Thoughts from the Curb

Aug 13, 2008 - Countdown to Bond: "Golden Gun's" AMC Hornet

"An AMC Hornet, you got to be kidding me!" Well, that sentiment is often said throughout "The Man with the Golden Gun," one of those movies that is so awful it orbits back to being good for sheer camp factor. The villain's henchman is Tattoo from "Fantasy Island," the title song is laughably bad. Austin Powers didn't spoof the Bond franchise this well. So it's only fitting that Bond's car be an AMC Hornet, right?

Well, there's a good reason for it being in the movie. In 1973, Bond producer Cubby Broccoli saw video of the "Astro-Spiral Jump," named so because it involved the safe 360-degree lateral spinning of a car during a mid-air jump inside the Astrodome. The stunt was dreamt up by stunt show promoter Jay Milligan and an engineer working on auto accident computer simulations. This was one of the first instances (probably the first) where a movie stunt was planned using computers. When Broccoli came knocking on Milligan's door to use the stunt, the promoter said that because the computer calculations were so intricately tied to the car the stunt was originally performed with, they'd have to use that. Well, an AMC Hornet it was then.

Of course, Q branch wouldn't give 007 such a car. Instead, he steals the Hornet from an AMC dealership in Bangkok (yeah, I'm sure they had one there) when trying to chase down bad-guy Scaramanga in his AMC Matador flying car. "Live and Let Die" veteran Sheriff J.W. Pepper inexplicably comes along for a ride just to make the movie more cheeseball. Along those same lines, when "Bond" amazingly spins the Hornet in mid-air to cross a river, director Guy Hamilton also inexplicably slowed the film down and put a kazoo noise over it. It's the best part of the movie and he even managed to ruin that. There's a reason the man who helmed "Goldfinger" would never direct another Bond movie.

Here's the stunt video in all its cheesy glory.

Here's a YouTube video of Top Gear's new stunt driver  proving why you have to use an AMC Hornet.

7:14 am | Categories: bond cars Permalink | Alert Administrator

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