Considering the amount of Bond actors whove also done horror films, it's apt that Spectre is being released in time for Halloween. Of course you know that Dracula himself, Christopher Lee, was The Man With The Golden Gun, but did you know that Michael Kitchen (Goldeneye) appeared with him in Dracula AD 72? In the sequel, The Satanic Rites Of Dracula, Lee took Joanna Lumley as his vampire bride, who a few years earlier had played The English Girl in On Her Majestys Secret Service. That films Bond, George Lazenby, would later appear in Eurohorror pictures, as would Thunderballs Claudine Auger and Luciana Paluzzi. In between cooing over 007s prowess, most Bond girls end up running away from ghosts and ghouls. The original Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell, did so in The Haunting (1963), while Naomie Harris, her latter day equivalent, fought zombies in 28 Days Later. After playing a nuclear physicist (in shorts) in The World Is Not Enough, Denise Richards turned to the horror genre for a role more in keeping with her skills and received Valentine, where she fights a masked psychopath while wearing a bikini. She later encountered a different kind of horror marriage to Charlie Sheen. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are several other actresses who went on to lengthy careers in schlock. Some of them played bit parts, some were the female lead, but theres more to each of them than the fact that they appeared in a James Bond film.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
