I’m pretty sure The Spy Who Loved Me was my first Bond film, on the telly one Christmas or Easter before 1983 (when i saw Octopussy at the ABC in Maidenhead, followed by a trip to the Berni Inn for a treat (and yeah - i saw Morons From Outer Space there too))
I already had the Lotus Esprit with the missiles and the pop-out fins (it replaced a wind up swimming frog and an empty Matey bottle as my go-to bath toy) and the smaller Corgi Juniors one too, which was stuck in submarine mode (it was the same size as my other cars and made more sense to me despite doing less cool stuff)... I even had Stromberg's helicopter, so it was nice to finally give them some context.
It is, of course, the best Bond film (ignore anyone who says Goldfinger is - they think that an ejector seat and a changeable number plate are cooler than turning into a submarine... an ACTUAL SUBMARINE)...
Of course you know it's a great big romp with a woman-eating shark, the pyramids, a microfilm, a beautiful Russian agent, a fight on a train, an underwater lair, explosions, one-liners and the foiled destruction-of-the- human-race-by-an-unscrupulous-villain, but the Spy Who Loved Me also has a Hammer Horror henchman (sharing a name with the then highest-grossing film), a fantastic car chase ("four different types of enemy, multiple weaponry, a leap from land to sea and Bond’s car turning into a submarine halfway through"), a submarine eating tanker, a classic catchphrase ("good evening Mr Bond, I've been expecting you") and THE GREATEST BOND PRE-TITLE SEQUENCE EVER.
Every moment from the missing submarines, to the Dymo digital watch, past "something came up" and "so does England", into the disco ski chase down the Austrian mountain (actually a Canadian glacier), off the edge, through 20 seconds of breath holding silence (longer than Rick Sylvester intended) and THAT parachute to Nobody Does It Better, is sheer JOY...
... in fact, i'm going to watch it again right NOW
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