Worst Bond Films

Worst Bond Films

Just as with the list of good Bond films the list of bad Bond films has certain markers. One is the absence of good bad guys, not that there are bad actors here, Jonathan Pryce and especially Christopher Lee would have been expected to be great villain material, but somehow their characters just don’t inspire world destabilizing fear. In these the Bond girls are more prevalent mainly because they are just so bad. But most importantly these films just don’t have good plots or good scripts and the various Bond actors have to try to hard to turn the material. In many of these Bond is a victim of his own success as these films try to be too relevant to the time they were made or are just too over-the-top to be enjoyed.

Moonraker (1979)
Too campy for its own good, Bond goes to space in this far out farce. Even the return, and conversion, of Jaws can’t save this from being the most outlandish of the Bond films that tried to capitalize on the Star Wars craze of the late 70s. James must find out who stole a space shuttle and it leads to Sir Hugo Drax who wants to wipe out the human population of the earth from space and repopulate it with his own chosen master race. The best thing this film offers is ample opportunity for satire from Austin Powers to The Simpsons.

The World is Not Enough (1999)
An oil tycoon is murdered and Bond is on the job to protect his spoiled daughter Elektra King from anarchist Renard. There is also something about an oil pipeline in the Middle East and right of ways. Would a Bond who is concerned about the dirtier aspects of his job really shoot an unarmed woman for taunting him? That isn’t the worst of it as Denise Richards makes her Bond girl appearance as Christmas Jones a nuclear scientist in a tank top. But the film has a very good theme song by Garbage and it does maintain the Denise Richards must get wet in a white tee shirt rule of cinema.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Even Christopher Lee as the bad guy assassin of the title can’t save this silly film. Plus was any woman more idiotic in a bikini than Mary Goodnight? Perhaps it is because I saw this after seeing the Austin Powers movies but I just kept thinking ’sharks with friggin laser beams’. Plus the house of mirrors inside the evil lair was just pointless and Herve Villechaize as Nick Nack wasn’t the most imposing sidekick.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Granted Bond’s stealth as a spy went by the wayside some time in the 80s but here so many things blew up it was difficult to locate any semblance of a story. Michelle Yeoh held her own as a Bond girl but to what purpose? At least they had the sense to know that Teri Hatcher sucked in her role so they cut most of her scenes and killed her off early. Jonathan Pryce could have made a good bad guy but you have to wonder why a TV exec can’t think of something less cumbersome than a war between China and the UK to drum up TV ratings.

Live & Let Die (1973)
Roger Moore’s first outing as the super cool British spy was an undeniable dud. This blaxploitation type Bond film involved Bond chasing drug trafficking voodoo practitioners through the US and into the Caribbean. Jane Seymour as tarot reader and Bond girl Solitaire couldn’t save this film from disaster. Neither does Bond’s first political assassination as he takes out the ruler of a small Caribbean nation.

Runners Up
The Living Daylights, A View to a Kill

Related posts:

1. Best Bond Films