The Man With The Golden Gun

Special Edition

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Action	Featurette-Inside "The Man With The Golden Gun" Featurette-"Double-O-Stuntmen" Audio Commentary-Guy Hamilton (Director) & Some Cast and Crew Original Theatrical Trailers Original Television Spots Original Radio Spots Still Photo Gallery Booklet
Rating
Year Released	1974
Running Time	119:48
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (101:03)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	2,4	Director	Guy Hamilton
Studio Distributor	Fox Home Video	Starring	Roger Moore Christopher Lee Britt Ekland Maud Adams Herve Villechaize Lois Maxwell Bernard Lee Desmond Llewelyn
Case	Transparent Amaray	Starring
RPI	$34.95	Music	John Barry

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, 256 Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, 256 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

Based on the final Bond book, The Man With The Golden Gun places our man Bond (Roger Moore) in peril as he becomes the target of the reclusive and exceptionally effective assassin, Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). Scaramanga has sent his signature, a golden bullet, to MI6 with "007" engraved into it indicating that James is his new target. Bond is taken from his assignment and summoned to M's (Bernard Lee) office. M wants Bond to take a leave of absence but Bond won't hear of it and proposes that he hunt down and confront the mysterious Scaramanga instead. M agrees and the action begins! Being a Bond movie things are blown up, people are shot, beautiful women are seduced and so on. Bloody good show old chap!

Transfer Quality

Video

This DVD contains a good 1.78:1 16x9 enhanced video transfer that I'm happy to say generally continues the high standard set by the earlier Bond releases.

This transfer is as sharp as you have any right to expect from a film that is after all, over 26 years of age. I thought that there was enough shadow detail visible in this transfer to support a mark of good and that the black level was excellent.

Colour saturation is also very good and while skin tones do have a slightly brown appearance there is nothing else wrong with the colours in this transfer.

MPEG artefacts were not a problem in this transfer but film grain is almost always noticeable. I didn't however, find it distracting.

I found only minor occurrences of moiré effects. The most significant example I saw was at 1:13-1:16 on Nick Nack's waist coat.. This transfer does however, suffer from minor telecine wobble throughout. It's not annoying, but it's there nevertheless - see 42:46-42:48 for a typical example. Film artefacts were quite common and at times quite obvious. The worst example I noted was at 0:34-0:41. I also saw a fairly major mark at 35:33 but fortunately it is only visible for a fraction of a second.

This is an RSDL disc with the layer change occurring at 101:03. It is placed right on a scene change and while noticeable, is not disruptive to the flow of the movie.

*Video Ratings Summary*
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
MPEG Artefacts/Grain
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

This soundtrack is fine and while not surround, is on par with many of the other Region 4 Bond releases and on the whole is a pleasing effort.

There are two audio tracks present on this disc. Both are Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo tracks encoded at 256 Kb/s. One is the main English track and the other is an English Director's Commentary. I listened to the main English stereo track and the Audio Commentary. You should note that the packaging is incorrect in this regard. It says that the audio on this disc is in mono.

Dialogue was always clear and audio sync was never a problem.

The score is typical Bond and credited to John Barry. It is well chosen, effective and adds nicely to the film without drawing undue attention to itself.

The stereo soundtrack is good and does make good use of both channels on occasion. I noted one example for you which can be found at 4:17-4:29. In this example, the evil laughter in Scaramanga's "Fun House" moves between the left and right channels. There were no pops or clicks and the effects were nicely matched to the action. All in all a solid effort.

The subwoofer was not called upon at all.

*Audio Ratings Summary*
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

There is a good collection of high quality extras on this disc as well as some stuff that could just as easily have been left out.

Featurette - Inside The Man With The Golden Gun (30:56)

Presented in Full Frame video with Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, this featurette is a documentary about the making of this particular film. It shows passages from the film, archival footage, still images and interview footage with members of the cast and crew. It is narrated by Patrick MacNee and is very good.

Featurette - Double-O-Stuntmen (28:35)

Narrated by Marie Clairu this featurette discusses one of the most important aspects of Bond films, the stunt work. As with the 'making of' documentary, film footage, archival footage, still photographs and interview footage is included. The interviews feature many of the main stuntmen from the majority of the movies and is again, very good.

Audio Commentary - Guy Hamilton plus members of the cast and crew

This audio commentary is in the same format as the other Bond films which is a collection of interview snippets introduced by a narrator. It does contain a wealth of information and is very well put together.

Theatrical Trailers

Two trailers are available in this sub-menu. One is a teaser trailer and the other a more traditional, longer trailer.

The teaser trailer has an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. Quality wise, it isn't the best. The audio is quite shrill and the colour is distorted somewhat.

The release trailer is 16x9 enhanced with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. There are quite a few film artefacts and the colour is a little faded but the quality is acceptable and certainly better than that of the teaser trailer.

TV Spots

The quality of the two TV spots presented here falls somewhere between the teaser trailer and the main trailer. They feature Dolby Digital 2.0 sound that is generally clear but you do hear the odd pop and crackle. The video has its fair share of film artefacts and slight telecine wobble but is watchable. Why these are included I'll never know as they each repeat the same stuff and are tedious to say the least!

Radio Spots

There are three radio spots available for listening on this menu. They each feature Dolby Digital 2.0 sound that is easily understood should you wish to sample what is really a boring inclusion.

The Man With The Golden Gun Gallery

This section is broken down into the following sub-sections each of which includes a number of 16x9 enhanced still images:

Portraits, 17 images
Press Conference, 2 images
Phuket, 29 images
Bangkok, 11 images
Bond with the AMC car, 8 images
Dojo, 10 images
Aboard Scaramanga's Junk, 6 images
Hong Kong, 7 images
Pinewood, 11 images
The Golden Gun and Flying Car, 3 images
Around The World With 007, 6 images.

Booklet

An eight page booklet is included which contains snippets of information about the producers, production of the film and the stunts. The booklet also includes a section which lists the chapter stops.

R4 vs R1

The Region 1 and Region 4 discs appear to be identical which makes the Region 4 disc the winner due to the superiority of PAL.

Summary

The Man With The Golden Gun is a good Bond film but by no means a classic. I didn't find the Scaramanga character particularly villainous and the story didn't quite flow. Still, Bond fans should be happy with the quality of this disc. While not without flaws, both the video and audio transfers are solid efforts.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Loewe Xemix 5006DD using SCART (RGB) output. Connected using ConCord interconnect cables.
Display	Grundig MW82-50/8 IDTV direct view 16:9 CRT connected via SCART (RGB). Calibrated with Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder	Built into Amplifier.
Amplification	Sherwood 8090R DD and DTS receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
Speakers	Mains and Rears: Tannoy Mercury M1. Centre: Tannoy Mercury MC. Subwoofer: Polk Audio PSW-120.