Live and Let Die

Spoilers throughout.

After the Lay-Z-Boy debacle you might think the James Bond producers might have played it safe when introducing their third Bond, but Roger Moore's first outing would prove you entirely wrong. Live and Let Die might be the strangest 007 movie of all, and this is a series that includes Moonraker.

Ugh, I canNOT buhLIEVE she wore the same outfuht???

Bond is called in to investigate an agent disappeared by drug lord Mister Big and/or Kananga, President of not-Haiti, who are the same person wearing an elaborate disguise. Why Kananga didn't just get one of his numerous minions to stand in as Mister Big is beyond me, but then Diamonds are Forever had a villain who was several of the same guy, so why not have a villain who's two guys at once?

YO LIL DONNIE I PULLED MY OWN FACE OFF. WHADDYA THINKA THAT?

Anyway the plot is not important. What's important in the Moore era is chases, stunts, setpieces, gags and ill-advised but always entertaining left turns into whatever was popular that year. Thus it is that Live and Let Die is the first and last early 70s blaxploitation flick starring James Bond wandering around the mean streets of Harlem and fighting drug dealers in comical pimp outfits. As you might imagine, this is the best thing ever in movie (and all) history.

We need to bring back this aesthetic.

Kananga is a fun villain with his inexplicable cosplay hobby and array of sidekicks including Teehee, a hook-handed henchman whose enjoyment of his work is infectious, Whisper, who whispers, and a taxi driver with the best sideburns in cinema. Another quirk of his is using Jane Seymour's Solitaire to predict the future for him using the Tarot. For some reason he believes in the Tarot despite knowing for a fact that Voodoo is real. He knows this because his other bff is Baron Samedi, the Ghede lwa, who appears several times throughout the film, is killed at least twice and can clearly do literal magic, which means in the James Bond films Voodoo is literally the correct religion.

DAS RITE

Why an actual god/spirit manifesting irl wants to help a drug kingpin push heroin is of course never explained, but I'm sure for shits and giggles is a good enough reason. The supernatural is never invoked in any other James Bond movie so this one is all we have to go on. This is also perhaps the movie that best illustrates the "overly elaborate death trap" bit from Austin Powers, with villains trying to feed Bond to both crocodiles and sharks, and has three chase scenes involving a bus, plane and boats. Teehee also continues the tradition of henchmen outliving their masters coming back for one last shot at Bond and starts a trend of fights on trains ending in defenestration that would continue in The Spy Who Loved Me.

70s stuntmen were not paid enough.

Teehee is a sadly overlooked henchman who loves his work.

The only things that keep this one from being the greatest Bond (or otherwise) film of all time are the lame villainess and comedy redneck stereotype. Rosie Carver is set up as a ditzy CIA agent (???) but turns out to be working for the villains, but never gets the drop on Bond and is killed off quickly for no real payoff, and Sheriff JW Pepper is astoundingly unfunny, though perhaps they put him in there to head off charges of racism towards the black cast, who are nearly all villains.

See? We hate poor whites more, now get off our backs.

Such considerations are dumb and gay because one movie out of eight (at the time) having black villains hardly constitutes a pattern, and Quarrel Jr (ostensibly the son of a character from Doctor No) appears as a goody, and, let's be honest, this couldn't be made today no matter what concessions they tried to awkwardly shove in there.

LMFAO who wrote this scene? DW Griffith?

No matter. Bond wandering into literal Voodoo, disappearing through a false wall and a false floor in the baddies' restaurants, and a main villain who inflates like a balloon are all the reasons you might ever need to see this wonderfully strange, unique experiment.

This happens too.