001. The story
Investigating the audacious mid-air theft of a space shuttle, Roger Moore’s James Bond discovers that the shuttle’s owner Hugo Drax plans to commit global genocide and repopulate the Earth with a group of aesthetically pleasing young folk from onboard his very own space station.
002. The villains
Softly-spoken Michael Lonsdale is Hugo Drax, a more languid Bond villain than most but one with an aim far more ambitious: to eliminate all human life on the planet rather than rule it.
He’s assisted by the familiar formidable henchman Jaws (a returning Richard Kiel, last seen in The Spy Who Loved Me), and the less imposing Chang (Toshiro Suga) who has a knack for sabotaging G-Force simulators and being killed by pianos.
003. The girls
Lois Chiles is the unfortunately named Dr. Holly Goodhead, and manages to play a smart and steely CIA agent masquerading as one of Drax’s scientists, all while being burdened with the least imaginative name in the entire franchise.
Corinne Clery is the doomed Drax employee Corinne Dufour, who’s killed by her employee’s ravenous Beauceron hounds for assisting Bond breaking into Drax’s study.
004. Best moments
The pre-titles free-fall from a plane is an impressive opening (although on Blu-ray it now suffers from the fact you can see everyone’s emergency parachutes under their clothes).
Bond being trapped in the out of control G-Force simulator, the utterly bonkers ‘Bondola’ gondola chase sequence through the streets and waterways of Venice, the precipitous cable car fight with Jaws in Rio, and Bond fighting a python are all fun set pieces, but are eclipsed by the film’s final act: a zero-G space battle onboard Drax’s space station.
005. Trivia
» Moonraker was the highest-grossing Bond film until GoldenEye was released.
» The film was released in Brazil (where much of it was filmed) under the brilliantly dramatic title ‘007 against the Death Rocket‘.
» Roger Moore took quite a battering during production. His face was left bruised from the air bursts fired at it to simulate the G-force in the runaway gravity simulator, and he also left production for a week to have a kidney stone removed. To top it off, he had trouble with the blood running up into his nose and eyes while filming the zero-G love scene with Lois Chiles.
» The budget for Moonraker was more than the first six EON Bond films combined
» Moonraker has the largest number of actors on wires (simulating weightlessness) ever filmed.
006. Best quotes
» Drax: “Mr Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you.”
» Jaws: [speaking his only line in two films] “Well, here’s to us.”
» Bond: “Bollinger? If it’s ’69 you were expecting me.”
» Drax: “Why did you break up the encounter with my pet python?”
Bond: “I discovered it had a crush on me.”
» Sir Frederick Grey: “My God, what’s Bond doing?”
Q: “I think he’s attempting re-entry sir.”
007. The verdict
That 1979’s Moonraker to this day remains the most sci-fi Bond film is testament to just how wildly ambitious it was. That ambition isn’t to everyone’s taste, but you have to remember that Moonraker was very much a product of its time.
Attempting to capture the post Star Wars euphoria that had engulfed the globe two years earlier, it starts out as your standard 007 adventure before becoming pure astro-blastin’ science fiction for its epic final act. And though it may be in space, it’s merely a more futuristic (and incredibly well shot) take on the ninjas storming Blofeld’s volcano base in You Only Live Twice.
Added to this, Roger is on fine form, while Chiles makes a superior Bond girl to most. And it’s nice to see Richard Kiel return as fan-favourite Jaws – a presence that seems meant to reassure the audience that despite the laser guns and space-jaunts, this is still a Bond film.
What do you think of Moonraker? Let us know below…