Even though James Bond films are espionage action flicks, they also contain a fair amount of humor
to add a dash of comedic fun and to soften the blow of some rather violent scenes—especially
death scenes. From the hilarious to the macabre, here are Bond's best post-kill one-liners.
In “Tomorrow Never Dies,” Pierce Brosnan drops an absolutely fantastic one-liner that cracks us up
right after a particularly nasty kill. At this point in the film, Bond is in a massive facility
that contains a printing press that looks like it generates 100 newspapers per second.
Reams of paper are weaving in and out of a complex system of machinery, and the sound is deafening.
And it's here that Brosnan goes toe to toe with a henchman, and you can probably guess where the
bad guy ends up by the fight's end. That's right — directly into the printing press.
As with so many of our deaths listed here, the sight is pretty gruesome.
The body jams up the printing press, and the newspaper flying through the machinery is
stained red from the victim's blood. Bond looks at a pile of newspapers hot off the press and says,
"They'll print anything these days."
Including a criminal henchman — literally.
In Sean Connery's very first 007 film, “Dr. No,” we find Bond innocently driving
his car on a winding dirt road when, suddenly, he notices he's being followed.
The car behind Bond is aggressively chasing him, even tapping his rear bumper a few times.
Bond tries to lose these bad guys by driving extremely fast around turns,
hoping the villain will fail to keep up at those speeds. It's quite a dangerous game
to play since one side of the road is a cliff that looks at least a couple of stories high.
Bond fails to lose them at first, but to his luck, there's a construction vehicle in the middle of
the road doing who knows what. Conveniently, Bond's car is small enough to drive through
a small opening, but the henchmen in the car behind Bond can't make it. At the last second,
the villains try grinding to a halt, but they drive off the edge, and their car rolls down
the mountain, exploding in the process. As a clueless bystander, the construction worker
is completely bewildered, wondering what happened. Ever ready with a quip, Bond says,
"I think they were on their way to a funeral."
Honestly, it’s pretty brilliant. After all, the construction worker probably
took it to mean that the henchmen were in a rush to get to a funeral,
but Bond was implying the henchmen were on their way to their own funerals.
This one-liner comes from the fan-favorite film “Goldfinger.” In the pre-credit scene,
Bond accomplishes his mission by blowing up a drug laboratory. He's then warned by an ally
that the drug lords will seek revenge and that he should leave immediately,
but that just isn't the Bond way. Before the spy hops on a plane home, he must first sleep with a
woman that he's been courting, but little does Bond know that she plans to kill him. She hides
a hitman in her apartment, welcomes Bond in, and then does something very clever. She casually
mentions that Bond's gun makes her uncomfortable, prompting the agent to take it off his person.
She kisses Bond while the henchman sneaks up, but 007 catches the reflection of the
would-be attacker in her eye. No, really, he does. That’s how eyes work. He dodges the first attack,
but from that point on, the two engage in a rather equal wrestling match in the hotel room.
It culminates with Bond throwing the henchman into a full bathtub, and while the bad guy
gets a hold of Bond's gun, 007 thinks fast and smacks an electric fan into the water,
electrocuting the villain to death. That's when Bond says,
"Shocking.
Positively shocking."
But was he saying these words about the woman who betrayed him? Or was he saying
them about how his victim perished? From his glances, it looks like both.
To fully appreciate this one-liner, you have to understand something about the main villain of
“From Russia with Love.” The major baddie in this 1963 action flick is Rosa Klebb,
a former Russian counterintelligence higher-up who joins the mysterious organization SPECTRE
as "No. 3." While Klebb has similarities with other Bond villains, she does have a rather
unique weapon — shoes that conceal poison-tipped blades. When you least expect it, Klebb ejects one
of these blades from her shoes and starts kicking at you. A single cut can land you in the hospital.
At the end of the film, Bond is relaxing in a hotel with Bond girl Tatiana Romanova.
Meanwhile, Klebb, disguised as a maid, is trying one last time to eliminate Bond and
retrieve a valuable device known as the Lektor. Fortunately, Bond and Romanova win a fight with
Klebb in their hotel room, which ends with Romanova shooting Klebb dead. Afterward,
Romanova remarks that she was a, quote, “horrible woman." Bond agrees, saying,
"Yes, she's had her kicks"
It’s a clever little jab at her killer sense of fashion.
James Bond delivered this little quip after defeating one of the most
difficult baddies in the entire 007 franchise — Oddjob. Hailing
from the movie “Goldfinger,” Oddjob is a short but extremely formidable opponent,
working for the main villain, Auric Goldfinger. At this point in the film, Oddjob and Bond are
fighting each other inside Fort Knox, and it's epic. Bond hurls a heavy gold block at Oddjob,
but it just bounces off his chest. Then Bond tries jumping on Oddjob and tackling him,
but Oddjob picks up 007 and tosses him like he's a frisbee. The spy then attempts punching his foe,
whacking him with a stick, and throwing a metal-ringed hat — all of which fail.
Clearly, Bond has no choice but to think outside of the box — and that's exactly what he does.
At one point, Oddjob goes to retrieve his metal hat, which is lodged between metal bars. At the
same moment Oddjob touches his bowler, Bond puts an open wire onto the bars, electrocuting Oddjob
to death. Later on, CIA agent Felix Leiter asks where his butler friend was and Bond replies,
"He blew a fuse."
Quite literally, we might add.
It should go without saying, but one of the major elements of “Goldfinger” is gold. The main villain
is named Auric Goldfinger, with the first two letters of his first name representing gold on the
periodic table. At one point, the bad guy kills a woman and paints her whole body in gold because
why not? And, of course, Goldfinger loves gold so much that he dedicates his entire
criminal career to smuggling it and even gathers a small militia to rob Fort Knox.
As a result, it's only fitting that Goldfinger would have a "golden" end. During the climax of
the film, Bond fights Goldfinger on a plane, which culminates in Goldfinger getting sucked
out a window. A little bit later, Pussy Galore — yes, that’s her name — asks Bond what happened to
Goldfinger. Bond spills the news that Goldfinger is dead, but he does so with the clever one-liner,
"Playing his golden harp."
Yeah, we've got to admit, it's a golden line.
In “Thunderball,” our suave spy gets one of the smoothest kills in 007 history. Bond is going
up against Emilio Largo, a villain who stole nuclear weapons and is threatening to use them.
To help locate them, Bond is attempting to recruit Domino, who's Largo's mistress.
Bond and Domino have a rather heartfelt and serious conversation on a beach,
where Bond explains to Domino that Largo killed her brother and may soon kill millions.
After she agrees to help, Bond begins instructing her on how to use some gadgets
to get the job done, but that's when one of Largo's henchmen starts sneaking up on them.
Domino, cool as a cucumber, casually tells Bond that the henchman is right behind him, and Bond,
equally as cool, says, quote, "Really?" In the flash of a second, Bond picks up a speargun,
turns around, and shoots the henchman. With the kill accomplished, Bond remarks,
"I think he got the point."
That's what you get for trying to sneak up on James Bond.
While James Bond's post-kill one-liners are generally one and done, this particular
comment has been used in two separate films. In “You Only Live Twice,” the evil Blofeld has
an elaborate volcano lair equipped with a pool of flesh-eating piranhas that he uses for executions.
At one point, Blofeld is scolding an underling named Helga Brandt for failing to kill Bond.
As punishment, Blofeld mercilessly activates a trap door that drops
Brandt into the piranha tank. She's eaten alive in seconds,
which is Blofeld's way of showing everyone watching that he doesn't tolerate failure.
Anyway, the moral of the story is you don't want to fall into this water.
Well, later on, Bond gets into a brawl with Hans, one of Blofeld's strongest henchmen.
After going back and forth a bit, Bond finally manages to throw Hans into the pool of piranhas,
which promptly ends his life. Bond encouraged the fish to eat, saying simply,
"Bon appetit."
But this quip also appears in “License to Kill,” when Bond breaks into an aquarium
at night to locate hidden drugs. He discovers an incubator full of maggots, which are fed to fish.
Right then, a henchman finds him, but Bond uses some kung fu
to throw the baddie into the bed of maggots, and then shuts the drawer.
"Bon appetit."
Disgusting.
This one-liner is a bit more gruesome for Bond films than we're typically used to.
It comes from “On Her Majesty's Secret Service,” delivered by one George Lazenby.
Leading up to the line, Bond is skiing down a mountain with Teresa "Tracy" Draco,
and chasing after them is a group of henchmen who are also on skis. It's quite an exciting sequence,
involving bad guys using machine guns, an epic ski chase, and an avalanche.
But the craziest part of the chase is when everyone skis past this huge snow-blowing machine.
One sorry henchman falls into the contraption, which has massive,
sharp gears that eat up snow before shooting it out. After getting caught in that monstrosity,
the snow blower shoots out red snow. Yikes. And that's when Bond yells over to Tracy, saying,
"He had lots of guts."
It works both figuratively, in that the henchman was brave enough to chase after James Bond,
and also quite literally. Not that we need to explain that.
Ever see an injury on-screen so painful that you feel it even as a viewer? That's what you'll feel
watching this death sequence. In “Diamonds Are Forever,” a pair of assassins named Mr. Wint
and Mr. Kidd are hunting Bond in the service of Blofeld. The evil duo find our hero on a boat,
and they attempt to kill him by bringing a small bomb aboard. Bond quickly dispenses with Mr. Kidd,
but it's the second villain we're interested in — Mr. Wint.
As Mr. Wint and Bond fight back and forth, 007 gets the upper hand by
yanking Mr. Wint's arms through his legs and upwards. It's obviously painful given
the sound he makes. While Bond has him in this terribly uncomfortable position,
he attaches the bomb to Mr. Wint, then throws him overboard. After the bad guy explodes, Bond says,
"Well, he certainly left with his tails between his legs."
Yeah, 007 would never let a bad guy die with dignity.
“Live and Let Die” might just feature the most creative death in the entire James Bond franchise,
and that's really saying something. The bizarre kill happens at the climax,
when the main villain, Dr. Kananga, captures 007 and the new Bond girl, Solitaire.
Like all Bond villains, Dr. Kananga must execute Bond in an elaborate way,
which naturally gives Bond the opportunity to escape. This time, the villain will try
to kill Bond and his girl by slowly lowering them into a pool of sharks. But 007 escapes
by using his gadget watch to saw through the rope, and then he starts fighting Kananga.
The battle becomes a lot more suspenseful when the two fall into the shark-infested water,
but it may surprise you to know that the sharks never kill either one of them.
Instead, while underwater, Bond takes a gas-compressed pellet
and forces Dr. Kananga to swallow it. The result? Dr. Kananga inflates to several times his size,
floats to the ceiling, and explodes. Talk about a wild death. Bond's only remark is:
"He always did have an inflated opinion of himself."
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