Two decades years before Peter Benchley terrified swimmers with “Jaws,” Ian Fleming deployed a shark to sinister effect in his 1954 novel “Live and Let Die.”
The evil Mr. Big feeds Felix Leiter — James Bond’s CIA sidekick — to a shark in his warehouse for exotic fish. The shark takes off Leiter’s leg and arm, but he survives. When Bond finds him, there’s a note pinned to his chest: “He disagreed with something that ate him.”
Fleming, who lived in Jamaica, was a shark enthusiast. After he finished his morning’s work at the typewriter, he’d put on his snorkeling gear and go shark hunting in underwater caves near his beach house, Goldeneye.
Sharks figure in many of the Bond movies inspired by Fleming’s books — the go-to villains whenever Bond is under the sea.
Here are some notable shark cameos:
‘Thunderball’ (1965)
The villain, Emilio Largo, has a shark tank adjacent to his pool. During a fight, Bond (Sean Connery) tumbles into the pool along with one of Largo’s thugs. A steel cover slides over the pool and the sharks are let out of their tank.
They eat the thug while Bond escapes by swimming into the shark tank.
‘Live and Let Die’ (1973)
Bond — now played by the great Roger Moore — falls into another shark-infested pool while fighting Dr. Kananga, dictator of a small Caribbean island.
Kananga points to the tiger sharks swimming toward them. Bond jams a shark-gun pellet into Kananga’s mouth, which makes him blow up like a balloon, float to the top of the cave and explode. Presumably, the sharks got the shreds.
‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (1977)
Coming out two years after “Jaws,” this 1977 movie has sharks all over it. The villain, Karl Stromberg, lives in an underwater palace with, naturally, a shark tank.
When he wants to dispose of someone, he ushers them into an elevator and then presses a button that releases the trap-door floor. The victim slides down a chute into the shark pool. Stromberg watches the feeding frenzy on a big-screen monitor in his dining room. This fate befalls one of Stromberg’s lady friends.
“It was you who betrayed me,” he says over a loudspeaker as the shark closes in on the hot blonde. “And now you must pay the penalty.”
Every beach house should have a shark chute.
“The Spy Who Loved Me” also introduces the character of Jaws (Richard Kiel), a giant thug with steel teeth who kills people by biting their necks. Bond throws him into the shark tank at the end of the movie, but Jaws escapes . . . by biting the shark.
‘Moonraker’ (1979)
No sharks with fins in this one — just Jaws! Bond’s on a private plane when, suddenly, the pilot pulls out a gun and tells him to jump — without a parachute. Bond knocks the pilot out of the plane instead, but then Jaws emerges to give Bond a push out the door.
Bond “flies” down to the pilot and wrestles his chute away from him. But Jaws is in hot pursuit through the sky. Bond escapes by ripping open his chute and soaring out of Jaws’ clutches. Jaws pulls his cord — and rips it right off his jacket. He free falls, landing on top of a circus tent.
It’s all very realistic.
‘For Your Eyes Only’ (1981)
This is Moore’s finest outing as Bond, battling Russians, smugglers and sharks. The villain, Aris Kristatos, devises a cute way of dispatching Bond and a Bond babe (Carole Bouquet). He ties them up and then drags them behind his yacht over a coral reef.
Bond gets cut up, blood is in the water and here come the sharks. Bond and the babe escape by cutting the rope on the coral and then swimming down to a dive site where there just happens to be a tank of air.
When they don’t come up for air, Kristatos says, “Ah, the sharks got them.”
It’s always a mistake not to hang around to make sure Bond is actually dead.