My trading card close-up this week arrives from the 1979 Roger Moore James Bond/007 effort, Moonraker. It's laughably...titled..."The Deadly Fumes" (*cough*, *nudge*).No, but seriously, I'm featuring this particular trading card because that absurd caption clashes so amusingly with that horrific image. That poor guy looks as though he's caught a whiff of something really, really bad. But heck, he who smelt it...
Anyway, this is card number #31 of the Moonraker series, and no doubt, the most absurd. Recently, I re-watched a sixth-season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode in which the Nerd Trio (Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew) debated the finer points of Moonraker. Warren was against it because of the notorious shot of a pigeon doing a double-take at Bond's all-terrain gondola in Venice. I think I agree with him...
When I was a kid, I loved this movie with a passion (hey - it had space battles!). Now, I think it's probably the worst of the series (at least before Die Another Day...). In the final analysis, I guess I like Moonraker even less than The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). At least that Bond effort has Agent 007 piloting my first car - an early 1970s vintage AMC Hornet! - over a collapsed bridge. Whoo-hoo!
