American Bonds
Despite all the criticism the early 70s Bond films (Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die & The Man With The Golden Gun) receive, I love them for the certain aesthetic they bring to the series that's different from all the others. I call them the American Bonds. Consider this, in the 60s the films had that very British, 60s spy-fi vibe to them. Then the early 70s comes along and styles change. While Blofeld is still the villain in DAF, it's against the backdrop of the fake glitz and glamour of Vegas instead of the cool sophistication of a casino in Monte Carlo). The rest of the film features chases with big American cars, Vaudevilians, moonbuggies, and a main villain who smokes with a long cigarette holder and makes sneering literary references meant to go over the head of most audiences, exactly the type of sterotypical "English" villain Americans love to see. I wonder in what direction the Bond series would had gone in if Connery refused his big-time offer and John Gavin became 007.
Live and Let Die is set in the Louisiana Bayou and Harlem with all the African-American stereotypes you can think of from drug dealers, voodoo priests, tough-talking black gangsters talking about wasting honkies, and a superstitious female version of Stepin Fetchit. Oh, yeah, and just to balance things out, there's a fat southern sheriff spewing out racial epithets and referring to black men as "boy". Plus, there's a great speedboat chase and a white pimpmobile!
TMWTGG mixes things up a bit by relocating to Far East Asia but inexplicably runs into the same fat American sheriff as the last film, on vacation in Bangkok! Thank goodness his wife was with him or I'm wonder just exactly what he's going to do to those "little brown pointy-heads" in their pajamas. Then Bond and Scaramanga get into a car chase throughout Thailand, while both driving AMCs!!! Despite the prospect of a car chase featuring vehicles made by the same company that made Wayne & Garth's Mirthmobile being somewhat less than inspiring, 007 pulls off an incredible spiral jump stunt, just like Even Knievel does on his motorcycle. The stunt actually originated during an attraction at the Houston Astrodome.
Unfortunately, with these films performing far less successfully than their 60s counterparts, this experiment in Americanisms ended and Bond was back to his usual spy-fi antics while all wrapped up in a Union Jack in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.