20 Things You Didn’t Know About For Your Eyes Only (1981)
8. Always Go Back To Fleming
Roger Moore’s Bond films largely stray far from the source material found in Ian Fleming’s novels. However, in the wake of Moonraker, when it was clear that Double-0 Seven could have become increasingly ridiculous, Cubby Broccoli knowingly returned to Fleming's stories for inspiration.
The killing of Sir Timothy Havelock (Jack Hedley) and his wife, Iona (Toby Robins) was drawn from Ian Fleming’s 1960 short story, For Your Eyes Only, as was Melina’s subsequent killing of their assassin with a crossbow whilst he is diving.
The rivalry between Aris Kristatos and Milos Columbo, together with the attack on Kristatos’s smuggling base was adapted quite faithfully from Fleming’s story, Risico, from the same collection as For Your Eyes Only, with the exception that Emile Leopold Locque was killed at the conclusion of the sequence rather than Kristatos himself.
Kristatos’s merciless keel-hauling of Bond and Melina in the hope of feeding them to some vicious sharks came from Fleming’s 1954 novel, Live And Let Die, in which Mr Big tries to dispose of Double-0 Seven and Solitaire in the same way.
Lastly, Q’s Identigraph device at MI6 had its roots in an Identicast kit that Bond used to obtain background information from international law enforcement agencies on his nemesis with the Midas touch in the 1959 Bond novel, Goldfinger.