The World, it is said, is not enough and, bored by lockdown, it appears that villainous in-fighting has broken out to such an extent that things have to be settled between the Bond villains.
Accordingly, fate brings forth a series of 12 deathmatches, villain v villain – and you determine who wins, simply by voting for your favourite.
Winner goes through to the next round, loser receives a small funeral service with only pirhanas and a few tearful jumpsuited goons in attendance.
Picking the first round of matches at random from names drawn from the Covid-19 face-covering Mrs Jim has ordered for me (a bucket), there are some interesting encounters and some potential first round giantkillings and clashes of titans (and Titans! Will! Clash!, apparently).
Yes, I know some are tag-teams (eg Whitaker & Koskov) but this is only for giggles, they are fictional and – ultimately – are two heads better than one?
Will cast my eye over the bloodstrewn battlefields in a week from now. Any ties will be administered a coup-de-grace, also known as a flip of a coin. I know that’s unfair but consider who we’re dealing with here, and cope.
This is a tough one, both being ‘classic’ villains, jumping onto the screen almost from Fleming’s pen with only minor alterations. I went with Blofeld since he’s the more physically active one. He won’t need an Odd Job to squeeze the Gold out of the Finger…
Goldfinger because for me he’s still the best Bond villain of all time.
I never saw Blofeld as a very physical guy. When I read the books I always imagine someone like Charles Gray as Blofeld.
If it was about a single scene, then GF wins hands down with his laser creeping towards Bond’s willy.
The taught juxtaposition of the approaching unthinkably ghoulish horror with Goldfinger’s cool detachment, preoccupied with other matters - petty details which are nevertheless more important to GF than Bond’s torturous fate. It make GF a truly chilling psychopath. Up against most villains he’d win…
But Sevalas owns Blofeld like no one else - his aristocratic pretensions relentlessly at odds with the snake scales and fangs they barely conceal.
Many an actor would cause one to undermine the other (Price’s Carver), but in Sevalas this feels entirely authentic. He’s taken Dr No and mixed in his Maggot from The Dirty Dozen to skin crawling effect.
Like Walken, he’s a force of nature that dominates the screen. Fortunately for Sevalis he had a far, far better movie to showcase this.
I like that Telly’s Blofeld has a bit of everything. He’s more of a hands on gangster in the way he skis after Bond with his henchmen, but he’s still very cultured and charismatic. He’s a man who seeks to threaten the world and manipulate people to serve that purpose. It’s a honour to this incarnation that he was the template for Superman: The Animated Series’ version of Lex Luthor.
Absolutely. And it’s also reflected in the costumes and props, the cigarette holder and karakul hat underlining Blofeld’s exotic and sophisticated tastes - while the ski and bob costumes and the gun of his own lend him a sense of physical agility and power previously not seen in a villain.
This is the toughest one yet. Savalas-Blofeld is the scariest Blofeld. A real menace and one that could physically and psychologically match James Bond. However, Goldfinger is just malice-incarnate. When you think of Bond villains, you think of Auric Goldfinger. He’s the most famous Bond villain of probably the most famous Bond movie. ‘Nuff said.
Tough one. Auric Goldfinger is an all-time great. Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld is great too. And while I like Goldfinger better, if they’re in a one-on-one fight, I’ve got to go with Savalas’ Blofeld. He’s just physically more of a threat than Gert Frobe.