Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker Trailer

I couldn’t help but think as I was watching “Moonraker” (1979), we are a long way from “Dr. No” (1962). “Moonraker” gets a rather bad rep, more or less because it is such a gimmick movie that relies heavily on gadgets, kill devices, special effects, and moments of silly humor (not to mention, more superhuman villainy from Jaws who can jump chomp down on reinforced cable car cable, snapping it with one bite, as well as, just punching into metal with his bare hands, forcing open immediate gashes without even wincing). And the double entendres aren’t even that subtle…Lois Chiles’ name is Holly Goodhead, need I say more? I think I also counted four different beautiful women Moore sleeps with during his travels to California, Venice, Rio, and the Amazon. Let’s see: Moore kills a long snake with a poison pin, has a watch that features a little bomb that can blow open a steel door, “drives” a gondola away from a boat firing at him that luckily has wheels carefully hidden by inflatable covering “interrupting” a parade that baffles locals and tourists, has a motorboat in the Amazon equipped with depth charges and missiles, has a wrist “gun” that fires little poison darts, and is such a skilled skydiver he can be tossed from a plane, locate an enemy agent who “went on ahead”, take his parachute off his back, slide the parachute on and latch it, all the while fighting off the enemy agent and evading Jaws who is targeting him. Oh, James also avoids near death by using his wrist gun to halt an accelerating anti-gravity “centrifuge chamber” (Chang, a martial artist henchman of the film’s main villain, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale; “The Day of the Jackal” (1973), is the one who uses the knob to accelerate the chamber at Drax’ request to make sure Bond is dealt with) from speeding so fast it would stop his heart. The Rio cable car sequence has Bond and a CIA operative/astronaut, Goodhead, trying to avoid Jaws throwing them off a stopped car dangling over the city at great height; Bond and Goodhead dump Jaws in the car while on top of it, then use a chain to slide down the cable to a safe dropoff on the ground while the speeding car with Jaws in it crashes through the checkpoint. Bond and Chang duel in a museum d’art in Vienna, where Chang is suited up with a jousting mask and “fighting stick”, while Bond grabs a sword, the two going through various glass cases and falling all over artifacts, before Bond hurls Chang through a breathtaking clockface (stained glass) of a clocktower, which drops the henchman into the piano of a “street orchestra”! The film is still quite a travelogue, so Bond fans will still get their trips around the world. The number of ornamental castles Drax associates himself with are aplenty, and the production locations are often luxurious, cultural, exotic, and alluring.

Although it starts with a trip to California, to the compound of Drax (he has his own property which I had to imagine would cost quite a lot in real estate in that state particularly today with all the damn taxing), is an estate that has a very European castle—he has dogs that only eat at the snap of his fingers, and soon a “hostess”, Corrine (Corinne Cléry; “The Story of O” and “Hitch-Hike”), who falls for Bond, is fed to them in his nearby “hunting forest” because she let James photograph (the mini-camera’s lens spells out 007!) blueprints¹ –and Drax even goes on pheasant hunts to keep the European flavor of the great fox hunt alive even in America.

There is a lab in Vienna where Bond locates scientists experimenting on the nerve gas Drax plans to poison mankind so he can create his own master race in his “own image” (of course), accidentally leaving a vial open to fall to the floor. While inside a protective-sealed operations center, Bond sees the scientists grab their throats, taking in the fumes that drop them dead while mice in cages are fine with no effects.

Bond locates shipping containers in the clocktower bound for Rio (conveniently broken open during his fight with Chang, obviously), which will initiate that interest in moving there after an attempt to provide M and the Prime Minister (Bernard Lee and Geoffrey Keen) with proof of the lab in association with Drax that has been removed, as Drax mocks Bond while the PM is embarrassed (an empty cathedral of great age is all that is left with a tiny desk inside). So Bond is “on leave”, as a vial of the gas was taken from the lab and left with M to check its components. Off to Rio, where Bond eventually meets up (and has sex with, of course) Goodhead, and the two recognize that Drax is moving a lot of goods/items from there. After the Jaws cable car incident, Bond and Goodhead are attacked by Drax’ agents in paramedics disguise, Bond frees himself from the ride, disguised himself as The Man with No Name (yep, just like Eastwood, complete with dainty cowboy hat and poncho!) on an ass, and eventually finds M (and Moneypenny, Q also there to take Bond’s zingers with the usual aggravation), learns from Q that the gas is from the orchid…so Bond is off to the Amazon! Drax is anything if not clever and extravagant so he has his Moonraker space shuttles located in temples in the Amazon forest, complete with a Garden of Eden cavernous waterfall and pool and bevy of beauties in while gowns…and a giant python Bond must eventually dangle with.

Then Bond and Goodhead escape a meeting room under a Moonraker shuttle’s exhaust Drax leaves them to be “cremated”  in, with the two later “confiscating” their own Moonraker shuttle. And then off to space Bond goes! A radar-jamming space shuttle orbiting the earth, Drax with plenty of officers and genetically perfected human Adams and Eves, and those globes containing the gas meant for earth are all waiting for Bond and Goodhead to somehow overcome. First stop the radar jammer, hopefully triggering help from one of the major superpowers on the earth below (America and Russia “have a talk” before Marines are sent in their own shuttle to the station), until Bond must somehow talk Jaws into “turning babyface” (the old pro wrestling term regarding a villain having a change of heart) as he doesn’t fit Drax’s model of a perfect race to cultivate the planet once the human race is killed off. Eventually you have the Marines and Drax’s forces laser firing on each other (in space and later on the space station), while Bond gets some help from Jaws (who has found a girlfriend, on the station with him!) in subduing some of Drax’s officers. Lots of bodies falling dead everywhere, Bond and Goodhead needing to avoid the lasers and uniformed Drax forces, as the station eventually starts to suffer structural damage, with Drax’s end particularly fun as Bond has plenty of quips involving exiting a space station from a hatch.

I watched “For Your Eyes Only” (1981) just last week, and you can definitely see a significant difference between this and “Moonraker”. Daylight and dark, those two films. “Moonraker”, no doubt, relies on a lot of bloated budget gimmicks and I could see why there might be a demand for a “return to form”, disengaging from the use of traveling vehicles with a number of hidden devices to help them undermine treacherous henchmen armed themselves, following close behind. There are just so many gadgets Bond uses in “Moonraker” and the gondola alone is probably enough to make some Bond fans pine for the simpler times when you could indeed rely more on physical action (there is some between Bond and Chang but even that includes medieval devices used) and stunts rather than special effects so heavily used and depended on. So while I personally also prefer “For Your Eyes Only”, I admittedly have a good time with “Moonraker”, and I do acknowledge that they are just two distinctively different kinds of Bond films. I like that you can choose and both offer something completely alternate. Moore is still Moore, so at least that doesn’t change…and I am every bit a Moore fan. He still winks at you and there are so many opportunities to quip. And Moore realizes that the material requires him to be a bit more tongue-in-cheek. To each their own…being a sci-fi fan, I get why the producers/filmmakers decided to go the “Moonraker” route. I think you definitely see all the money spent. The setpieces (especially the different inner workings of Drax’s Moonraker programs, in the heart of the Amazon…how would he even be able to move all his materials and cargo there without some government not realizing it???) are often quite elaborate and the number of Bond weaponry quite sophisticated. Yes, Bond locating Drax interference every place he goes (and Jaws seems to follow him closely) can be a bit ridiculous, and the means for which the screenplay allows Bond to escape peril time and again is contrived, but this is the very definition of escapism. You just have to avoid trying to critically value this with much scrutiny. 3/5

1.The blueprints will reveal a type of diagram, featuring a “globe” meant to house a nerve gas from a particular orchid found in the Amazon, later found in Vienna, soon to realize they are made for globes that will be sent back to earth to poison all of mankind in order to “cleanse” the planet of its imperfect race, as Drax plans to re-populate with “perfect specimens”