001. The story

Armed with a novelty watch, some flyaway flares and a volatile eyebrow, Roger Moore finds himself in a 1973 blaxploitation pastiche, trying to stop a corrupt Caribbean dictator called Dr Kananga and a Harlem gangster named Mr Big flooding the USA with cheap heroin.

After sneakily seducing soothsayer Solitaire via some sleight-of-hand with a loaded deck of trademarked 007 cards, the superspy evades crocodiles, hookhanded giggler Tee Hee and imbecilic redneck Sheriff J.W. Pepper before belatedly discovering that Kananga and Big are the same person. ‘He always did have an inflated opinion of himself,’ Bond deadpans at the denouement as the bad guy is blown up like a balloon and bursts.

 

002. The villains

The superb Yaphet Kotto (Alien) makes a refreshingly earthy megalomaniac following three failed attempts to kill Blofeld, while Tee Hee (Julius Harris) gives good prosthetic as Kananga’s (artificial) right-hand man.

Best of all the bad guys, however, is voodoo cultist, snake wrangler and makeup artist extraordinaire Baron Samedi, played by Geoffrey Holder, who has a novel way of avoiding paying his fare when travelling on a train.

 

003. The girls

Jane Seymour provides an alluring mixture of mysticism and innocence as Solitaire, although we can never quite work out if she’s only pretending to go back to fortunetelling for Kananga after being deflowered by 007.

Elsewhere, Bond also cracks on with Rosie Carver – a cocklaphobic CIA newbie masquerading as his wife – and an Italian agent whose dress he removes using ‘sheer magnetism, darling’.

 

004. Best moments

Although the speedboat rampage through the Everglades goes on too long, the bus pursuit across San Monique is an authentically exciting chase sequence, capped by the decapitation of the vehicle under a low bridge.

Bond’s brush with crocodiles is so tense that Roger Moore is almost forced into some real acting, while the closing scene on the train with Tee Hee is so good they reprised it with Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me.

The most memorable sequence doesn’t feature 007 at all, however. The New Orleans funeral at the beginning – which turns from a dirge to a celebration when an agent is murdered (‘Whose funeral is it?’) – is simply brilliant.

 

005. Trivia

» The only Bond film between 1963 and 1999 in which Desmond Llewelyn’s Q does not appear.

» When the film was released in South Africa, Bond’s love scenes with Rosie Carver were removed due to the apartheid policies of the country’s government.

» The first film in the series not to be scored by John Barry; replaced by former Beatles producer George Martin.

» Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea star David Hedison would later become the first actor to reprise the character of Felix Leiter in 1989’s Licence to Kill.

» The first Bond film to feature a four-letter swearword: Mrs Bell’s exclamation of ‘Holy shit!’

 

006. Best quotes

» Sheriff J.W. Pepper: ‘What are you? Some kinda doomsday machine boy? Well we got a cage strong enough to hold an animal like you here!’

» ‘I once had a nasty turn in a booth.’

» Mr Big cuts to the chase: ‘Names is for tombstones, baby. Y’all take this honky outside and waste him – now!’

» ‘Butter-hook!’

» Bond gets back into bed with Solitaire: ‘There’s no sense going out half-cocked, is there?’

 

007. The verdict

Despite containing some depressingly racist elements that are difficult to overlook, Live and Let Die is a solidly enjoyable (if atypical) Bond movie which introduces the new lead actor with enough wit and style to conceal a plot so mundane it wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of T.J. Hooker.

 

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