Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Geek Pin-Up #15: The Ones With Dirty Names
There's something magical about the Bond theme music that makes you forget all good sense. Maybe it's the tuxedo or the gun or Shirley Bassey honking over shots of naked ladies for five minutes, but when a Bond girl introduces herself as Holly Goodhead, it seems incredibly cool. There's no point fighting, so you might as well enjoy it.
The most famous is Honor Blackman's feisty bi-sexual villain in Goldfinger who went by the name of Pussy Galore. A mother must have some fairly firm plans for your career if she gives you that name. Pussy had the benefit of being in one of the few genuinely good Bond films, but also benefited from Honor's 50 a day voice (and she smoked a lot! Woo!). Her brother, Whiskey, is also good fun.
While I couldn't believe it when I heard Ms. Galore's name when I was a kid, I still blush today at 1983's Octopussy. I tried to work out the pun or the double meaning, but there really isn't one. It's the sort of one-and-a-half-entendre that Bond excels in - saying something basically fairly crude but saying it with an elegant smirk that suggests something much more refined and witty.
Plenty O'Toole was in Diamonds Are Forever. She isn't much more than a joke character, trying to woo James Bond in a casino while sporting cleavage so precipitous there is snow on her nipples. So proving the pointlessness of Bond pastiches like Austin Powers. How can you mock this name without having a character called 'I Like To Bend Over And Get Fucked Up The Arse Like A Bitch'? Austin Powers 4 is apparently in development.
Mary Goodnight and Holly Goodhead appear in The Man with the Golden Gun and Moonraker respectively, and offer up obvious if unimaginative opportunities for Bond to make jokes while getting into their knickers.
Much better are the slightly more surreal names that are not literally dirty but drip with a slightly bizarre naughtiness. Kissy Suzuki, Sylvia Trench, Honey Ryder, Lisl Von Shlaf (it sounds dirty to me) are all great names, though special mention to Serena Scott Thomas, a real actor who's won awards and stuff, having a character in The World is Not Enough who labours under the name of Dr. Molly Warmflash.
Moving into the 90's with Pierce Brosnan offering a more sensitive, modern Bond, we were assured the old misogyny and schoolboy snickering would be gone. Goldeneye features a baddie bond girl called Xenia Onatopp. You see she's a predatory sexual animal who likes to be on top. You see. Bonus points for her preferred method of killing being her thighs, just after sex. Extra bonus points for being played by Famke Janssen.
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You forgot "Chew Mee" in Golden Gun.
I suggest you go edit the wikipedia 'bond girl' page and gain much international glory. It has lied to me.
I discovered after watching THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN yesterday that you see Chew Mee's hairy bit. It's underwater, but it's there.