Villains: Scaramanga

Francisco Scaramanga was the triple nippled villain also known as The Man with the Golden Gun. He was supposed to be the ultimate assassin, a skilled sharpshooter capable of picking off his victims with a single shot. He lived on a remote island paradise and worked for the highest bidder. Played by Christopher Lee he was quite a memorable Bond villain.

The film was actually a pretty embarrassing Bond outing with Roger Moore at the helm, the offensively named Nick Nack as a kind of miniature Odd Job and one of the weakest storylines to feature in a Bond adventure. The book was the last that Ian Fleming ever wrote and it was published posthumously. There were rumours that he actually died before completing it and the manuscript was finished by other writers however this is disputed.

Scaramanga had a colourful past as a Catalan circus performer who performed trick shots for the crowds. He was also charged with looking after one of the circus elephants. He embarked on a life of crime after his elephant stampeded and the handler killed it, an act which enraged him so much that he shot the handler. He then travelled to the US and started working as an enforcer before becoming a hit man for Castro and the KGB. They changed his background radically for the film making him the British born son of a Cuban who leaves the circus young to become an assassin for hire, he is trained by the KGB and eventually turns freelance. Scaramanga is so good at what he does he can command $1 million per contract.

In the film he assassinates a British scientist in order to steal a device called the solex agitator and then double crosses the criminal who hired him and sells it to the highest bidder. His name came from the fact he used a golden gun with golden bullets which was a single shot weapon and could be disassembled. He could disguise the gun by breaking it apart into a cigarette lighter, a fountain pen, a set of cufflinks and a cigarette case. Using his vast profits from assassination he has constructed an island base complete with a strange labyrinth reminiscent of the circus funhouse where he likes to compete against other assassins in a fight to the death. Scaramanga eventually lures Bond to his island for a duel.

Scaramanga was played by Christopher Lee who is actually a cousin of Ian Fleming. Fleming apparently wanted him to play Dr. No in the first Bond film but in the end it took several years for him to appear as a Bond villain. In fact Lee almost didn’t get the role of Scaramanga because it was offered to Jack Palance first but he turned it down.

Scaramanga is easily the best villain to face the Roger Moore incarnation of Bond. He is suave, talented and vicious. His downfall is his pride as he becomes obsessed with besting Bond and makes the mistake of taking him on in a head to head battle to the death, of course there can only be one winner.