10 Movie Henchmen Who Stole Movies From Villains

7. Jaws - The Spy Who Loved Me

Al Leong Big Trouble in Little China
United Artists

Despite Roger Moore's tenure as James Bond getting pretty hokey the further it went on, the actor did get to star in one of the franchise's greatest-ever films - The Spy Who Loved Me.

Similar in set-up to You Only Live Twice but with a better central romance and some of the best visuals in the series, Lewis Gilbert's film took the established tropes of the Bond formula and dialled them up to an epic scale, all the while affording space for Moore to shoot for a greater level of emotional depth than any of his other outings as 007 ended up doing. The end result is something really quite spectacular, wrapped up in a neat little package by Carly Simon's  "Nobody Does It Better" - a powerful, yearning ballad that is also one of the best Bond themes of all time.

It's also somewhat instructive, as while The Spy Who Loved Me doesn't quite manage to be the best Bond film ever made (but for On Her Majesty's Secret Service and 2006's Casino Royale), it does feature the best henchman - Richard Kiel's Jaws.

A brute with metal teeth who towers over Bond, Jaws outshined every other 007 heavy in this one appearance, which is no small statement when you consider the likes of Oddjob and Xenia Onatopp are in the running too.

Jaws proved such a hit in The Spy Who Loved Me that he was brought back for Moonraker, but the balance of threat and comedy was lost in a film that is probably the lowlight of the Moore years.

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Content Producer/Presenter

Resident movie guy at WhatCulture who used to be Comics Editor. Thinks John Carpenter is the best. Likes Hellboy a lot. Can usually be found talking about Dad Movies on his Twitter at @EwanRuinsThings.