Nobody Does It Better...

So, it’s late autumn 1977, it’s a Saturday night, and to a 7-year-old, the chance of staying up late is always welcome. The fact that I’d been “brave” whilst my dad had administered an ill-advised remedy to my infected, swollen nail-bitten finger, involving a kettle full of boiling water and a bread and potato poltis, had earned me a choice; the cinema, or staying up late to watch Starsky & Hutch. The cinema option would mean I would be home in time for my usual bed-time, so Starsky & Hutch, on the face of it, did seem a good bet. However, there was no choice really. I’d only ever been to the cinema twice, the cinema in our town was not exactly the Odeon in Leicester Square, and the latest movies always took months to arrive. So the cinema it was.

I’d never seen a James Bond film, and was only vaguely aware of the concept. People spoke to me like I should know all about it, and in fact I was told that I probably had seen Bond on TV at some point. Maybe I had, maybe I hadn’t. If I had, then it must have been incidental viewing, and I certainly didn’t recall it. But Bond was in town. I was informed that “The Spy Who Loved Me” was the latest in a long line of James Bond films. My parents gave me the background about Bond being a British Spy who, to quote my dad, was “sort of like John Steed”…powerful words to a 7-year-old Avengers fan! The playground buzz was all about the underwater car, the steel-toothed giant, and the dwarf in the sidecar. An intriguing and irresistible combination of delights for anyone! Surely!

Dad and I arrived at the cinema. It was heaving. We struggled to find seats in the dark, but eventually ensconced ourselves a few rows from the front of the balcony. The short film preceding the main feature was half way through, and was a documentary about the Chinese and their street festivals. I couldn’t care less. I was waiting for Bond, and was equipped with ice-cream and Coca Cola. Life was good. The Chinese dragon thing wound up, and the activity of the interval began. People milled around going to fetch more sweets and drinks, me and dad stayed-put. I spotted a girl from school as she returned to her seat, and we exchanged a mutual giggle, amused to unexpectedly see each other there, and both pleased to be at the cinema! And finally, the commercials for local restaurants and businesses concluded, the lights dimmed, the general murmur subsided and an atmosphere of anticipation gripped the entire audience. This was something I’d never experienced. This was proper grown-up cinema. This was exciting. I loved it.

And then it began. Not only the movie, but a lifelong fascination and appreciation of a certain character created by Ian Fleming. A moving spotlight travelled along the screen, replaced by the inner rim of a gun-barrel following an immaculately dressed man back to the centre. The man turns sharply and fires a gun straight at us. The black and grey background is replaced by red, oozing from top to bottom. The music is dramatic and could somehow be nothing else. It had familiarity. I guess I must have heard it somewhere after all. And so it begins, submarines being subjected to some unknown fate, important men in suits looking worried and asking questions, all fairly incongruous stuff to a 7-year-old, that is until we are introduced to Mr. Bond. The magnificence of the snow-covered mountain, the romance of the secluded log-cabin, the beauty of Sue Vanner…all wasted on me, especially when compared to the fact that this James Bond bloke, had a digital watch! Yes, a digital watch! He would without doubt be the coolest guy in our school, regardless of whether or not he was a spy. And even better than that, the watch was dispensing tape! Tape with a message on it! At this point I was pretty much sold on the idea of spies and their message-spewing digital watches. Next thing, Bond’s on skies, hacking-it down the mountain-side, shortly to be pursued by a collection of menacing-looking bad guys in black suits, all to the throbbing beat of 70’s wah-wah guitar, synthesizers and Hammond organ. The chase was exciting, the chase was dangerous. Guns were being fired, there were back-flips, people being knocked everywhere. Bond took-out one of the other guys with a rocket fired from his ski-pole for God’s sake! Why had I not been told about Bond before? How cool was this?
Then came the moment…and I mean THE moment. The shot panned wide, Bond was heading straight towards the edge of a cliff, at some speed! The black-suited ne’er-do-wells had decided to quit while the going was good, only pausing to loose-off a couple of inconsequential token gunshots. As Bond approaches the cliff-edge, the violins frantically reach a high-pitched crescendo. For a moment, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing…here was someone about to actually ski over a cliff! The sun spotlit the cliff edge as Bond, the lone skier hurtled through the blinding white and into the nothingness. The audience actually gasped collectively and I could, for the first time I can remember, feel tension. Something even quieter than silence fell upon the world as the screeching violins abruptly ceased with a repetitive echo reverberating around the oblivion into which Bond had skied. The only sound was the wind as Bond fell. Not one person in the cinema dared breath. I stared in disbelief, convinced that this guy was plummeting towards certain death. Suddenly a small square of material seemed to appear from Bond’s back-pack, to be followed by the sudden but somehow graceful unfolding of a parachute…and not just any parachute…a parachute depicting the majesty of the British Union Jack flag! There was nothing more than a moment of silence, both on-screen and off, as the audience processed, I guess, what their eyes were telling them, before a full-orchestra kicked-in, emphasising the drama of the spectacle, and all but drowned-out by a spontaneous round of applause from the audience. The atmosphere was indescribable. Bond had survived, the orchestra subsided into the complete contrast of sublime melodic piano as the main theme began, along with the credits. And I’d considered staying home and watching Starsky & Hutch?
A profound effect on this particular 7-year-old’s life had occurred, and there was one thing I couldn’t be more certain of…this guy was nothing like John Steed!

A whole new world is now open to me; the homicidal billionaire nutcase listening to classical music whilst feeding treacherous employees to sharks, and remotely detonating accomplices’ bomb-laden helicopters. The introduction of Jaws, larger than life, literally. Incredulous and almost comedic, but at the same time dark and psychotic. And there were fights, stylish and diverse. Fights at the Pyramids, fights on trains. Bond was cool, he had all the lines, all the chat, you wouldn’t mess with him, but you’d trust him to walk home from school with you when the school wanna-be hard-nut had threatened to “bang you in”! Bond was handed a white Lotus Esprit which instantly became my dream-car, at least for a while replacing the Ford Capri or the Triumph TR7 in my list of top motors. The second best moment in the film, after the parachute-jump of course, was the Lotus being chased by the helicopter. Black and yellow Bell Jet-Ranger piloted by tasty long-haired bird firing on-board machine-guns as the Esprit snakes its way along the coast road. The entire audience was enthralled. I sat there wide-eyed as the car hurtled down the jetty and disappeared into the sea. The conversion from car to submarine was spot-on. Disappearance of wheels, emergence of fins and tail-planes, revolving speedometer revealing digital navigation controls, and finally, deployment of surface-to-air missile blasting the black chopper out of the sky. And then, the contrast. Lotus Submarine gliding effortlessy through the depths, passing rare ocean plants and fish. Exquisite totally apt music conjuring-up almost dream-sequence type imagery. I sat there promising myself that as soon as I was 17 I was going to pass my driving-test and get a car that went underwater, and no-one was going to tell me otherwise. Suddenly frogmen appear with mini-submarines and harpoon guns. No match for Bond and Agent Triple X. The Lotus has its own on-board weaponery ranging from torpedo launchers to depth charges, and Bond was soon driving it out of the sea and onto a beach. The audience roared with laughter. I was appalled. The humour totally lost on this particular 7-year-old. What’s so funny? This guy has just taken-out a helicopter, successfully driven a car in and out of the sea, defeated a load of tooled-up scuba-divers, and this audience has the audacity to laugh? Only later in life did I understand how the reactions of holidaymakers seeing a car emerge from the sea is amusing, particularly the guy who instinctively doubts his own eyes, blaming his drink!The movie continued into what I became familiar with as trademark climatic conclusion involving Bond storming the billionaire nutcase’s lair, rescuing the girl, defeating the steel-toothed giant, liberating stolen nuclear submarines and averting global disaster. As Bond and Triple X escape the destroyed Atlantis, sipping Stromberg’s champagne, eventually to be rescued by the Navy, I knew that the class, the style, the kudos if you will, could ne’er be successfully imitated by other films.

As I left the cinema, town was buzzing with Saturday night atmosphere. As we walked back to the carpark, the green Hillman Hunter stood alone. I was James Bond. Passers-by didn’t know I was a spy about to embark on a mission to save the world. In a world where video and DVD existed only in the darkest realms of the geekiest imaginations, I was at the mercy of TV to further my explorations into the world of 007. I didn’t know when Mr. Bond and I would next meet, but what I did know was…nobody does it better!