The Man with the Golden Gun

Guy Hamilton’s fourth and last Bond film is remembered less for its villain than for one car. The corkscrew leap over a broken bridge was designed by Raymond McHenry at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory as a test of its vehicle simulation software, first in simulation, then on the laboratory’s own proving ground. Loren Willert drove it, landed it on the first take and took a $30,000 bonus on the spot. It plays in slow motion because at true speed there is nothing to see, and John Barry laid a slide whistle over it; Broccoli kept the sound in, and Barry later called that a mistake. The flying car could not fly; the aerial shots used a 1 metre radio controlled model built by John Stears. The setting was an accident too. Iran was scouted and dropped after the Yom Kippur war; Thailand came in because production designer Peter Murton saw Phang Nga bay in a magazine. Christopher Lee was Ian Fleming’s step cousin, and Fleming proposed him for Dr. No far too late to matter. A good fit if you like the thing Bond chases being an oil crisis invention, the plot tied to the 1973 energy shortage. Not for you if the period will not excuse the way Mary Goodnight is written.