I am not the biggest Bond fan in the world. When he’s not a cardboard cutout in a tux, he’s a suave-slash-vicious example of British imperialist blahblah. Even as a kid I couldn’t see the appeal; Bond rarely entertained, the women rarely lived. I caught a couple of the Pierce Brosnan ones, and I like Daniel Craig in the role (though I still haven’t seen the latest one he’s in), so my cultural awareness of James Bond is more or less a vague impression of guns and boat chases and Timothy Dalton scrunching up his face all the time like he’d just smelled poop. Also, because his girlfriend was probably dead.

All this to say, I was totally unprepared to be surfing channels and to run across Live and Let Die. I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off, because I kept waiting for a punch line that never came, and then it was over.

And you guys, we need to talk.

You know, let’s just begin with the title card.

Yeah. So, that happens!

You think it can’t get ironically better / actually worse? Aren’t you sweet.

I’m not going to go into the plot, mostly because it’s appalling on a quality level that has very little to do with the overtly awful content. I mean, no one wants to see James Bond in America! They want him in exotic locations doing amazing stunts on water skis or a high-speed giraffeback chase or something. There is a chase scene in this movie that is literally him taking a cab for five minutes, following some other car. Utter failure.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about depiction of race in the movie.

I’m glad we had this talk! (In case you’re wondering, yes, that is a gay voodoo tartan Vulcan ceramics instructor playing a flute. There’s a tiny walkie-talkie inside it. I don’t know, either.)

Where this script accidentally succeeds is by subliminally expressing a lot of the things white people fear. During the abovementioned cab chase, every black person in Harlem pulls out a radio that is tuned to KSTALK and radios the movements of Harlem’s only current white occupant directly to the bad guys. CIA agent Rosie, whose incompetence Bond openly mocks, turns out to be working for the bad guys. The bad guys have – gasp! – political power. They have – dear God! – office lobbies! (We never see offices. Just lobbies.)

Quick review: organized people of color = evil and frightening. Also, everything they carry has a tiny radio in it for talking to Bad Guy Headquarters. You’ve been warned.

Yaphet Kotto, who plays politician Kananga-slash-drug dealer Mr. Big, is an awesome actor, as anyone who has ever watched Homicide knows. He spends every second of this movie looking totally Over It.

Check out that face. Even when he’s detailing how he plans to take the virginity of his captive psychic (played, not at all problematically, by British white lady Jane Seymour), he’s totally over it. Just get into your casual around-the-house attire and read some tarot cards or something, Solitaire, damn.

Thank you.

Later, in a whole different bracket of Problematic Themes, Bond seduces Solitaire, thereby stripping her of her occult powers with the sheer majesty of his bathing suit area.

The expression on her face cracks me up so hard I can’t even handle it.

Anyway, there’s a bus chase and a boat chase, and we meet some Louisiana backwoods sheriff-types, and it’s basically the most boring Bond movie in the entire world. I mean, a low-speed boat chase through the bayou probably happens at least once a week, right? It’s like having a violent fight over a cab in Manhattan. Get your ass to Switzerland and ski-parachute for our pleasure, Bond!

But instead, it’s off to San Mumblemumble, where Mr. Big holds the poppy-harvesting population in check through fear of voodoo and through the power of his sidekick, that flute guy from before, and – okay, look, it’s just a fifteen-minute scene where the white chick is in the middle of a bunch of moaning and dancing “natives” and there’s a dude with an animal head and she’s sacrificially tied up and somebody is hydraulically raised from the dead and I just don’t even know what to say except, “You’re kidding me,” which is what I said repeatedly during the actual scene.

…yeah.

However, this movie did clear up which Bond movie, exactly, the shark tank thing came from.

I like that they went for a faux-natural décor. It’s almost like you’re being eaten by sharks right out in nature! If sharks lived in Stone Creek right behind your house.

To sum up: To Live and Let Die, WHAT THE SHIT. The end.

ETA: Most of these pictures are from the Screen Musings, which is a very useful site, since otherwise you’d just have stick drawings.