6. The Man With The Golden Gun - A Much 'Loved' Character Returns
Live and Let Die features some unexpectedly amusing comic relief in the hog-like shape of J W Pepper, a redneck sheriff who acts as exasperated onlooker to Bond and his pursuers during the boat chase sequence. We're not talking Christopher Guest here, but for a dumb action movie he's a funnier character than he ought to be. Behind the bluster of Clifton James' performance there's some genuinely well observed dialogue that just about lends credibility to the role. Whether anyone was clamouring for a return appearance is another thing, but someone on the production team clearly thought they were onto a winner, because a year later, the trailer for The Man with the Golden Gun proudly proclaimed 'Sheriff J W Pepper is back!' To be honest, by the time the good Sheriff rears his swinish head, The Man with the Golden Gun has already featured a midget henchman, a fake third nipple, a Bond girl hiding in a cupboard, two schoolgirl martial artists and a lady called Chu Me. After all that, it would've felt wrong not to have a loudmouth Southern cop in there somewhere. The problem is, whereas all those elements serve some kind of purpose in the narrative (yes, even Chu Me), JW does nothing to drive the plot of the movie. Minutes are spent establishing the fact that he's on holiday in Bangkok with his wife ("We're Demmycrats, Maybelle"- er, hilarious), that could've been spent on, oh, I don't know, the world's greatest secret agent being pursued by the world's deadliest hitman? What's most awkward is that the writers barely make an effort in bringing Bond and JW together. The sequence of events is as follows: Bond needs a car. Bond steals a car from a showroom. Bond just happens to steal the car that JW is in. And that's it. That's the level of complexity we're dealing with here. There's no suggestion that JW has tracked Bond down or been in any way proactive at all. No, you can forget yer story arcs and yer hero's journey- this is the best kind of screenwriting, the kind where things just happen because it's easier that way. Quite aside from the mystery of an American man trying to buy an American car during a holiday in Thailand, the most awkward thing about the ensuing chase scene is the inverse ratio between JW's usefulness as a character and the loudness of his mouth. Another few minutes later, and he leaves the film much as he entered it- making ill-advised jokes about 'pointyheads'. As he's led away by a gaggle of surly Thai police officers, presumably to the comforts of the Bangkok Hilton, you may realise that his intervention has contributed not one whit of plot development to the film, and precious few laughs into the bargain. Mercifully, we were spared a third appearance, saving us from more gems like "You're that English secret agent! From England!" and allowing 'Man with bottle' to take the title of 'most awkwardly shoehorned in comic relief character' for three bloody movies.