Bond: Top 5 Villains' Lairs

As the release of Bond 22, AKA Quantum of Solace, is looming, here we celebrate the Bond legacy by looking back at the whole franchise. Look out for several Bond Top 5s over the coming week!

Top 5 Villains' Lairs

5. The space station - Moonraker
OK, so Bond has no business going into space, but Drax's orbiting space station is certainly a spectacular set, heavily inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. It really sums up the no-expense-spared approach that Cubby Broccoli took for Bond's most outlandish adventure.

4. St. Cyril's Monastery - For Your Eyes Only
For Your Eyes Only divides opinions, but for me it's always been a highlight of the Moore era. This is one reason why. The sequence in which Bond scales the sheer cliff face brings the sort of realistic suspense to the franchise that hadn't been seen for over a decade.

3. The supertanker - The Spy Who Loved Me
Although not really the villain's lair in the film - that would be Stromberg's underwater city, Atlantis - it is his base of operations, and deserves to be included here for its sheer scale. No stage existed in the world big enough to house it, so they built one.

2. Piz Gloria - On Her Majesty's Secret Service
This beautiful mountaintop retreat actually exists, sitting atop the Schilthorn in Switzerland. Indeed, both the exteriors and many of the interiors were shot on location; they weren't sets. But it seems made to be in a Bond film, and provides the opportunity for an awesome climactic helicopter assault.

1. Hollowed-out volcano - You Only Live Twice
There could only be one winner here. Blofeld's volcanic hideaway is such a brilliant concept, wonderfully executed. It sums up You Only Live Twice's comic book approach, which doesn't work entirely, but it does allow for this mindblowing set. This may be my first memory of a Bond film, and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever.




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Bond: Top 5 Stunts

As the release of Bond 22, AKA Quantum of Solace, is looming, here we celebrate the Bond legacy by looking back at the whole franchise. Look out for several Bond Top 5s over the coming week!

Top 5 Stunts

5. Dangling out of a plane - The Living Daylights
The climax of Timothy Dalton's first outing sees him and a baddie grappling with each other while clutching on to a net which was hanging out of the back of a plane. The stuntmen did it for real, but hadn't anticipated the turbulence, and nearly couldn't hang on.

4. Dam dive - GoldenEye
This impressive bungee jump is one of the first things that we see in GoldenEye, and, though meant to be in Russia, was actually performed on the Versasca Dam in Switzerland. It's a suitably spectacular start to the Brosnan quartet.

3. Freefall fisticuffs - Moonraker
This opening sequence of Moonraker involves Bond and returning baddie Jaws duking it out in mid-air for one parachute. It's incredibly filmed, and actually required something like 80 separate real jumps to shoot. Pity it's all but ruined by the punchline - Jaws survives by landing on a circus tent. That's Moonraker for you.

2. Crocodile stepping stones - Live and Let Die
You'd think they would just use fake floating crocodiles, but that would be too mundane: Bond's escape from the crocodile farm in Roger Moore's debut actually involved a poor guy (the actual owner of said farm) running across real, living reptiles. Luckily, all he lost was a shoe.

1. Bridge jump - The Man With the Golden Gun
Another example in the Moore era of an incredible stunt almost being ruined in the quest for a cheap laugh, but the naff sound effect added to this spectacular corkscrew car leap can't disguise its daring. It was basically a one-shot deal, and even with so many variables involved, they nailed it, landing the car perfectly on the other side after rotating a full 360 degrees. It had never been done before.




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Bond: Top 5 Bond Girls

As the release of Bond 22, AKA Quantum of Solace, is looming, here we celebrate the Bond legacy by looking back at the whole franchise. Look out for several Bond Top 5s over the coming week!

Top 5 Bond Girls

5. Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) - The World Is Not Enough
Bad girls are hardly rare in Bond films, but rarely are they as well-written as Sophie Marceau's Elektra, who ultimately turns out to be, uniquely, the film's primary villain. Not only is she sexy as hell, she also completely acts Denise Richards off the screen. (Maybe not the hardest thing to do, but still...)

4. Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) - Casino Royale
For once, Casino Royale provided a strong and realistic female character in a Bond film. Refreshingly neither a blonde bimbo nor a wannabe action heroine, Vesper's relationship with the rugged new Daniel Craig-shaped Bond is actually genuinely touching. Eva Green deserves much of the credit.

3. Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) - Goldfinger
Probably the only Bond girl whose name is more famous than the character itself - and it's a name that surely you wouldn't get away with in today's more conservative times. Honor Blackman also holds the, er, honour of being the only Bond girl older than the leading man, but she still looks the part. What makes the character is the fact that she doesn't just submit to 007's charms immediately.

2. Tracy Di Vincenzo (Diana Rigg) - On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Arguably the first time a Bond girl was more than just window dressing, Diana Rigg's Tracy provides George Lazenby's sole effort with its beating heart, and it's the unique relationship between the pair - not to mention its tragic end - that makes On Her Majesty's Secret Service such a strong entry in the canon.

1. Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) - Dr. No
She hardly does anything and only makes her entry about two thirds of the way into the film, but what an entry. Look up "Bond Girl" in the dictionary and you get this image. Well, you would if Bond Girl was in the dictionary. And it was a dictionary with pictures.




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Bond: Top 5 Henchmen (and Henchwomen)

As the release of Bond 22, AKA Quantum of Solace, is looming, here we celebrate the Bond legacy by looking back at the whole franchise. Look out for several Bond Top 5s over the coming week!

Top 5 Henchmen (and Henchwomen)

5. Xenia Onatopp - GoldenEye
Subtlety is hardly the name of the game when it comes to naming women in Bond films, and saucy minx Xenia's surname basically spells out how she kills her (male) victims: during sex, she wraps her legs round them and squeezes hard. Probably not the worst way to die.

4. Nick Nack - The Man With the Golden Gun
Basically the Mini Me of his time (but far less cute and twice as creepy), the brilliantly monikered Nick Nack may appear in one of the worst Bond films, but he's the part you remember most. Well, him and Scaramanga's third nipple.

3. Oddjob - Goldfinger
Goldfinger was basically the film that invented all of what became the Bond trademarks, not least the nasty bola-hat-throwing Korean known only as Oddjob. He first proves his skills by slicing the head off an antique stone statue. Now that's evil.

2. Red Grant - From Russia With Love
As he appeared in Bond's second ever screen adventure, Grant came before henchmen had to have a gimmick. We know he means business straight from the start, as he garrottes a fake Bond in the very first scene. Eventually he gives away his identity to the real Bond by committing that cardinal sin of ordering red wine with fish. No no no.

1. Jaws - The Spy Who Loved Me/Moonraker
Jaws was so popular that he is the only henchman who's ever been in two separate movies. OK, so what happens to him in Moonraker completely rapes the memory of the character, but he's a genuine threat in The Spy Who Loved Me and provides probably Bond's best physical adversary (certainly in the Roger Moore cycle).

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Bond: Top 5 Gadgets

As the release of Bond 22, AKA Quantum of Solace, is looming, here we celebrate the Bond legacy by looking back at the whole franchise. Look out for several Bond Top 5s over the coming week!

Top 5 Gadgets

5. Remote-controlled BMW - Tomorrow Never Dies
This awesome little gadget (well, I guess as remote-controlled vehicles go, it's not so little) provided the undoubted highlight of Pierce Brosnan's second outing as 007. It also led to probably the best action sequence in the Brosnan era, as well as being damn funny to boot.

4. Little Nellie - You Only Live Twice
The helicopter so cute they gave it a name. Almost small enough to pack in a suitcase, the introduction of this mini-chopper may have been the first sign of the Bond franchise jumping the shark, so to speak, but it's certainly a memorable image. During the shooting of the sequence a stuntman got his leg chopped off by a rotor blade. Ouch.

3. Lotus Esprit - The Spy Who Loved Me
Or, the car that's also a submarine. The actual real-world usefulness of such a concept - who really needs to drive into the sea on a regular basis? - is immaterial, because it's just so damned cool. Even if it does leak.

2. Jet Pack - Thunderball
Although on screen for all of, ooh, 5 seconds, the tin-foil-wrapped (or at least, that what it looks like) jet pack gives Bond an awesome means of escape in Thunderball's pre-credits sequence. And the best part? It actually works. Although the user will probably die horribly.

1. Aston Martin DB5 - Goldfinger
Not only is this obviously the best gadget Q has ever created, it's also quite possibly the most famous car in the history of movies. Its arsenal of weapons and tricks is unbeatable, and it was so good that they brought it back for Thunderball, albeit briefly. And after seeing Goldfinger, who hasn't wanted a passenger ejector seat?




... And the worst:
Invisible Aston - Die Another Day
Just about everything was wrong with the final Brosnan Bond, but this was probably the cardinal sin (well, this and Madonna). I mean, there's ridiculous and then there's bleedin' stupid. Who would want to make something so beautiful disappear anyway?


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