The range of opinion in relation to The Man with the Golden Gun is enormous. As with some other Bond films, it comes down mainly to how tolerant one chooses to be of self-parody and silly comedy in a Bond film. This film has a thin plot and carried the parody aspect to a new high (or low), but also possesses enough strengths to provide a decent level of entertainment. I rate this film in the bottom five in the series but not as severely as those critics who rank it dead last. Of all the films in the series, this is the one that had the weakest box office appeal. It was the second Bond film directed by English director Guy Hamilton.

Historical Background: Guy Hamilton was actually born in Paris, France in 1922, but his parents were British. Hamilton had a pretty substantial influence on the Bond series, turning its direction more than once, for better or for worse. He directed a total of four of the films, including the landmark Goldfinger (1964) that went a long way toward establishing the franchise formula. Hamilton introduced the idea of the pre-credit action sequence, for example, and up-graded the caliber of the toys provided by Q. Hamilton's three other contributions to the series, consisting of Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), were influential in another way. They were the films that first shifted the tone of the series from mostly serious spy intrigue (with occasional touches of wit) into the realm of self-parody through slapstick and farcical elements. Five of the seven Bond films starring Roger Moore would end up being more in the self-parody mode than the spy thriller format.

The Story: The story for this film concerns an ex-KGB agent, Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), who has gone freelance at a million dollars per hit. He always kills his victims with a bullet made of gold, shot from a golden gun. There's no picture of the man on file at MI6, but he is known for one distinguishing characteristic: an extra nipple. In the pre-credit sequence, we watch Scaramanga dueling with a Chicago hitman, Rodney (Marc Lawrence), lured to his lair by Scaramanga's miniature henchman, Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize), for the ostensible purpose of assassinating Scaramanga. The actual purpose, however, is to provide Scaramanga with entertainment in the form of a challenging duel.

Scaramanga becomes relevant to James Bond (Roger Moore) when a gold bullet and a note arrive at MI6 headquarters. The bullet is embossed with "007." M (Bernard Lee) is concerned that Bond's ability to do his job will be jeopardized if he has to be looking over his shoulder all the time. Bond is given a leave of absence to clear up this threat – unofficially. Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) provides Bond with a starting point. A former agent, Fairbanks (002), is thought to have been assassinated by Scaramanga in Beirut, though no gold bullet was ever found.

In Beirut, Bond takes in the belly dancing routine of a pretty dancer named Saida (Carmen du Sautoy), who had once been Fairbanks's girlfriend. She wears a good luck charm in her navel and Bond recognizes immediately that it is the missing gold slug. With a bit of delicate nuzzling, Bond is able to recover the evidence, though he ends up having to fight his way out of Saida's dressing room, pitted against three thugs. Q's analysis of the bullet leads to a man named Lazar (Marne Maitland), a Portuguese custom gunsmith, operating out of Macau. Lazar makes Scaramanga's golden bullets. Bond follows the trail of the most recently ordered bullets to Scaramanga's mistress, Andrea Anders (Maud Adams), at the Casino de Macau. Outside, Bond encounters an old lover and British liaison agent, Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), who's a perpetual screw-up. Thanks to Goodnight, Bond temporarily loses sight of Anders, but later catches up with her in her hotel room. He walks in while she's showering and then twists her arm for information, learning that Scaramanga goes to the Bottoms Up Club in Hong Kong. Bond stakes out the club. Instead of spotting Scaramanga, however, Bond becomes witness to one of his assassinations. The victim is Professor Gibson (Gordon Everett), inventor of the Solex agitator (which can harness solar power with 95% efficiency). The priceless Solex is stolen from Gibson's apparel. British agent Lieutenant Hip (Soon-Tek Oh) whisks Bond away to a British Intelligence installation, creatively situated in a grounded ship hulk in Hong Kong bay. M is quite put out that his agents have lost both Gibson and the Solex. Meanwhile, back in his lair, Scaramanga, who is aroused by killing, caresses Anders with the barrel of his golden gun.

Hip believes that Gibson was in Hong Kong to negotiate sale of the Solex compoent to a wealthy Hong Kong industrialist, Hai Fat (Richard Loo), head of Hai Fat enterprises. Hai Fat would have the kind of money to pay for a million dollar hit but would likely not have met Scaramanga in person. Q fits Bond with a superfluous nipple so that Bond can present himself to Hai Fat as Scaramanga. While he's at it, Bond flirts a bit with Chew Mee (Francoise Therry), a young woman swimming naked in a pool at Hai Fat's estate. Hai Fat, only pretending to be taken in by Bond's ruse, invites Bond to return for dinner, planning to kill him. At dinnertime, Bond gets a ride to Hai Fat's estate from Hip, whose two nieces are giggling in the back seat, apparently enamored with Bond.

In the gardens of Hai Fat's estate, a pair of sumo wrestlers accosts Bond. He very nearly bests them, until Scaramanga's midget, Nick Nack knocks him over the head with a pitchfork. Nick Nack is about to run the unconscious Bond through, but Hai Fat intervenes, ordering them to take Bond "to school." School, in this instance, is a karate school where a few dozen Hai Fat henchmen are in various stages of training, from novice to expert. There, three Chinese lovelies pamper Bond, like a fatted bull. Bond watches two of the lower level students fight with swords until one kills the other. Then, Bond is challenged by one of the young karate experts. Bond manages to knock the man cold with a quick kick to the jaw. Next, Bond has to fight Chula, the top karate master at the school. Bond takes the worst of the fight, but manages to thrown Chula off guard long enough to leap through the slats covering a window. Outside, he finds Hip waiting, along with his nieces, Nara and Cha. A group of the karate students come charging after Bond, but Hip and his nieces take them on. Hip explains to Bond, "Their father runs a karate school."

Hip and his nieces finally have to escape in their car and Bond is left to flee in a motorboat. Some of Hai Fat's thugs pursue in another boat and it doesn't help that Bond's boat sputters to a crawl. A young boy selling elephants climbs aboard Bond's boat. Bond is not interested in an elephant at the moment, but says he'll give the kid $10,000 if he can make the boat go faster. The boy turns a valve on the gas line and, sure enough, the speedboat is back in business. Bond tells the boy he'll have to owe him and shoves him overboard. In a tricky maneuver, Bond manages to slice the pursuers' boat in half. On the walkway beside the waterway, Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), back again from Live and Let Die, hurls some ignorant racial slurs at the Chinese thugs, who are now treading water.

Back at his hotel, Bond settles in for the night with Goodnight – until Andrea Anders shows up. Bond stuffs the hapless Goodnight into a closet so he can pump Anders for information. Bond learns that it was actually Anders who sent the golden bullet to MI6 headquarters. She wants Bond to kill Scaramanga, since there is no other way she can escape him. She offers herself to Bond in exchange. He likes that offer but wants the Solex as well. Anders agrees. Later, Bond meets Anders at a wrestling arena, only to find her quite dead, shot through the heart. Bond is able to recover the Solex, however, and deliver it to Hip, who passes it on to Goodnight. Scaramanga and his little sidekick make their escape, shoving Goodnight into the boot of their car in the process. Goodnight not only has the Solex but the keys to Hip's car. Bond therefore has to steal a car from a dealer's showroom for the pursuit. Who should be sitting in it at the moment than good old Sheriff J.W. Pepper? After a lame chase through some city streets, Bond ends up across a river from Scaramanga, on a parallel road. With no bridge closer than two miles, Bond settles for a warped wooden pier, flooring the gas peddle, and doing a 360 degree loop-the-loop jump to the opposite bank. Bond overtakes Scaramanga, just as the assassin pulls into a warehouse, bolting the door behind him. A couple of Chinese patrol cars show up. Before Bond can bust into the warehouse, Scaramanga has mounted wings on top his car and taken flight, with Goodnight still in the vehicle's boot.

Bond later follows a homing signal that Q installed in one of the buttons on Goodnight's blouse. Scaramanga, desiring a memorable showdown for posterity, welcomes Bond with gracious hospitality – after blowing up Bond's parked plane. Scaramanga shows Bond around the Solex solar facility and invites him for lunch. After lunch, the duel begins on the beach but soon moves into the arcade. Nick Nack manipulates the audiovisual effects that provide the playhouse's backdrop. Meanwhile, more screw-ups by Goodnight trigger a crisis in the Solex facility, initiating a meltdown that will lead to a massive explosion. By the time Bond has finished off Scaramanga, there's barely enough time to recover the critical Solex component, especially after Goodnight activates the system by backing her butt into the control panel. In the nick of time, Bond and Goodnight hop onto Scaramanga's luxury yacht for a slow cruise back to Hong Kong.

They've got a stowaway, however, in the form of the bad penny that keeps showing up – Nick Nack. He may be small but he's a fury and it's all Bond can do to hoist him up to the top of the mast in a makeshift cage. At last, Bond can turn his attention to making good on earlier promises to Goodnight. One last interruption comes in the form of a call from M, who asks to speak to Goodnight. Bond sets the receiver down and waits until M impatiently calls out loudly, "Goodnight!" Bond picks up the receiver and responds, "Goodnight," and hangs up.

Production Values: Based loosely on Fleming's last novel, the screenplay for The Man with the Golden Gun took little more from the novel than the name of the villain, his third nipple, his golden gun, and his occupation as an assassin. Even the locale was shifted from Jamaica, which had already been used for Dr. No, to the Far East. Scriptwriters Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz even converted Scaramanga from an American hood into a methodical assassin with Bond-like social graces. Scaramanga therefore makes a good contrast with Bond that raises questions about the morality of killing for compensation vs. killing for queen and country. Ironically, as the film opens, Scaramanga murders a man, Rodney, very much like the Scaramanga of the novel.

The storyline for this film has less to do with traditional spy issues than any other Bond film. Half of the film's plot is equivalent to a showdown between gunslingers, like in the film High Noon, and the other half relates to the energy crisis, which was a major sociopolitical issue at the time. The most remarkable aspect of the script, however, is the extent to which it devolved into campiness and self-parody of the spy film genre. The Man with the Golden Gun goes further than any other standard Bond film in that respect, perhaps even half the distance toward the silliness of Casino Royale (1967) and about a quarter of the way toward the Mike Myers's Austin Powers spoofs. Clifton James is back from his stint in the predecessor film, Live and Let Die, as the buffoonish redneck sheriff, J.W. Pepper, who spouts racial epithets, such as "If you got your little pointy heads outa them pajamas you wouldn't be late for work." Then there's the absurd martial arts fight in which two schoolgirls pummel and crotch-kick a couple dozen young men, while Bond stands idly by and watches with bemusement. The car chase scene has a lot of keystone cops absurdity. Even the film's most spectacular stunt is turned into mocking satire because it is accompanied by one of those high jinx kind of sound effects. The gunslingers' arcade scenes are similarly absurd. There are a wide variety of midget jokes, both verbal and physical. The one-liners are lamer than usual, such as when a raised propeller blade is referred to as a "Mexican screw up."

Women don't fare well at all in this film. It may be the most misogynistic film in the Bond series. Mary Goodnight is probably the least competent Bond colleague we ever encounter. She goes beyond mere bimbo status, actually generating problems for Bond through negative intelligence. Even her shapely derriere almost kills Bond in one scene. Andrea Anders is far more intelligent than Goodnight, demonstrating a capacity, even, for clever scheming, but she gets overtly bitch-slapped by Bond. There are four scenes that are about as sexy as any you'll ever encounter in Bond films (which carry PG ratings typically): Andrea Anders showering behind an opaque glass door, Francoise Therry swimming in the buff, Bond kissing Carmen du Sautoy's bare abdomen a couple of inches beneath her navel, and Scaramanga caressing Anders after a kill with his golden gun.

The settings for this film are intriguing and sometimes beautiful. The cinematography is very attractive. Not only do we get the kind of gorgeous outdoor shots (Hong Kong harbor and some rocky islands off of China) that we associate with Bond films, but we also enjoy some exotic shots of nightlife in Beirut, Bangkok, and Macau. John Barry's score is very good, with varied orchestration and a sweep that adds impact to the film's most dramatic scenes. The film's theme song, performed by Lulu, has weak lyrics with overly blatant double-entendres. It is not very good musically, either. At least Barry gets some mileage out of it in the score.

The action scenes are generally weaker in drama and realism and more thoroughly imbued with slapstick than in better Bond films. There's an extended slapstick karate fight between the two nieces of Bond's Hong Kong contact, Lieutenant Hip, with a group of male students from a karate school. The film's car chase is unoriginal and silly.

This film was Roger Moore's second outing and a considerable improvement over his shaky start in Live and Let Die. He would not reach his full mastery of the role, however, until his next film, The Spy Who Loved Me. The rest of the regulars do a good job, especially Bernard Lee and Desmond Llewelyn.

This film's strongest quality is a classy performance from Christopher Lee. Lee already had experience playing villain roles, in films like Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959). He would much later play the role of Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee plays his part straight and it's too bad that his brilliant performance is negated somewhat by an excess of silliness in the rest of the script. Hervé Villechaize is better than just "cute" in the role of Nick Nack. He's actually a pretty good actor, with a range of facial expressions and a capacity for physical humor. I rather enjoy Clifton Jones's contributions to both this film and its predecessor. Some reviewers declare his lines offensive, but the bigotry of his sentiments is so blatant that the lines really only reveal him as a racist redneck rather than reflecting on the groups he targets with his racism. Marne Maitland, who played the gunsmith, Lazar, is a pretty good character actor who also appeared in I'm All Right Jack (1959).

Maud Adams is the only actress to have starred twice in Bond films. She would return as the title character in Octopussy. She also had a bit part in A View to a Kill. Outside of the Bond series, her best film was Rollerball (1975). She's a lovely woman with subtle facial expressiveness. Britt Ekland wanted very much to be a Bond girl and finally got her wish, though her casting as Goodnight made her the most empty-headed bimbo the series ever produced. Ekland's other best films include Get Carter (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), and Scandal (1989).

Bottom-Line: Like Scaramanga, I'm blessed with a left supernumerary nipple. I have to say that the myth that this particular feature endows its possessor with invulnerability and great sexual prowess has been somewhat exaggerated! I suspect that having Maud Adams for a mistress might be the more substantial factor in Scaramango's level of libido. Although this film is in the lower quarter of Bond films, it nevertheless has good entertainment value. Those who enjoy Bond films in general have no reason to shy away from this one. If, on the other hand, you dislike the Bond films that strive for self-parody, you might want to give this one a pass. Here is my Overall Certified Gold Bond Rating for this film, using my system that facilitates comparisons across the series:

Bond: Roger Moore, starting to feel comfortable in the role but not yet fully stamping it with his own identity Rating: 3/5

Villain: Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) Rating: 5/5

Henchmen, Portuguese gunmaker, Chicago gangster, and Karate students: Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) 4/5; Hai Fat (Richard Loo) 2/5; Lazar (Marne Maitland) 2/5; Rodney (Marc Lawrence) 2/5; Chula (Yiu Lam Chan) 5/5 Overall Rating: 3/5

Henchwomen: Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) Rating: 4/5

Bond (good) Girls: Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) 5/5, Saida (Carmen du Sautoy) 3/5, Chew Mee (Francoise Therry), 4/5 Overall Rating: 4/5

Colleagues: M (Bernard Lee) 5/5; Q (Desmond Llewellyn) 5/5; Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) 5/5; Lieutenant Hip (Soon-Tek Oh) 2/5; Hip's Nieces Cha (Joie Pacharintraporn) and Nara (Qiu Yuen) 1/5; Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) reprised 3/5 Overall Rating: 3/5

Storyline: Assassin with supernumerary nipple, mano a mano showdown, Solex agitator Rating: 1/5

Action: Scaramanga vs. Rodney in opening arcade shootout 1/5; fight in Saida's dressing room 2/5; Bond vs. Chula fight inside martial arts school 4/5; nieces vs. karate students outside martial arts school 1/5; lame car chase 1/5; AMC Matador 360 degree corkscrew wheelie 5/5; car taking flight 5/5; Scaramanga vs. Bond in arcade 2/5 Overall Rating: 3/5

Toys: fake nipple 0/5; Scaramanga's car sprouting wings 5/5; golden gun 4/5 Overall Rating: 1/5

Character Development: Scaramanga's psychology explored more than for most Bond villains; Anders and Goodnight with more personality than most Bond girls Rating: 4/5

Music: Weak theme song by Scottish singer Lulu; pretty good John Barry score with hints of far east instrumentation Rating: 3/5

Locales: London, Beirut, Macau, Bangkok, Hong Kong harbor Rating: 4/5

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Overall Certified Gold Bond Rating: 38/60
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You may also enjoy my other reviews for 007 films:

Casino Royale (1954), non-series, television
Dr. No (1962)
From Russia with Love (1963)
Goldfinger (1964)
Thunderball (1965)
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Casino Royale (1967), non-series
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Live and Let Die (1973)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Moonraker (1979)
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Octopussy (1983)
Never Say Never Again (1983), non-series
A View to a Kill (1985)
The Living Daylights (1987)
Licence to Kill (1989)
GoldenEye (1995)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Die Another Day (2002)

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older