007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND - Day 4: The Best Deaths

007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND

As a seven-part feature, I'll be counting down the final week to Skyfall's release in North American theatres on Nov. 9 with seven James Bond-related articles.

DAY 4 – THE BEST DEATHS

By Chris Luckett

When telling stories of an agent with a licence to kill and megalomaniacal villains, the body count is bound to stack pretty high. (According to sources CommanderBond.net and AllOuttaBubbleGum.com, there’ve been 1,299 deaths in the first 22 official Bond movies.) Many deaths have been generic, numerous have been memorable, but the best of the best leave you shocked and a little shaken (if not stirred).

Image property of United Artists

10. Tov Kronsteen (From Russia, with Love)

After scheming a revenge plot against Bond and failing, Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) blames Rosa Klebb for his failure when reporting to Blofeld. Being a chessmaster didn’t help him see Blofeld’s next move coming, however, as Kronsteen is suddenly stabbed with a poison-tipped shoe dagger and dies upon Blofeld’s desk. The drawn-out death made for a surprising and disturbing henchman disposal.

9. Professor Dent (Dr. No)

Until Timothy Dalton and, to a larger extent, Daniel Craig came along, many had forgotten that Bond was really a ruthless killer. From his very first movie, 007 showed he has no remorse or compunction with killing in the name of Her Majesty. When Dr. No’s geologist/henchman (Anthony Dawson) tries to shoot Bond with an emptied gun, 007 dispassionately shoots him where he sits.

8. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)

While it looks incredibly corny by today’s standards, the death of Live and Let Die’s villain, the corrupt Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), was quite shocking for its time. After Bond and Kananga tumble into the villain’s shark tank, Bond stuffs a compressed-gas shark bullet into Kananga’s mouth, with explosive results.

7. Dario (Licence to Kill)

Frank Sanchez’s psychopathic lackey Dario (Benicio Del Toro) causes many brutal deaths in Licence to Kill. It’s only fitting that his death at the hands of Bond is one of the most brutal of the series. After trying to send Bond to his death in a rock crusher, Dario ends up being the one going in the grinder.

6. Elektra King (The World is Not Enough)

Dispatching villains ruthlessly has never been a problem for Bond (see #9). Even so, you don’t expect Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), the duplicitous mastermind who used M’s motherly feelings for her to exact revenge for a childhood trauma, to be killed so swiftly. After teasing Bond that he wouldn’t kill her, 007 shoots her right in the heart.

(skip to 6:30 for the relevant scene)

5. Oddjob (Goldfinger)

In Goldfinger’s pre-credits sequence, Bond shocks a baddie by tossing a toaster into a bathtub, but that was just the precursor to the more spectacular electrocution of Oddjob (Harold Sakata) in the film’s final act. After futilely trying to match strength with the henchman, Connery outsmarts him by waiting for Oddjob to touch a metal gate and then electrocuting it with a loose wire. One of the most memorable henchman deaths of the series.

4. Corinne Dufour (Moonraker)

After his assistant (Corinne Clery) aids Bonds, Hugo Drax dismisses her with nary room for an excuse on her part. Mere seconds after her termination, Drax unleashes a pair of Beaucerons who proceed to chase her into the woods and attack her, in a scene almost more at home in a horror film. The haunting music and atmospheric lighting give the scene an odd beauty, despite hers being the most violent of any female in a Bond movie.

3. Milton Krest (Licence to Kill)

As Bond slowly exacted his revenge on Frank Sanchez and his associates, he turned Sanchez against his men one by one. Of all the violent deaths in Licence to Kill – and there are more here than in any other 007 movie – Krest’s (Anthony Zerbe) is the most memorable and twisted.

2. Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale)

Heart-breaking not just in how painful it is to watch but in how you know she tragically has to die to turn James Bond into the heartless man he becomes, Vesper’s death is the soul of Casino Royale. When she drowns, with Bond mere feet away but unable to save her, the series comes as close to earning a tear-shedding moment as it ever has.

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)

As wrenching as Vesper’s death was, it was preceded by the same premise 37 years earlier. What’s worse, Tracy (Diana Rigg) and James had just gotten married, after the 00-agent had finally fallen in love. On their way to the airport for their honeymoon, their car is besieged in a drive-by shooting by Blofeld and Irma Blunt. Bond thinks it a close call, until he finds the body of his love lifelessly slumped in the passenger seat. The sudden and unexpected twist, coupled with the tones of the heart-wrenching Louis Armstrong song “We Have All the Time in the World,” ended the movie on the saddest note of any Bond movie and provided the most memorable death of the series.

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FROM WORST TO BEST: PART 1

007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND - Day 3: The Best Henchmen

007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND

As a seven-part feature, I'll be counting down the final week to Skyfall's release in North American theatres on Nov. 9 with seven James Bond-related articles.

DAY 3 – THE BEST HENCHMEN*

By Chris Luckett

Villains get all the glory. Le Chiffre, Rosa Klebb, Scaramanga, Max Zorin, Hugo Drax, Blofeld, Alec Trevelyan... They get all the credit, even though they often delegate most of the work. Their henchmen are the ones who are often in the trenches, trying to kill Bond and keep him from reaching their boss. It’s about time they got their dues.

*And henchwomen, of course.

10. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)

A lackey really in it for himself, Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) obeys his employer to the man’s face, but hires assassins to kill his boss. Scaramanga, his boss and the man of the film’s title, has an island paradise that Nick Nack plans to inherit. When Bond destroys the island as well as killing Scaramanga, Nick Nack comes for Bond himself.

9. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)

An actual spirit of Haitian voodoo (or a loa), Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) makes the cut not by serving the corrupt Dr. Kananga but by his overall creepy appearance, terrifying laugh, and that pesky habit of his to resurrect himself. Tee-Hee Johnson was also a worthy henchman of Kananga’s, but a pincer for a hand can’t bring you back to life.

8. Mr. White (Quantum of Solace)

Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) was in the preceding Casino Royale, but in that film, he was pulling the strings of the main villain. In Quantum of Solace, his role as a cog in a much larger machine is revealed and his position as a character shifts. During his brief but very memorable scene in which M and 007 interrogate him, Mr. White gives the most enjoyable performance of the movie.

7. Xenia Onatopp (GoldenEye)

As GoldenEye trumpeted James Bond’s introduction to the ‘90s, many wondered if the series’ formula had grown stale after 33 years. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) was just the change needed to make the old feel new. A vicious henchwoman who lured her prey before brutally crushing and asphyxiating them, her most terrifying trait was the sadistic pleasure she got at extinguishing the lives of anyone she could.

(NB: clip mildly NSFW)

6. Oddjob (Goldfinger)

He was a man of few words, but Oddjob (Harold Sakata) left a loud impression. His stout stature and imposing posture were threatening, but not as much as his razor-edged bowler hat, which he could throw with deadly accuracy.

5. Zao (Die Another Day)

After Bond blows up a briefcase of diamonds that Zao (Rick Yune) was closely inspecting, Zao is left with sparkling gems permanently lodged in his scarred face. An unemotional man that’s always one step ahead, he proved the most formidable henchman against Bond since the ‘80s.

4. Dario (Licence to Kill)

One of the most ruthless and sadistic enemies 007 has run into, Dario (Benicio Del Toro, in his second film role) psychopathically tortures captives and enemies. After his kills Felix Leiter’s wife and brutally injures Felix, Bond goes on a rampage to hunt Dario and his boss down. Arguably the most cold-blooded of any henchman from the Bond films.

3. Red Grant (From Russia, with Love)

A homicidal paranoiac, Red Grant (Robert Shaw) is also a ruthless and efficient assassin who keeps a length of garrotte wire concealed in his wristwatch, for convenient strangling. Clever, brutal, and professional, he was the first truly threatening henchman in the Bond series and remains one of the best.

2. May Day (A View to a Kill)

With unusual looks, an inscrutable face, and remarkable strength, May Day (Grace Jones) was a henchwoman as fearsome as she was capable. Whether casually leaping from the Eiffel Tower or lifting a man above her head on a whim of rage, she was more than a fair match for James Bond, who she often got the better of.

1. Jaws (The Spy who Loved Me)

More frightful than most full-fledged villains, the man with the razor-sharp, steel teeth set a standard that has never been topped. Despite an unfortunate declawing in the subsequent Moonraker, Jaws left his indelible mark on the franchise as the most ferocious of baddies. With his towering figure, silent expressions, and unrelenting ferocity, he remains the toughest henchman 007 has ever faced.

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THE BEST DEATHS

007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND - Day 2: The Best Stunts

007 DAYS OF JAMES BOND

As a seven-part feature, I'll be counting down the final week to Skyfall's release in North American theatres on Nov. 9 with seven James Bond-related articles.

Day 2 – The Best Stunts

By Chris Luckett

The James Bond movies have always had an action element to them, and with action scenes eventually comes outrageous stunts. The 007 series has had some of the craziest of cinema over the years, setting numerous Guinness world records.

Bear in mind, this list isn’t dealing with entire action sequences. Each of these stunts is just one ridiculous piece of action, rarely longer than 20 or 30 seconds. Because not all the stunts were available on YouTube as videos on their own, some of the clips will be for a full scene, but I’ve identified the relevant times within each clip.

10. For Your Eyes Only – Cliff Fall

In a movie of wide hits and misses, one of the best parts is a free fall by Rick Sylvester as Bond. 007 has just finished scaling the face of a cliff when, before he can get to his feet, he’s kicked off the cliff and falls... and falls... and finally snaps to a halt as the rope goes taut.

(0:00-0:20)

9. Octopussy – Microjet Escape

An underrated Bond movie with some decent action sequences, Octopussy features a fantastic scene in which Bond (stunt pilot J.W. “Corkey” Fornof), piloting a compactible microjet, narrowly flies through a pair of closing hangar doors.

(1:40-2:00)

8. Live and Let Die – Crocodile Stepping Stones

A scene in Live and Let Die required henchman Tee Hee leaving Bond to be eaten by crocodiles. The man who owned the crocodile farm where Live and Let Die was filming, Ross Kananga, suggested running across the croc’s backs. When no one else was willing to do it, Kananga suited up as Bond and performed this daring escape. Fun fact: This was actually the fifth take; during the fourth attempt at filming the stunt, one of the crocodiles almost bit Kananga’s heel.

(3:40-4:00)

7. Moonraker – Skydiving Without a Parachute

While the final act of this movie contains most of the worst material filmed for a Bond movie, there are a number of good set pieces through the first two-thirds of the movie. The pre-credits sequence, for one, involves an incredible skydive where 007 (stuntman Jake Lombard) is pushed out of a plane without a parachute and then has to wrestle a free-falling henchman (skydiver B.J. Worth) for his.

(0:55-2:20)

6. The Man with the Golden Gun – Hornet Aerial Twist

In a chase in The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond (stunt driver “Bumps” Willard) floors the pedal of an AMC Hornet and corkscrews off a twisted stump of a bridge, landing smoothly on the other side. Massive amounts of computer calculations were made and the stunt was repeatedly put through simulators before it was attempted for the film. It resulted in one of the greatest car stunts in any film, but was sadly tarnished in post-production when the composer decided to add an unfortunate slide whistle sound effect. Ignore the whistle and just behold the impressive stunt.

(0:00-0:15)

5. Tomorrow Never Dies – Helicopter Jump

Arguably Pierce Brosnan’s most underrated foray as 007, Tomorrow Never Dies involved many great action sequences, most of which involved vehicles. One elaborate chase sequence on a motorcycle with a helicopter in pursuit reaches a dead-end, until James Bond and Wai Lin (stunt drivers Jean-Pierre Goy and Wendy Leech) get a racing start and leap over the helicopter to another rooftop.

(3:35-4:00)

4. Licence to Kill – Truck Wheelie

During the climactic chase sequence in Licence to Kill when 007 is driving a tanker and some baddies pull a rocket launcher on him, he does what only James Bond (stunt driver Remy Julienne) could: he uses a ramp of dirt to pop the truck onto a side wheelie, so the rocket flies underneath it. For bonus measures, he also keeps the wheelie going just long enough to squash the henchmen’s car.

(1:40-2:05)

3. Casino Royale – Crane Jump

In arguably the greatest action sequence of all 22 Bond films, 007 chases a terrorist through a construction yard. Following a fistfight on the arm of a crane, the terrorist (freerunner Sebastian Foucan) leaps from one crane to another, and then to a rooftop; Bond (Daniel Craig, doing the stunt himself) follows suit.

(3:05-3:50)

2. GoldenEye – Dam Dive

After a six-year leave of absence from cinemas, James Bond needed to make a spectacular re-entrance. The opening scene of GoldenEye delivered that in every way. Sneaking into a dam through the back entrance, 007 (stuntman Wayne Michaels) bungee jumps off the lip of the dam, over 700 feet down, before grappling to the entrance.

(0:00-1:00)

1. The Spy Who Loved Me – Ski Jump

As magnificent a dive as 007 made in the opening of GoldenEye, The Spy Who Loved Me’s was better. Rick Sylvester, the same stuntman who’d later return to fall off a cliff in For Your Eyes Only, skied off a 2,000-foot-high mountainside (Canada’s Mount Asgard, doubling for Austria) and plummeted seemingly forever, until a Union Jack parachute finally opens and Bond soars to safety. It set a record for the highest ski BASE jump on film and remains one of the most memorable stunts in action movies.

(1:40-2:25)

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THE BEST HENCHMEN