Roger Moore's dapper James Bond is asked by his boss, M, about Scaramanga. Bond mentions that this assassin has a superfluous papilla - a third nipple. That is the most memorable moment of this joyless and tedious Bond effort (one I did not revisit much during the last 40 years) that feels like it has the thinnest story imaginable.
Preceding this flick was "Live and Let Die" which was Roger Moore's dubious debut as Bond. That film had a little more story, a far more interesting Bond girl delivered by Jane Seymour as a talented tarot reader, a decent villain played by Yaphet Kotto, and they threw in some voodoo magic in the strange locales and surroundings of the Caribbean Islands. "Man With the Golden Gun" deals with an assassin who has a golden gun and gets paid a million dollars a hit - more than enough money to own a private island off the coast of southeastern China. He has some extraordinary solar beam that can presumably destroy anything. Bond must find Scaramanga and has assistance from Miss Goodnight (!) played by Britt Ekland. Throw in yet another boat chase (nowhere near as good as the one in "Live and Let Die"), a martial arts sequence, and a car chase with one unbelievably good stunt where it flips while crossing an unfinished bridge. Also thrown in is some Bond's brief hanky panky with Ekland and Maud Adams. The car chase, by the way, brings the return of Clifton James as Sheriff Pepper from the last Bond outing - almost improbable he would run into Bond again.
Christopher Lee is astonishingly good in an underwritten part - when he's on screen, the film comes alive. Moore hadn't grown in to the part of Bond yet and Ekland is a pure waste - a throwaway blonde Bond girl. "The Man With the Golden Gun" is the worst Moore Bond flick because it does something rather rare - it bored me to tears.
