9. Francisco Scaramanga - The Man With The Golden Gun
If you haven't read Ian Fleming's books I would strongly recommend them. The enjoyment comes from being able to see things from inside Bond's cool, calculating mind as well as when you read a Bond book you're getting to experience an almost brand new story. The books and their film adaptations, in many cases, have almost nothing in common. Like in the case of Man with the Golden Gun, one of the last books in the series to be written. The book still portrays a cat and mouse gunfight between Bond and Scaramanga, but it takes place in the Jamaican jungle after 007 applies the brakes on Scaramanga's safari train. The hitman has taken an unwilling Bond and a few gangster friends out to the countryside where Bond is intended to be the main target of the hunt. The wounded MI-6 agent puts a bullet in his head as a downed Scaramanga pulls a golden derringer (the book Scaramanga uses real weapons made of gold instead of created ones). The movie of course gives us the fun house version. Scaramanga has drawn Bond into his island's bizarre shooting gallery fun house to toy with him. It's James' seven bullets in the Walther PPK versus Scaramanga's one golden nugget in the goofy golden gun. James wins by pretending to be the statue of himself Scaramanga had been keeping around for practice. He shoots the evil, gold-crazed gunman through the heart. The moral of the story is that when you're a professional hitman don't keep life sized effigies of targets lying around the house.