On paper, the character must have seemed campy, to the point of ridiculousness.
“The Spy Who Loved Me,” the 1977 James Bond movie starring Roger Moore, perhaps sought to capitalize on the shark craze created in the wake of “Jaws” when it introduced a new villain — a giant, Frankenstein-like menace with steel teeth called, well, Jaws.
Moore’s Bond movies were deliberately light-hearted, but this was carrying things a bit too far.
And yet, as played by Richard Kiel, who died this week at 74, Jaws was a compelling combination of horror, humanity and humor.
His first appearance in the movie is downright chilling. The setting is the famous son et lumiére show at the Pyramids of Giza. Bond is pursuing a sleazy Egyptian trying to sell top-secret plans for a nuclear submarine. Jaws is after the plans as well — but he has no intention of paying for them. As green lights come up around the pyramids, the Egyptian sees Jaws and makes a dash to one of the ancient tombs. He closes the gate behind him and locks it with a chain.
Fat chance that’s gonna save you, pal! Jaws chomps the chain in half, corners the man in the pyramid and takes a nice chunk out of his neck.
The next time we meet Jaws, he’s ready to take a bite out of Bond’s neck. They do battle at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, with much of the Temple crashing down on Jaws, who emerges unscathed but for a cloud of dust around his head.
Moore and Kiel became close friends during the filming of the movie.
“I can’t think of two more different characters — Richard is so kind, so gentle . . . whereas Jaws is a hired killer without much soul,” Moore wrote in his memoir, “My Word Is My Bond.”
Moore was amused to discover during the shoot at Karnak that Kiel, who stood 7 feet 2, was afraid of heights. Told he’d have to run across some scaffolding high above the temple, Kiel went pale.
“I don’t even like being this tall,” he said.
As a teenager, Kiel developed acromegaly, a hormonal condition that often causes gigantism. By the time he was 15, he was 6 feet 7. He was also blind in one eye, which gave his Jaws that dead, soulless look.
Except when he smiled with his chromium steel teeth.
Every time Bond encounters Jaws in “The Spy Who Loved Me,” they exchange grins before fisticuffs.
The little smile-offs were Kiel’s idea. Jaws had a dry sense of humor, Moore writes, “thanks to the little nuances Richard gave him.”
Unlike most villains in Bond movies, Jaws was still alive at the end of “The Spy Who Loved Me,” having survived by biting a shark that was supposed to eat him. He was so popular with Bond fans that he returned for the next movie, “Moonraker.”
In the pre-title action scene, he throws Bond out of a plane without a parachute. Bond manages to rip a parachute off another baddie in midair, but Jaws is soaring behind him in hot pursuit. It’s one of the most spectacular stunts in the history of the franchise, filmed by cameras mounted on the helmets of the aerial stuntmen.
Later in the film, Bond and Jaws battle it out in a cable car above Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil. The cable car Jaws is in crashes into the station. Once again he emerges from the rubble unscathed but with help from a petite, bespectacled blonde. They smile at each other, he takes her hand, and Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Overture” swells on the soundtrack.
Love has turned Jaws into a good guy, and by the end of the movie, which takes place in outer space, he and Bond are pals.
“Moonraker” was it for Jaws. The producers decided it was time to bring Bond back to Earth (literally) in the next movie, “For Your Eyes Only.” The villains in this one would have to be a bit more believable than a Frankenstein monster who can bite through chains.
But Jaws, as portrayed by the gentle giant Richard Kiel, is unforgettable. As henchmen go, he and his steel teeth are right up there with Oddjob and his steel-rimmed bowler hat from “Goldfinger.”