Bond Girls: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

There are several things you can depend on as a new Bond movie is about to come out. 1 of those things has to do with the latest Bond Girl(s) & how they stack up (no pun intended, there is no way to say this without a double meaning) to their predecessors. & with the announcement of Gemma Arterton and Olga Kurylenko as the latest in Quantum of Solace, the debate on who are the best & worst begins anew. To a certain extent the lists are subjective. But some actresses who would have been perfect as a different Bond Girl were poorly cast for the role they got stuck with. & there was 1 Bond Girl (Woman) who was perfectly cast, even though this role was anything but glamourous, she had the chops like no other. (& yes, she made this list that I am looking at in this post. See if you can guess who. If not I'll tell you later.)

Some of the names were taken from the books, others were created for the movies. The book based names usually worked, but the originals were either hits or pale attempts to capture the Fleming talent for names with double entendre.

WHAT GETS ME IS THEY ACTUALLY PAY PEOPLE TO COME UP WITH THESE LISTS!!!!!

& in the case of Entertainment Weekly, the person they selected to have the honor was staff editor Joshua Rich. He got the priveledge of a photo gallery article, James Bond Babes: Best and Worst, where he chose his top & bottom 10.

The Top 10 1st:

10. MELINA HAVELOCK (Carole Bouquet) For Your Eyes Only (1981)
As the quintessential Bond girl-with-a-vengeance, she never smiles or says much as she gets even for the murder of her parents with a little crossbow and a helluva lot of determination. Still, with legs like those (among the most iconic images in all of 007-dom), who needs a personality?

9. TIFFANY CASE (Jill St. John) Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
She was devious and devilish, but that only made Bond — and, well, men everywhere — want her more. (Her terrifically corny-comely moniker didn't hurt, either.) But beyond all that, seeing this voluptuous lady running around a burning oil rig in a technicolor bikini was all it took to make Sean Connery's dreariest outing as 007 eminently watchable.

8. ROSA KLEBB (Lotte Lenya) From Russia With Love (1963)
Unsexy, you say? Not a real Bond girl? We beg to differ. Dr. Freud would have had a field day with this Russian agent's manic obsession with, er, sticking her knife (fabulously concealed in a tight leather shoe) into our hero. The first dominatrix Bond girl (and, amazingly, not the last), she never doffed her duds, but she was as memorable as they get.

7. WAI LIN (Michelle Yeoh) Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
She wasn't the first woman of color to match wits with 007 (although, woefully, there haven't been many). But in 1997 she became the first one you could take seriously. Hong Kong action veteran Yeoh's skilled and savvy Chinese agent was the first babe that could be called superhot on a truly global scale.

6. XENIA ONATOPP (Famke Janssen) GoldenEye (1995)
Those eyes! Those thighs! And with a name like that, guys knew they were going to get what they'd secretly longed for: a woman who really does use sex as a weapon — and can't get enough of it. Onatopp (stop snickering!) is said to be the first Bond girl seen having an orgasm, and she returned 007's leading ladies to smooth sailing after years in the doldrums.

5. ANYA AMASOVA (Barbara Bach) The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Bach may have been an American girl, but in the mid-1970s no more exotic a woman appeared on screen than her KGB spook (codename, ahem, Agent XXX). Equally at home fighting in the Sahara as rolling in the sheets, she was the Bond-girl response to women's liberation, in every respect 007's first modern equal.

4. VESPER LYND (Eva Green) Casino Royale (2006)
In 2006's re-energizing of the series, she fit the bill perfectly, embodying all the traits that characterize 007's most memorable minxes — the smarts of Pussy Galore, the drive of Melina Havelock, the sobriety of Anya Amasova, and the, ahem, jewels of Tiffany Case. An instant classic.

3. TRACY DI VICENZO (Diana Rigg) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
As it happened, Rigg replaced fellow Bond girl Honor Blackman on TV's The Avengers, where her Emma Peel became renowned as the toughest of dames. Opposite one-time 007 George Lazenby, however, she gave the series' most heartfelt and least comic performance as a lovelorn Mafia heiress, the only woman you could imagine the superspy settling down with.

2. PUSSY GALORE (Honor Blackman) Goldfinger (1964)
Really, her name alone would have been enough to rank her among Bond's best loves. But Brit Blackman rounded off Pussy's cardboard edges, introducing fans to the series' first real woman — a gorgeous dame who can fly a plane and kick butt (check out her rumble in the hay with 007) as well as coo and woo.

1. HONEY RYDER (Ursula Andress) Dr. No (1962)
The first truly was the best. The Swiss native's voice may have been completely dubbed over in postproduction, but, well, the goods were all hers. Her sultry walk out of the waves set the tone for every sexy-strong Bond girl who followed and led a generation of men to dream about lying down ''underneath the mango tree.''

For the most part I agree with this list. It's big weakness, it limited itself to the Eon/Danjaq films. If we stick to those films, the only 1 I wouldn't have put on this list was Wai Lin. She did a great job. But not quite top tier. She'd be in the running for the top 20 though. Instead I would have put MayDay (Grace Jones) from A View to a Kill on the list. She was over the top enough without being unreal. MayDay was someone I would like to meet. Grace Jones character was paired with Christopher Walken's, 1 of the better villians. She was 1 of the few actresses who could star with him & not be overwhelmed. Grace Jones was able to definitely hold her own. (In some movies, Walken needed an actress he could overwhelm because of the story, not here.) It was their 2 characters & how they played off each other that made this movie better than it would have. In AVTAK there were 2 weaknesses in it that made it a good, not as great Bond movie as it should have been. 1 weakness was Roger Moore was WAY too old. The other will come up in to bottom 10.

1 that I was very pleasently pleased to see on the list was Tracy DiVincenzo. Too many people hate the character because she married Bond. Most of those are people who have never read the Fleming novel. OHMSS played very closely to the book. & Diana Rigg did a great job of catching the weaknesses, brokeness, hurts, & strengths that made up Tracy. Another thing that people held against the movie was George Lazenby. While there was room for improvement (it was 1 of his 1st major acting jobs.) he did a better job than most give him credit for. Part of that was the fact that a lot of people wanted Sean Connery, not a new guy. He was treated worse than Daniel Craig in some ways. (Note: Tracy's father, Marc-Ange was the head of the Union Corse, not a part of the Mafia.)

As I said, a big weakness with this list is that it was limited to the Eon/Danjaq films. That means it left off 1 of my favorite Bond Girls & 1 of the best villians in any of the movies. To put her on 1 would drop Vesper Lynd to the 2nd 20 with Wai Lin. She was good & caught Vesper fairly well, but this character outways her in so many ways. So, who am I talking about? Fatima Blush, played by Barbara Carrera in Never Say Never Again. She has the sexiest walk down a staircase that I have ever seen in a movie. She was so deliciously egotisticaly evil. That says it all for me. The scene leading up to her death is a classic. I could go on & on. & like the Walken/Jones matchup, she was perfect opposite Klaus Brandauer (Max Largo).

Now, have you guessed who I agree with on this list, that most people would never expect to see on it? If you said Rosa Klebb played by Lotte Lenya you were right. This was late in her career. She began her career in 1920s Germany theater. Her 1st big role was that of Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper (3 Penny Opera). Later she starred in the original Broadway production of Cabaret. Lenya's experience made her uniquely suited for Klebb. She caught the heart of Klebb as Fleming wrote her.

Now on to the worst. This list is a even more subjective & there were a few others that I might have debated about adding rather than some of these.

10. OCTOPUSSY (Maud Adams) Octopussy (1983)
Swedish model-actress Adams was gorgeous, the only woman to play a leading love interest in two different movies (she got offed halfway through The Man With the Golden Gun), and the only one to have a whole film named after her character. And yet, for all that, do you remember a single thing about her biggest role? Neither do we.

9. BIBI DAHL (Lynn-Holly Johnson) For Your Eyes Only (1981)
To appeal to younger filmgoers — or maybe just fans of Ice Castles — the producers cast the then-22-year-old figure skater to jump a few triple axels around the then-53-year-old Roger Moore. She was harmless at best, but it took more than one vodka martini for us to wash the icky daddy-daughter innuendo (especially her goofy ski-lodge flirtation) out of our minds.

8. HOLLY GOODHEAD (Lois Chiles) Moonraker (1979)
Bond babe? Try bland babe. Chiles worked the CIA counter-espionage thing just fine, and none of 007's ladies looked better in zero gravity (of course, nobody else actually made it to outer space, thank God). But the ex-model was the worst victim of one of the biggest Bond Girl traps: a thorough lack of chemistry with her leading man.

7. PAM BOUVIER (Carey Lowell) License to Kill (1989)
We see what the Bond brain trust was trying to do by naming their main dame after Jackie O (and even winking to that fact during one extended sequence). But Lowell fumbled this attempt at giving 007 a modern, independent counterpart by turning her into a nagging pest. Who cared if she and our hero ever got it on? She just needed to shut up.

6. MARY GOODNIGHT (Britt Ekland) The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)
Come on, what self-respecting Bond girl would tremble at the sight of...Herve Villechaize? Another Swede who was all sex and no spunk, Ekland may have had one of the series' best bikinis, but her dopey, doltish portrayal was a turnoff as much to filmgoers as to fans of Ian Fleming's novels, in which Goodnight is one of 007's closest allies.

5. HELGA BRANDT (Karin Dor) You Only Live Twice (1967)
The un-exotic German star's SPECTRE spy and short-time lover (those piranhas gobbled her up even faster than 007 did) looked out of place in a movie where Sean Connery was getting sensuous sponge baths on Japanese mountainsides. Watching Bond cut off her dress was like watching him finally get it on with Rosa Klebb. Eeeew.

4. KARA MILOVY (Maryam d'Abo) The Living Daylights (1987)
Timothy Dalton's first Bond Girl got off to a promising start, appearing through a window as a rifle-wielding KGB assassin. And yet, inexplicably, she fast devolved into a charmless wimplet, dragged around the snows of Europe and the deserts of Afghanistan with a blank stare — and a cello that always seemed to be in the way. A freakin' cello!

3. CORINNE DUFOUR (Corinne Clery) Moonraker (1979)
An attempt to sex up the series with the star of the French soft-core spectacular The Story of O backfired when Clery wound up the weakest of the second-tier Bond girls, those who pop up for three scenes and then haplessly die. Mlle. Dufour could fly a helicopter, but she got outwitted by Bond in two seconds and outrun by some deadly dogs in one. C'est un scandale!

2. STACEY SUTTON (Tanya Roberts) A View to a Kill (1985)
Roberts was beautiful, sure, but she was also totally miscast as a geologist with a vendetta. (No wonder she got upstaged by Grace Jones' glowering henchwoman.) The squeaky-voiced former Charlie's Angel gave off so little steam that we half forgot that Bond Girls were supposed to be smart and sexy.

1. DR. CHRISTMAS JONES (Denise Richards) The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Let's review: Denise Richards played Dr. Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist who wore a tank top and hot pants. Bloody hell, even Q didn't have a gadget to help Bond escape from that disaster.

Let's start with #5, Helga Brandt (Karin Dor) in You Only Live Twice. Who? She was probably 1 of the least memorable of the minor Bond Girls. It took me a while to finally remember any more than her death scene. & I still can't really remember much more.

Many of those on this list are fine actors. The problem was the way the role was written. Maud Adams was OK in Octopussy. But I think her role of Andrea Anders in The Man With the Golden Gun was better written & gave her more depth of character. Octopussy seemed very much 1 dimensional. I do remember a few things about the role, like where she tells in a few sentences the story line of the short story the movie got its title from. Her assistant, Magda, had more personality. (She also had a cameo in A View to a Kill.)

I liked Britt Ekland as Goodnight, somewhat. But, as written, Mary Goodnight was mostly unbelievable. In the books Goodnight was Bond's secretary until he went missing. In The Man With the Golden Gun Fleming made her Bond's assistant. She was very capable. In the movie they wrote her as a bubble-headed blond. If they had followed the lead of the book, this would have been a much better role.

Lynn-Holly Johnson as Bibi Dahl suffered from "Roger Moore is too old as Bond to be credibly attractive to her character" syndrome. Julian Glover (Kristatos) was 8 years younger than Moore & in much better shape as well as better looking. & Bibi was turned off by him. It would have worked with a Bond in his late 30s, not 54 yr old Moore. If so, I don't think she would have made this list.

I know this is heresy, but the problem with Holly Goodhead (besides the name) was that they had her fall in bed (in space) with Bond. As her character was written, it made sense for her to not like Bond. But there is no way she ever would have fallen for him, let alone make love to him in a space shuttle.

Pam Bouvier, good idea, bad writing at points. Same with Kara Milovy. These 2 started off with great promise that the script "wimped out" on. They should have been much stronger women, less dependant on Bond. The fault lies more in what the actresses had to work with than their acting.

Now for the top 3. Corinne Dufour, see Pam & Kara. Dr. Jones could have been that good looking. See Holly Goodhead for the rest. Her falling for Bond was unbelievable.

That leaves Tanya Roberts. She was perfect as Midge in That 70's Show. She was OK as Stacey Sutton. The character was written poorly. Stacey should have been a much stronger woman. He is right, Tanya Roberts was miscast here.

I have to add a caveat here. I enjoyed every Bond movie. Some were better made than others. But, they are still Bond, & that covers a few of the sins. Not all.

There are others that I could argue for to make both lists. Like I said, these lists are somewhat subjective. Still it is fun to see what other people think. Even if you don't agree.