Octopussy (1983)

"You must be joking! 007 on an island populated exclusively by women? We won't see him till dawn...!"

Now that's more like it. Exotic locations, high stakes, great set pieces... the Bond franchise has got its mojo back. Well, unless you happen to be a coulrophobe, that is. Then you'd have problems.

It's the early '80s, the Raj is all the rage and Bond hasn't done India yet, so Octopussy gets a fantastic setting with Delhi, the Taj Mahal, and even a massive hunt riding elephants during which Bond meets a tiger. For a baddie we have Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince who, for some reason, is working with the Soviets, his natural enemies or so one would have thought, but it makes for a good film. The real baddie has a Cold War flavour for once in the shape of Steven Berkoff's nuke-happy Russian general, Orlov, although our old friend Gogol is around to stop things going too far. 1983 is a somewhat appropriate year to raise the spectre of nuclear annihilation, of course...

Roger Moore is 55 and looks it, but he just about gets away with it: his charisma and acting chops are as impressive as ever. Maud Adams is an ok Bond hgirl too, although for once the set pieces tend to outshine both the sex and the baddies.

This film is absolutely the least like the source material of any so far (the Fleming short story is actually about an octopus), but how can you dislike a film where Q turns up in a hot air balloon? After two duds, Bond is back on track.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

"I admit it's a little kinky..."

It says a lot for the recent high standards of Bond films that, while The Man with the Golden Gun is a splendidly enjoyable film in which both Roger Moore and Christopher Lee are excellent, it is in comparison not as good as many of its predecessors, merely very good rather than superb. Still, the run of good Bond films continues.

Lulu's stab at theme tune is a perfectly good one even if it's no one's favourite and she's so Shirley Bassey. And those lyrics... "Who will he bang?" Oo er!

Q is back, this time paired with a ballistics expert played by the superb James Cossins, who I will always remember fondly from a certain episode of Some Mothers do 'Ave 'Em. But it's an unusual Bond film, the villain being an assassin whose grand scheme to monopolise solar power seems almost an afterthought. But seeing solar power as a panacea? And one has to raise an eyebrow, given the current price of oil, that supplies of oil and gas were thought to be exhausted back in 1974, even if the central point is true.

The film is a splendid series of entertaining set pieces, this time in various parts of the Far East. I was a little perturbed to find Sumo wrestlers in Thailand, though: it's almost as though all eastern Asian countries and cultures are considered interchangeable. Our agent in Hong Kong even has convenient relatives in Thailand. Still, schoolgirls kicking ass with martial arts are cool.

I'm not sure about including that annoying sheriff from the last film as comic relief, but the film is another triumph. We get the first of the formulaic endings, too, with M phoning Bond while he's otherwise occupied with Goodnight ("She's just cumming, Sir"). The Roger Moore era is in full swing already.

Jane and the Lost City (1987)

"Do you mean... the Empire should rally to the flag?"

Blimey. This film is… a bit of an oddity. I borrowed the DVD from a mate after being told that it starred both Sam Jones, star of Flash Gordon, and Jasper Carrott. Any film starring that combination just has to be seen. And it is in fact rather amusing. But I'm somewhat bewildered at how a film like this ever came to be made!

The Jane in question is the star of an old comic strip from the Daily Mirror which ran during the Second World War and was exceedingly popular with the average Tommy, mainly because Jane's gimmick was that she kept accidentally losing her clothes. Yes, I know- political correctness gone mad. One wonders what Laura Mulvey would make of this film. So, naturally, there's an element of soft porn.

Except… there's not that much of it. Yes, Jane is reduced to her underwear about half a dozen times, but that's about it. This is essentially an H. Rider Haggard spoof in the style of 'Allo 'Allo, with a bunch of Brits (and Sam Jones) competing with some comedy Nazis to find a lost city in the middle of Africa which has loads of diamonds.

The script is by one Mervyn Haisman, known to us Doctor Who fans as, among other things, the co-scriptwriter of The Web of Fear- that is, the one who isn't well known for espousing silly conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail. That isn't the only Doctor Who connection, either: the programme's current production designer, Michael Pickwoad, was also production designer on this.

The film is essentially a farce, and a rather amusing one, with a few spoofs from other films. I never thought I'd see a version of the shower scene from Psycho involving Jasper Carrott as the baddie, but I just have. And there's a bit of a Casablanca spoof at the end. It also has more mildly racist, colonial era, African clichés and stereotypes than I could even keep track of; the first five minutes alone feature pith helmets, spear-wielding natives, a dying man whose last words are of a lost city, and a vast chasm to be crossed by swinging on a vine. This lost city (which is not named) was not, of course, built by Africans, heaven forbid. Still, at least the city's queen is an African, not a white woman as per She. Even if she did go to Roedean and Oxford.

It's all very Boys' Own, and there's an obvious Indiana Jones influence. There's a bit where they travel by map, which is a bit funny if you happen to have recently seen The Muppets at the cinema. I won't make any great claims, but this very silly film is rather fun if you can get hold of it.