The joke is, Bond thinks his urine sample is what killed the goon, but it turns out it was the various lethal-looking syringes that ended up in his back.
I’m not a fan of this film by any means but that particular scene is great and the gag at the end is hilarious.
Also love Bond’s response to Fatima the first time they meet, when she bumps into him accidentally-on-purpose after waterskiing.
‘Oh I’m so sorry, I made you all wet!’
‘Yesh, but my martini’s still dry’
I think this was also the first Bond movie I saw in a theatre. I remember thinking the electrifying video game was pretty cool.
I think I have only watched it one time as an adult. Not great, but then again I wasn’t a big fan of Thunderball either.
Well, that was true of Claudine Auger in the original Thunderball - Largo had been responsible for her brother’s death (not that she knew that until Bond revealed it to her).
My favorite bit was after M dresses Bond down and sends him to a health spa, to get rid of those free radicals in his blood. (At the time, this was a new concept, IIRC). When Bond leaves M’s office, Moneypenny asks if he got a new assignment.
Bond: “Yes…I’m to eliminate all…free…radicals.”
Moneypenny (shocked): “Ohhhh, do be careful.”
The funniest thing to me about Never Say Never Again is the ongoing concern that Bond is getting too old for the job–even though Connery was actually three years younger than Roger Moore, and nobody in the main series seemed to have any concerns about Bond’s advancing age.
The audience, maybe, but not anyone in the films.
Could have been a sly dig at the main series producers’ over-reliance on Roger?
To me, the entirety of NSNA was that it was a money-grubbing film, a rerun even! It will always for me exist outside of Bond canon. It’s a much of a Bond film as the Woody Allen’s Casino Royale. It’s just a cheap knockoff using one of the original cast and the same story and hoping no one notices. It’s as real a Bond film as Seymour Goldfarb was really Roger Moore in Cannonball Run.
Came about as a result of a legal dispute between Kevin McClory and the Bond producers & Fleming’s estate. He was adamant he was the main creative force behind the Thunderball story, including creating Spectre, Blofeld etc. So McClory got to use the same basic story for his pet project NSNA. The same dispute is what kept Blofeld off the screen until Spectre in 2015, although characters like Drax and Stromberg were Blofeld in all but name. Bond dropping the unnamed bald wheelchair user at the start of FYEO was a bit of an ‘up yours’ from the producers to McClory as it was clearly meant to be Mr Blofeld.
I remember being confused as a kid when they were calling (faux) Q “Algernon”. Was he supposed to be the same character or not?
Wikipedia has this to say:
In the 1983 film Never Say Never Again, Bond received his gadgets from a man (played by Alec McCowen) he referred as Algernon and Algy. His opening line is “Nice to know old Q can still surprise you 00s”. In sharp contrast to the personality of Q in EON film series, Algy hopes to hear about “Lots of sex and violence” from James Bond following his mission. In the closing credits, he is named as “Q” Algy. Q Branch itself is depicted as underfunded and ramshackle compared to the high-tech surroundings of the Eon films.
Q in the Eon films was named “Major Boothroyd”, but his forename was never given. Wiki has a long list of people with the forename “Algernon”, but none with it as a surname.
I would speculate that it was intended to be the same person, but Kevin McClory didn’t want to give Eon any pretext for the type of lawsuit that McClory had filed against Eon.
Ah, another thing I hated about the film. 1983 wasn’t supposed to be that into “meta” jokes.
And it was “gratuitous sex and violence”. Even more meta.
eta: and the ineffective bureaucrat with the name “Small-Fawcett.” I guess the large (heh heh) number of “big dick” comments about Bond weren’t enough, they had to make small dick jokes.
Originally George Lazenby was lined up to return as Bond in Never Say Never Again before the people behind the movie got word that Sean Connery was interested to take on the role again. Though in an alternate universe in 1983 Lazenby would have still been the official James Bond at the age of 44 rather than Roger Moore at 56.
He sort of was. He showed up driving an Aston-Martin with the initials “JB” on them in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1983
It was the year we got all three cinematic Bonds playing the role again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_the_Man_from_U.N.C.L.E.
A View to a Kill (1985)
I came into this one with low expectations. 37% on Rotten Tomatoes and a few stray remarks here on this thread had me thinking I was in for a turkey. My expectations were more than exceeded.
Sure, this has one of the most ridiculous plots of any 007 so far. An evil oil magnate plans to cause a massive earthquake to destroy Silicon Valley so he can corner the market on microchips. I’m not a seismologist, but I don’t think the science behind this plan made a lot of sense. And from a financial standpoint, seems like this whole scheme would cost a lot more than one could hope to make back on it.
But who cares? This was great fun. The pre-credits sequence set the tone with its terrific ski stunts. Then we get right into the plot without a lot of farting around. For a while, I thought the theme of this film was going to be a great action scene immediately undercut by silliness. The aforementioned pre-credits sequence was undercut by playing the Beach Boys while Bond snowboards away from the bad guys. The exciting chase up the Eiffel Tower and very cool base-jump from the top was undercut by Bond subsequently driving half a car in pursuit. After that, though, the tone became more consistent.
Christopher Walken was born to be a Bond villain. He’s a perfect Big Bad. Maybe a tad too perfect, though, to be honest. Even in the James Bond universe, where human life is cheap, seeing Zorin gunning down innocent mine workers while laughing out loud was just a little bit disturbing. And I found the bit about a Bond villain having other enemies to worry about – Zorin apparently defected from the KGB – to be an intriguing twist. Unfortunately, it was a twist that really didn’t really amount to anything.
But these are quibbles. I found AVTAK a rollicking wild ride of a movie. Grace Jones was exotic and sexy, a Bond Girl unlike any we’ve seen before. I loved her. Mayday’s demise was one of the few things that I recalled from having seen this in the theater 37(!) years ago. That was an intense scene, and Jones sold it hard.
I now live in San Francisco, and seeing 007 in (and over) my City was a hoot. I’ll stack the climactic scene on the Golden Gate Bridge against any scene in any Bond movie, and you can quote me on that. The Roger Moore era ended on a high note.
Next up: The Living Daylights
I can never complain about Christopher Walken, but the rest of the movie wasn’t great, and ages poorly on later viewings.
But I still say Duran Duran’s theme song is the best Bond song, bar none.
Grace Jones was great. Christopher Walken was good. But Roger Moore just looked so old and tired. (I haven’t seen it for a long time, so I’m going from memory here.)
My least favourite part: “What a view!” “…to a kill!!!” Gee, what an elegant way to tie in the name of the movie.
The movie definitely had some issues, including Moore’s obvious age, but I liked it a lot better than its reputation. Tanya Roberts gets a bad rap for some screeching, but I liked her performance in that fight that took place in her mansion, where she bashes a villain over the head with her grandfather’s urn (“He always did enjoy a good fight.”). I also loved the part in that fight scene where Bond is sliding down the bannister machine-gunning down thugs, and suddenly has to shoot the knob off of the post to save his manhood.
I think the fire-engine chase is one of the most interesting chases in the Bond series, with him swinging this way and that on the ladder.
Walken makes a fantastic villain, and May Day’s sacrifice at the end elevates her above other henchmen.
One thing that really annoyed me was how stupid 007’s aliases were when he was undercover. That big burdensome one he used at the horse auction was bad, but the absolute worst was when he was pretending to be a financial reporter and introduced himself as “James Stock.” Really? An experienced, professional spy can’t some up with a better fake name than that?
That’s apparently the only one that’s ever worked!
“Bar none” is pretty strong. I would certainly put it behind Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, and possibly behind a-ha’s “The Living Daylights.” But I agree that it’s up there on the list.
“Thunderball” and “Live & Let Die” have all those beat.