1973 - Live And Let Die
Alternate Title - Live Racist And Let Me Die
PG - 121 minutes
Director - Guy Hamilton
Stars - Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour
A man stands on a New Orleans sidewalk as a funeral procession slowly gets closer to him. He asks whose funeral it is and a man says “yours” and stabs him. The men carrying the casket then walk over him and somehow get him into the casket without opening it. It then turns into a wild fucking funeral as all the people walking start to dance. Nevermind the fact that this means 40 people are in on this murder. They can’t all be cool with this can they? All of the people in this scene are black except the man they kill. While these black people are dancing they immediately cut to a crazy black tribe in the Caribbean killing another boring white dude. Were the makers of this film trying to say that all black people are crazy, uncivilized people? That black people just want to kill white people? Is this an analogy for the decay of white power? I can’t say if any of these were on purpose but the rest of the movie doesn’t exactly negate this.
This movie is full of blatant 70’s racism. It’s an insane mix of blacksploitation and Bond. If you love tarot card reading, this is the Bond movie for you. Mr. Big is the villain in this movie and of course he lives in South Ghettosville. Just kidding, it’s Harlem, but they might as well have called it that. All of his henchmen dress like New York City pimps.
Mr. Big later rips off of a rubber face. It’s seriously the worst rubber face I’ve ever seen. It was basically a rubber face of his actual face. It was one of the most pointless things I’ve ever seen.
Bond escapes a swamp full of gators by hopping from one to another like a Loony Toons character. He was of course put there by three evil black men. There seriously isn’t a black character in this movie that isn’t introduced and then immediately does something evil.
We are then introduced to the racist, southern Sheriff Pepper. He does not belong in this movie series. It turns into a bayou boat chase for the next FOREVER. It simply doesn’t feel like it’s going to end.
At the end they replay the scene in From Russia With Love when Bond throws the guy out of a train window. But this time the guy has a hook for a hand and is black. Then they cut to an exterior shot of the train in which a black man is dressed in voodoo makeup and clothing and starts to laugh maniacally. Seriously, it’s all-around racist.
Overall, it’s racist. I really wish I had more to say about the plot and specific scenes but this movie reads like bullet points of racist moments. This movie must have been responsible for so many new Klan memberships in the same way that Fight Club was responsible for a bunch of backyard fight videos.