Countdown to Skyfall - It started here

The Origin of James Bond 007

 In a couple of months we will have a new James Bond movie, as the film franchise celebrates fifty years, but to get to the real 007 you must return to Ian Fleming's original canon.



“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”

 They are the opening words from Ian Fleming’s 1953 debut novel, Casino Royale – the book that introduced James Bond 007 to the world. I know this book, so well, have read it so many times that I can write the passage above from memory.

Raymond Benson noted, in his excellent James Bond Bedside Companion (1984) that Bond is entirely humourless in this first novel, and for the most part I would go along with that but I wouldn’t say the character was entirely without humour. There is much resigned wit over being partnered with a woman and Bond even laughs at his own pretentiousness when ordering dinner. And in the latter sections of the book Bond is overly romantic when falling in love with Vesper, but for the most part Bond is a stiff no-nonsense type, which perfectly suits the seriousness of the story. And it is a serious story – Fleming set out to write the best spy thriller possible – and there is no time for frivolity.

A highly ingenious plot sees Bond trying to out gamble Russian agent, Le Chiffre who is trying to win back the funds he has misappropriated from his paymasters in order to finance a string of failed brothels. It is felt that if Le Chiffre fails to recover the monies he has embezzled his ruination will bring about the collapse of a Communist controlled trade union in Alsace, something that would be highly desirable to the British, Americans and French governments.



Fleming’s introduction of Bond at the Casino is masterful and shows him to live the kind of high life that was out of the grasp of most people. During the time the book was written foreign travel was attainable to only the wealthiest and the degree of description the author gives to the locales would have seemed incredibly exotic to the average reader.

 Fleming is heavy on detail – offering the minutiae of food, car engines, locations and weaponry. However the author manages to makes these passages exciting and interesting – he even fills several chapters explaining the rather complicated card game and yet the story moves like an express train. Fleming would pull off similar tricks several times in the series, most notably with the thrilling Golf duel in Goldfinger. Raymond Benson, again in his James Bond Bedside Companion, called this "the Fleming Sweep" and it is a term we will adopt for this article.



“Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold and then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”



Did Fleming consider a series of books when he wrote this one? I feel he did, several passages seem to suggest he is setting up character traits in Bond that will be used later. At one point Bond decides to resign from the service, telling Mathis while lying battered in a hospital bed: “History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

To which Mathis replies, “Don’t let me down and become human yourself. We would loose such a wonderful machine.”



Bond, by the point, has had enough – his body has been beaten almost to destruction and his mind has taken a similar treatment. Le Chiffre is dead, killed by a SMERSH assassin, and it all seems to have been so useless to Bond. He contemplates marriage to Vesper and a normal life, the kind of life the average person leads. But all this is not to be and when Vesper is revealed to have been a double agent. His heart hardens and he weeps real tears as he informs his people that she was a traitor – “Yes, dammit, I said, ‘was’. The bitch is dead now.”



Casino Royale is one of the best in the series (personally it’s my favorite) and the book sets up the shadowy world in which James Bond operates. The novel details the first meeting between Bond and Felix Leiter and we are told that Bond uses a .38 Police Positive. With this book Fleming provided wish fulfilment for many people including a soon to be President Kennedy whom it later emerged was a huge fan of Mr Fleming.

Countdown to Skyfall - almost James Bond

Who Dares Wins


Lewis Collins, then coming off the long running TV show, The Professionals, must have seen this vehicle as something of an audition piece for taking over from Roger Moore as James Bond. At the time the actor was the bookmaker's favorite for stepping into the shoes of 007 and the actor himself heavily campaigned for the role. As it worked out Moore stayed for another couple of Bond movies and by the time he hung up the Walther, Collins was no longer favorite.


Who Dares Wins, known in the US as The Final Option, was based largely on the Iranian Embassy Siege - Collins plays Peter Skellen, an SAS agent who has an elaborate cover created, in which he is thrown out of the SAS in order to infiltrate a militant group. Skellen does this in best Bond fashion by seducing the groups female leader. And then pretty much blowing up everything that moves.

The film was the third highest grosser of that year in the UK and a sequel was planned but unfortunately it never came to fruition but Who Dares Wins, holds up well and the action scenes are excellent.

The film won't tax your brains but it's a great action movie.

And you know what - Collins would have made a great James Bond.

Western Classics - The Last Wagon (1956)

The Last Wagon (1956)
Directed by Delmer Daves

The DeLuxe color looks wonderful in this digital transfer and makes the most of the Arizona landscapes. I've seen this movie several times over the years as it's often run on television, but this DVD offers the best print I've ever seen. I watched the film as a standard DVD but played through a blu-ray system which upscaled the picture somewhat but even on a standard player this looks terrific.

Comanche Todd (Richard Widmark) a white man who has been raised by the Comanches starts of the film as a fugitive who is captured by the brutal Sheriff Bull Harper. When Todd is captured by the sheriff he is brutalized by the lawman. However they soon come across a part of settlers led by Colonel Nimrod. The sheriff and Todd end up traveling with the party but soon the lawman's  treatment of his prisoner causes friction and Todd eventually kills the man.

Then, while some of the young people sneak away for a late night swim, the Apaches raid the camp. Todd  survives a fall when the wagon to which he is tied is thrown off a cliff by the Apaches, and now it is up to Todd to lead the six young survivors to safety, despite the distrust of some of them.

Richard Widmark is brilliant and on times appears sinister whilst at others he is totally selfless and heroic. His is a well flushed out character and the script and direction allow for a compelling performance from Widmark. He looks excellent, like a true movie star should. It takes a long while for the viewer to see his good side, and for the first section of the film he comes across as a sadistic killer. The scene where he kills the sheriff is especially effective given that he does so in front of the children who he will later save. The largely young cast are also superb and play off well against Widmark's seasoned turn as a man who on times seems more like an animal. The film does contain some liberal preaching to the viewer, but this is never at the expense of the rousing adventure. This is something it holds in common with the same director's 1950 classic, Broken Arrow of which it is sometimes reminiscent.


The only problem I had with the film was that the ending was corny and didn't fit well with the fatalistic tone of the rest of the movie, but that's a small complaint as it's only at this point that the excitement lets up. The Last Wagon deserves a place in any western DVD collection.

Countdown to Skyfall - Battle of the Bonds

The battle of the Bonds

1983 was a significant year for James Bond since there was not one but two Bond movies hitting the box-office.

How could this be?

Well the genesis goes back to when the first movie was in development - the first Bond film was intended to be an original story called Thunderball which had been written by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham. McClory always claimed to have invented SPECTRE. However when the script fell by the wayside Fleming later salvaged it for his 1961 novel, Thunderball.

McClory and Whittingham sued Fleming saying that the book used many of their ideas from the aborted screenplay. The case was settled  but McClory ended up retaining certain rights to the characters and plot. Later when McClory made moves to put the a movie version into production a deal was reached with Broccoli and Saltzman and the movie became the fourth James Bond movie, Thunderball.


However McClory had often tried to get a series of Bond movies into production based on  ideas from the Thunderball script but legal battles with EON Productions kept this from happening. That was until the early 80's when EON found themselves unable to stop McClory from putting the film into production. And when news broke that Sean Connery had signed to play Bond in this unofficial Bond movie Eon were horrified. Many people still considered Connery to be the best James Bond and they felt that the official series, with Roger Moore couldn't compete.

In 1982 McLory won a legal battle and found he could now produce an "independent" Bond film. "Never say never again" (NSNA) is one of the two "unofficial" 007 films made outside EON (the other is the 1967 comedy spoof "Casino Royale"). NSNA is a remake of "Thunderball" and stars the original Bond, Sean Connery -who comes back to the role after twelve years of absence.

Thus in 1983 there were two Bonds in the cinema - Octopussy had a summer opening and Never Say Never Again opened in the autumn. Which is the better Bond movie though? Well Octopussy won out financially but Never Say Never Again wasn't too far behind. And Octopussy too benefited from having all the series trademarks - the opening gun-barrel scene for one thing. And of course the regular supporting cast - Desmond Llewellyn, Louis Maxwell and Robert Brown who had succeeded Bernard Lee as M. While Never Say Never Again's biggest pull was that it had Sean Connery, the man who many considered the real James Bond. Perhaps Never Say Never's biggest weakness was that it was a direct remake of Thunderball, which was one of the more ponderous Bond movies.



The Bond films however had moved on since Connery's days and his performance in Never Say Never Again, whilst enjoyable, doesn't come close to the earlier movies. And like Thunderball, the film it remade, it suffered from being over long with a severe drag in its middle section. The script curiously mimiced Roger Moore's lightweight style which has never made sense to me - surely having Connery in the role was such a coup that the hard edge of the early Bond's should have been the template.

I suppose there was no clear cut winner in the battle of the Bonds - if there was a winner, then maybe it was the fans because they got two Bonds in the same year. However the saga would continue and in 1999 McClory once again attempted to put another remake into production, this time called Warhead. Sony backed the movie and Timothy Dalton was said to have been cast as James Bond. However EON managed to block the film in court and McClory's party had to cede all rights to make movies from the Thunderball scripts.


These days EON own all rights to the Thunderball scripts and no further movie adaptations can be produced. McClory died in 2006.

Shield TV series news

Joss Whedon's forthcoming TV series set in the Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D will feature new characters and limited input from Samuel Jackson as boss man, Nick Fury.

“It’s new characters. It needs to be its own thing. It needs to be adjacent [to the movies]. You don’t want to do a show where you’re constantly going, ‘Iron Man just left, but he was totally here a minute ago.’ You want them to go off on their own thing, and say, well, what has S.H.I.E.L.D. got that the heroes don’t have? And part of that for me is, they’re not superheroes, but they live in that universe. That makes them a little bit — even though they’re a big organization — underdogs, and so that’s really interesting to me.” JOSS WHEDON

Bestselling Black Horse Western Amazon charts - print and eBook

Bestselling print Black Horse Westerns on Amazon 17 September 2012

 

1- Wild Bill Williams by Jack Martin

2-Hour of the Black Wolf by Mark P Lynch

3-Buffalo Falls by Robert B McNeil

4-Incident at Butler's Station by Richard Wyler

 5-Canon for Hire by Doug Thorne

6-Showdown at Singing Springs by Cobra Sunman

7-Blood Gold by Scott Conner

8- Road to Rimock by Chuck Tyrell

9-Arkansas Smith by Jack Martin

10-Invite to a Showdown by Terrel L Bowyers

 

Bestselling eBhws on Amazon.co.uk - 17 September

1. All Guns Blazing by Doug Thorne (30 Dec 2011)

Available for download now £3.43

2. Meredith's Justice (Black Horse Western) by Philip Harbottle (31 Jul 2012)

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3. Blood Gold (Black Horse Western) by Scott Connor (31 Jul 2012)

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4. Saddle Tramps by Owen G Irons (30 Dec 2011)

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5. Vengeance Pass (Black Horse Western) by Lance Howard (31 Jul 2012)

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6. Arkansas Smith (Black Horse Western) by Jack Martin (30 Apr 2012)

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7. Longhorn Country (Black Horse Western) by Tyler Hatch (31 Jul 2012)

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8. Dead Trouble (Black Horse Western) by Jake Douglas (31 Jul 2012)

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9. The Goose Moon (Black Horse Western) by Caleb Rand (31 Jul 2012)

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10. Tennesssee Renegade (Black Horse Western) by Hank J. Kirby (31 Jul 2012)

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Countdown to Skyfall - Roger I've bonked Moore than Bond

According to Sir Roger Moore, when it comes to women, it’s a case of, well, ‘Moore. The 84-year-old actor claims he ‘mesmerized’ the ladies, bedding even more than the debonair spy himself. Sir Roger, who has been married four times, confessed he had lost count of the exact number of women he had slept with – but knows it’s more than 007. Much Moore.

In the 22 Bond films to date, the spy has had 51 lovers, of whom 16 met sticky ends – most notably Jill Masterton in Goldfinger, who suffocated after being covered in gold paint.  Sir Roger said many of his own conquests confused him with Bond or Simon Templar, his character in 1960s TV series The Saint,and that he bedded far more than James Bond himself who was a bit of a prude in comparison with good old Rog.