The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Rating: D-

Dir: Guy Hamilton
Star: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams

This is really amazingly lacklustre: it takes Bond 70 minutes to get a shag, and in terms of action, virtually all you get is the odd fist-fight and two soporific chases. It seems very cheap (Christopher Lee, good as assassin Scaramanga, can muster precisely two henchmen – actually closer to one-and-a-half) and stretched; everything takes three times as long as it should. Britt Ekland is another uber-bimbo, perpetually screwing up and needing rescue, while Moore shambles from one scene to another. Despite obvious theft from the previous year’s ‘Enter the Dragon’ – the Far East setting, an evil millionaire and a hall-of-mirrors climax – two kung-fu schoolgirls and a solitary decent car stunt fall well short of what’s required for even minimal entertainment.