Tonight – our first Bond film debuting Roger Moore, arguably the sleaziest and campiest Bond! And in my opinion? LaLD is also the creepiest Bond film, in good ways and bad ways. The film has enough blacksploitation/racist charicature to choke a generous-sized goat (see: Caricatures, a series of wonderful essays by Dr. Pilgrim). And Bond is also realllllly rapey, I mean even for him. He is particularly nasty to Rosie (as played by Gloria Hendry) and Solitaire – the latter who he tricks, using her own religion, to believe she is God-fated to hump him.
On the bright side, we have “the most terrific boat chase you’ve ever seen” – and Jane Seymour’s hair. She has such lovely hair. Admit it. Annnnnnd honestly the title sequence and song are killer.
You can join @VFD_crow & I and follow our commentary at #BondBFFs on awesometi.me; better yet, get your copy of Live And Let Die*, pause the film immediately after the MGM lion fades, and press play again at exactly 6 PM PST according to this site’s clock.
* (My advice? Buy a legal version, and download/torrent it to put the file on the computer through VLC or some such, so streaming internet doesn’t make viewing stutter.)