote that too! He goes, You better believe I have the noise. Oh, fuck yeah. I love yours. 100%.

It's so weird, man. Yeah, he very easily, he kicks one of the guys once and he just kind of falls over it's very weird he like opens a fire escape on them yeah um but at this point somebody in the production staff realizes that they can't just have every black person in this film be evil no we need one black guy who's a good guy so we meet cia agent strutter who really doesn't do all that much he's in the film that's the most we can say strutter he is in much, he's in the film. That's the most we can say. Strutter, he is in this movie.

He is in this film. He only gets a couple of lines, and the lines he's all talking like Jack Palance. It's all very top-of-the-world Jack kind of thing. He rescues Bond. He explains that Mr. Big is the only person who could put together this much black muscle. Jesus.

That's what he says, that's the line! I know it's the line, but it's so much, man. Just, every time there's something that makes you win, I'm just gonna hit you with it. That's how it feels like! That's what this movie feels like to watch, is you're just watching this kind of terrible movie which is two hours long because editing still wasn't invented yet and then every so often there's just a line that just is like oh i worry that if i complete the sentence i'm gonna get memes i'll get someone's gonna fucking post that image from

like community where someone's like i can excuse racism but a badly made movie but honestly i came into this being like okay this is to be insipidly racist. This is going to be brutal to even watch. But also, it's a shit fucking movie. Like, it's badly made. It's badly timed. It fucking overstays in the third act like every fucking Bond movie does.

It's like they had simultaneously too many ideas and too few. It's like they saw sweet sweet bag's badass song and were like whoa a blaxploitation movie would be cool but what if the white guy was the hero and then they're like i don't know maybe we need to do a wacky chase movie like those are big right now and then they just threw in some random other things like uh you know what's scary let's have some voodoo in here. I've had a realization, which is

during the scene where Bond is going to the restaurant and every black person in America is on a walkie-talkie that they have concealed about their person going, he just turned left on 125th Street, right? One of the people, the first person, in fact, who gets called on the radio is Strutter.

So either he's in fucking deep cover. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or they've just kind of forgotten until this point in the script that he's on a different side. I don't know. Maybe they're supposed to be setting up that he's being followed by the CIA and every black person in America.

I don't know. I'd have to watch it again. Maybe. Eh, combo. You know, when we're born in America, all black people get a book that says how to lie and deceive or fake. I'm sure the Struthers just played from that playbook.

Also, I should point out, Roger Moore is a terrible fighter. He sucks shit in this movie. Yeah, he really is bad. He really is bad. He sucks so bad. Yeah, he's not like a physical guy. No. I mean, he's not really like any other kind of guy.

He's a pair of eyebrows. Look how fucking act! It's just a slow slab of hair. So, okay, I wanted to pull this further to something Chris just said, but the reason why this novel was chosen as the next to be adapted while they were filming diamonds are forever was because tom mancovich thought it would be daring to use black villains because the black panthers were active during the era this was made this was specifically made as like a damn these black

people are doing all sort of like political shit what if we made them the villains there's so much about our society and it comes through so hard because there's at least three characters who when we get to them it's essentially just imagine what a black panther looks like there's another bit that i'm thinking of right there's a guy who just looks like fucking tom Hampton, easily. We're gonna get stuck on this scene because all the ideology of this movie is in it, but when he gets out of the cab to get to the restaurant, the driver, who is also spying on him, he tips him, and the driver says,

"'Right on, brother'", and Bond gives him this look, lasts fully a couple of seconds. And what I think that's intended to communicate to the viewer is just like, yo, you've seen these black people? It's crazy. Who are these black people they've got now? When did this come in? Strange news out of America, Bond. They're called black people.

So Bond is informed that Kananga has left town. He has gone home to Saint-Domingue. Saint-Doming town. He has gone home to Saint-Domingue. Saint-Monique. What is it called? Saint-Monique. Just say Saint-Marino every time. It'll be very funny. The reason why Saint-Marino fucks with me so much

is because it's like, in their attempt to not talk about a real place, they've done half French and half Spanish. With different genders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it should be like Santa Monica monica or somony but it's yeah san monique anyway we get to see poor poor jeffrey holder for the first time future tony award winner oh there's nothing in this movie that makes me as mad as the misuse of jeffrey. Poor guy. Jeffrey Holder is like, he's monumentally talented. He's a ballet dancer.

He's a composer. He won Tony's for costume design and director. He was a painter. He published books of photography. And he's most famous for appearing in 7-Up commercials and being a racist caricature. And Roger Moore, this big slab of beef, is knighted and celebrated. Anyway, he's

totally misused in this movie. It's bad. Yeah. Jeffrey Holder is Baron Samedi, who, we are informed, is the voodoo god of cemetery, chief of the Legion of the Dead. And his business in this movie

is mostly to, like, laugh menacingly, and cakewalk around, which he does very well because it's Jeffrey Holder. And I will point out the one thing that you observe from this movie is it's insane how much better the black actors are than Roger Moore and Jane Seymour. Oh, fuck. Every single fucking scene that Moore is in, he's getting completely eaten up by every other actor who have been given these like pathetic caricatures.

And yet they're still playing them so much better than fucking Moore is with his pathetic caricature. Yafukoto works so hard. Yeah, Yafukoto who is Mr. Big and Kananga. And half of the reason why this movie isn't going to be getting a fucking 20 out of 7 for racism because Yafit Kodo just kept going like, I'm not saying that line, man. Like, every time. Really? I both want and very much do not want

to find out what was in the shooting script that he said no to. But yeah, yeah, he's on record as being like half the shit that Tom Mankiewicz wrote down, I would not say. That roars. Like, it was too undignified. Well, we'll get to undignified,

but the dignity that Kananga gets in this movie is not very much. Anyway, we see Jeffrey Holder as Baron Sambi as like a tourist entertainer as Bond checks into his hotel in San Marino. Santa Monica. As Bond checks into his hotel room in Santa Monica, he discovers, of course, that the hotel room is bugged, another classic Bond scene. And then, because we're looping back to old Bond ideas, motherfuckers loved to try and kill James Bond by inserting an animal

into his hotel room. I wanted to highlight again, worst secret agent that's ever existed, because he goes to this fucking hotel and they're like, oh yes, Mr. Bond, Mrs. Bond wanted to highlight again, worst secret agent that's ever existed because he goes to this fucking hotel and they're like, oh yes, Mr. Bond, Mrs. Bond was here just now. She's already ahead in the room. And any fucking secret agent worth half their metal would be like, ah yes, I understand that this

must be a trap. Like, no, no, maybe not even a trap, just like someone has been set up. But this guy just goes like, Mrs. Bond! What? What? And it's like bro fucking let me just call my boss mi6 why does he sign in the hotel with his own name look i don't think that's right i'm a confirmed bachelor like fucking just go to your room dude but he does and they slit the snake in that. And this snake has done this before. There's no way to explain how completely adept at stealth this fucking snake is.

It's hiding behind shit. This is the bond of snakes. And this snake, which incidentally looks, like, even to me, like the most harmless fucking snake. Yeah, he's adorable. It's a white corn snake. It like slithers towards Bond and Bond responds to this by burning the hotel down.

He just turns around with his aftershave spray can in one hand and his cigar, because Roger Moore smokes cigars in this movie to make him less Connery-like. Massive cigars in this movie to make him less Connery-like. Massive cigars. Yeah, and he just fucking flamethrowers this snake. What the fuck was in that aftershave? Listen, they used to make them stronger in those days. Sex Panther cologne.

It was a long flame, like it wasn't just a gout. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, this was a fucking like spout of flame but then a gun comes through the door and he fumbles for his gun which you would think he would have he's a secret agent and he's like ah fuck that can't find it in a carry-on in a pile of three things on the desk the most important thing that I have to remember where it is, I have already lost. He puts out his cigar on the

like, armed hand that comes through the door, and throws a stunt double onto the bed. This is his contact, CIA agent Rosie Carter. Jesus fucking Christ. No one is treated worse in this movie. No, wait, that's a lie. One person is.

Who didn't bother to pin her wig, because it just flies off. Oh, yeah, 100%. Oh, yeah. What black woman, like, does not pin her wig? Well, because it's important that we know that it's a wig. And also, it's going to, like, set up that she's kind of, like, deceptive, which is cool. But, like, she's very ditzy. She's like, you're only my second assignment,

and my first assignment was Baines, the guy who got killed with the snake. But I'm sure it's fine. And so Bond kind of like, demures, and does not tell her about the burned snake in the bathroom. So when she goes in there, she screams, and he's like, oh yeah, it's the snake, I should have told you about the snake. Couldn't she smell the burnt snake? snake yeah a bunch of burned aftershave and a dead snake famously like difficult to notice she's like yo what smells like burned snake hey yo you wearing burned snake yeah this is my cologne burned snake i mean i guess he did just order room service so maybe she thought it was the special. The fact that he ordered room service

is somewhat cogent to her cover story because he orders room service. I don't fucking remember what he orders. Some Bond shit. Bollinger. Specifically, it's Bollinger, not Don Perignon. Oh, dickhead. Yeah, it's very specifically

because the movie had a fucking sponsorship. Also, just before I get into that, this movie had so many fucking sponsorships and they list them all in the credits. It's fascinating to look at the list. Now pay attention 007, CuriosityStream is an online streaming service where you can watch...

The guy that shows up to deliver this Bollinger is the same guy who was in the car that assassinated his driver right at the very start. It is a man by the name of Whisper. And I have been thinking about Whisper for quite some fucking time since I watched this, because Whisper is overweight. And as his name implies, he can only whisper. So this is an overweight, disabled man.

And neither of those aspects are played for laughs like they might have been in a previous or would have been in a later bond they are treated with just pure contempt from top to bottom every single time he's on screen he's getting abused by someone he just gets on with his job he gets in he fucking says like typical way to shit to bond but he whispers it and bond's like what was that huh and he says it again and then he fucking gets sent out of there and then there's a later scene where kananga does that to him and it's like bro this is your employee you fucking know what his deal is why are you just being so rude to this fucking man? Whisper is unjustly treated, but still less so than Rosie, right? Who gets two sequential jump scares because she goes out of the bathroom,

into the bedroom, screams again, because someone has left them a voodoo death threat. You kind of skipped the part where she said she would rather take a sigh and tell that fuck Bob right before she goes to the bathroom. Oh, fuck, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bond immediately tries to fuck her. And she says... Felix told me there'd be moments like this. Bond did.

Good old Felix, yes. If all else failed, cyanide pills. Hey, Rosie, your contact is a dangerous rapist. Yeah, everyone knows who Bond is and they all know that he's a dangerous sex pest. Yeah, she finds the voodoo death threat, which Bond immediately is like, sort of poo-poos. It's like, oh, it's a small hat.

Whatever. But she of course has to get the sort of like, g-g-g-ghosts. You can't have a racist movie Without black people being scared of Ghosts It's interesting that Bond dismisses this Whereas if he'd had an ounce of intelligence Or detective skills he'd be like

I know what this is because I've studied The culture that I've been sent into And it's like a threat Maybe it can tell me something about who's threatening me But instead he's just like Somebody's left a small hat with chicken feathers on my bed i'm james bond let's have some bollinger like it's just like it's content to the extent that it would hinder him doing his job if nothing else even if you don't take the supernatural threat seriously which fine

whatever someone's been in your fucking room to leave you a death threat after having also tried to kill you with a snake. Yeah, dog. And you're just like, eh, whatever. It's very much a continuation of the point I made in our first episode, Doctor No, which was about Quarrel, which was black people in these

fucking movies are always treated as extremely base and instinct-driven driven to a point where like it's a central plot point that the people of San Monique are being kept away from something Kananga doesn't want them to see by using voodoo because whoa

ghosts now you mentioned quarrel disgusting I mentioned fucking quarrel because I'm a fucking professional and I understand segues. After Bond successfully uses Rosie's contemptible superstition to force her to have sex with him. Right, genuinely.

They go out to charter a boat in the morning, and you remember Quarrel from Doctor No? You know, Quarrel the fisherman. The Fetch My Shoes guy? Yeah, the Fetch My Shoe guys, the Jamaican fishermen from Doctor No. Guess what? There's only like five black people in the world, so one of these fishermen, it's Quarrel Jr. Yay! At least he survives. Which I guess means that like, Bond orphaned or half-orphaned this guy. Just like, oh yeah, I got your dad killed with a flamethrower tank. Do you want to join me in the family business of, like, fetching my shoes?

And this guy, Quarrel Jr., is like, yes. For the record, that's two, count them, two black people in this movie who are not textually evil. Oh, yeah, good point. Basically progressive, as far as movies from the 70s go. Oh, these woke leftists always having to include at least one Black person who isn't on the international anti-white conspiracy. Bond gets Rosie to take him to the place where Baines was killed, but she kind of tries to misdirect him, right?

She's like, it's up in the hills but it's down here and he immediately gets suspicious not suspicious enough to not have sex with her a second time a man comes after having had sex with her right not even gonna justify that he's like i know you've been lying to me i know you're a double agent. You're trying to lead me into a trap. Tell me where Kananga is. And she's like, well, I can't do that. They'll kill me. The mask drops, right?

He just flatly pulls the gun on her. It's like, yeah, well, I'll kill you if you don't. I wanted to say something about this scene because it mirrors a later scene that occurs with Solitaire. I think it's interesting to watch this film and note who gets a gun pointed at them and when um and it's specifically always the black characters who do so she is a cia agent bond has figured out that she is somehow been corrupted or blackmailed um and she even tells him they will kill me like they've got something on me i've been compromised

and his response as an agent is not to say well you know we can protect you or like we need to remove you from the theater of operations because like you've clearly been compromised his response is just to say i will fucking shoot you with this gun if you don't tell me what i need to know now he puts it in her face he cocks the gun and like points it at her having just shagged her and like it's maddening it's despicable the way that he behaves in this film the worst part of that is she's like no you wouldn't do that we just had sex and he's like well i wouldn't have done it before so like she is literally just a piece of meat to him she's not even a human oh i forgot about that line

fuck oh i hate this man. I appreciate he's just reading a script he's been given. Whoever wrote this, and I have name-dropped whoever wrote this, Tom Mankiewicz. Tom Mankiewicz, yeah. I will destroy, if this man's still alive,

let me double-check. He died in 2010. Imagine being the nephew of the guy who is partially responsible for Citizen Kane, considered one of the greatest movies of all time. And this is your magnum opus. We are 43 minutes into this movie. It's such a long movie as well.

That's the weirdest part. There's a point before that scene where Solitaire is once again being asked to track Bond's location using tarot cards. And she's talking to Kananga on the phone. And she pulls the lover's card, and again, it's just like, the cards say I have to fuck Bond, but she lies to Kananga and says she pulled the death card. That isn't what death means. That sets up something for later, carry on. What is with fucking hang gliding in the early 70s?

Dunno! We had this in Man From Hong Kong, everybody was really into hang gliding. Bond has to like, infiltrate Solitaire's house, and he does this by means of hang gliding while smoking a cigar, like the world's biggest piece of shit. He kicks a guy off a cliff with the hang glider, I hate this guy so much. Gets a little spinning 007. Yeah, and of course, it's been 20 minutes since he's had sex with anybody under dubious pretenses. So he breaks into Solitaire's house, tells her that the cards...

He jacks her dick, man! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tells her that the cards say they're gonna fuck. And he establishes, you really believe in these cards, right? And she says straight up, oh, this is like, blasphemy. He's like, yeah, no, fine, I don't give a shit. I'm gonna take advantage. He's like, I've got the blue eyes white dragon, we gotta

fuck. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna take advantage of what I now believe to be your religion to make you fuck me. Why doesn't she have a special deck? Like, why does she have one that you can just pick up at any store? Good point. He makes her draw a card, and it's the lovers.

And as they kiss, we see that he has replaced the entire deck with the lovers. And we're meant to go, ah, what a clever fucking rogue, instead of like... I got very mad about this also. What a fucking duplicitous piece of shit. Creepy rapist. A little spinning silver thing that says Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act appears above his head.

How did you get that many? These tarot decks are either $16.99 a pop, in which case he's bought at least 50 of them. Or she has all of these decks herself and he's gone through them and individually removed the lovers. We see them set this up because he goes to the tarot shop in like the resort so he has either bought 50 tarot decks

or he has like no he's had that he has to buy over 70 because there's also 22 major arcana so there's also the suit cards oh no you're completely right he's made some poor fucking shop clerk go through make me a deck entirely of lovers. Either way, the American taxpayer has paid for so many tarot cards, just so that this man can pull off an extremely bad line in order to get laid. Kananga kills Rosie, Bond fucks Solitaire. A man comes. They go and try to investigate what's going on,

and they discover a bunch of camouflaged heroin fields, right? I've written dire fit here, and I'm trying to find a picture so that I can remember what his fit was. He's wearing, like, a black open-necked shirt and bell-bottoms. Is that the one where he had the reversible tuxedo, and, like, all of a sudden he's wearing, like, grey flannel bell-b bell bottoms for some reason. He's got a baby blue denim jacket on

and the same coloured trousers and he looks very bad. He starts the movie in a mustard yellow dressing gown. Like, yeah, it's very bad. Bond's line, by the way, is... Voodoo land was just poppy fields. A simple matter of heroin smuggling. A simple matter of heroin smuggling.

Which, and I want to be clear here, he's intuited that. That doesn't hold up in any international court. Yeah. This is a sovereign nation growing like poppies. That's something that's legal to do. He has no jurisdiction. Maybe they really wanted to make muffins.

We get the first of two incredibly lengthy car chase sequences here. God, it's so long. Bond has to commandeer a double-decker bus, he drives it to escape from the police, he goes under the 11 foot 8 bridge from the YouTube Zone, takes the top deck off, and escapes back to the boat, where he has Quarrel take them to New Orleans, because they figure, ah, New Orleans is like where the other guy was killed, there must be a connection there.

Two points. First of all, I'm looking again at my notes here, and I've written no ass on this guy. None. Because Moore has the flattest fucking ass I've seen ever. Very unfortunate. Second of all, the way he pronounces New Orleans. New Orleans. It's like no one involved had been like, hey, buddy, this is the pronunciation of that. They get to the airport in New Orleans and are immediately captured.

By the same cab driver! There are four black people in America! He drove all the way from New York to New Orleans! It's the same motherfucking guy! He's kept the meter running, Bond is gonna owe him a lot. Just to capture Bond. Even though Dr. Kanega clearly has a network of... It makes Strasser's line about how only Mr. Big could get together

this much black muscle very funny when you consider it's four guys. But they're very dedicated. Only Mr. Big could put together four guys. Yeah. God, they're so dedicated. Unfortunately, right, we do have Struthers to deal with, and the plot then, the script then realises, ah, fuck, we've got a dead end,

and also we don't want to pay this guy any more than we already are. We have an extraneous guy. They just fucking kill him offscreen. And the way that they kill him offscreen is we see him watch the same restaurant in the same place that the other guy got killed, and we see the jazz funeral

go past, and we're meant to be like, oh, shit, well, how's he going to get out of this one? No, he doesn't. He doesn't. Offscreen as well. The guy who stabbed the first guy just comes up next to him and they cut to the next scene. They have one trick and it works every time. The CIA

is never going to stop falling for this. They never, for instance, get people to observe anybody in pairs. Why would you put your drug front to the French Quarter? Why would they put the drug front in the French Quarter? Why would they put the drug front in the French Quarter? Bond has previously been captured in a Filet-O-Cel restaurant

with a rotating booth. And so when he goes into the second one, he's like, I don't want a booth this time. Because he's smart. He's wised up to this. So he gets a seat by the stage, and the seat by the stage immediately

then drops him into the basement where he is captured again. Don't go into this guy's restaurant! Stop going in there! Don't sit down! He has entirely chair-based traps. He does, though. But Mr. Big is spending way too much on overhead.

The French Quarter's expensive. Why would you put your junk front there? And then why would you spend all of your money in this kind of listed-type neighborhood hollowing out an underground in a place with a high groundwater level to put in your secret underground torture meeting room?

Oh my god, you're so right. I hadn't even considered how unbelievably hard it would be to have a basement in New Orleans. We still have an hour to go on this movie, I'm blazing through it, but it's fucking... Oh, it's okay, there's like ten minutes that we're just gonna not talk about, because it's a ten minute long fucking speedboat chase. Bond gets handcuffed to a chair, and we get the big reveal that Kananga and Mr. Big are the same person, because Mr. Big puts his fucked up waxy face in Bond's face. Solitaire is there, he points to her and he's like, did you mess with that?

Because if you fucked Solitaire, her tarot powers don't work anymore? He specifically refers to Obia, which is a West Indian practice of... It's hard to explain. But why is this white woman using, like, ancient slave magics? Why is she the recipient of Obia? Because she's a virgin, and white virgins are the most powerful people. Which is why video games are so good now. Bond has fucked the power out of her. And she says afterwards, like, yeah, no, I just can't see.

Right. And he's going to kill me now because of this. And Bond tries to like, be like, oh, well, I did trick you as if that's, you know, don't be mad, but I did technically, you know, rape you by deception here. Interestingly, does not point a gun in her face when she says the bad guys are going to kill me. I wonder why. She says a physical violation cannot be undone so i think that was a line from one of the reviews of this film she's still she's still into him but kananga pulls off his fucked up face in front of bond and you see oh shit it's y Koso under there. Yo, it's the same guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. It was previously seen, like, winning a tape and getting a whole pipsuit, so it's a giant surprise. And so he does a little test, right? He has Solitaire try and read the number off of the back of Bond's watch. If she's wrong, then he's gonna have Teehee cut one of Bond's fingers off, and so on. Which is definitely something you can do with tarot cards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, what's really interesting to me is, she fucking gets it wrong, but we aren't supposed to know that, because he's only using that as like a threat. He's being considerably more clever than most other Bond villains would be, because he doesn't actually follow through on this at all. He sells both Bond and Solitaire on, oh, well, you got it right, fine. Go and get Bond out of here. But like, she fucking gets it wrong, because she has lost her very real within the context of the movie, tarot psychic powers, because Bond has had sex with her.

I hate it when this happens. Yeah. But like, he has successfully lulled them both into a false sense of security. Also, he discusses his plan. His plan is he's going to grow a bunch of heroin and then ship it to the United States, distribute it in the Filet-O-Sol restaurants for free.

Bond describes this as a junkies welfare system, which is... This is the point where it does start to become a natural crime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Up until the point where you're shipping it to the US and selling it. This is legal. His plan is he's going to distribute this heroin free to drive the mob out of business and become a monopoly on dealing heroin. monopoly on dealing heroin.

But, the idea of trafficking drugs from the Caribbean into the United States to distribute into the ghetto for free, or at least for very cheap, he has just inadvertently described the shit the CIA would do with crack ten years later.

He just was ahead of his time. Yeah, this movie just predicts shit the CIA actually did which is very cool I find that very funny Felix Leiter was taking notes he's like oh shit that's a good idea you just get them all on crack so they have

Tiki knock Bond unconscious and take him to the farm the alligator farm and crocodile farm yeah this is what got my attention back into the movie, because I was lulling. I'll be completely honest. But then they put a fucking crocodile on screen,

and I went, that's a boy! And then I was back on. Bunch of alligators, bunch of crocodiles, and Teehee's plan is to explain crocodiles to Bond, which is cool, he does that. He gets a little lesson on crocodiles. The way you can tell them apart from alligators crocodiles have a round nose cool he tosses them some some meat he leaves bond on an island in the middle of a swamp to be eaten by alligators

yeah it's it's something interesting i was like i just wouldn't have stepped on he steps onto it from like an extended walkway that then de-extends and leaves him on the island. I was like, I wouldn't have got off the walkway. All of the fucking threats here are like, be eaten by alligators or I will shoot you. I don't know, maybe I'm built different, but I'd pick the death by gunshot wound. I feel like shoot me, man.

No interest. The crocodiles are far more likely to eat than the alligators, because alligators can't extrude salt, and crocodiles can't, because they live in the ocean. Yeah, this is all in the stuff that Teehee explains to Bond. Give us a little briefing back.

Roger Moore is made of roast ham, so it would be very salty. Tries to use the Rolex, the magnetic Rolex, to move a boat to him, and that doesn't work. So he pulls the most fucking, I would simply walk out. I would just leave.

You can just go, Shaz owns it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it sucks, hit the bricks. And he does. Exactly the same way as getting out of the fucking pipeline in Diamonds of Forever. He just walks out. Well, the crocodilians are very, like,

convivial and line up in little neat steps for him, so that helps. Yeah, they make a bridge for him and he walks over their backs and he runs to safety. And nobody, like, stops him. It's so good because in a typical movie, in order to get out of a jam like that, you'd use something that had been set up,

something that the audience had the ability to think of. So that then if they had managed to guess it, they would feel smart. However, in a perfect mirror image of that, as soon as you realize what Bond's about to do, you feel like you've dropped about 10 IQ points because you're like, oh, no way. Well, in fairness, they do set up earlier

on that he can walk. Yeah, that is true. Oh, fuck. Yeah, in the books, they were very clear. He sets fire to the drug lab, escapes on a boat, and Tiki and his men give chase. We now have, by my count,

one, two, three, four, 23 minutes of car chase. Of boat chase. This is the most inexplicable shit you can ever imagine. Bond fucking drives a boat through a series of fucking sketches. I thought that they were ripping off the Dukes of Hazzard, but the Dukes of Hazzard wasn't out yet. The Dukes of Hazzard is ripping off this. Ripped off...

There's a fucking character who's just like a big racist Louisiana cop, and he's just in it. Oh, I got the fucking drop. You picked the wrong... That motherfucker's from Oregon. His accent goes all over the place, and I'm like, that's Kentucky. That's... I don't know what that is. That's fog Oregon. His accent goes all over the place. And I'm like, that's Kentucky. That's, I don't know what that is.

That's foghorn. Leghorn. Do you want to hear the accent, listener? You picked the wrong parish to haul ass through, boy. Nobody cuts and runs on Sheriff J.W. Pepper. And it's him speaking, by the way. What's fun is that that actor later did star on the Dukes of Hazzard for a season as a racist cop.

Okay, well, first of all, let's not make fun of everybody's southern US accent in the context of professional acting because it is quite difficult to do. It's a particularly difficult accent to master, especially on a film set where you have to do it at the last minute. Abby, I'm so looking forward to your turn

as Sheriff J.W. Paffer. Yeah,w pepper yeah it's gonna be good nah see here so bond is being chased by a henchman including one henchman in a car and there is a terrifying scene where sheriff jw pepper the racist cop pulls this henchman over he pulls his gun on him he calls him boy a lot he implies that the henchman stole the car and then he spits on him oh it's fucked up this is a fucking terrifying scene apparently in 1970 whatever this is this like fucking played for laughs and we are supposed to like oh this like racist cop who like has his gun in a black man's face and like we know now that this could very easily result in a murder, but it's just played for like, we know that the henchman is evil. We're just meant to be like racism.

Sometimes it works. Hey, you know what? Actually, this was the only scene of the entire movie that like kind of resonated for me. I'm like, Oh, look,

there's something where the black people who have been all cartoonish, despite the best efforts of these fantastic actors have like some humanity never mind and then i'm like oh wait we're supposed to be on the side of the racist cop yeah it's a joke we're supposed to be on his side this black character who i want to i want to flag up again because i accidentally got the name wrong earlier like an absolute imbecile he looks a lot like fred hampton it's basically if you just imagine what a black Panther looks like, that's this character.

And he is explicitly evil. And he's got a fabulous tweed jacket. Oh, he looks phenomenal. Like, all of the bits in this that aren't worn by Bond do kind of go a little... There's a weird moment where Sheriff J.W. Pepper

calls in the boat chase on a radio and he says, we've got a swamp full of Black Russians. And I'm like like is that a weird that this boat chase is happening at 4am Russian time yeah not quite sure what that's about

Sheriff JW Pepper would be a 3%er now he'd be a Q guy oh yeah there's no way he would have said black if he was being nice he would have said big. If he was being nice, he would have said big one, but he was not being nice. Woo! Yeah, it's not good.

So we get a series of boat chases where the henchmen are chasing Bond in the boat, and then the state police and the sheriff are chasing them both in cars. We get a bunch of car crashes, and then having finally driven through a series of car crashes and then having like finally like driven through a series of comic sketches of like southland reverie bond pulls in to find felix leiser and the like rest of the cops waiting for him i would really like to dig a little further into what chris just said because that's a phenomenal point is that this is easily hands

down one of the most racist movies frankly that i've ever watched not even just the most racist bond movie but they never at any point use a racial slur for black people because it again it mirrors that liberal mindset right where racism is a specific act that you do and not a a sense of inherent these people are less than me because of the color of their skin this movie is racist only in ways that aren't i would i was about to say textual but it's textually extremely racist but they never go to the point where they actually say a racist letter or say anything outright racist yeah well like well, I never said the word. There is something else here too, which is that there's a Britishness about it.

There's a kind of like parochialism that it's like racism is this kind of exotic feature of Americans. And it's something like potentially very comic that Americans do that is like not really relevant to us because we don't have that sort of thing here. It's a form of eccentricity. And so it's just something that bond can like sort of quirk an eyebrow at and be like oh that's funny but it's a good it's a good thing it'll never be relevant to me a citizen of britain there's a scene in one of the comic sketches when they're doing the this interminable

boat race where uh sheriff pepper has his back to the thing and he thinks his brother-in-law is coming to chase Bond. And it's not. It's Adam, the black guy who looks like Fred Hampton. And he speeds by. He's like, woo-hoo! That's my brother-in-law! And the other white people see a black man in the thing.

And, like, all of the look just fades out of their face. And it's completely played for laughs that, oh, he's got a black brother-in-law. That's disgusting. And it kind of just is in microcosm the whole attitude of this movie towards black people. Fucking Ian Fleming is a white Englishman. And he wrote this book as sort of like, oh, isn't it interesting the way that americans are racist first of all he was unbelievably racist he managed to be racist to white people even like we're talking a fucking nuclear grade imbecile sheriff jw pepper gets a sort of comic thing at the end where he like gets

out of a completely wrecked car and tells bond what are you some kind of doomsday machine boy! Fine, whatever. Glad we're never going to see this character again. Glad he's not going to come back in any other films. He had six accents in that one line alone, though, that's impressive. I'm just saying, they're filming in Louisiana, they could have gone out and found

a racist white person to do that role. Well, you know, sometimes you're filming in a foreign country, and you've got to have an actor and you've got to learn an accent at the last minute and it's not easy. Bond has to go to fucking Santa Monica to rescue Solitaire, who has been captured. I'm just saying it's hard is all.

Catch Abby showing up in Redacted in a couple years' time being like, nah, you see here, boy. Are you some kind of a doomsday machine bond goes to the the same fucking voodoo ritual place where they killed baines but in the pre-credits thing it's a very confusing voodoo ritual by the way they've got vevs of ursula up they've got like i don't really know what's going on the dancing is on point but but that's because Jeffrey Holder choreographed it. What's going on is they're gonna kill her with the snake. She's wearing the

same fucking white dress like Fay Wray and King Kong. She's looking whiter, and she's, like, gonna get tied to a post while the guy with the goat head menaces her with a plastic snake, right? I would like to pull one specific line that fucking put this shit completely in

perspective for me right again a sovereign nation he's going to san marino he's gone he's gone there and fucking quarrel who is on the boat with him no it's not quarrel it's um felix lighter it's quarrel junior and felix literally says to him happy hunting which which you could kind of read that as like a go get them boys but he is there textually to extrajudicially assassinate at least four black men all of whom have to be dead for the movie to have ended so he's just going to this ritual yeah to fucking kill guys he's not even going to attempt to arrest anyone. Which, of course, is what happens. The guy with the goat head threatens her with a snake,

and Bond shoots him. Shoots him! Stone cold dead! This is a scene I really have problems with, because, like, a smug agent of empire shows up on a Caribbean island where a bunch of people with machetes have had a voodoo ceremony. And let me tell you, history suggests that this might have worked out well for him he keeps this crowd of like 50 people at bay with a revolver like that's gonna fucking work my man should have gotten to sont lovature he should have fucking been strung

up yeah it should have been a decimated replay absolutely two guys come at him he shoots both of them and then the rest of them are like oh well we don't want anything to do with this no thank you he frees solitaire baron samdy shows up yeah here's where we get the very weird thing this movie does where it goes like maybe voodoo is real he tries to shoot baron samdy it's a fucking voodoo doll he succeeds he does shoot baron samdy yeah you cannot kill death so he just shows up again he gets yeeted up out of a grave. But Bond, with his superior Western technology, realizes that this is just a stage lift. And so he hijacks that, runs it down, and he and Solitaire sort of run into this subterranean cavern.

After he dispatches, in his slow, ham-like manner, the chief of the Giddick, the barrel-sobdy, death himself with, like, a couple of sluggish moves. Yeah, he beats him in a machete fight. Where a six-foot-eight, like, beautiful ballet dancer pirouettes sadly into

a coffin full of snakes that was just present. Yeah. The coffin full of snakes that that was just present. Yeah. The coffin full of snakes that we all have at our various digs and dives. Of course. Why not? Anyway, he dies in that. And then they go underground to... Look, it's a Ken Adams set. It's a good set. He's doing his best. They get immediately captured.

I also got to talk about the henchman fits here, which are atrocious. Yes. Not even going back to colored jumpsuits. The vibe here is, everybody's wearing jeans, like, fucking boat shoes, and red polo shirts with a K on them. It's like a megastore outfit. It's like the uniform at, like, I don't know, a giant group off of Best Buy. He's got a monorail, though, and Bond even comments on his underground monorail, he's like, that boy he's got a monorail though and bond even comments on his underground monorail he's like that's a pretty sick villain monorail you should have seen the last underground monorail i saw terrible the shit looks way better i don't think i would let the

stage lift to my evil voodoo ceremony also be a back entrance into my underground drug lab we're in the last little bit and yafuk also gets to right? And in my notes here I have put in, we were robbed of this guy as Blofeld. He is having a fantastic time being able to do, like, smart inconvenienced sort of board? He, he tells Bond to his face. Like, Bond's like, oh, I hope your poppy fields that I just burned down were insured. The poppy's a very sturdy flower.

You have been a relatively minor nuisance, in fact. He has such a fucking good line in gloating. He's got Terry Savalas Blofeld energy. He's just like, I don't give a shit. Like, fuck you. The script is terrible, but don't give a shit, like, fuck you. The script is terrible, but he provides such a sense of intelligence and quiet dignity into a character that's written as a broad stereotype.

Of course, he also manages to take Bond's pistol, which is a shark gun. It fires compressed air, and it just expands something until it explodes. And we get a little joke at Whisper's expense too, because he makes like he's going to shoot Whisper with it, and instead he shoots the sofa that Whisper is sitting on, and it just expands and knocks the guy off his feet, which is... it's very funny. Again, it's not even played for laughs, it's like,

whoop, fat guy falls over, lol. Fat guy falls over. Lol. Yes. Just treated so meanly, just as for Whisper. Yeah falls over, lol. Fat guy falls over. Lol. Yes. Just treat it so meanly. Justice for Whisper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way Kananga's gonna kill them is he's gonna tie them to a hoist,

he's gonna, like, cut Bond's arm, and Bond is, like, trying to outsmug him the whole time, and it's just not working because Yafit Koto is a better actor. So he's just like like Bond says something about drowning and he's like oh I very much doubt you'll get the chance to drown he the cutting of Bond's arm is like weirdly sexual not sure what that's about yeah yeah yeah there are also a lot of like really close-up shots of him grinning which feel like this is the sort of like phantasm that you're supposed to be scared of here the other thing about the cutting of bon's arm is that i don't know what the foley artist was thinking

but it makes the sound of you drawing a knife across like ceramic yeah it makes this sound it's like fuck you it's like what's this guy made of man like they're drawing a knife across him and it sounds like when you run it down fucking like concrete ham ham he's made of ham man. They're drawing a knife across him and it sounds like when you run it down fucking concrete. Ham! Ham! He's made of ham! They've sliced some ham on Iberico. Kanaga's written like a menstrual character. He's written like the pompous

black character who's supposed to be faux intelligent but really stupid and arrogant. Yaf and Kodo ignores all of that and plays him seriously. If you'd played to the direction and to the script here, he would have been like, uh, I don't know,

one of the fucking congressmen and birth of a nation, right? He dunks Bond over the shark tank and like leaves Bond to bleed while the sharks assemble. Luckily, Bond has fucking established. He's got a magic watch. He's got a magic watch. He's got a magic watch.

Rolex paid a lot of money. Rolex was not fancy at this time. Certainly not as fancy as they are now. They were just kind of a relatively middling kind of tool watch manufacturer. But part of the reason why they're so high-end now is because they happened to get on board the Bond train. Bond magnets the fucking compressed gas canister with a shotgun over to his wrist does not affect anything metal in the way

at all he pushes a couple of buttons and the bezel of his watch rotates like a buzzsaw and this is the point where I want to get unbelievably pissed off at this movie and I've been that before in this hour and 20 minutes but I'm'm gonna do it

again a traditional movie right a normal fucking movie imagine like i don't know read fucking the sherlock holmes books right i'm gonna steal h bomber guy's point here he solves problems that he's put in using things that are set up clearly so the audience have a chance to guess how he would do it and then if he does it in the way they've guessed, they're going to feel smart. They're going to feel rewarded for having paid attention to the movie. This movie is spitting in your fucking face because both of the gadgets Bond uses to get out of this situation are invented at the start of this scene or in the moment. The spinning fucking bezel on the watch to use as a saw never comes up before this you have no way of knowing he would be able to do that the fucking

expanding gas cylinder is invented at the start of this scene and they very hastily insert it into the plot fine whatever that's set up but it's like it it's insulting to the viewer because you have no way of knowing how bond's going to get out of this. Yeah, I tried to set my watch and I cut my arm off because I just had a circular sort of blade in there. It's like a dumb man's way of writing a smart man. It's like, oh, this guy knows

shit that you don't even have a fucking chance to know. It's like, it's like Moffat writing for fucking Doctor Who that's a tasty fucking comparison but I'm here for it it's like

it's legitimately like and this has been discussed a few times on Trash Future which is the only way Moffat knows how to make a guy look smart is to put him in a bad situation and have him react by being calm the movie does exactly that with bond they put him in this situation where it's like man how's he gonna get out and then he pulls something so far

out of his ass yeah and again it's like oh i can excuse racism but bad filmmaking but like come on it's not even a good movie uh opinions of Devin About celebrated TV writer Steven Moffat They're the opinions of the podcast Thank you Bond frees himself And we have to get one last joke At Whisper's expense

Whisper sees what is happening He tries to warn his boss But his boss can't hear him Because he can't shout so he's wearing airpods so whisper just whispers watch out and then gets kicked into a fucking torpedo for smuggling heroin uh and and sealed in there where i presume that doesn't kill him i presume he just suffocates or whatever that's well to be fair like i i've read the the bond wiki article about whisper to see what the basic consensus of the bond fandom was about what happens to

whisper after that god imagine being part of the bond fandom imagine making a podcast about james bond insane ridiculous no thank you and essentially what what the audience agrees on, which was my interpretation, is the Whisper is specifically put into an airtight container because he is unable to call for help. Like he's just going to die in there, even if there are like guys in the fucking set cleaning up afterwards. He's just going to die in there because he's disabled. And it's funny that he's disabled. He can't show and he needs to be punished so he can bang although i i assume they also think he's too fat to bang because uh he's about the same dimensions as the torpedo it's the most contempt

i've ever seen a character treated with legitimately it's about to get worse cause hell yeah he fights kananga with a knife. Oh, yeah. They both go into the water, and Bond kills Kananga by forcing the compressed air cylinder into his mouth, causing him to expand into a balloon and explode. Imagine spending all of your time trying to provide a sense of intelligence and dignity into this crass, stupid caricature, only to die like a Kali Wong Baruch assault. I was so mad. Yeah. Dude, the second that they set up that fucking expanding air calendar, I was like, oh my god, they're going to inflate this guy. They're going to inflate this motherfucker.

They have the sharks right there. He was going to kill Bob with the sharks. That would be fine. That would be him hoisted by his own batard. But no. He just has to get inflated. Because Bond has to say he has an inflated opinion of himself. Oh, I hate this match.

Also, why did he float? It was just compressed air, right? It wasn't helium. I assume because there must have been an original draft of the script where he referred to him as uppity. As in, like, literally going up. And then someone was just like, no, no. Bond has now assassinated a head of state.

This is fine. Yeah, just killed a prime minister. Bombed his island as well. Bombed his island. Killed a bunch of his people. Cool. Cool. Normal.

That's fine. He and Solitaire escape on the monorail. And then we smash cut back to New Orleans, where he and Solitaire are going to take the train back to New York so that they can fuck. Mm-hmm. That's explicitly the reason why, it's like, what are you gonna do on a train for 16 hours? A man comes. Now, I gotta talk about the Kronstein Rosette for this movie.

And I want to give the Kronstein Rosette to Teehee, because we get one last scene, because we're not done with this movie yet. Now, Teehee's boss has been killed. Emphatically killed. Everyone who knew who he was or what his deal is, has been killed. His drug lab and his alligator and crocodile farm have been burned to the ground. At this point, I would find

a new job. I would get on Hench. Yeah, I'd log on to Indeed. Also, what about the political chaos that Santa Monica's in? He could take advantage of that. He could become the new Prime Minister. Instead, and this is why he gets the Chronostema Rosette, because he has a loyalty beyond the call of duty and he is he has initiative he sneaks

himself aboard the train that bond and solitaire are on and he tries to kill bond he fails sadly cool yeah he does fail and of course the way that he fails is he has his disability used against him. Bond snips the lines of his artificial arm, forcing it to clamp onto the window of the train, and then Bond kicks him out of the train. James Bond. Deviation from the norm will be punished, and gleefully so. We don't get out of it that easily, because there is one final shot that this movie has to do, which is voodoo real? question mark on the front of the train just sitting

on the front of the locomotive it's fucking Baron Samedi who we thought was dead yeah making him one of the only Bond villains to survive that's right because he's just you know he's too powerful to kill because voodoo is real.

Put him on the list with Irma Bunt. And I think that's it. Yeah, but I want fan art of Baron Samedi and Irma Bunt, just hanging out. I want that buddy comedy. Just on the beach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nuts. Ground.

Ice. And that's the movie! That's two hours two hours of bond movie of the the most racist one i got nothing you know i this movie is is not only racist like obviously it's racist we know that we knew that from the fucking start it's live and let die they made this movie because they were like damn the black panthers are really getting some political capital what if we were like black people bad question mark like the movie is bad right it's badly made it's written by a outright fucking racist i will destroy mankovich but it's also fucking boring

it's boring as fuck to watch and at the conclusion of this i've said before on the podcast i watched these with my partner at the conclusion of this i felt so bad about having made her watch this fucking movie that i'm like i'm just gonna do this on my own from here on out man like she was just like it's the same movie it's the same movie every fucking time it overstays the third act it badly caricatures the culture, it's the same movie. It's the same movie every fucking time. It overstays the third act. It badly caricatures the culture that it's a part of. There's a fucking smug bastard who just goes like, ooh, shocking. And then it's like, there's no sense of resolution.

The movie sucks. It's bad. Fuck this. I hate you. Yeah. There's a couple of good shots, like in the boat chase, there's some good stunts. And it's like, oh, wow, that must have been quite difficult to do, and it's cool that they did it, and

I mean, other than that, there's not a lot going on. Why is there a wedding at a swamp? I don't know, but the bit where they jump the cars in the speedboat, I was like, oh, that's cool, it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I guess. Aside from the fact that it's like 40 minutes of that shit. It's so long.

It's so long. It's so long. We spend more time with J.W. Pepper at his nine accents than we do with Baron's son. Before I get to our patented rating system, do we have any thoughts

about either this movie or Roger Moore? Because we got a lot of Roger Moore to get through. I, for one, am fucking hating it so far. I hate them more with my life. It's strange the way in which he is... He's so vicious, but unlike Connery, who just plays it like, yeah, I get what I want, and that's the charm.

He plays it as if, like, it's more sinister in that he is also vicious and murderous, but he plays it as if it's like, but I'm actually really nice. And it's like but i'm actually really nice and it's like yeah i think in particular one thing i said to you when we were watching this is that bod has always been kind of a a kind of raw raw british british empire like fantasia but this in particular is the first one i saw where it was also a white supremacy fantasia like there's some in dr no but it's like background it's like oh this is just the natural state of things yes well dr no is racist as hell and like all of the jamaicans are childlike and he doesn't even bother to fuck the incredibly

gorgeous black woman of that movie but it's completely different than this where it is like every bad stereotype you could think of crammed into what felt like 12 hours of movie. I'm so sorry I made you watch this with me. It's a bad movie. It's not great, I'll be honest with you. On this podcast, we have a highly patented system.

We have a science-based system on this podcast. We do. It's a bad movie. We might have buried the lead so far by not... have an evidence based system for classifying the gender of this movie and we call it the SCUM system it stands for SMUM

cultural insensitivity unprovoked violence and misogyny so I'm anticipating a man scums anticipating a high answer out of a possible seven negotiable. 20, 20, 20, 20. Smarmy.

Vision. Fuck this. I hate this man. He is the smarmiest bot. He is oily. He's the smarmiest. Smarmiest. God, I've never fucking seen.

Oh. I don't think this is the smarmy as he gets, though. I don't want to give it a full seven. Yeah. Because Murr does get worse. Oh, is it not? I think we should start with a baseline of maximum and go seven, yeah. Oh, it gets worse?

Yeah. It might do. He's only going to get older. I don't think he's Smarmy-er in this than Goldfinger, which was a seven. I want to give it a six for smarm. No, I agree with that. I'll go seven. I'll go seven. I definitely don't think it's less smarmy than Goldfinger.

So two sevens and a six. Okay. All right, seven it is. Oh, incenser, ten. Fucking twelve. Fourteen. I don't know, man. 24,000. Unable to put a fucking number to this.

You know, voodoo's actually a religion. Yeah, yeah, and he blasphemes it. Is this more or less culturally insensitive than you only live twice? Way more. Way more. In that case, it's gotta be a 9, because you only live twice was it was a was an eight so this is a nine out of seven perfect that sounds right that sounds right for me

unprovoked violence he puts a gun in a woman's face for no fucking reason okay this guy's way more on the unprovoked violence scale than connery or Laserby ever were. Which is insane! Because you think of Roger Moore as being the kind of comedy Bond, but no. Absolutely not. He's not at the level of Inspector Fangsting Lee, but he's pretty high.

This island's got a small population, who's getting through them fast? No, I would be willing to see a five or a six for this. Yeah. Goldfinger was a six. I'd say this is slightly less unprovoked

violence than Goldfinger. Yeah, slightly less. So how about a five then? A five works for me. Now misogyny. There's misogynoir in here. That's true. It's misogynoir. The line where he's like, well, I wouldn't have done it before, again, which viscerally hit me, and you might have heard that on the recording, but like, holy fuck.

I'm kind of still comparing it to our high watermark for the evil of James Bond, is still Goldfinger for me. And since Goldfinger shows a flat-out, explicit, textual rape, by force... Corrective. I think that it has to be lower than Goldfinger, but not by much. If Goldfinger was an 8 on misogyny. I would see 7. Yeah, because the thing about the Goldfinger and i'm obviously all forms of sexual

soul are equally heinous but like the fact that goldfinger is forced whereas all of these are obtained uh consent through deception it's not as textually and openly misogynist as goldfinger so yeah i would see a seven but where does that leave live and let die theme song does kind of go though it does indeed but unfortunately that doesn't gain any more points and it is I would see a seven. Where does that leave? Live and let die. Theme song does kind of go though. It does indeed. But unfortunately that doesn't gain any more points. And it is Sitting Pretty at 28. The worst one we have watched so far.

That sounds right to me. That sounds absolutely correct to me. By a way as well. Goldfinger was only a 23. This is the worst one we've seen. This is the worst one so far. An incredible start for Roger Moore. Yeah.

I wanted to just to say thank you for being able to discuss this with the three of you. This feels like I've excised a demon that I've been thinking about for quite some time. Yeah. I am writing my novel right now, which features the Loa very prominently. And so every time voodoo comes up, I'm just rolling my eyes and gritting my teeth. And I'm like, that's the wrong VEV. And I'm like, why would you offer that? Wait, that's a symbol of Damballa.

I mean, let's segue that. Chris, where can the people find you? What do you do? I write fiction and science, fantasy. people find you what do you do i write fiction and science fantasy um i've got a lot of short stories at uncanny magazine which is uncannybag.com you can search by me my name by christopher caldwell and my twitter at although i'm currently suspended for a really stupid reason is at sarah 76 you were suspended for owning british it might be worth getting into the stupidness. Yeah, hello and welcome to Block Party. You were suspended because you talked about how biscuits,

you eat a biscuit like it's gone hot out of the oven, and they suspended you for threats of violence or self-harm. It was self-harm, yes, because I don't know, eating a southern biscuit warm the way you're supposed to do is apparently like... I did say you eat it hot from the oven but i did not imply that you need to stick your head in the oven to eat it i feel like that's what must have been flagged but it's a ridiculous thing to be suspended over i'm sure it was the word oven chris thank you so much for joining us thank you for listening listener we

will be back with a bonus episode subject tbd. And then Roger Moore will return against our protests in... Fuck, what is the next one? Man with a Golden Gun. It's Scaramanga, baby. Oh, fuck, with the fucking... Christopher Lee. Add more J.W. Pepper. It's the solar shit.

I used to love this one as a kid. I'll be interested to see whether it holds up it does not hold up it will not let's find out bye everybody thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond

this podcast can only survive thanks for generous contributions of our patrons. First and foremost among them are our £15 and above patrons, who are the beautiful Jack Holmes, Paint McCullough, Amanda Rugga, Nikki, Field Commissar Jen Jen,

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Our producer is Nate Bethea, and our podcast art is by Matt Lubchansky. See ya. you