The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Guy Hamilton

Writers:

Richard Maibaum (screenplay) and
Tom Mankiewicz (screenplay)

Release Date:

20 December 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Thriller

Tagline:

He never misses his target, and now his target is 007.

Plot:

Bond is led to believe that he is targeted by the world's most expensive assassin and must hunt him down to stop him.

Plot Keywords:

Assassin | Golden Gun | Bullet | Gold | Island

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Roger Moore	...	James Bond
Christopher Lee	...	Francisco Scaramanga
Britt Ekland	...	Mary Goodnight
Maud Adams	...	Andrea Anders
Hervé Villechaize	...	Nick Nack (also as Herve Villechaize)
Clifton James	...	Sheriff J.W. Pepper
Richard Loo	...	Hai Fat
Soon-Tek Oh	...	Lieutenant Hip (as Soon-Taik Oh)
Marc Lawrence	...	Rodney
Bernard Lee	...	'M'
Lois Maxwell	...	Miss Moneypenny
Marne Maitland	...	Lazar
Desmond Llewelyn	...	'Q'
James Cossins	...	Colthorpe
Yao Lin Chen	...	Chula (as Chan Yiu Lam)

Also Known As:

Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun (UK) (complete title) (USA) (complete title)
The Golden Gun (International: English title) (informal short title)

Runtime:

125 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | Thai

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:G (Quebec) | USA:PG (certificate no. 24040) | Iceland:L | UK:PG (1987) (video rating) | South Korea:15 | Brazil:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Ireland:PG | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 | Norway:16 (1974) | Peru:14 | Sweden:15 | West Germany:16 | UK:A (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Andaman Sea, Thailand

Company:

Danjaq

Trivia:

A shot with a Golden Gun results in a certain one shot one kill in such James Bond video games as GoldenEye (1997) (VG), 007: Agent Under Fire (2001) (VG), 007: Nightfire (2002) (VG), GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (2004) (VG), James Bond 007: From Russia with Love (2005) (VG), James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2003) (VG) and The World Is Not Enough (2000) (VG). In the Nintendo 64 version of The World Is Not Enough (2000) (VG), the Golden Gun must be assembled from the cigarette case, fountain pen and cigarette lighter, as in this movie. Similary, a move with a Golden Revolver also results in a guaranteed kill in the video game Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico (2005) (VG). Moreover, in the video game Killer7 (2005) (VG), the hero can utilize a Golden Gun which will in one shot exterminate all of his adversaries. Neither Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico (2005) (VG)nor Killer7 (2005) (VG) are James Bond universe video games.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Scaramanga shoots the fingers off the statue/dummy of Bond, only three shots are heard, and Scaramanga can only be seen to fire three times, but all four fingers are shot off. In addition, only two fingers are seen shot off in the view from behind the statue/dummy before the angle changes, but a third finger is already missing after cutting to a close-up of the hand, before the fourth finger is then shot off.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Francisco Scaramanga: Nick Nack! Tabasco!
Nick-nack: Right away, Monsieur Scaramanga.

Movie Connections:

References The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Soundtrack:

The Man With The Golden Gun

Much better than its reputation

The Man With the Golden Gun was producer Harry Saltzman's last hurrah before selling out his share in the Bond series to United Artists to ensure the maximum inconvenience to his detested partner Cubby Broccoli. It's certainly not premium Bond: at times it threatens to turn into an episode of The Avengers, what with Scaramanga's funhouse, his midget servant Nick Nack, it's human statues or the off-kilter angles of MI6's Hong Kong HQ located in the rusting wreck of the Queen Elizabeth, not to mention Roger Moore's more Steed-like Bond. Although there are hints of the lows to come in Moore's tenure – Bond being saved by a pair of schoolgirls or defeating a villain by pretending to be a tailor's dummy – this is still recognisable an old-school Bond film, with thankfully few gadgets, although it's disappointing that the producers provide Scaramanga with an island lair and super-weapon to give Bond something to blow up at the end (a rather half-hearted effort to be sure: instead of a private army, Scaramanga simply has Herve Villachaize and a maintenance man).

Britt Ekland's irritating 'typical silly woman' comic relief was a bit hard to take in 1974 and gets worse with each passing year, but Christopher Lee's Scaramanga is one of the more interesting Bond villains, not least because of his imagined empathy with his prey – he regards himself as Bond's moral and professional equal, the kind of pathological snobbery Fleming's books were full of but the films increasingly abandoned.