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Released: July 1977
Producer: Albert R. Broccoli
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Written by: Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum
Plot:
When both Britain and the Soviet Union lose nuclear-capable submarines in mysterious circumstances, the respective superpowers put their best spies on the case: Commander James Bond 007 and Major Anya Amasova XXX. Can these two put Cold War enmity aside to defeat the creepy, fish-obsessed Stromberg, who plans to destroy the world and build a new world under the sea? Sure, but they’re going to have to get through steel-toothed henchman Jaws to do it.
Famous For:
Being legitimately the best Bond film of the 1970s
Stromberg’s incredible Atlantis sea lair
Incomparable steely-toothed henchman Jaws
THAT LOTUS ESPRIT
It’s a car! It’s a submarine! It’s all I want in the world!
Do you ever want to watch a film that is just pure polished fun from start to finish? A film that will fly by, racing from one intrigue to the next, never letting up the pace, maintaining a vigorous potency the likes of which rivals 007 himself?
In the James Bond franchise, that film is The Spy Who Loved Me. It has no peer, but boy does it have peen. This movie is the fully-justified Big Dick Energy instalment of the series.
We’re talking sex on a fur rug in front of the fire in an Austrian chalet level of peen, people.
Not to be sexist of course, as the presence of the phenomenal Barbara Bach as Triple X only engorges the film’s tumescence.
Look, I know I sound a bit hot and bothered about it all, but re-watching The Spy Who Loved Me in the context of a series retrospective did feel a bit like finally getting down to serious business after a few films of not-quite-right foreplay.
Where Live and Let Die was clumsy at times, and The Man with the Golden Gun flailed weakly, The Spy Who Loved Me fires on all sexual cylinders. The villain, the henchmen, the lair, the gadgets, the locations, the score, the stunts, the near-screwball comedy style of banter between Bond and his Russian match Amasova, it all works.
It also can’t be denied Barbara Bach is a WELL-tempered clavier (Bach innuendo!) and despite pushing 50 at the time of filming, Roger Moore never looks better as Bond.
I can’t even.
Speaking of Moore, his own fully-realised embrace of a different kind of Bond persona is one of the key reasons this film works so well.
Director Lewis Gilbert, whose previous Bond outing had been You Only Live Twice, thought the production team had been trying too hard to make Moore fit Sean Connery’s mould, including the edge of danger the Scot brought to the character, particularly with women.
Moore himself certainly never looked comfortable holding guns to women’s faces or threatening them with physical harm if they refused to give up information. He famously said during production and certainly in interviews since he felt his Bond was more of a smooth seducer than the blunt instrument of the state.
So Gilbert wanted him to lean into the suave English gentleman persona, always ready with a quip, a cocktail and, well, a cock. Given free reign to pash on, James Bond’s already magical penis becomes a weaponised wand, able to turn women’s allegiances with its promise of carnal bliss.
The other key factor in The Spy Who Loved Me’s success is that the film was the first to feature a story totally invented for the screen. Ian Fleming only allowed the title of his tenth book to be used, having been unsettled by the poor reaction to its actual plot. Fleming had written the novel from the point of view of a woman who encounters Bond at a holiday resort in remote New York state, where he helps her escape the clutches of two mobsters.
Fleming had wanted to write a warning to young people he felt were idolising the Bond character too much, reminding them that men in crime and espionage are all violent, even the “good” ones. But the negative response to his experiment with the format prompted him to try to downplay the book, allowing only its name to be included as part of the film rights deal with Eon Productions.
Therefore Albert R. Broccoli - now in charge solo after the departure of founding co-producer Harry Saltzman - had to spin out a completely new story. The way he did that was by gathering a bunch of writers and creatives for input and tossing around ideas.
That process cannibalised a number of previous plot elements and story features - for example, Stromberg’s submarine-eating ship was a direct lift from Blofeld’s spaceship-eating spaceship from Gilbert’s previous effort You Only Live Twice.
Yeah, you know the one.
The villain was originally going to involve Blofeld and possibly SPECTRE, but that was kyboshed by Kevin McClory’s ongoing effort to get his remake of Thunderball (the eventual Never Say Never Again) off the ground.
The result was Karl Stromberg, a shipping magnate about as deep as the coastal waters off Sardinia where he anchors his beloved Atlantis “laboratory”, which is absolutely a simple underwater-capable research facility, and not in any way a massive red flag for world powers.
Stromberg has the physical gimmick of excessively-webbed fingers - not that you’d know it from his reluctance to shake hands and show the skin flaps. Frankly think they could have ramped up the creepy fish-man dial to 11.
His plan is fairly simple too, albeit bonkers. Washing his webby hands of humanity, he aims to use the nuclear missiles from hijacked British and Russian subs to destroy New York and Moscow, provoking global war, an end to the human race, and the beginning of his new world… under the sea.
You Only Live Twice had one very cool base in the extinct volcano: The Spy Who Loved Me adds a second, mobile base to Atlantis - Stromberg’s mega-tanker Liparus.
Legendary set designer Ken Adam created an imposing internal environment for the ship -complete with monorail - in an entirely new soundstage specifically constructed at Pinewood Studios.
There was one other element of the novel Broccoli asked screenwriter Christopher Wood to include - a bad guy with metal teeth.
The result was quite possibly the most memorable Bond henchman of all time; one who would so outshine the actual villain of the piece he would be invited back for another bite of the cherry.
Jaws is what happens when an immovable object reproduces with an unstoppable force.
Played by 2.18m tall Richard Kiel, Jaws is terrifying and yet utterly compelling. Silent and impossibly strong, the assassin-for-hire makes the lanky Moore look like a pixie whenever they come to blows.
It’s also a fun note that Jaws actually winds up killing a shark by gnashing it, technically making him even scarier than the star of Steven Spielberg’s smash hit Jaws movie of 1975.
If there is a henchman rival to Jaws, it’s Oddjob. Both are mute, physically imposing, with a special ability to kill with ease. However, Oddjob is virtually always with Goldfinger; he’s his driver, golf caddy, general thug. Jaws is a free agent, hired to go into the world and kill. Therefore, you get brilliant segments of him in action, such as the pitch perfect sequence at the Pyramids, chasing Fekkish across ruins and finally sending him to meet the Pharoahs. American composer Marvin Hamlisch’s synth score adds menace to the imposing Pyramids light and sound show, elevating Jaws almost to the level of avenging god.
These kinds of moments illustrate a transformation that seems to have taken place in the wake of The Man with the Golden Gun. It had done well enough financially, but was a critical target. It’s like the production team sat down and really worked hard on identifying how best to create a Bond film as its own entity, rather than just how best to adapt one of Fleming’s novels.
And so they mix up a magic ambrosia from the best ingredients from the previous films. Such as:
A ski chase! The filmmakers brought in ski specialist Willy Bogner, who filmed much of the slopes chase in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, to capture another crazy ski chase, resulting in the phenomenal jump and parachute release at the end. The stunt, which cost $500,000, including $30,000 for stuntman Rick Sylvester, was the most expensive ever filmed at the time, but boy does it pay off - you cannot help but laugh with delight as the Union flag-patterned parachute releases as the Monty Norman theme breaks the silence of the freefall. The reception at the film’s premiere was so good, the audience - which included Prince Charles - gave it a standing ovation.
A train fight! Jaws surprises XXX by hiding in her tiny cupboard onboard their train journey towards Sardinia. She’s knocked out pretty quickly so Bond can have a close up battle with the henchman. It’s very in the style of From Russia With Love and Live and Let Die.
Sharks! Like Largo from Thunderball and Kananga from Live and Let Die, Stromberg also has a predilection for throwing people to the sharks.
Speaking of Thunderball, there’s also an underwater sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me - when Bond and Amasova get a close-up view of Atlantis from below the surface.
It helps that they’re in the iconic Lotus Esprit, second only to Goldfinger’s Aston Martin DB5 in the legendary Bond cars stakes. Being able to see our heroes’ faces as they dispatch marauding scuba crews with the car-sub’s bag on onboard tricks is a big advantage over the often confusing fights of Thunderball.
One of The Man with the Golden Gun’s best features - the cleverly hidden remote MI6 base - is brought back, but this time, they’re all in a pyramid! Q even has a workshop with a bunch of Middle East appropriate spy weaponry, as well as a tea service that also acts as a decapitator, something he’s keen to have ready for an upcoming picnic (boom-tish).
It should be noted that the concept of British and Soviet spies working together is the fresh material this film brings to the Bond franchise. And that sparks so well because of the genius creation of KGB superspy Anya Amasova, aka Triple X.
Setting them up first as rivals - racing each other to capture the microfilm containing the blueprints for the Liparus - they were able to create delicious fieldwork banter, like the scene at Cairo’s Mujaba Club, where the pair flex at each other with their knowledge of each other’s careers. However it’s Anya who presses a sore point for Bond, who quickly shuts her down when she brings up his brief marriage.
It’s a gorgeous scene, helped by both actors looking incredible, and the bonus of having Roger Moore in a tuxedo for the first time since taking on the Bond role.
There’s also the fantastic sequence with the spies winding up at a faraway Egyptian temple under repair, trying to find then fight off Jaws, retrieve the microfilm and get away in Jaws’ van as he peels it to pieces from under them. Bond is also an endearingly patronising jerk about Amasova’s driving, despite the fact she gets them away from Jaws, and flashes her a particularly cocky look when the whole van breaks down.
Amasova gets her own back, by pretending to blowing knock-out gas from a cigarette into Bond’s face after pretending to get all smoochy. She stills the microfilm - but of course, once Bond arrives at the cool pyramid base and finds Amasova and her KGB boss Gogol had beaten him there, he reveals he already checked out the blueprints with his portable negative scanner. Because it’s a Bond film, it’s still the 1970s, and while Triple X may be Bond’s equal, some are still more equal than others.
Still, the temporary detente allows the pair to team up, allowing us the fun of seeing the banter of Bond and Amasova as allies. Talk about eating your cake and having it too.
Barbara Bach follows ten films’ worth of memorable Bond women, and yet she surpasses them all. A particularly compelling aspect of her character is that she’s clearly as steel-nerved as Jaws’ mouth, but is cool, softly-spoken, and full of guile. Her massive eyes take in far more than they reveal.
A quote I cannot remember who to attribute to - quite possibly my good friend and Bond expert Tom Salinsky - is that James Bond is more interesting than Rambo because Rambo is a killer who looks like a killer. James Bond is a killer who looks like a playboy.
In a similar vein, Anya Amasova is a killer, but looks like a socialite.
Even in borrowed khakis.
Sadly she doesn’t actually get to kill anyone in The Spy Who Loved Me, although she does execute a number of fine martial arts moves.
She’s also forced to play second fiddle to Bond when they pose as a marine biologist and his wife (uggghhhh) to get an audience with Stromberg onboard Atlantis. Bond’s the one who gets to meet the creepy fish-man and hear about his aversion to people totally sensible plan for a permanent underwater civilisation.
Triple X is left to take a tour with Stromberg’s assistant Naomi, who is sensibly attired in a bikini and heels, highly practical workwear for a PA/helicopter pilot. She’s the one they later shoot down with a rocket from their submerged Lotus Esprit, before driving out of the ocean onto a beach once the car-sub starts taking on water. At least Anya got to have known about the Lotus from blueprints she’d seen two years earlier.
The point is, the fact that Anya never formally meets Stromberg until the big reveal on the Liparus in the movie’s third act makes it rather confusing as to why he removes her from the Liparus and takes her back to Atlantis.
Is it simply because he fed one female assistant to the sharks, then lost Naomi in a helicopter explosion, and so needed a warm body to cling to as he established his fishy kingdom?
Once again, a Google Image search - this time for “fish sex” - pays off.
In an ideal script, she should have killed Stromberg. Rather than be tied up and defenceless, clad only in a sexy mermaid-ish dress, the impending feed for the creepy fish-man, she should have wrangled herself free and executed the web-fingered groper with some kickass karate.
Mind you, given it’s a Bond film, not having Bond kill the villain was probably never going to happen, but at least they could have taken him on together. There’s no reason why he couldn’t rescue her first, then kill Stromberg, then head for the escape pod.
Except there’s still a formula, and at this point in a Bond film, there’s often a girl who needs rescuing. Anya is the only one who can fit that role, so they change her character rather than compromise the rule of thumb that Bond always rescues the girl.
He does this after a whole bunch of action onboard the Liparus with the hostage crews of the British and Russian subs, plus the American seamen Bond and Amasova had been captured with. Bond disconnects a nuclear warhead from a missile in the trickiest game of Operation ever; then uses it to blow open the steel doors to the operations room by riding in on an overhead security camera like Miley Cyrus.
Bond arrives on Atlantis and easily dispatches Stromberg, who attempts to harpoon 007 under the table (not a euphemism) before Bond returns fire down the table tube, before pumping a few more rounds directly into his chest for good measure. Stromberg dies ignominiously into his fish food, which weirdly enough seems to be a salad.
Jaws is a harder prospect to defeat, but Bond uses his natural magnetism (yeahhhhhh).
The production team filmed two endings for Jaws - one where is eaten by the sharks, and the one we see where he escapes quite happily. They had an inkling they might not want to definitively kill off the character, and were proved right after a test screening had fans going nuts for Jaws.
Bond and Amasova make it into a plush escape pod, which is on my personal fantasy list of James Bond sets I wish I could live in. Honestly, it looks so snug and sexy. As long as the seas stayed calm, who wouldn’t mind being holed up in there for a few days? (yeahhhhhhhhhh!)
Still, the last threat to Bond is Amasova herself, who earlier pledged to kill 007 when their mission was over, in revenge for his killing of her lover back in Austria in the film’s ski chase opener. Bond had said they both knew the risks of their particular business, but still, Anya was pretty mad. However it turns out the lure of James Bond’s magic penis was too strong - helped possibly by the dashing navy outfit he wears in the final sequence
Please also note the jazzy red jumpsuits and berets preferred by Stromberg’s sailors.
But of course, it’s not a Bond film without a great tag to go out on, and so the escape pod is rescued by a British ship, with M, Q, Gogol and the British Defence Minister all peering into the window to see if 007 and Triple X have succumbed to the bends.
I do adore the fact that both M and Gogol voice disappointing disapprovals of their spies’ ….er, glasnost… before the Minister asks 007 what he hell he’s doing.
The clap back (and subsequent jazz hands version of theme song Nobody Does It Better) is a corker.
Again, this film is the high note for the Roger Moore Bond era. Despite being the result of so many elements recycled from earlier films, it adds enough sparkle, mystique and wonderful characters to make it the most rollicking good fun since Goldfinger.
Thank you for reading this instalment of the James Bond Retrospective! If you enjoyed it, you can sign up to support the series and my other writing/podcasting efforts via my Patreon page. Thanks to all of you who are already members; your support is truly invaluable.
You can listen to the companion Raven Bond The Spy Who Loved Me podcast here:
Stu and I have are also ranking the Bond films as we watch and podcast about them. Here’s how we stand:
See you next week for Moonraker!