I’m kinda a “Three Blind Mice” guy, myself.
Even as a kid I couldn’t understand what the point of that was. They’re already escaping in the fire truck, but he climbs back and unhooks it so he can dangle from the swaying ladder?
This movie is right near the bottom of the rankings for me. It’s dopey scene after stupid scene after insulting scene. The bit where Zorin looks up Bond on his computer is one of those pre-internet high comedy cinematic moments, with the computer editorializing on how dangerous Bond is. And Bond’s cover dialogue is so boilerplate and unconvincing, it’s a wonder he’s survived undercover for ten minutes in his career.
Not one of my favorites, but not the worst. I liked Patrick McNee’s ill-fated role. And using the tire air was clever in a good way, not like relying on some Q nuclear-powered rebreather.
And people forget, with the passage of time, despite their popularity, how much Duran Duran was also hated. Using them for a Bond theme was just going least common demominator music, like say Madonna. 
IIRC, he didn’t unhook it, Stacey did that by mistake. But I didn’t recently re-watch it, so I welcome any correction.
The ladder was unhooked (presumably by the firefighters) while parked. Bond drives away without re-securing it. One of the fireman very subtly points this out. (“Hey! He’s driving the truck with the ladder unhooked! That’s dangerous!!”)
As far as Bond songs go, there’s Carly Simon, and there’s everyone else.
There is only one James Bond theme in my music collection, and it is “A View To A Kill.”
The movie was garbage, but the song was great.
The BEST Bond theme was Johnny Cash’s original version of Thunderball. It was so awesome that it was deemed unsafe for the general public, so they went with the safer Tom Jones version.
The next morning, I still liked it. Dumb plot, maybe, but great fun action.
And now that I’ve finished with the Roger Moore films, I have to say I liked him as Bond a lot more than I thought I would. Seems A View to a Kill and The Spy Who Loved Me were the only two I had seen previously, and I recalled little of either. But I honestly thought Moore’s run was pretty solid throughout. The filmmakers seemed to have a hard time deciding how serious they wanted the franchise to be at times, but Moore himself was quite good in the role, and truly inhabited the character by the end.
I haven’t been following super close: have we done the one where they drive off the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, cause I’m anxious to nit pick that one?
That one’s up next (The Living Daylights).
Are you saying nobody does it better?
I wasn’t fond of Moore as Bond in his first outings – Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy who Loved Me, and especially Moonraker. It didn’t help that he was given pretty awful scripts (especially the Christopher Wood ones) with puerile plots and ludicrous jokes.
I liked him much better when the movies went back to their original sources. For Your Eyes Only was prime Bond, with bits drawn from the title story, the short story Risico and a bit from Live and Let Die that they didn’t use in the movie of that name, They tied the movies back to the earlier ones, too (Bond’s visit to Tracy’s grave, the showdown with an un-named Blofeld in the pre-credits) and gave Bond a reasonable and proper problem to solve.
Octopussy looked as if it was going to be the same for about the first half (they took stuff from the title story and the story Property of a Lady), and gave Bond a Cold War threat to fight, but the movie dissolved into puerility worthy of Wood halfway through. Again, I can’t blame Moore for that, but for one and a half movies I really liked Moore as Bond.
I agree that by the time they got to A View to a Kill (or, as many of us called it, Siliconfinger) Moore was looking pretty old and shopworn, and the plot and writing had descended into silliness again. Walken wasn’t bad as the villain, but it would’ve been better if they had gotten their first choice, David Bowie.
Yep. Makes me feel bad for the rest.
I actually thought you were kidding about this, but I checked it out and it. Is. AWESOME!
I wonder if the franchise would have evolved differently if they’d used that song instead. It’s such a different feel. Those 60s themes (Goldfinger and Thunderball specifically) pretty much define spy movies. Maybe no one takes the 1967 Casino Royale seriously because the music is more suitable for 60s sex comedies?
I have the themes from all the movies, including the mentioned Johnny Cash, and the alternate Thunderball song “Mr Kiss Kiss Band Bang” by Shirley Bassey. Madonna’s is probably the worst with its autotune/digital noise, but the rest are fun. You can really hear how the tastes of the times affect the music choices. “For Your Eyes Only” just sounds so “easy listening 80s” it should be in a Whitney Houston romanatic movie.
All the music in that film was by Bill Conti, right down to the opening gun-barrel Monty Norman- inspired bit, which sounds very different in Conti’s hands. He definitely did give the film an “easy listening 80s” vibe, with its guitars and synthesizers, rather than the impressive John Barry orchestral scores, but I still like it
They should have gone with this one.
The theme song was the best part of that movie.
I stand corrected. Every time I watch it (and as a devotee I can’t skip it in my bi-annual franchise rewatch) I’m usually watching that one with about 30% of my attention.
I like Moore in the role but thought he was saddled with such dire scripts and ugly production design that nothing could have saved the bad ones. Still, For Your Eyes Only is in my top 5 Bonds, and I still maintain that Octopussy (Tarzan yell aside) is the most underrated one in the franchise, mainly because of the chemistry he has with Maud Adams, and the cold war realpolitik elements of the plot.