Review of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) by Van R — 17 Mar 2010

The tenth official James Bond movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me," had virtually nothing in common with Ian Fleming's novel about a girl at a remote hotel menaced by thugs. Bond shows up at the hotel because his car has a flat time and bails her out of a deadly predicament. The novel dealt largely with the heroine and Fleming contrived the idea that he had awakened and found the manuscript on his bedside table. Happily, director Lewis Gilbert and scenarist Christopher Wood deviated entirely from the novel and "Spy" replicates the usual world-in-jeopardy plot pitting Britain's best against larger-than-life villains.

"It's Bond and Beyond," proclaimed the advertising campaign and "Spy" certainly lived up to the hype. Like Gilbert's first Bond epic "You Only Live Twice," "Spy" was a military Bond with military hardware conspicuously on display in the form of British nuclear-powered submarines. Moreover, Bond appears in his naval uniform as he did in "Twice" and would appear later in "Tomorrow Never Dies." Indeed, "Spy" inverts the outer space formula for "Twice" and relocates the action underwater with Max Stromberg, a villainous sea expert who wants to precipitate World War III between the superpowers so that bring about an Armageddon. Unlike "Twice," James Bond doesn't have to undergo plastic surgery and masquerade as a foreigner. Furthermore, "Spy" contains more exciting action sequences that make it one of the five best Bonds ever made. For the record, Roger Moore has called it his favorite Bond. The cinematography by August Renoir's son Claude is absolutely gorgeous and John Glen's editing is stupendous.

Just as "Twice" opened with Blofeld capturing an American space capsule in orbit, "Spy" opens with a British submarine mysteriously losing power while the sub commander peers incredulously into the periscope and utters "Oh, My God." Unlike "Twice," we don't know what has happened to the submarine. Later, a similar fate occurs to a Soviet sub. At this point, we get one of the most memorable James Bond stunts. When M (Bernard Lee) learns from the Navy that they have lost a sub, M orders Bond to "pull out." Predictably, Bond is in the middle of making love to another beauty in a cabin on a high mountain slope. As he skis off to saw the world again, he runs into several Soviet agents who try to kill him. Bond races to a cliff and plunges off it, plummeting to sure death below until he deploys a Union Jack parachute. Meanwhile, we really don't know who is causing this unrest until we are introduced to an entirely new adversary, Ernst Stromberg (Curt Jurgens of "The Enemy Below") who supervises an undersea kingdom and has quite unrealistically managed to turn his hands into webbed fingers. He has paid for two scientists, Dr. Bechman (Cyril Shaps) and Professor Markovitz (Milo Sperber), to devise a means of tracking British nuclear submarines cruising. As soon as they have proved that their system works, Stromberg kills them in a tragic helicopter crash at sea that he has engineered.

The Soviet equivalent to M, General Anatol Gogol (Walter Gotell of "From Russia with Love"), summons Russian Agent XXX, Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) to find their own missing submarine. He informs her that her lover, Sergei Barso (Michael Billington) has died on a mission involving a British agent. Eventually, she learns that Bond was the culprit and vows to kill him. The trail leads to Cairo and the two agents find themselves in a biding war with an Egyptian who has special information. As it turns out, Stromberg has dispatched agents of his own to deal with informants. Bond kills one of the bad guys, but he misses another, a seven-foot tall giant named Jaws (Richard Kiel) who has metal teeth and likes to bite his victims vampire style on the neck. Sure, "Spy" is pretty outlandish, but Lewis Gilbert maintains a serious tone despite the puns. The two opposing spies team up in an example of detente with M and General Gogol meeting in an Egyptian pyramid as a command center. Bond and the girl masquerade as Mr. & Mrs. Robert Sterling and visit Stromberg who makes speeches about how neglected the sea remains. Eventually, when Stromberg's helicopter Naomi (Caroline Muro) tries to kill them during a "From Russia With Love" style chase, Bond surprises his co-hort and leaps his Lotus into the sea and we watch as it turns into an underwear vessel, shades of Little Nellie the micro-helicopter in "Twice." Stromberg kidnaps an American submarine, the Ranger, and we see that he does these abductions using giant supertankers with bow doors that open and gooble the vessel. Marvin Hamlish replaced John Barry on this Bond adventure and he provides a lively, atmospheric score that underlines the suspense. Carley Simon sings the title them "Nobody Does It Better" and this held true for this Bond entry. The ending with Jaws escaping after he kills a shark is a hoot. Although "Spy" is hopelessly far-fetched, the film looks fantastic and Gilbert paces it perfectly. More than either "Live and Let Die" or "The Man With the Golden Gun," "The Spy Who Loved Me" restored Bond to the high standards of the Sean Connery Bonds.