Guy Hamilton
Agente 007 - Missione Goldfinger

Bond emerges from the water, dressed as a diver.
He throws a harpoon and surpasses the wall of what appears to be a giant chemical plant/storage facility.
He easily eliminates a guard, sneaks into a silo through a secret passage, and plants a time bomb.
He exits the structure and only then does he remove the wetsuit, flaunting a pristine white tuxedo, without even a wrinkle, to which he pins a freshly picked red carnation, which he kept hidden among his buttocks.

We are at minute 2:30 and you already know why he is James Bond and you just have to hope that the underwear you hung out last night has dried, otherwise today again you'll go to work with the chafed bits reddening your derrière.

Then the song starts...

Gooooold... fi(nnn)gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
He's the maaaan
The man with the Maaaidas TACC!

sings Shirley Bassey, risking a jaw dislocation with every refrain, while the opening title is elevated to an art form.

Give me semi-nude women covered in gold to use as a screen, and then let me die.
Let’s end it here.
7-8 minutes at most.
The most beautiful short film ever.
And we haven't even started yet.

Let’s address it right away, lest someone berates me.
Shirley Eaton's (semi)nude body covered in gold is the pram falling down the staircase.
The severed horse head in the bed. The helicopters flying to the rhythm of Wagner.
Me, high as a kite, peeing in a bush in the restaurant garden at my sister's wedding.
Images ingrained in your memory forever.

That shiny, bare back is one of my first cinematic memories.
It was the mid-80s, a now-legendary era where there were no news previews on TG5, no Striscia la notizia, no annoying game shows or tacky commercials. Movies started right at 8:30 PM and a first-grader kid could still hope to watch a film on TV, on the couch, with mom and dad.
The sight of that gold-covered corpse impressed me more than much more violent scenes I had seen before.
I didn’t understand what had happened.
How she could have died.
So much so that, I remember clearly, I immediately asked my mother for explanations.
Who probably placated me with some nonsense like: "She too never wanted to cut her toenails".

What is surprising about "Goldfinger," its real strength, is certainly its iconicity.
Indeed, even more so, its brashness.
It’s the full awareness of having in hand a brand that is literally conquering the audience of the entire planet and, therefore, the possibility of indefinitely raising the bar, of daring, carelessly, if necessary, about trifles like plausibility or modesty.
Let's even consider the premise of the film.
Auric Goldfinger is a famous horse trainer obsessed with gold who devises a plan to assault Fort Knox, America’s gold reserve.
Thanks to a squadron of planes piloted only by busty women, themselves led by an even bustier leader, he will spray the entire area around the depot with a powerful narcotic neutralizing the more than 40,000 soldiers guarding the fort.
Then, he will detonate a small atomic bomb inside the underground vault, making the gold stored there radioactive for an estimated 58 years, thus increasing his own gold reserves' valuation over tenfold.
While at it, he might as well have organized crossing the Alps aboard my old mixed-fuel Si Piaggio...

In "Goldfinger" everything is delightfully over the top, bordering on vulgar or parody.
Just think of the "Pussy Galore Flying Circus" or the character Oddjob: a loyal mute, strong Korean henchman who kills people by throwing a hat... Even Goldfinger himself, truth be told, isn't believable as a villain: he's a chubby bon vivant who secretes a kind of hormone when he sees a gold bar, like a teenager with his first adult magazine, and loses all reason. And when, during the golf game, he shows up dressed like an Anglo-Tyrolean doll, you mostly want to pinch his cheeks and buy him another cream puff.
They are caricatures, characters, and situations we would nowadays expect to find in a manga where the protagonist must fight against thousands of enemies, each one crazier than the last.
And all together, they work wonderfully.

Coming (verb chosen not accidentally) to much more serious matters, it's the turn of the milf Honor Blackman, who, regardless of her final positioning in the "Best Boom Bond Pussies," deserves credit for being able to act in the scene where she reveals her name without laughing madly.

Pussy Galore is too famous to deserve an in-depth analysis.
Here it's enough to remind both young and old that she has breasts full like ripe melons, two blue eyes of a naughty doe, and legs that look like four, stacked one on top of the other.
She has a very intriguing look, of someone who knows her stuff.
Or someone who could unscrew your penis with just the force of an eyebrow.
She exudes confidence from all her pores, perhaps aware of how her statuesque physique makes all our bumps spray.
Personally, I prefer other types of women, but what is right is right.

Rather, I would like to take advantage of the space granted by the management to draw attention to a secondary (and out of competition) Bond Girl who, in my very humble opinion, deserved more attention.
I’m talking about Tania Mallet, who plays the unfortunate Tilly (basically, the sister of the one painted gold).
A very refined beauty, she probably paid for her excessive resemblance to Daniela Bianchi from the previous "From Russia with Love", and her not exactly explosive measurements.
Pity, because I was taught that no one is denied a lingerie scene.

And now, the updated rankings!

"Best Boom Bond Movie":

1) From Russia with Love – 1963;
2) Goldfinger – 1964;
3) Dr. No – 1962;

"Best Boom Bond Pussies":

1) Daniela Bianchi – Tatiana Romanova;
2) Honor Blackman – Pussy Galore;
3) Ursula Andress – Honey Rider;

Next episode: "Thunderball."