Note: One of the arsonists had steel teeth, which is the sole element to survive from the original source material. The book ends with the young Canadian continuing her tour of America, devoted to the memory of the “Spy who loved her.” To say none of this happens in the movie would be a vast understatement but, though to be fair in this instance, it was more a case of Ian Fleming not being happy with the book and only selling the rights to the title. She is spared rape and murder by these nefarious criminals when Bond arrives, having had a flat tire while passing by, he then defeats the two villains and beds the grateful girl. There is no greater example of this than in the adaptation of The Spy Who Loved Me as the book was about a young Canadian woman who while touring America is asked to “house sit” for pair of unscrupulous owners of a motel who, unbeknownst to her, have hired a pair of arsonists to burn down the motel for insurance purposes. It’s at this point in the franchise that it has becomes abundantly clear that the filmmakers have no real interest in adapting Ian Fleming’s novels, instead, they simply slap one of his book titles onto a script that will bear no resemblance to the source material. Can even Bond’s bottomless levels of charm solve that bit of “awkwardness” and save the world? After the two rather “low stakes” spy adventures found in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun it was finally time for Roger Moore to step things up a tad and have a balls-to-the-wall action spectacular, a movie that would not only pit James Bond against an honest to goodness supervillain, one with massive sets and a pair of truly impressive henchmen, but he’d also find himself teamed up with Russia’s top agent, one whose love he’d just so happened to have recently killed.

The spy who loved me book