‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die’

If it were your job to watch movies — and it’s my job so I think about these kinds of things — it would take you a full 40-hour work week plus some overtime to catch up on all 22 of the James Bond movies. That includes the sort-of-unauthorized “Never Say Never Again,” 1967’s one-off spoof “Casino Royale” and this week’s updated taking-it-seriously version of that same title.

In that work week you would hear cruddy Sheryl Crow, Rita Coolidge and A-Ha songs posing as Bond themes, you would see Madonna pop up as a fencing instructor, and Roger Moore with a prosthetic third nipple (I’ll get to that later). You’d also see some of the greatest bad guys ever.

They’re the greatest bad guys ever because they only get to terrorize the world (aka James Bond) for a little bit before he vanquishes them completely. They are not slippery Osama Bin Laden types who disappear and frustrate. They come in, show off for the camera, then James Bond takes care of business. This is a template for how the world should actually work.

But like all film franchises, some Bond adventures are more equal than others and some Bond bad guys are just badder. There’s a reason they brought Blofeld back again and again. Sometimes your bad is so good everyone wants another taste.

A kitty cat’s best friend

Slideshow   Bond through the ages From Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, see the many faces of 007 and vote for your favorite one. more photos

So yeah, Blofeld. His character shows up in “From Russia With Love” (as a disembodied voice stroking the soon-to-be-iconic fluffy white kitty), “Diamonds Are Forever” (where he’s played by Charles Grey), in “You Only Live Twice” (Donald Pleasance), and then, finally, in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (a pre-“Kojak” Telly Savalas).

He changes little by little in each movie, always evading death and eventually morphing into Dr. Evil of the “Austin Powers” movies. He’s got awesome sidekicks in Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), a woman with poison-tipped shoes, deranged killer Donald Grant (Robert Shaw), and, in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” he has an entire harem of foxy ladies (blink and you’ll miss “Absolutely Fabulous” star Joanna Lumley) that he mind-controls and empowers to commit evil with specially-designed world-domination make-up kits.

‘I expect you to die’
A guy named Gert Frobe plays Auric Goldfinger in “Goldfinger.” He likes to eat and gold-spray-paint women to death when he isn’t tinkering with destructo laser-beams. When he gets lazy he has Oddjob (Harold Sakata) to do his bidding with a metal-rimmed bowler hat and, for a time at least, has the greatest Bond Girl ever, Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) on his side.

After he fails to make good on his desire to kill Bond — he’s the one who says, “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die,” and if you win a radio trivia contest with that one, I want the extra Ozzfest ticket you score — Miss Galore shines him on to go be with Connery. You would too, really.

Nebbish as world conqueror?
Most people don’t count the original “Casino Royale” as a Bond movie. Those are people with no sense of fun. Everything doesn’t have to be non-stop grim testosterone poisoning all the time, does it?

We’re all grown-ups here and we can handle a wacky send-up with Woody Allen as the villainous “Dr. Noah,” can’t we? I mean, yes, it’s a crap movie and it had five directors who were all seemingly on set at once giving the cast contradictory directions. But it’s freaked out in the best 1967 way it can be and there’s a score by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I dare you to be grouchy about it. As the bad guy, Woody Allen is just… very Woody Allen-ish.

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