2. Live And Let Die
What We Got: A James Bond Outing... mixed with a Blaxploitation Drug Movie.
What It Should've Been: A Parody Mash-up of the two Genres Someone pitched this idea and won out, "Let's have James Bond go to Harlem, and take down an unbelievably intricate urban heroin drug-ring... what could go wrong"? Well, seemingly everything. Roger Moore's first outing as the British super spy is just a disaster (foreshadowing the rest of his tenure as Bond, perhaps). Putting aside the pretty good post-Beatles Paul McCartney title song, this is a movie you can just tell from the premise would be nothing but a misguided mess of a film. The movie screams that it was made in the early 70's, the drug plot, the muscle cars, the soundtrack, which all wouldn't that bad if this film wasn't dated on arrival. After all the outings with the pitch perfect Sean Connery, I guess the producers wanted to shake things up on the first movie with Moore in the role. Well, they succeeded in doing something... different. The movie is made even more uncomfortable in it's depiction of African-American culture. In one scene right at the beginning seemingly everyone in Harlem is in on the conspiracy to track and kill Bond. Not that making this a full-on comedy would've saved the movie, (a staggering lack of Sean Connery is hard to cover for) but it would at least look like the filmmakers knew just what the hell they were doing if they tried to make this a parody mash-up of both spy thrillers and Blaxploitation movies that dominated the screens in the 70's. Just the idea of the straight-laced English secret agent finding himself involved in a jive-talking drug ring is ridiculous in and of itself to warrant comedic gold (that the producers tried to make this a 'true' James Bond movie tells you something about their mind-sets). The franchise was primed for parody as is, and with Connery leaving this could've provided a great opportunity for a tongue-in-cheek comedy with the hammier Moore donning the Tuxedo. Granted it would've taken the series in a different direction... but one far better than what actually happened with 'Live And Let Die'.