The Man With The Golden Gun

PLOT

An American gangster visits famed crack shot hitman Francisco Scaramanga in order to try to kill him to collect a bounty, but he is directed into a funhouse section of the estate where there are mannequins of gangsters. Scaramanga eventually retrieves his golden gun and shoots the gangster.

In London, a golden bullet etched with '007' is received by MI6; it is believed to be sent by Scaramanga, but because no one knows of his appearance outside of having a third nipple, M relieves Bond of his current mission involving tracking an energy scientist named Gibson.

At a hint from Moneypenny, Bond sets out unofficially to locate Scaramanga, first by retrieving a spent golden bullet from a belly dancer in Beirut. He traces the bullet to a gun maker in Macau, and forces him to reveal how he ships the bullets. Bond follows the shipment carried to Hong Kong by Andrea Anders, Scaramanga's mistress. At her Peninsula Hotel room, he coerces her to expose information about Scaramanga, his appearance and his plans. She directs Bond to the Bottoms Up Club where Scaramanga snipes Gibson when he steps outside, and Scaramanga's dwarf assistant Nick Nack steals a small device called the Solex Agitator off his body. Bond, who had pulled out his pistol outside the club, is arrested by Hong Kong police lieutenant Hip. But instead of going to the station, he is transported to the wreck of the RMS Queen Elizabeth in the harbour where he meets M and Q, and is assigned to work with Hip to retrieve the Solex.

Bond travels to Bangkok to meet Hai Fat, a wealthy Thai entrepreneur suspected of arranging Gibson's murder. Posing as Scaramanga by showing off his fake third nipple, Bond is invited to dinner, but his plan backfires because unbeknown to him, Scaramanga himself is operating at Fat's estate. Bond is captured and placed inside Fat's martial arts academy, where the students duel to the death and then are instructed to kill him. Escaping with the aid of Hip and his nieces, Bond speeds away on a motorised sampan along the river, and reunites with his assistant, Mary Goodnight. Scaramanga subsequently kills Fat with his golden gun and assumes control of his empire and the Solex.

Anders reveals to Bond that she sent the bullet to London. She wants him to kill Scaramanga, and promises to give him the Solex. At a Muay Thai boxing event the next day, Bond finds Anders sitting and staring silently, dead from a bullet to the heart. Scaramanga arrives and introduces himself to Bond, but Bond is able to smuggle the Solex to Hip, who passes it to Goodnight. When Goodnight follows Nick Nack to place a homing device on Scaramanga's car, Scaramanga traps her in the car's boot. Bond discovers Scaramanga driving off and steals an AMC Hornet from a showroom to give chase, coincidentally with the holidaying J.W. Pepper (the American sheriff Bond encountered in Live and Let Die) sitting inside. The chase concludes when Scaramanga's AMC Matador hides in a building and then transforms into a plane that flies off.

Tracking Goodnight's homing beacon, Bond flies a seaplane to Scaramanga's island in the Red Chinese waters. Scaramanga welcomes and shows Bond the solar power plant facility that he has taken over, the technology for which he intends to sell to the highest bidder. But while demonstrating the equipment, Scaramanga uses the solar-powered energy beam to destroy Bond's plane.

After they dine together, Scaramanga proposes a pistol duel with Bond on the beach. With Nick Nack officiating, the two men take twenty paces, but when Bond turns and fires, Scaramanga has vanished. Nick Nack leads Bond into Scaramanga's manor and funhouse section. Bond eventually outwits and kills Scaramanga by posing as his mannequin. Goodnight kills Scaramanga's security chief Kra, but the latter's fall into a liquid helium vat causes the plant's temperature to spiral out of control. Bond retrieves the Solex unit just before the plant is destroyed, and they escape unharmed in Scaramanga's Chinese junk. After Bond fends off a final attack by Nick Nack, he romances Goodnight.

CAST

Roger Moore as James Bond - 007,

Christopher Lee as Francisco Scaramanga,

Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, Bond's assistant.

Maud Adams as Andrea Anders,

Hervé Villechaize as Nick Nack,

Clifton James as J.W. Pepper,

Richard Loo as Hai Fat,

Soon-Taik Oh as Lieutenant Hip,

Marc Lawrence as Rodney,

Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary.

Marne Maitland as Lazar,

Desmond Llewelyn as Q,

James Cossins as Colthorpe

Chan Yiu Lam as Chula

Bernard Lee as "M", the head of MI6.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ninth movie in the James Bond series and the second to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. A loose adaptation of Ian Fleming's posthumously published 1965 novel of the same name