Although the most recentJames Bondmovies have been dark, grounded, and gritty, the007 franchise has a long history of delivering delightfully campy moments. Even inthe most realistic Bond movies, there’s a healthy dose of campness. Daniel Craig’s Bond films were deadly serious for the most part, but they still had 007 cracking jokes after taking lives. Bond goes on international spy missions with goofy gadgets, falls in love as he pursues an eccentric megalomaniac bent on world domination, and delivers quippy one-liners before saving the day — these movies can’t afford to take themselves totally seriously.
There have been a lot ofhilarious Bond parodies, but in its campiest moments, the Bond series has veered into self-parody. There’s a chase sequence inMoonrakerin which a pigeon does a double take. In the big finale ofDie Another Day, 007 surfs on a tsunami. InOctopussy, Bond disguises himself as a clown.Tongue-in-cheek humor isa staple of the Bond franchise. From the moon buggy escape inDiamonds Are Foreverto the corkscrew car jump underscored by a slide whistle inThe Man with the Golden Gun, the Bond movies are jam-packed with wonderfully campy scenes.
10Mr. Big Pops Like A Balloon
Live And Let Die (1973)
In the original novel thatLive and Let Dieis loosely based on, the villainous Mr. Big is killed by sharks and barracudas. But in the movie adaptation, the filmmakers decided to give the character a much sillier death. In the climactic sequence of the film, Mr. Big is forced to swallow a pellet full of compressed gas.His entire body then inflates like a balloon until it pops.
Live and Let Die
Cast
James Bond investigates the murders of three MI6 agents, leading him to the Caribbean underworld. He uncovers a drug trafficking operation run by the enigmatic Dr. Kananga. With the help of Solitaire, a tarot card reader, Bond navigates voodoo rituals and dangerous encounters to dismantle the criminal empire.
They couldn’t have made this death scene more absurd if they tried. It’s the goofiest Bond villain death by far; it throws any semblance of realism out the window. Sequences like Bond running across the backs of alligators had already established the wacky, comedic approach ofRoger Moore’s Bond moviesin his first outing, but blowing up Mr. Big like a balloon at the climax solidified it.
9Bond Drops Blofeld Down A Chimney
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
The cold open ofFor Your Eyes Onlyties all three Bond continuities together. It shows Moore’s 007 grieving at his wife Tracy’s grave, confirming that he’s the same Bond from George Lazenby’sOn Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and it showsBlofeld coming back for revenge, confirming that the rivalry from Sean Connery’s movies carried over into Moore’s tenure.
After more than a decade of build-up, Bond’s rivalry with his arch-nemesis culminated in a slapstick gag.
But the way the film portrays Moore’s relationship with Blofeld is far campier than anything that happened in the Connery movies. After one of Blofeld’s agents captures Bond in a helicopter,Bond takes control of the chopper and comes for Blofeld himself.
For Your Eyes Only
A British spy ship sinks, and James Bond is tasked with recovering its secret missile command system before it falls into enemy hands. Bond’s mission leads him through Greece and Albania, where he confronts a vengeful woman and a ruthless smuggler in a high-stakes race against time.
He picks up Blofeld by his wheelchair and drops him down a chimney stack. After more than a decade of build-up, Bond’s rivalry with his arch-nemesis culminated in a slapstick gag. To really hammer home the lunacy, there are some cartoonish sound effects tossed in there.
8The Moon Buggy Escape
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Connery’s last official outing as 007,Diamonds Are Forever, also features his most ridiculous escape. In the film’s second act, Bond sneaks into a remote research laboratory where a satellite is being built by a laser refraction specialist. While he’s having a look around the lab, Bond is caught.He escapes by hopping on a moon buggy and driving it at a hilariously low speed.
Diamonds Are Forever
James Bond infiltrates a diamond smuggling ring, uncovering a plot by his arch-nemesis Blofeld to build a space-based laser weapon. From Amsterdam to Las Vegas, Bond faces off against Blofeld’s henchmen and foils the plan, ensuring the diamonds return to their rightful owners.
This sequence is so unbelievably wacky that it has to have been conceived as a comedic scene, not a serious action set-piece. As Bond is chased across a fake lunar surface, where a couple of fake astronauts are re-enacting the Moon landing, the astronauts stay committed to the bit, walking in low-gravity slow-motion. There are some really creative vehicle choices in Bond’s chase scenes, but the moon buggy is by far the most inspired.
7The Cello Case Chase
The Living Daylights (1987)
When Timothy Dalton took over the role of Bond from Moore, the series did a tonal 180. The Moore movies were criticized for becoming too silly, so Dalton’s movies took a darker, grittier, more serious approach. Dalton’s Bond is arguablythe most faithful portrayal of Bondas Ian Fleming wrote him in the books: a cold, calculating killer. But Dalton’s first Bond film,The Living Daylights, still hasone Moore-esque moment of comic absurdity.
The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series and the first to feature Timothy Dalton as the iconic British spy. Released in 1987, the film follows Bond as he uncovers a complex arms deal while protecting a defecting Soviet general. Featuring Maryam d’Abo as his ally, the movie blends action, espionage, and intrigue in a Cold War setting.
Bond’s love interest inThe Living Daylightsis Czechoslovak cellist Kara Milovy. When he and Kara find themselves in a jam, engaged in a chase with bad guys on the side of a mountain, Bond comes up with a novel way to escape.They both get inside Kara’s cello case and ride it down the mountainto safety. This is about as campy as Dalton’s Bond got.
6Jaws Finds Love
Moonraker (1979)
Jaws is one of the fewBond movie henchmento come back for a second go-around. The metal-toothed goon proved to be so popular as Karl Stromberg’s hulking henchman inThe Spy Who Loved Methat he was brought back as Hugo Drax’s hulking henchman in the next film,Moonraker.
10 Greatest James Bond Stunts Of All Time, Ranked
James Bond is one of the most iconic franchises and characters of all time, with each movie full of jaw-dropping, heart-pumping stunts.
And he didn’t just come back as a secondary villain; inMoonraker,Jaws got his own romantic subplotwith a short, bespectacled woman with pigtails named Dolly, played by Blanche Ravalec. After the cable-car sequence, Dolly helps Jaws out of the wreckage.
Moonraker
James Bond investigates the theft of a space shuttle, leading him to the megalomaniac industrialist Hugo Drax. Bond uncovers Drax’s plan to annihilate humanity using a deadly nerve gas and repopulate the Earth with a master race. The mission culminates in a dramatic showdown aboard a space station.
As their eyes meet, the overture from Tchaikovsky’sRomeo and Julietplays on the soundtrack — andtheir romance only gets camper and camperfrom there. Jaws’ love story is even more ludicrous, over-the-top, and self-effacing than the mishmash romcom spoof ofDate Movie.
5The Horse Jump
Never Say Never Again (1983)
More than a decade after his last official Eon-produced Bond movie, Connery was able to reprise the role of 007 ina remake of one of his earlier Bond films—Never Say Never Again, based onThunderball— due to a legal loophole. It’s a great Bond movie for the most part, but its horse jump sequence is so notorious thatit’s been recut over the years.
Never Say Never Again
Never Say Never Again features Sean Connery as James Bond in this 1983 spy thriller directed by Irvin Kershner. The film follows 007 as he is brought out of retirement to investigate the theft of two nuclear warheads by the nefarious organization SPECTRE. The star-studded cast includes Klaus Maria Brandauer as the villainous Maximilian Largo and Kim Basinger as Bond’s love interest, Domino Petachi.
There are a couple of particularly asinine shots that always get cut from British prints of the film, but the full, unedited sequence is still featured on the American home media release. When Bond jumps off the roof of a castle on horseback,he and the horse fall hundreds of feet into the ocean below. And, miraculously, both he and the horse are fine. The whole sequence is so over-the-top that even Moore wouldn’t have done it.
4Bond Dresses As A Clown
Octopussy (1983)
Throughout Moore’s tenure in the role,the Bond moviesdevolved into full-blown self-parody. That self-parodying style reached its peak inOctopussywhen 007 dressed up as a clown to disguise himself at a circus.People were already saying Moore had turned Bond into a clown, so he donned some makeup and literally turned him into a clown. It doesn’t get much campier than putting a deadly international secret agent in clown makeup.
Octopussy
A jewel-encrusted Fabergé egg surfaces at a London auction, catching the attention of MI6. James Bond is dispatched to investigate its origins, leading him to the mysterious and opulent world of exiled Afghan prince, Kamal Khan, and his accomplice, the enigmatic and resourceful circus leader, Octopussy.
Bond had a good reason to dress up as a clown. He donned the disguise in an attempt to hide from the police while he was trying to locate the bomb that they didn’t want him to find. But there are a bunch of different disguises that 007 could’ve worn. The clown disguise fits perfectly with the tongue-in-cheek comic approach of the Moore films.
3The Slide-Whistle Corkscrew Car Jump
The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
The Man with the Golden Gunfeatures one of the greatest car stunts ever captured on film, and it’s ruined by one of the goofiest sound effects ever recorded. During a high-octane car chase, Bond comes across a broken bridge. Instead of putting his foot on the brake, he keeps it on the gas and drives off the broken bridge.The car does a perfect corkscrew in the air and lands effortlessly on the other side.
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Man with the Golden Gun features James Bond as he tracks skilled hitman Francisco Scaramanga, who charges a million dollars per job, to recover a stolen solar weapon. Bond navigates dangerous encounters, including a showdown on a Thai island, while partnering with agent Mary Goodnight.
It’s one ofthe most impressive stunts in the entire Bond franchise, pulled off flawlessly. But the awesomeness of the stunt is let down by the zaniness of the sound design. As the car spins through the air, a slide whistle plays on the soundtrack. What could’ve been a mind-blowing 007 car chase instead plays like aLooney Tunescartoon.
2Bond Surfs On A Tidal Wave
Die Another Day (2002)
Pierce Brosnan’s tenure as 007 ended not with a bang, but with a whimper when he starred inDie Another Day. It has a great cold open and Halle Berry gives an iconic performance as Jinx, but its plot is derivative, its race-swapping villain is ludicrous, it’s jam-packed with distracting product placement, andits action scenes are riddled with primitive CGI. Speaking of its CGI-riddled action scenes, it culminates in one of the Bond series’ campiest set-pieces.
Die Another Day
ames Bond is captured and tortured during a mission in North Korea, but after 14 months, he is exchanged for a North Korean prisoner. Stripped of his 00 status and determined to clear his name, Bond embarks on a globe-trotting quest to uncover a traitor and stop a catastrophic plot. Teaming up with the enigmatic NSA agent Jinx, he tracks down a diamond mogul with a sinister connection to his past. The mission leads Bond to an ice palace in Iceland and a high-tech satellite capable of devastating destruction.
In Brosnan’s final action sequence in the role of 007,Bond wind-surfs on a tsunami. He wryly smiles through one of the most needlessly extravagant scenes in the franchise. The only way this scene could get campier is if a Bond-ified version of “California Girls” played on the soundtrack like the snowboarding sequence inA View to a Kill.
1The Gondola Chase
Moore was the campest Bond actor and his movies are full of camp moments, but the campest moment from his tenure is the gondola chase fromMoonraker(and it’s not even close). WhileBond is engaged in a chase through the canals of Venice on a gondola, the bad guy makes it onto the street. Rather than giving up, Bond drives the gondola onto the street and reveals it’s actually a hovercraft — and a nearby pigeon is so shocked that it does a double take.
This sequence is a masterpiece of camp filmmaking; it would’ve made John Waters proud. It takes a real commitment to campness to loop footage of a pigeon to make it look like it’s doing a double take and leave it in the final cut. TheJames Bondfranchise has some really camp moments, but it never got camper than this.
