One of the problems with the Laemmle’s theme months is that they often open with a classic. Like “Military May” began with The Dirty Dozen and of course couldn’t top that. (I missed that one, but The Flower was subsequently disappointed by M*A*S*H, e.g., because as she said, “The Dirty Dozen was great!” (And after M*A*S*H—heh—they showed Platoon, Stripes and Three Kings.) When you’re having a Shaken, Not Stirred month celebrating James Bond, and you go in chronological order, you are begging for exactly this problem.

And you might as well pack it in after Goldfinger, often regarded as the best of the Bonds.

This time around, 007 (Sean Connery, in his third outing) is investigating the nefarious Goldfinger! (You have to say it like that after hearing Shirley Basset sing the lurid theme song: Goldfingeeerrrr!) Goldfinger apparently has a gold smuggling racket, a penchant for cheating at cards and a nasty, murderous temper. As Bond travels the world (as he always must) his investigations reveal that Goldfinger is no ordinary villain—but a supervillain!

As we learned in Megamind, the difference between a villain and a supervillain is: style!

Not content with mere smuggling and hoarding of gold, Goldfinger has decided he’s going to take Fort Knox! Preposterous, as Bond points out, because all the gold in Fort Knox has been gone for years! No, wait, that would be if they did the story today. But seriously: It’s a fort, so you can’t get in. And if you could get in, you couldn’t get the gold out. But that’s not Goldfinger’s plan at all, no, he’s going to irradiate the gold! Thus removing it from the market and making his own gold more valuable.

Which, when you think about it, means he’s less about loving gold—you don’t render something you love untouchable for decades, do you?—and more about being rich, but whatever. He’s the one with the super-elite squad of super-model fighter pilots, so who’s going to argue with him? Maybe you’d like to take it up with his ginormous, deadly-hat-throwing Korean wrestler, Oddjob? No? OK, then.

Also, to do this, he’s going to kill a lot of people. Not just with radiation but with poison gas that will allow him to get the dirty bomb into Fort Knox. And he’s involved the surprisingly gullible leaders of the American mafia somehow.

His super-elite squad of pilot-honeys are led by Pussy Galore, played by the inimitable Honor Blackman, late of the BBC spy show, “The Avengers”. (Sort of amusingly, the next week’s film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would feature Diana Rigg—also late of “The Avengers”—as the love interest.) She’s got a back story and doesn’t just roll over for Bond, at least not right away!

I should note, however, that Bond literally seduces his way out of trouble in this one. I don’t mean a come-hither-look-to-the-sexy-gaoler-so-he-can-get-the-keys kind of seduction, either. No, this is a lot more elaborate.

It’s goofy, goofy stuff. And I’m generally not a Bond fan. They all sort of run together in my head. (About six times while writing this, I had to erase something because I had it confused with OHMSS.) But there is something to seeing this on the big screen and enjoying its adventurousness and unabashed heterosexuality. It’s just fun. There’s no complex moral question being raised, just good vs. evil, and we all know who is who. (Even Pussy, who is closely associated with Goldfinger, is good at heart, and we all know that.)

As such, it rises and falls on its production values. The actors are likable, but hardly straining themselves dramatically. The sets are beautiful and appropriately over-elaborate. (Goldfinger’s HQ “war-room” being a great example.) The gadgets (including the now infamous ejector seat in the Jag) are fun. There’s never a bad reason to have a good-looking woman around. The action scenes are excellent—except that the rear projection technique sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s a little jarring now to have the very practical effects interspersed with something that was end-of-life back in ’64.

It’s a good time. In some ways, it reminds me of From Dusk Till Dawn, which we would saw the month before (as part of the “Down Mexico Way” theme): It’s just fun, spectacle, sex and unpretentious fantasy, three of which are missing from the current Bonds. (There’s still spectacle, but the fantasy pretends to reality.)

The Boy missed it, and regretted it muchly, while The Flower just loved it. While she’s not a big fan of the ’60s, she does appreciate the fashion and appreciation of feminine pulchritude. She would subsequently demur on all Bond films: To her, Bond was Sean Connery, and she was concerned that even his other entries into the Franchise wouldn’t live up to this.