10 Movie Scenes Shot For Real

Roger Moore's third James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me is hardly a franchise classic, but it does open with one of the most memorable moments in the entire 007 canon.

The pre-titles sequence climaxes with Bond skiing off the edge of a cliff in order to escape his pursuers, after which he daringly parachutes to safety - with a Union Jack-bearing parachute, of course.

This is another stunt which could easily have been achieved through visual effects - especially given the goofy Moore era within which it resides - but the production instead hired stuntman Rick Sylvester to do it for real.

Sylvester and a small crew camped out in a neighbouring village for 10 days waiting for the right weather conditions to perform the stunt, and due to its technical complexity, it was captured by simply pointing a number of cameras in Sylvester's direction and choosing the best unbroken take.

Sylvester was paid $30,000 for the stunt, which ended up costing a total of $500,000, making it the most expensive ever performed at the time.

The end result remains an absolute show-stopper over 40 years later, so it was clearly time, money, and effort well spent.