I am strangely fond of the moon buggy chase (perhaps down to long submerged memories of a cross-promotion with Bob Monkhouse’s Golden Shot - and if that reference means anything to you then you are unfortunately older than I).
SC “nimbly” sidestepping an astronaut, “What is this, amateur night?”, John Barry’s music, trikes and uniforms courtesy of Gerry Anderson’s UFO - the moon buggy chase screams 1970s and I do kind of love it.
Yes, the hearse chase is soooo important for the series yet it goes because undercranking, overcranking, whatever-cranking goes on, always takes me out of the moment, both here and in TB.
The hearse chase. The moon buggy chase is fun for what it is, but I’ll always go with the more serious take on the character. Also gave us that great “I think they were on their way to a funeral” line.
Moon buggy has to stay! Willard White/ Blofeld, fakes the Moon Landings, ConneryBond is oblivious. It’s as surreal as the Nevada dessert and also comments on the duality/ duplicity theme throught the film. Everything is fake therefore everything is real. It’s an existential cry masked as silly chase through a TV studio then into the panorama of a cinematic dessert. Commenting on the dual nature of Bond as cinema spectacle and laterally TV fodder in the corner at Christmas.
Okay, that genuinely made me chuckle out loud, especially after scrolling back up to confirm that we had all voted to remove the moon buggy chase! Touché!
That I did not know. Why on earth would anyone, by this stage, question a single Barry choice is totally beyond me. DAF does have a wonderful score, the moon buggy chase being but one moment in two hours full of terrific musical cues.
A goof? No reason for elimination. In the hearse chase, the bad quy even change the car in mid-chase (second one has the lights in the fenders, whereas the first one has not)
Never really been very fond of it, and also not fond of being on the “bombe surprise” list. The hearse chase (with all the screeching tyres on sand and Connery’s wild movements that in now way fit to what actually happens) has to go, the Moon buggy chase – a true pinacle of Bond absurdities from beginning to the end – is forever.
It was the placement of the music. Barry wanted to start it later in the sequence, while Hamilton wanted there from the start. In DAF, music comes in later on action sequences than had been the practice in previous films. Barry’s score also used dissonance to a degree not heard before. All-in-all a superior score, but a quite different one.
Another interpretation being that this Mr Barry hadn’t written enough music for his fat fee and he was called out on it. The laziness of the production was viral.
Trickier than expected. Both chases try to mix danger with some chuckle moments. Bond taking a ride across Dick Francis country seems the more ludicrous scene with its moving hurdles and obstacles which only serve to take out Zorin‘s own goons while Bond - against all odds as per usual - even wins the race until Zorin triggers the booster chip in Bond‘s steed*. The result is an unbalanced sequence where the laughs don’t quite gel with the thrills of a chase.
The stock car chase is not so far from the horseback one. The sense of danger from the Spectre Mercedes shooting at the Cougar is undercut by the relaxed atmosphere in Tracy‘s car. She’s having a lot of fun being shot at and Bond repeatedly nibbles her neck. These two could go on all night like this.
Cutting into the crowd to hopefully ‘discourage’ their pursuers is a freak idea achieving little - but serves to Tracy having even more fun knocking about the stock car competition. It’s also the second (or third, counting the phone booth) time a public presence doesn’t discourage the opposition.
So on that basis the stock cars are superfluous.
*Why he would though is a miracle. Bond already proved he’s an able horseman who‘d be only more likely to escape on a horse with that chemical kicks. He probably would have made it had he not switched to the Rolls.
The stock car stuff is fine and doubtless there to show Tracy’s independence and capability blah blah blah and an incentive for Bond to subsequently propose, a stronger progress to that event than the book where Bond just feels sorry for the poor old bat.
However, we know Tracy is capable and independent already so it could be taken out without too much harm to the understanding and appreciation of the portrayal.
The horse chase - it’s the endpoint of that whole plot line about the fiddled-with gee-gees (and isn’t a million miles in spirit from rack / centrifuge). Bond in a panic and out of control on a genetically modified donkey is well worth the money, Also, without it, that horsey sub-plot really goes nowhere.
The horse race is fun, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would Zorin go to the trouble and expense of rigging up all those automated obstacles unless he’d anticipated that some day he’d want to throw a competing rider off his horse to win a race that any participant or spectator could plainly see he’d cheated to win? If the object is to hurt or maybe kill an opponent, okay, but there are cheaper methods that don’t involve so much risk to his own henchmen. If the object is to win a race against anyone other than an investigating British agent you’re gonna kill anyway, there’s no way the results would stand up to a post-race challenge from an actual fellow sportsman.
On the other hand, I like the way the music is handled – there isn’t any for most of the race, which emphasizes the sounds of thundering hoofbeats and colliding contestants to make it all seem suitably brutal and scary, then at the end the out-of-control dash through the woods has one of the best musical cues in the film, IMHO, brief though it is.
I have nothing against the OHMSS stock car chase as a moment for Tracy to shine, but I will make a confession here: every time I see the film, I’m mildly surprised to rediscover the sequence because I’ve forgotten it again. I always remember Bond getting shot at in the phone booth and I remember the romantic scene in the barn, but for whatever reason all that comes between falls out of my brain between viewings. So considering I’ve already excised the scene mentally, that’s the easiest one to let go.
The stock car chase/race is my least favorite sequence in OHMSS and features some horrible overdubbing to boot. A quick car chase through the streets wherein some tricky driving enables Bond and Tracy to lose Blofeld’s goons, followed by the snow storm would be fully sufficient to advance the plot. And I agree that the exclusion of the horse race makes the whole horse subplot less necessary.
