The Man with the Golden Gun (1974): Cast, Villain, Plot and Ending

The Man with the Golden Gun follows James Bond as he hunts the assassin Francisco Scaramanga, who appears to be targeting him after MI6 receives a golden bullet engraved 007. The film opens in a private funhouse, where a hitman named Rodney is killed by Scaramanga, a man who uses a golden gun and charges a million dollars a job.

M takes Bond off his search for a missing solar energy scientist because he fears Bond is the target. Bond then follows the bullet's trail through Beirut and Macau and on to Hong Kong, where it leads to Scaramanga's girlfriend, Andrea Anders.

The setup gives the film a different shape from a standard mission. Bond is the target as well as the hunter, and the device at stake, the Solex Agitator, which can harness solar power, is tied to the missing scientist Gibson.

The full plot of The Man with the Golden Gun is a chase across Asia that ends in a duel on Scaramanga's private island. Bond goes after Scaramanga on his own and collects a spent golden bullet from a belly dancer in Beirut. He traces it to a gunsmith in Macau, who points him to Andrea Anders in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Scaramanga kills the solar scientist Gibson, and his henchman Nick Nack steals the Solex Agitator, a device that can harness solar power. M and Q send Bond to recover it with help from Lieutenant Hip. In Bangkok, Bond meets the wealthy Hai Fat and fights his way out of a martial arts school with Hip and his nieces. Scaramanga then kills Hai Fat and takes over both his business and the device.

Anders offers Bond the Solex in exchange for Scaramanga's death, and she is killed. Bond passes the device to Mary Goodnight, who is caught after putting a tracker on Scaramanga's car. Bond chases Scaramanga in a stolen car, and Scaramanga escapes in a car with wings. Bond follows the tracker to Scaramanga's island, where Scaramanga shows off his solar plant. The two agree to a duel, but Scaramanga vanishes among the funhouse trick rooms. Bond tricks him by posing as a mannequin and shoots him dead. Goodnight deals with Scaramanga's other henchman, Kra, the plant is destroyed, and Bond gets the Solex out and escapes with Goodnight on Scaramanga's junk.

The Man with the Golden Gun had its UK premiere on December 19, 1974 (reported) and its US release on December 18, 1974 (reported). Australia is reported on the same day as the UK, December 19, 1974.

The three dates fall within a day of each other, so the film opened in all three markets in the same week, just before Christmas. No premiere city or venue has been published for the film. The Numbers records the UK run as a limited release.

The ending of The Man with the Golden Gun resolves two problems at once: Bond kills Scaramanga in the funhouse, and he gets the Solex Agitator out before the solar plant is destroyed.

How does the duel work? Bond wins the duel by posing as a mannequin in Scaramanga's funhouse and shooting him dead. Scaramanga vanishes among the trick rooms after the two agree to the duel, so Bond has to flush him out rather than outshoot him. That matches the film's opening, where Scaramanga kills Rodney in a private funhouse: the first scene and the last scene take place in the same kind of room, and the assassin dies in the setting where he was introduced.

Analysis (opinion): the funhouse is the one setting where the assassin's own trick rooms work against him, which makes the mannequin ruse a fitting way to end a killer who treats his island as a stage. It also shows how this film differs from Live and Let Die, which comes before it in the series: here the climax is a one-on-one duel with a villain who charges a million dollars a job, not a raid on a large organization. The Spy Who Loved Me, which follows, is the better point of comparison for the other half of this finale, the destruction of the villain's base.

The second half of the finale is more mechanical. Goodnight helps deal with the henchman Kra, which sends the solar plant out of control. Bond recovers the Solex just before the plant is destroyed, and he and Goodnight escape on Scaramanga's junk while Nick Nack's last attack is stopped. Bond and Goodnight then become romantically involved, which closes the film on the boat rather than back at MI6. Goodnight is the character who put the tracker on Scaramanga's car earlier, so her role in the finale pays off the middle of the story.

The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed in Hong Kong, Thailand and Macau, with studio work at Pinewood Studios in England. In Thailand, the production shot in Bangkok and in Phang Nga Bay, where the island of Khao Phing Kan (James Bond Island) doubles as Scaramanga's hideout.

The Hong Kong shoot began on November 6, 1973, at the wreck of the RMS Queen Elizabeth, which was used as the MI6 base. Casino scenes were shot in Macau. Bangkok supplied the martial arts school sequence, where Bond fights his way out with Lieutenant Hip and his nieces. Back in England, Pinewood Studios handled the studio work, including the interior of the solar plant. A location spread this wide gives the film its travelogue feel, and it follows the plot closely, because Bond's trail runs from Beirut to Macau, Hong Kong and Bangkok before ending at the island. Murton's decision to suggest Phang Nga Bay after seeing it in a magazine explains why the final act looks so different from the city scenes before it.

The best known piece of trivia is the astro spiral car jump, performed by Loren 'Bumps' Willert in an AMC Hornet X. Guinness World Records lists it as the first astro spiral stunt on film. The car used for the jump is preserved at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, UK. For more vehicles from the series, see James Bond cars.

The film's budget is reported as $7 million, and it grossed $97.6 million worldwide: $21 million domestic and $76.6 million international.

The film carries a PG certification in the US, the UK and Australia.