Every James Bond Finale Ranked

Live and Let Die is a generally thrilling Bond film, but the finale is a bit disappointing. It's far too short, there's not enough actual action and the evil lair just feels copied from previous Bond films.

By far the best part of it is the legendary death of the (pretty bland) antagonist, Dr Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), who is forced to bite an air-compressed bullet and literally inflates and explodes. "Well, he always did have an inflated opinion of himself" remarks Bond.

That moment is absolute comedy gold and the one bright spot in an otherwise lame climax.

This film does rescue itself a bit though, as it has an epilogue fight against a surviving henchman - the hook-handed Tee Hee (Julius Harris). This is a very neat and well-done little set-piece that allows an awesome henchman to go out on a high and features another great Bond one-liner ("Just being disarming, darling"). Therefore, the ending of this movie is not a total wash-out.

The final shot of the film is absolutely bizarre: Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder), another henchman who'd seemingly died earlier on, sits on the front of the train laughing maniacally at the camera. Make of that what you will.