Roger Moore’s glib brand of Bond is routinely slagged these days, but if the guy had a high point, it’s right here. The killer moment: Bond visits a bathhouse, where the comely employees marvel at his hairy chest and prompt the spy to recite a “Japanese proverb” about how birds don’t nest in bare trees. While Kissy does get to pretend to marry Bond, she sadly has as little dialogue as she does clothing. The Bond girl: Mie Hama plays Japanese agent Kissy Suzuki, a name that’s almost as flagrant as Pussy Galore but twice as lazy. Theme song: Nancy Sinatra’s languid classic is one of the few Bond tunes good enough to earn a life of its own beyond the movie-those swirling violins will outlive us all. Beyond that tiny detail however, this is what we talk about when we talk about Bond: ninja armies, henchman-devouring piranhas and the glorious reveal of baldheaded SPECTRE mastermind Ernst Blofeld (Donald Pleasence).- DE That’s right: James Bond saves the world in yellowface. Scripted by legendary children’s author Roald Dahl (hardly the weirdest thing about the film), You Only Live Twice finds everyone’s favorite spy faking his own death and traveling to Tokyo in order to see if the Japanese are behind the hijacking of an American spacecraft. It’s almost a shame that Bond’s fifth adventure is so good, because it’s also so racist. The killer moment: The fight between Shaw’s blond superthug and Bond in a tiny train compartment is one of the most brutal set pieces in the entire series. The Bond girl: A former Miss Rome, Italian starlet Daniela Bianchi makes for a convincing Russian ballerina-turned-mole-though she’s drop-dead gorgeous in any language. Theme song: The number shows up briefly sans lyrics in the credits and as background noise later-which, given Matt Monro’s faux-Sinatra crooning, is probably a good thing. We love that latter version, of course, but Russia proved that a straightforward spy thriller equally suited the secret agent.- DF Though the movie is best known for giving us Robert Shaw’s juggernaut villain and Lotte Lenya’s shoe-knifing henchwoman, this is one of the franchise’s purest espionage entries-it suggests an alternate universe in which Bond was closer to a John le Carré spook than a gadget-wielding action hero. The first of many sequels drops the MI6 operative into a tried-and-true plot: A decoding device is stolen, and only Bond can retrieve it-which is what the cat-stroking Blofeld and his SPECTRE comrades are counting on. The killer moment: Strapped to the laser table: “Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. The Bond girl: Honor Blackman’s rough-and-tumble romantic interest made a good match for Connery’s Bond and had a name that launched a thousand playground jokes: Pussy Galore. Theme song: It simply doesn’t get any better than Shirley Bassey’s window-rattling tribute to the “man with the Midas touch,” punctuated by those slinky horn blasts. Goldfinger, however, made him a pop-culture icon that’s endured for decades.- DF The earlier movies established Bond as Her Majesty’s most resourceful secret agent, a lover and a fighter. This was the movie that perfected the template for what we consider a proper Bond film: tricked-out sports cars and spy gadgets, eccentric supervillains and quirky sidekicks (the hat-throwing Oddjob), a name-dropping opening song and a fun, flirty, tongue-in-cheek version of Fleming’s hero. The Bond series already had two films under its belt by the time 007 matched wits with Gert Fröbe’s precious-metal obsessive, but the third time was the charm. The killer moment: A parkour chase on a construction crane showed Craig's Bond to be a no-nonsense physical presence. Their relationship offers more than the usual brief moment of eye candy. The Bond girl: Born to this kind of role, Eva Green is Vesper Lynd, an agent for the British Treasury with whom Bond falls in love. Theme song: Soundgarden's late Chris Cornell punches in with a workmanlike soft-rock entry in the Bond song canon. We have no problem ranking it this high.- DC Punchy, serious-faced and infused with tragic romance, this winner became an immediate Bond classic. GoldenEye director Martin Campbell returns behind the camera, and the script takes the character right back to the beginning-when Bond first earns his 007 licence-by drawing on Ian Fleming's 1953 novel of the same name. Step up, Daniel Craig, previously best known for films like Layer Cake and Munich. The Bond franchise was in need of a shot in the arm after the retirement of Pierce Brosnan and an over-reliance on wonky effects and bad gags.
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