The Man with the Golden Gun

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By the time Ian Fleming wrote this story he had been ill & was running out of ideas for his novels. The main villain, Scaramanga, is more of a gangster & a thug in the novel compared to Christopher Lee's smooth film version of the hit man. Lee, by the way, was Ian Fleming's step-cousin! In The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond is sent to confront a celebrated gun man and killer in Central and South America. Change the facts in this story just a little and this could have been set in 1870 and in the American west. Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter laments that romantics killed a criminal and then made him a hero. Historians can note the legends of Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Fleming’s 1950-60s gunman is Francisco Scaramanga – as scary a villain as any he’s written in the past. Ian Fleming was a long time heavy drinker and smoker and these two poisons combined and contributed to his early demise. The creator of James Bond and the author of thirteen Bond books, Fleming died at age 56 in 1964. His last recorded words were an apology to the ambulance drivers for having inconvenienced them, saying "I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.” Mary Goodnight is a proper, demure, respectable woman who's fantasies about Bond include (I am not joking) cooking for him and sewing buttons on for him. Bond knows this. He is perfectly clear with the type of woman Goodnight is and he is making the conscious decision to take her to bed anyway. Bond, you are a piece of shit. What the hell do you think you are doing? You might like pretty woman and sex, but you've never been this callous and heartless before. There is NO WAY Goodnight is going to come out of this unscathed. Sadder and wiser, maybe, but also hurt and crushed. The Man with the Golden Gun theme song sung by Lulu who more than redeems herself after giving us "To Sir, with Love" eight years prior. (No, I won't provide a link to that song; look it up on YouTube yourself. It doesn't deserve to share space with a James Bond tune, let alone the same sentence.)

Jones, D.A.N. (14 October 1965). "Bondage (Subscription required)". The New York Review of Books . Retrieved 26 October 2011. A recently brainwashed James Bond is given an assignment to prove his worth, to kill international freelance hitman, Scaramanga. The shortened monosyllable ‘Kay?’ from O.K. in Chapter 13 is extremely and wonderfully informal, the first one I’ve ever found in my long reading exploration. Prepolec, Charles. "From Fleming to Film: The Search for Scaramanga". Bakerstreetdozen.com . Retrieved July 6, 2012.On the other hand, there was no bumbling idiot American Sheriff by the name J.W. Pepper in the book. Why he's in some movies is beyond me, but he destroys the flow of the films and I am decidedly over him.

The title tune is sung by Lulu. I do not know why they chose this singer or this tune. It's just awful. Hideous. A criminal mobster who often works as an assassin-for-hire has been responsible for the death of agents 267 (British Guiana), 398 (Trinidad), 943 (Jamaica), and 768 and 742 (Havana). Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, the assassin, also has demonstrated a wide streak of sadism in wounding 098 by bullets in both knees. Scaramanga has a unique identifying mark - a third nipple. Bond is assigned to kill him. Unfortunately, Fleming died after he finished his first draft, and before he could add edits. I am not sure to what extent his publisher edited Fleming's text (there is one sentence about an em-dash which made me think an editor inserted it as a joke), but the book reads really disjointed. Well, like a rough draft. Fleming knew the Cambridge Spies, or at least he was friends at school with Kim Philby, but it is a reasonable assumption to say the Cambrigde Spies scandal was on his mind, considering he even put Bond in a situation where he, too, could be a double-agent. Sophie Borland (2008-01-21). "Lightsabre wins the battle of movie weapons". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 2012-11-13.Barnes, Alan; Hearn, Marcus (2001). Kiss Kiss Bang! Bang!: the Unofficial James Bond Film Companion. Batsford Books. ISBN 978-0-7134-8182-2. Hardly one to hide his light under a bushel, Scaramanga introduces himself to Bond as "The Man with the Golden Gun" and shows off his signature weapon by blowing away a couple of tame birds. "Mister, there's something quite extra about the smell of death," Scaramanga tells Bond in the way of a job interview. "Care to try it?"

Scaramanga used the Golden Gun in numerous assassinations of officials, political enemies, gangsters, and a 00-agent, Bill Fairbanks (002). Scaramanga later used the Golden Gun to kill British scientist Gibson and Scaramanga's own employer, Hai-Fat. But, when Scaramanga was killed and his island destroyed, the Golden Gun was presumably also lost. The Golden Gun ranked sixth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll of the most popular film weapons, which surveyed approximately two thousand film fans. [7] A telephone operator at MI6 takes a telephone call from a man claiming to be James Bond, they forward it to Captain Walker, who tests Bond's claims of identity. After Bond passes these tests, Walker consults a superior, his comments revealing that for several months the Ministry believed Bond was deceased. Walker is instructed to direct Bond to meet Major Townsend, his superior to further verify his claim. The Man with the Golden Gun was published in serial form in the Daily Express newspaper on a daily basis from 22 March 1965 onwards. [33] Playboy serialisation (1965) Pfeiffer, Lee; Worrall, Dave (1998). The Essential Bond. London: Boxtree Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7522-2477-0.Nashawaty, Chris (December 12, 2008). "Moore...And Sometimes Less: A look at the most–and least–memorable bad guys, babes, and Bonds in Roger Moore's 007 oeuvre". Entertainment Weekly. No.1025. New York City: Time, Inc. p.37. The novel was serialised in 1965, firstly in the Daily Express and then in Playboy; in 1966 a daily comic strip adaptation was also published in the Daily Express. In 1974 the book was loosely adapted as the ninth film in the Eon Productions James Bond series, with Roger Moore playing Bond and Fleming's cousin, Christopher Lee, as Scaramanga. Comentale, Edward P; Watt, Stephen; Willman, Skip (2005). Ian Fleming & James Bond: the cultural politics of 007. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21743-1. I don't like that bit about the steak-and-kidney pudding. Pass him on to the Hard Man. No. Cancel that. Make it the Soft. There was always something odd about 007's death. No body. No solid evidence. And the people on that Japanese island always seemed to me to be playing it pretty close to the chest. The Stone Face act. It's just possible. Keep me informed, would you?'

Other reports detail his psychological history, exploring why he became the killer he did, and also offer suggestions that because he's so obsessed and identified with his gun, he's perhaps not as sexually successful as his reputation would suggest. Finally, the various reports suggest that Scaramanga should be eliminated swiftly. But other than this, the book suffered from the same problems as any other Bond novel: The portrayal of women, Jamaicans, .... well, anyone who is not white, straight, male, and British or American is just plain awful. The relief is largely caused by the fact that, on the whole, the books are not great, and in some cases are just pure terrible and made me wish for brain bleach.Francisco Scaramanga is a playable character in the multiplayer portions of the 2003 game 007: Nightfire and the 2010 game GoldenEye 007. In the original GoldenEye 007 game, Scaramanga's weapon, the golden gun, was initially added to the "Egyptian" level and multiplayer portion of the game. It is said in the briefing for the "Egyptian" mission that the Golden Gun was stolen from Scaramanga by Baron Samedi. Also, the multiplayer-only fan remake GoldenEye: Source features the weapon as well. The sadness is most definitely a result of reading the series with an awesome buddy, who never lost his patience when I needed to rant about the stupidity of the main character or of the author or both, and who is one of these awesome fans of the franchise that impart additional information about Fleming and the books, who was (at least seemed) happy enough to just geek out on some of the aspects of the stories, and without whom I would not have continued the series.