Goldfinger

Goldfinger (1964) (UK) Some people like this one best of the early Bond films. I won’t argue with them. There’s some good stuff. Like: Bond is tied down to a table and a laser (something brand new at the time) is slowly burning its way toward his bonded jewels. Bond: “Do you want me to talk?” Goldfinger: “No, Mr. Bond, I want you to die.” This is where the iconic Aston-Martin DB5 with its oil slick dispenser, machine guns, Ben-Hur-type chariot spokes, and ejection seat is introduced. Gert Frobe is one of the best Bond Villains, and the raid on Fort Knox is sort of cool, as a concept. (Though I never believed that many soldiers could be relied on to keel over and play possum when those planes flew over spraying “poison gas.”) Oddjob and his lethal hat are good for some laughs, and the climactic scene is funny, too, as James opens up the nuclear bomb and looks down into it … and what the fuck and I supposed to do now? And when the obligatory countdown clock (put there for the audience, of course) is stopped, it reads 007. Then we get to Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, surely the most audacious character name in the long honor roll of Bond Girls. Sadly, she died in March of this year, 2020.