20 Things You Didn’t Know About Moonraker (1979)

13. “Take A Giant Step For Mankind.”

Moonraker Roger Moore 1979
United Artists

Michael Lonsdale deliberately avoided eating breakfast on the morning that he filmed Hugo Drax’s death at the hands (or rather the wrist) of Double-0 Seven.

For the sequence in which James Bond jettisons the mortally wounded Drax out of an airlock onboard the megalomaniac’s space station, Lonsdale was lying face-down on a soundstage floor wearing a harness with a cable attached to it.

When the exterior airlock doors opened behind him, the crew pulled the cable, lifting the actor 50 metres into the air.

Visual effects supervisor, Derek Meddings then filmed a figure of Drax sent whirling into the empty void of space whilst shooting miniature effects on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.

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