Henderson, definitely.
Although I will never understand the reversal of „shaken, not stirred“. Some weird code for Bond is dead, this one is an imposter… therefore… a precursor to DAF?!
5 Likes
Ooh! There’s a theory! Blofeld using an agent to masquerade as Henderson, usurping his clout in Japan. And Blofeld planning to eventually mask as Henderson himself.
Except something went wrong. The Henderson double rebelled against Blofeld, maybe himself planning to use Bond to thwart Blofeld and take his place as leader of SPECTRE (what’s left of it). Blofeld gets wind of the coming betrayal. Fake Henderson attempts to tell Bond the truth about Osato, but is killed before he can reveal the info.
At that point, Blofeld is too invested in making himself look like Henderson, so he continues with that face into DAF. ! 
4 Likes
I think it’s just used as a counterpoint that James Bond was knowledgeable and alert enough to know which leg was Richard “Dikko” Henderson’s fake one, but Henderson was errant in his knowledge of the type of drink Bond likes. At which point, Bond is just being courteous about the drink being “perfect” when it’s really wrong, which I think is the intention because Sean Connery’s Bond kind of looks hard at Henderson and pauses momentarily before saying “perfect.”
I don’t like that scene for a couple of reasons. One, it makes it look like the screenwriters don’t know Bond’s drink or the filmmakers messed it up by not correcting it. And two, Henderson proves he’s a knowledgeable and capable agent when he talks about who might be responsible for the stolen spacecraft and then he messes up a simple detail regarding Bond’s drink. Those two facts don’t seem compatible. If it had been someone like Nigel Small-Fawcett, I would buy it, but not Henderson.
6 Likes
Who’s the chap who gets killed in FYEO? Luigi? Bond’s contact “Don’t touch any of the buttons.” That guy. He’s the best character with the shortest amount of screentime, a genuinely nice chap, it would seem.
6 Likes
Luigi Ferrara he is, and yes, he does seem like a nice guy and fairly competent.
1 Like
Ferrara was memorable to Bond, certainly, as it’s the last name Locque hears before he dies. 
Poetic doves & death motif, too.
3 Likes
Have always enjoyed the folks hanging around the hotels Bond stays in; the funny little chap in The Man with the Golden Gun who likes a suppwize; Valerie Leon just this side of Carry On in Sardinia; eye-fluttering receptionist in the Bahamas; the fact that the one in San Monique appears to employ Baron Samedi (the job interview must have been right dead weird); Henderson, as mentioned; loads of them bring a bit shifty and seedy and corrupt; great fun and all part of the Milieu Askew of Bond. Except A View to a Kill which still appears to be the only film where he doesn’t stay in nor go to a hotel. That it all gets to Spectre and he is ripping a hotel room apart is I suppose indicative of the narrative meta-arc of him having a colossal emotional breakdown and his World of Hotel failing around him as well. Or something. Anyway, Milieu Askew: Bond and Hotels, soon coming your way as badly proof-read self-published and insufficiently self-aware shallow codswallop on Amazon*.
*a lie.
6 Likes
Also, that beneath/behind the palaces of pleasure/leisure, there reside the tools of surveillance.
5 Likes
John Gardner would have a word or two thousand to say about hotel rooms and surveillance…
7 Likes
Gardner. Hotels. My childhood.
6 Likes