The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

James Bond investigates the hijacking of British and Russian submarines carrying nuclear warheads with the help of a KGB agent whose lover he killed.

Director:

Lewis Gilbert

Writers:

Christopher Wood (screenplay), Richard Maibaum (screenplay),

Stars:

Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curd Jürgens

Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Roger Moore	...	James Bond
Barbara Bach	...	Major Anya Amasova / Agent XXX
Curd Jürgens	...	Karl Stromberg (as Curt Jurgens)
Richard Kiel	...	Jaws
Caroline Munro	...	Naomi
Walter Gotell	...	General Anatol Gogol
Geoffrey Keen	...	Sir Frederick Gray
Bernard Lee	...	M
George Baker	...	Captain Benson
Michael Billington	...	Sergei Barsov
Olga Bisera	...	Felicca
Desmond Llewelyn	...	Q
Edward de Souza	...	Sheikh Hosein (as Edward De Souza)
Vernon Dobtcheff	...	Max Kalba
Valerie Leon	...	Hotel Receptionist

Storyline

James Bond is back again and his new mission is to find out how a Royal Navy Polaris submarine holding sixteen nuclear warheads simply disappears whilst on patrol. Bond joins Major Anya Amasova and takes on a a web-handed mastermind, known as Karl Stromberg, as well as his henchman Jaws, who has a mouthful of metal teeth. Bond must track down the location of the missing submarine before the warheads are fired.

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Plot Keywords:

submarine | british | jaws | teeth | sea | 

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Taglines:

007 Blasts Back

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Crime | Thriller

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Official Sites:

MGM

Country:

UK

Language:

English Italian Arabic

Release Date:

3 August 1977 (USA)

Also Known As:

La espía que me amó

Filming Locations:

Abu Simbel Temple, Abu Simbel, Egypt

Box Office

Budget:

$14,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$46,800,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Danjaq, Eon Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

125 min 123 min (cut)

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The hull number on the sail of the U.S. submarine USS Wayne in Stromberg's supertanker is 593. This is the number of the USS Thresher(SSN-593), lost in 1963 with all hands off the Massachusetts coast.

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Goofs

There's a scene in the phone booth area, where Jaws supposedly bites a man to death. If you look closely, Jaws does not even bite the man. He makes the motion like he's about to bite him, but the man faints before he gets the chance. He doesn't break skin or draw blood or anything. Yet, the man dies from being "bitten" by Jaws.

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Quotes

[first lines]
HMS Ranger Navigator: Captain wants to keep 500 feet.
Young officer, HMS Ranger: [over PA] Maneuvering, Control. Come in shallow to 500 feet.
Young officer, HMS Ranger: [to crewman] Keep 500 feet
HMS Ranger crewman: Keep 500 feet, sir.

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Crazy Credits

"THE END of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME JAMES BOND will return in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" - though in fact the next film in the series was switched to Moonraker in light of the success of sci-fi movie Star Wars. Thus Moonraker went unannounced and For Your Eyes Only was promised twice. For the other incidence in the series of the next film being announced in error, see Octopussy.

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Connections

Follows Goldfinger (1964)

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Soundtracks

"Eastern Lights"
(uncredited)
Music by Paul Buckmaster

User Reviews

Roger Moore rated this as his best Bond film. I don't agree, but it's certainly an entertaining and spectacular one.

Roger Moore has always maintained that The Spy Who Loved Me is the best of his Bond films. Personally I prefer Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only, but this one certainly has its moments. The original novel by Ian Fleming was an odd-one-out in the book series, describing as it did how an off-duty Bond saved a female hotelier from a couple of nasty hoodlums. However, in this film adaptation the novel has been completely jettisoned and replaced with a story about Bond thwarting a megalomaniac from achieving world domination.

Bond (Moore) is partnered with Russian agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach

• most beautiful of all the many Bond girls) to solve the mysterious

disappearance of two nuclear submarines, one British the other Russian. They follow the clues to the underwater lair of Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens), an elegant and educated psychopath with a plan to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust and retreat to his undersea empire. To add to their complications, Anya learns that her recently killed boyfriend was eliminated by Bond during an assignment.

The pre-credit sequence is among the better pre-credit sequences in the series, involving an extraordinary ski stunt which many consider to be the most breathtaking stunt ever devised for a Bond film. Moore is good as Bond, Bach stunningly attractive as his partner (though not very convincing as an actress), and Jurgens provides a suitably over-confident villain. The location work in various locations, most notably Egypt, is nicely photographed. Marvin Hamlisch provides the music, marking a change from the usual composer John Barry, and Hamlisch's score is decent enough though it does have a dated '70s quality to it when listened to nowadays. The plot is totally implausible and self-parodic (if they'd stuck to the plot in the book though, it would've been almost impossible to make a Bond movie in the expected sense of the phrase), but director Lewis Gilbert cleverly plays it with tongue-in-cheek so that the absurdness of the on-screen events becomes curiously endearing. The Spy Who Loved Me is silly, entertaining and extravagantly spectacular.