Helga Brandt
(Karin Dor)

"Villainous" Bond Girl

Suicidal, lovelorn, tragic and daring Teresa (or "Tracy") first met up with Bond (George Lazenby) on a deserted coastal beach in Portugal, when he rescued her from committing suicide - she walked fully clothed into the ocean to drown herself. Although Bond saved her, she sped off in her car and he didn't learn her identity until later - as Contessa Teresa Di Vicenzo, although she liked to be called Tracy. Finding themselves at the same South of France hotel, Bond watched as the beautiful female approached his gambling table in the casino, in a provocatively revealing low-cut dress, and foolishly made a gambling bet. He covered her bet when she lost, after which she invited him to come to her room suite that evening. After beating off a black assailant in her room, he found her in his own room, wearing his short hotel robe and lingerie underneath, and holding his own gun on him. She proposed: "Suppose I were to kill you for a thrill." He replied: "I can think of something more sociable to do." But then he knocked the gun away and ordered her to get dressed. Lying on his balcony's lounge-bed, she countered that she was there for "a business transaction" - to repay her debt of 20,000 Francs to him - Bond kissed her, and they slept together that night. He was awakened the next morning and discovered she had left (and checked out). In his bedside drawer, Bond's gun had been replaced by two 10,000 Franc gambling chips, he had been "paid in full." Teresa was the only child of crime syndicate head Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), whom he raised alone from age 12 after his wife died. While unsupervised and finishing her education in Switzerland, she joined the "fast international set, one scandal after another." His spoiled daughter had married an Italian Count who killed himself in a Maserati with one of his mistresses. Bond was offered $1 million pounds in gold (as a "personal dowry") by Draco if he would marry her to provide her fragile and troubled life with stability. Tracy rightly sensed that her father was luring Bond to her by tempting him with information about the whereabouts of villainous, bald SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas). Blofeld, wishing to bestow upon himself the title of Count, maintained a mountaintop hideaway Piz Gloria in Switzerland, an allergy clinic front for patients (Angels of Death), who were to help him in his scheme to blackmail the United Nations and the world with the threat of massive destruction by bacteriological means. Headstrong, adventurous, independent-spirited, and spoiled as a Mafia heiress, Tracy initially resisted Bond because she distrusted her father's motivations, but she eventually succumbed to his sincere romantic interest in her and they became lovers. She helped Bond to evade Blofeld's pursuing guards on skis when he escaped from Piz Gloria and sought to hide in the village of Murren. She admitted a "new interest in life" and in him while driving wildly in her red Cougar, eventually escaping by sidetracking the pursuit in a stock car race. That evening during a blinding snowstorm, they sought refuge in a barn, and Bond proposed marriage ("I know I'll never find another girl like you...Will you marry me?"). He called her "Mrs. James Bond" while kissing her, but then announced that they wouldn't make love: "The proper time for this is our wedding night, and that's my New Years' resolution." But then he collapsed her bed above him, so that she fell into his arms: "It's not New Year yet." The next day, she was caught in a tremendous man-made avalanche and taken prisoner by Blofeld. However, she was later rescued during her father's massive assault on Piz Gloria, as she also displayed courageous fighting skills by killing henchman Grunther (Yuri Borienko). After the end of Bond's mission, he and Tracy were reunited and married at her father's ranch in Portugal. In the shocking and tearjerking ending of this film, the British Secret Service 007 agent senselessly lost his newly-wed wife Tracy Bond - the only Bond girl to every marry Bond - only moments after their Portugal wedding. As they left for their honeymoon in his flower-adorned dark-green Aston Martin DBS car, Tracy mentioned wanting a large family ("three girls, three boys"). He assured her: "But darling, now we have all the time in the world." When Bond parked the car on the side of the mountain road to remove some flowers to give her, she mentioned that the best wedding present she had already received was "a future." He kissed her with a flower between her lips. Suddenly without warning, MP-40 submachine gun fire from a passing silver Mercedes 600 sedan strafed their car in a drive-by shooting, and then drove away. Blofeld was driving the vehicle in the attempt on Bond's life -- his henchwoman Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) had fired the shots from the back seat of the sedan. Bond ducked and avoided being hit. He shouted twice: "It's Blofeld" as he jumped into his car, realizing then that Tracy had been hit in the forehead by a bullet through the windshield and was instantly killed. He cradled her in his arms, and at first denied her death to a police officer on a motorcycle: "It's alright. It's quite alright, really. She's having a rest. We'll be going on soon. There's no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world." Bond's mournful words were underscored by Louis Armstrong's beautiful and ironic rendition of "We Have All the Time in the World."

Tiffany Case
(Jill St. John)

[She was the first American Bond Girl.]

Bond (Connery) was involved in preventing the takeover of the world diamond market by villainous SPECTRE agent Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) who was stockpiling gems and keeping them off the international black market, intent on selling them (by blackmail) to the highest bidder to attain nuclear supremacy. Tiffany Case was a devious, intriguing and sly, redheaded (although she often changed hair color) voluptuous American diamond smuggler (working as a fence to smuggle diamonds out of South Africa), who first met Bond in Amsterdam in her third floor apartment, believing that he was professional smuggler named Peter Franks. When she appeared in a satiny bra and red-headed wig at her bedroom doorway inside her apartment, Bond asked: "Weren't you a blonde when I came in?" She replied: "Could be." He further added: "I tend to notice little things like that, whether a girl's a blonde or a brunette." She asked provocatively: "And which do you prefer?" He answered with a sexy double entendre: "Oh, providing the collars and cuffs match..." She told Bond the origin of her name - she was born on the first floor of Tiffany's New York store while her mother was shopping for a wedding ring. Later, once they had both reached Las Vegas, when she didn't know where 'Bond' (impersonating Franks) was hiding the diamonds, she appeared in his hotel suite's bedroom at the Tropicana, after voluptuous Bond girl Plenty O'Toole (Lana Wood) (called a "fullsome friend") had been dumped out the hotel window into the pool 10 stories below by thugs. Seductively, Tiffany again wanted to know the location of the real diamonds, and whether he was working alone or not. Bond called himself "the condemned man" and Tiffany was "the hearty breakfast" - and they had sex together. Afterwards, Tiffany proposed a "fifty-fifty" split of the diamonds - she would help get them out safely in an escape to Hong Kong (Tiffany: "I have the feeling this is the beginning of a wonderful relationship") - and he pretended to acquiese to her proposal. When Plenty O'Toole was found drowned in Tiffany's swimming pool at her operation's residence - a case of mistaken identity, Bond told her that each link in the smuggling pipeline had been killed, and she was the next target. He convinced her to divulge where she had taken the real diamonds after an exchange at the Circus Circus casino - they were inside a stuffed animal that she had placed inside an airport locker at the Vegas airport. They traced the diamonds to a remote desert location, where a diamond-encrusted laser-satellite was being constructed at billionaire entrepreneur Willard Whyte's (Jimmy Dean) Tectronics Factory - it had the ability to use a deadly laser to destroy major cities and other locations from outer space. She changed allegiances, took Bond's side and helped him to escape pursuit by Whyte's guards at the factory and by local Vegas police, and then spent the night with him in the bridal suite at The Whyte House casino/hotel. Bond quipped about the selection of accommodations: "In order to form a more perfect union, sweetheart." They made love on a clear circular waterbed filled with fish, when he told her: "I'm on top of the situation." After love-making, she covered her naked self with a full-length white fur. Later, after she was kidnapped and held hostage by Blofeld on his oil-rig platform headquarters in Baja California (Mexico), she lounged and sunbathed in a purple bikini on deck and in Blofeld's office. However, she sided with Bond to try to switch a coded cassette tape controlling the satellite, but mistakenly substituted the wrong one. When given a machine-gun to help defend Bond, its powerful discharge propelled her off the burning deck into the water. Afterwards, on the Canberra cruise ship bound home for England, after Bond fended off an assassination attempt on their lives, they hugged and looked up at the stars from the railing, as she asked about how they could retrieve the diamonds from the defunct satellite in space: "James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?"

In her very short role, this buxom Bond girl and floozy was first seen prowling the Whyte House casino in Las Vegas, looking for high-rollers. After her mark named Maxie (Ed Call) lost, she rejected his advances to go to his place: "Why don't you go take a nap and I'll see you next year." As she was leaving the craps table area, she paused and turned to reveal her voluptuous figure in a low-cut purple dress, when she heard Bond (Connery) wagering $10,000. As Bond reached for his chips, she leaned over next to him, presenting her deep cleavage to him and introducing herself with her suggestive name: "Hi, I'm Plenty!" He looked downward as he replied: "But of course you are." She added: "Plenty O'Toole," to which Bond quipped: "Named after your father, perhaps?" When she assisted him in throwing the dice, she lost. But then Bond bet all of his money as she told him: "Hey, you played this game before." On a bet of $10,000, Bond won $50,000 and gave Plenty $5,000 for her assistance, as she followed him to his hotel room, calling him a strange but "terrific guy." After he kissed her, and her dress was unzipped and dropped to the floor, they were interrupted by three gunmen (Bond: "I'm afraid you've caught me with more than my hands up"), who proceeded to throw Plenty, topless, out of the 10-story bedroom window. When she landed in the hotel's pool below and survived certain death, Bond noted: "Exceptionally fine shot." One gunman dumbly replied: "I didn't know there was a pool down there." She was later drowned (off-screen) in a sheer nightgown at the hands of SPECTRE villain Blofeld's (Charles Gray) murderous, soft-spoken homosexual assassins Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and nearly-bald Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), in a case of mistaken identity, in the pool of diamond smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John).

Solitaire was a naive, sensual, virginal Tarot card-reader who worked for San Monique's Caribbean island evil foreign minister-statesman Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto). Kananga also managed a chain of Fillet of Soul restaurants under his alias - as Harlem black crime lord and syndicate leader "Mr. Big." Bond (Roger Moore) first met Kananga's psychic tarot card-soothsayer and virginal "High Priestess" Solitaire (Jane Seymour) in the back of Mr. Big's Harlem Fillet of Soul restaurant (Solitaire: "I know who you are, what you are and why you've come. You have made a mistake. You will not succeed"). After being disarmed, she had him pick a card to identify himself, and he turned over the Fool card ("You have found yourself"). After Mr. Big ordered Bond to be killed ("Y'all take this honky out and waste him, now"), Bond selected another card to foretell his future, the Lovers card, and he asked her, prophetically: "Us?" The heroine had to remain chaste in order to retain her mystical, psychic powers and keep herself from danger, although she was beginning to have visions of making love to Bond, when she continually drew The Lovers tarot card. Her mother had also had the same power, as a disturbed and angered Kananga reminded her: "These growing signs of impertinence begin to disturb me, Solitaire, even as they did with your mother before you. She had the power and lost it, became useless to me. You will not make the same mistake." Inside Solitaire's cliff-top island headquarters set up for her by Kananga, Bond confronted her - but she berated him for playing with her tarot cards, although he predicted: "The cards say we will be lovers." She asserted it was "impossible" and "forbidden" for her to lose her virginity through earthly love - it would mean the loss of her magical powers. Bond tricked her to pick a card from a fixed Tarot deck (composed completely of The Lovers cards), and she slept with Bond. She was a willing lover, seeking to escape the oppressive Kananga, although she needed reassurance from Bond: "There has to be a first time for everyone." And then he confessed his duplicity in seducing her: "Darling, I have a small confession to make...The deck was slightly stacked in my favor." She replied: "The physical violation cannot be undone," and she feared Kananga's retaliation. He promised to protect her, but first needed to know the deadly and valuable secret of what Kananga was protecting at Voodooland. But before leaving, he agreed to remain for another round of love-making (Bond: "There's no sense in going off half-cocked"). When the two were brought back together by Mr. Big, the crime lord jealously asked Bond about whether he had slept with Solitaire ("Did you mess with that?...Did you touch her?"), but agent 007 refused to answer to anyone but Kananga ("When I see Kananga"), so Mr. Big ripped off his facial disguise to reveal himself as Kananga. Solitaire tricked Kananga into believing that she still possessed her psychic powers, but then the disappointed Kananga, feeling spiteful and betrayed, revealed that he knew her secret, and he brutally slapped her. Now that she was no use to him, he decided to kill her at "the proper time." She eventually assisted Bond in combating the evil villain and defeating his plans to seek control of the North American heroin market. But first she had to be rescued from a strange voodoo sacrificial ceremony held in Voodooland's cemetery-chapel on the island of San Monique. She was led out for execution and her wrists were tied to stakes. Intimidating cemetery god Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) with skeletal makeup, one of Kananga's associates, prepared to throw her into a casket filled with poisonous snakes. Bond cut Solitaire loose with a machete, and the two fled into Kananga's subterranean lair. When the two were captured and lowered into Kananga's pool and served up as bait for his pet sharks, Bond cut himself free, killed Kananga in a gory death scene by an exploding shark gun CO2 pellet in his mouth, and rescued the two of them. In the film's final scene, as they took an overnight train from New Orleans to New York and were preparing to make love in their sleeper cabin (Solitaire: "The first time in my life, I feel like a complete woman"), henchman Tee Hee (Julius W. Harris) with a pincer-hook hand and steel arm attempted to take Bond's life, without success. She and Bond presumably proceeded to make love again, as the film ended.

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)
d. Guy Hamilton