[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-LCrEg5YQ]
The Man with the Golden Gun opens on a beautiful beach with Fantasy Island‘s Hervé Villechaize, in his role as miniature butler to master assassin Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), carrying a tray of Champagne—just as he does in the later scene shown above. The next thing we see is a full frontal closeup of Scaramanga’s naked torso, glistening with ocean spray. For some reason it also has three nipples. A beautiful woman (Maud Adams) in a black bathing suit begins to lovingly towel him off, as Villechaize leers and pops the Champagne cork. Just as we’re getting extremely uncomfortable with where this entire scenario is heading, the doorbell rings. It’s a mob hit man in a bad suit, come to kill Scaramanga.
As if things weren’t weird enough already, The Man with the Golden Gun quickly devolves into psychedelic lunacy. Scaramanga’s beach villa doubles as a full-on amusement park fun house where he hones his skills by hunting other assassins. He and his would-be killer stalk each other through darkened rooms as skeletons and wax figures pop out at them and old-timey music plays. The mobster doesn’t last long. After Scaramanga shoots him in the head with his golden gun, the lights come up to reveal the fun house’s real trophy: a wax figure of James Bond, whom Scaramanga for some reason considers his archnemesis. He shoots off Bond’s fingers one by one.
As a scene-setter for the rest of the film there’s no real reason for any of this, except to let Villechaize have a grand old time as a manservant who clearly relishes his boss’s possible demise. While elsewhere we’ve penalized movies for failing to have Bond appear in the pre-credit scenes, he does get a wax figure here; we’ll let the The Man with the Golden Gun skate on a technicality.
GRADE: B-