Back from the past

The last James Bond movie Skyfall seems a long time ago, mostly because why the biennial cycle has been broken to accommodate Sam Mendes with a second stint as director, though why this has to be consecutive I don't know.  Martin Campbell was at the helm for the two best James Bond outings in the last 20 years - GoldenEye and the rebooted Casino Royale - and they were 11 years apart.  As it stands, we'll only have one addition to the Bond canon in seven years (Quantum of Solace, 2008, Skyfall, 2012, 'Bond 24', 2015) and Daniel Craig was no spring chicken when he started out.
I wrote out a text  just before Skyfall came out but mislaid it.  Recently, while searching under the bed for something Kimberley had rolled under the 2cm high gap between the carpet and the bed drawer, I came across it.  Always meaning to transcribe it to the blog, here it is.

When discussing his favourite James Bond music on Classic FM ahead of the release of Skyfall of which he was the artist tasked with the score, Thomas Newman highlighted John Barry's "lush, Las Vegas soundtrack" (although it was the laser killer satellite's theme) in Diamonds Are Forever.  Of course, Barry was a supreme composer for Bond and elsewhere but the spotlight placed on this particular slice elevated it in my consciousness and thus my consciousness elevated it.
As the seventh 007 film and Sean Connery's last official appearance (though he would pop up again in the unofficial remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again), Diamonds Are Forever is one of the weaker in the canon.  Though a major inspiration for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (especially with the minions), it was held in such low regard that Charles Gray's portrayal of Ernst Stavro Blofeld was effectively excised and when 'Blofeld' is finally finished off in For Your Eyes Only (though whether it was a double or not is open to question, plus because of Kevin McClory's estate, everything related to SPECTRE was off-limits until recently, so it's just bald man in a wheelchair), it essentially is a return to the Telly Savalas depiction with the neck cushion from the incident with the tree in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  I wouldn't go as far as my fellow aficionado Chris Foxwright in labelling it the the worst of the official series (although I do have a soft spot for all of Bond's outings and cannot come to condemn any of them entirely, Quantum of Solace is the nadir for me; Diamonds Are Forever would not be in my bottom five).  While playing from YouTube '007 and counting', in a spare moment I thought to check up - on Wikipedia - all the aspects that damaged this opinion of the movie.
Chris did not mention Mr Wint and Mr Kidd as negative factors, mind.  I was surprised, to say the least, by their being voted on entertainment website IGN the worst Bond villains of all time, with Bambi and Thumper (who are pretty useless) from the same big screen outing at number two.  I felt this exceedingly harsh, though the trouble with write-ins is that there is no control sample which accounts for, among other things, imperfect knowledge (e.g. who has seen all the films, powers of recall, etc.) and those who can be bothered to vote in the first place.  In my view, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd combine an oily charm with their deap-seated malevolence and the fact that they are homosexual lovers (without overdoing it) indicates emotional undercurrents absent in most underlings, a sexlessness typified by Emilio Largo's right-hand man, Vargas - a no. 2 to a no. 2 as it were ("Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love.")  Of course, they do not hold a flame to Red Grant or Oddjob but then few do.
Were we to confine ourselves to principal henchmen (unlike the IGN poll) for the simple matter of like-for-like comparison, given that some villains make a limited contribution (Ho Fat and ludicrous karate school in The Man With The Golden Gun spring to mind - just how is Bond meant to meet his demise if the swords are withdrawn before the fights?), it can be shown that Wint and Kidd are far from the worst.  They are more effective than Professor Dent in Dr No (though they really should have done in the unconscious super-spy before placing him in the pipeline, even if they did nearly in Morten Slumber's Crematorium). From Russia With Love and Goldfinger stand above the crowd; Wint and Kidd are slightly above Vargas in Thunderball and definitely superior to Hans in You Only Live Twice who seems to only feed Blofeld's piranhas before being fed to them himself after losing his only fistfight with Bond.  Irma Bunt is one of the great underlings, especially so as she is only to survive and get away (until the reboot and Mr White in Quantum of Solace).  And there we have if from the silver screen projections before Diamonds Are Forever.
I don't propose to go through all Bond's adventure released thereafter but having seen them all more than twice, I'll pinpoint the principal henchmen who did not make par with Wint and Kidd.  Cha in Moonraker is so bad he doesn't even make it past the halfway stage (to be replaced by Jaws, who is both iconic and silly - his indestructability a counterpart to Bond's own but surviving many a situation that would end 007's career).  The situation in Licence To Kill is rather confused as to who is directly under Franz Sanchez but if it be Milton Krest, all he does is allow his shark to feast on Felix Leiter and run a drug-running operation incompetently; if Sanchez's 'lieutenant', then he is pretty poor, his principal impression being skewered on a fork lift truck; the third possibility, Benicio del Toro's character gives a good run but is rather junior.  Elliott Carver's blond beefcake bodyguard gets injured more than that which he inflicts (however, Tomorrow Never Dies is a Bond painting-by-numbers flick).  With the reboot, the main men of the main baddies were anonymous and easily taken out of the picture and Skyfall did not have a no. 2 worthy of the description.  I am not syaing that those unmentioned (Tee-Hee, Nick Nack, Gobinda, Emilio Locke, May Day, Necros, Xenia Onatopp, Renard, Zao) are necessarily superior to Mr Wint and Mr Kidd but, along with this couple, they form a memorable rogues' gallery alongside Red Grant (or is Rosa Klebb the real no. 2?) and Oddjob.