The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

M: 007!
General Anatol Gogol: XXX!
Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence: Bond! What do you think you're doing?
James Bond: Keeping the British end up, sir.

Sheikh Hoseim: Are you, eh, quite sure I can't persuade you to stay the night?
James Bond: When one is in Egypt, one should delve deeply into its treasures.

The Spy Who Loved Me (SWLM) is, for my money, a classic of James Bond -if not the best that I've seen. (Judgement and ranking to be done after seeing them all.)

SWLM is just the right level of ludicrous to be enjoyable fun. The Carly Simon song is a great fit, setting the mood, just right.

I could go on about the specifics of SWLM; the submarine car holds up really well, it was good to see a female counter part to 007, and the indestructible Jaws; but what I really want to talk about is production and its history.

SWLM was released in July of 1977 a full 3 years after MWTGG. Bonds, at the time, were coming out every 1 or 2 years.  So why the delay? My answer comes from understanding a little about movie history. I'm betting that the writers scrapped a whole different movie after seeing the success of Jaws in 1975. The studio wanted to capitalize on public interest in sharks and all things ocean. So, the producers/writers went back and created a story about a mad villain who wanted to live in a post-nuclear holocaust Atlantis. They even included character called Jaws.

Unfortunately for them, while SWLM was well received, it was swallowed by the release of Star Wars in late May of 77. Underwater terror was out. Space was in. -hence the idea of Moonraker.

On a scale of Nick Nack to Jaws, I give The Spy Who Loved Me 3.4 out of 5 stars.