Henchmen: Jaws

Jaws was the towering mute henchman from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. He had razor sharp steel teeth fitted and used his unnatural strength to hold down unfortunate targets and bite their throats out. Played by the frightening Richard Kiel he was a memorable henchman.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, which was Roger Moore’s third outing as Bond and possibly his best Bond film, Jaws first appeared as a terrifying killer. The script for the film underwent a number of re-writes and it was a troubled period for the franchise but the resulting film was praised by critics. Jaws was the hired help for Karl Stromberg, a web fingered shipping magnate with an underwater base. He was entirely mute and extremely menacing and his enormous strength and slicing teeth made him a formidable opponent. In the end he was defeated by an electro-magnet which attracted his metal mouth and dumped him into the water with a shark, although only one Jaws would emerge.

After that he obviously went back to the evil henchmen agency and with his impressive CV had no trouble picking up more work for another megalomaniac villain. In Moonraker he appeared again, this time working for Hugo Drax a billionaire shuttle manufacturer. Sadly after creating this terrifically menacing character they completely ruined him in Moonraker turning him into comic relief and writing in a cringe inducing love affair with a geeky bespectacled girl by the name of Dolly. After finding love Jaws seems to decide he isn’t a bad guy after all and turns a new leaf, helping Bond to escape the crumbling space station. He even gets a line of dialogue during the cheesy ending.

Jaws was played by actor Richard Kiel who suffered from acromegaly in real life. The condition causes people to overproduce growth hormone and they often grow a great deal larger than average people and have pronounced facial features. Richard is 7 foot 1.5 inches tall and has a large skull with jaw and brow protrusions. Acromegaly used to be a much more common condition but with advances in medical science it is generally treatable nowadays. Hollywood has always cast actors with acromegaly in henchmen parts and you’ll see a number of sufferers in villainous roles throughout the 30’s and 40’s. Rondo Hatton is one of the best examples.

Richard Kiel had already enjoyed a long and varied career in movies and television before the Bond films but it was the part of Jaws that brought him international fame. He was actually cast as The Incredible Hulk but then replaced by Lou Ferrigno after the producers changed their minds. After the Bond films he went on to appear in Cannonball Run 2, Pale Rider and Happy Gilmore. Kiel has also worked as a writer and producer over the years and he still attends fan events and signs autographs for people.

Jaws was a great Bond henchman and he was certainly extremely scary in The Spy Who Loved Me. If it wasn’t for Moonraker he could have gone down as one of the most menacing Bond baddies ever.