Spy Movies and Spy-Spoof Movies

I suppose this is a somewhat misleading title.  I'm mostly thinking about the Bond franchise, as well as the Pink Panther movies.  I have owned a Bond set from the UK with all the Bond movies through the first Daniel Craig film (though not the spoof Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again) and finally was inspired to start watching them with my son after Sean Connery's passing a few months back.  I also have a Pink Panther box set, though it took me a while to track it down. As it happens The Return of the Pink Panther isn't in that box, due to rights issues as well, though the library had it, and it didn't take too long before it came in.

I don't want to spend too much time dissecting the Bond films, but a lot of them are super creaky and unbelievably sexist (with several plots hinging on Bond (particularly when played by Sean Connery) converting women over to his side just through the strength of his animal magnetism).  I basically grew up with the Roger Moore Bond and am very unsure how I will react to seeing them with my much more critical 50 year-old eyes.  Still, there is no question that for me Bond was Moore, though I also like Pierce Brosnan in the role. 

But I thought it was important to watch them in sequence.  As incredible as it seems, as far as I can recall, I only saw Connery in Goldfinger (on HBO) and in Never Say Never Again while it was in the theatres.  I would have thought the Connery films would have crept up more often in the HBO line-up, but perhaps not or somehow I just kept missing them.  I'm fairly sure I saw all the Roger Moore Bond films,* probably only the first Dalton Bond and the first two Brosnan Bonds. I've never watched any of the grittier Daniel Craig films, and I have no intention of starting now.

In general, the Pink Panther films hold up a bit better, except when playing Inspector Dreyfus's psychotic break for laughs.  I probably did watch the first one, The Pink Panther, though I certainly didn't remember it very clearly, though the bit with the two men in gorilla suits and the cars crisscrossing as they try to escape does ring a bit of a bell.  That one was pretty baggy and would have benefited from a lot more trimming.  The ones I remember better are A Shot in the Dark, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, and Revenge of the Pink Panther.  I even saw Trail of the Pink Panther (the one that was compiled from a bunch of outtakes from the other films).  That one was pretty bad, and I think we'll just stop with Revenge.  However, I'm not entirely sure whether I had seen The Return of the Pink Panther before.  There was a lot that didn't seem familiar, particularly all the bits where Christopher Plummer is off by himself being an action hero.  (Stylistically, this is much closer to the original Pink Panther movie.)

* Actually, after finally getting to it last weekend, I don't think I had seen Live and Let Die before, which is a totally strange Blaxploitation-Bond crossover with an amazing title song by Paul McCartney and Wings.  So it was an odd coincidence that Yaphet Kotto, the main villain from the film, just passed away a day ago. RIP