The opening: Bond blows up a heroin factory in the middle of
nowhere. Then he meets a chick of
questionable loyalty and kills a bad guy by electrocuting him. Foreshadowing!
Credits. Shirley
Bassey. Gold…fing-aaaah! Too bad the rest of the lyrics are rubbish. True story: that’s actually That Random Ho
From The Pool Scene covered in gold paint in the titles, rather than Disposable
Wench #1. Hey, this is a film with a
character named “Pussy Galore.” I honestly think I’m being more respectful with
the names I give them.
Speaking of respecting women, we rejoin Bond at the pool,
where he gives That Random Ho From The Pool a smack on the bum. I say, this James Bond chap wouldn’t be too
far out of place on that Mad Men show, would he? Felix Leiter is played by some guy who is not
Jack Lord. Oh My God They Have Recast
Felix Leiter James Bond Is Ruined Forever.
Goldfinger enters.
True story: all of Gert Frobe’s dialogue was redubbed in post by
somebody else. We know he’s a bad guy
because he cheats at cards and employs suspiciously beautiful women. Case in point, Disposable Wench #1, spying on
Goldie’s opponent’s hand for him. Is
that underwear or a bikini? Must get
Blu-Ray version to be absolutely sure.
Bond and Disposable Wench #1 are in bed. Surprisingly, Wench #1 is wearing more
clothes than she was the first time we saw her.
Bond insults the Beatles (this is where hacks point out that McCartney
did the title song as soon as Connery bolted for good; meanwhile, I, being
totally not a hack, will point you to this instead), and gets bumped over the
head. When he comes to, Disposable Wench
#1 has become Pretty Corpse #1. Oh My
God A Bond Girl Died, James Bond Has Been Ruined Forever. When Bond calls Felix, Felix reminds us of
That Random Ho From The Pool Scene. Glad
she was an important contribution to this film.
Then there’s scientific malarkey about skin suffocation that
mythbusters has already gone to town on.
Bond and M snark at each other because this is a Bond Film and that is
What They Do. Bond and Moneypenny flirt;
see previous sentence.
Then they have lunch with that guy from the train in A Hard Day’s Night (again, see the
Beatles quip above). We have a lecture
about gold and the value thereof. This
is a clever scene inasmuch as Goldfinger’s scheme revolves around changing the
price of his own gold.
Q’s lab! We get to
see it for the first time, and for the last time until For Your Eyes Only. (We see
various field labs in the meantime, but not the main one.) And the Aston Martin DB5! This scene is iconic and I can’t snark over
it too much, except to point out that Connery and Craig both got tracking
devices and drove an Aston Martin with an ejector seat in their third
firms. Totally Different From The Old
Formula, our boy Craig.
By the way, true story: the DB5’s special features were
designed by John Stears, who later built the Death Star.
Bond goes golfing with Goldfinger. Now we know Goldie’s a bad guy because he
cheats at golf. As if we didn’t already
know he was a bad guy because he cheats at cards. But Bond is also cheating at golf, so are we
supposed to think he’s the good guy here?
I mean he was standing on the dude’s ball for at least part of that
search. That is not a euphemism.
The game ends and Goldfinger makes Oddjob decapitate a
statue. Hey, you know what Jaws did in
his first two appearances in The Spy Who
Loved Me? He f*cking murdered
people. He didn’t decapitate
statutes. Oddjob would make a better Doctor Who companion than a Bond
henchman.
Off in Switzerland.
The production team scopes out locations for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service while Bond and a Lady tail
Goldfinger. On an improbably turn-filled
mountain road, the Lady takes a potshot at Goldfinger but, this being a Connery
film and she being a female, she is of course an absolute crap shot. (And don’t tell me that she was a crap shot
in the book; they don’t need to adapt everything directly from the books, and
if they had there would have been a global race war in 1973.)
He uses the spiky wheels from Ben-Hur to wreck her car and then offers her a lift after spouting
one of the worst puns in a Connery film.
(Watch it yourself.) He gives her
a lift and at the end of it her underwear is (presumably) still on. I say, this James Bond chap isn’t quite the
sex puma he was made out to be, is he?
At any rate, having exchanged words if not fluids with Bond, the Lady
now becomes Disposable Wench #2.
Bond follows Goldfinger to his metalworks shoppe. He overhears a line about “Operation Grand
Slam” and the music buts in to let us know it’s important. On the way back he
runs into Disposable Woman #2. Filler
ensues. A car goes over a cliff and
explodes, hey they did that in Dr. No,
Oh My God This Series Is Already Out Of Ideas James Bond Is Ruined Forever. Further filler, and Disposable Woman #2 dies
largely because Bond took a wrong turn.
She is bitch-slapped to death by Oddjob’s hat. Then there’s another chase scene. The ejection seat happens. The Aston Martin gets to shine. It is iconic.
Its windscreen is bulletproof (Q couldn’t put that feature on the DBS,
could he?)
Then the crotch-laser scene.
It, also, is iconic. Bond is shot
with a tranquilizer and wakes up staring into the face of That Chick Off The Avengers No Not Emma Peel The Other
One. Emma Peel will be along later, but
in the one with Lazenby, so nobody remembers that (alas). Anyway, Cathy Gale. Voice like Janeway’s, alas. That and her character’s name are enough to
bar her from the Top Five Bond Girl list.
Bond tries to turn on the charm, but she’s “immune,” because this is
1964 and they can’t say “lesbian.” That
attache case from From Russia With Love got
written out so Bond can’t get his knife, which honestly probably wouldn’t help
too much against Oddjob’s hat.
We find out that Goldfinger’s private jet has a bathroom
with a zillion peepholes (ew), and that Cathy Gale is in charge of an outfit
called Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus.
Made up entirely of ambiguously lesbian pilots. Makes Monty Python’s thing look like a cheap
knockoff, dunnit.
Bond tries to hit on Gale-ore, but he stops as soon as
Oddjob enters the frame. Not “as soon as
he catches sight of Oddjob,” which has to be sometime before. Ah the magic of cinema. Things not on the screen don’t exist.
Hick music! We must
be in the Former Confederacy. Bond is
thrown into a cell, and there’s a bit of clever visual humor as he heads off
for the stables only to be directed towards the basement.
Then we see Goldfinger’s rec room. A lot of people praise Ken Adam for his Fort
Knox set, but I for one would rather have this room. Goldilocks shows off his plan to a bunch of
gangsters. Bond catches the tail end of
it, having psychologically manipulated somebody (a guard) for the last time
until Licence to Kill. Apparently the plan involves having Pussy
spray someth- okay no I can’t finish that joke.
Gale-ore’s Flying Circus will shower the area with gas. (As a side note, I’d like to point out that
Bond keeps saying her name almost like it’s “Percy.” Even Connery’s embarrassed
by this.
Then Goldfinger, a man played by a former member of the Nazi
Party who used his credentials to help Jews escape the Holocaust, starts
gassing people to death. I don’t have a
joke for that, so I’ll move on.
Mr. Solo has a pressing engagement and John Barry gets to
fill time by rearranging the “Goldfinger” theme. (If George Martin – the Beatles producer, not
the long-winded writer – had done the same thing for Live and Let Die, maybe the boat chase wouldn’t seem as
tedious. In the interest of science I
have watched the boat chase while listening to cues from various soundtracks. Science says it’s still about ten hours too
long.)
The car is destroyed and nobody wonders why Goldfinger
didn’t bother taking the gold out before he did that. Back at the ranch, Bond explains what
everyone who read the book noticed: that Goldilocks can’t possibly take all the
gold out of Fort Knox in the scant minutes he’ll have. (Removing gold from things seems to be an
ongoing problem for Goldilocks.) But
Goldfinger has noticed the exact same problem and has come up with a novel
solution: nuclear fire.
Gale-ore returns with a new outfit and Oh My God I Can See
All Of Her Cleavage. She tries doing
judo on Bond and meets with some success, because she is Cathy Gale, but she
ultimately loses because he is James Bond.
And then there’s awkward rapey stuff.
But it’s okay because it’s the sixties and he’s Sean Connery – not quite
yet The Sean Connery Who Is James Bond, but awfully darn close – and it turns
out Gale-ore isn’t a lesbian after all.
Then we get one of John Barry’s best performances – it’s up
there with “OHMSS” and a lot of The Living
Daylights. The Flying Circus comes
to town, but it’s the soldiers who get to entertain with their Synchronized
Falling Down. And Oh My God They Have Killed Felix Leiter James Bond Is Ruined
Forever. A laser demonstrates its
curious inability to drill in a straight line.
True story: technology is not as impressive as Hollywood pretends it is.
Into Fort Knox, Bond gets handcuffed to the bomb, setpiece,
setpiece. We know how it ends. Looks nice though. The sets I mean. Not the fight with Oddjob; and they say Moore’s
fights look unbelievable. I like how
Oddjob doesn’t care one jot that he’s been left to be irradiated. Goldfinger’s decision to wear a military
uniform under his coat demonstrates remarkable foresight. Entirely not sure why the army troops think
this oddly-accented fat man is their commander.
Or how he figures out Gale-ore betrayed him. Or why she doesn’t just fly him right into
the middle of an army formation. And why
does Goldfinger have a golden pistol? He
is not the man with the golden gun, James Bond Is Ruined Forever.
Bomb ends on seven but then there’s a line about three more
seconds. Poor editing, that. I blame Peter Hunt, cuz obviously he’s
responsible for everything that went wrong with the first six films, why else
fire him after OHMSS?*
Final bit where the assumed-defeated villain turns up again
but gets sucked out a window that’s obviously too small for him in this film
with a bit of a lesbian subtext. No, not
Alien Resurrection, but thanks for
asking. Bond and the Bond Girl have sex
because that’s how all these movies end, roll credits. James Bond will return in Scuba Doll.
(Thunderball will get a proper 2014 Bondathon Review this weekend, promise. I'll even post an explanation for why it was delayed from last weekend somewhere in the review. For once there's a good reason.)
*This is intense sarcasm. Hunt’s departure from the series results in a
massive drop in quality.
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