In order of their crapitude:
- Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) The Man with the Golden Gun
Never has there been more of a waste of a hot girl in a bikini. If she's an example of what MI6 was reduced to in the 70s then M may as well have been Benny Hill. Bond essentially spends half the film cleaning-up after Goodnight's mistakes and it not only weakens the believability of the film, but reduces Bond to a glorified babysitter. Ekland's lack of any kind of acting skills only makes you wonder how many times she boinked Cubby Broccoli to get the part. She wasn't even that good-looking! - Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo) The Living Daylights
USELESS! Absolutely, completely useless! About as useless as, saaay, dragging a cello all over Europe on a spy mission. Here we thought she may have had some balls, after all, she was an assassin, but no. Turns out the KGB just pulled her out of second chair and told her to go shoot somebody. She wasn't really a spy at all! She then spends the rest of the movie with poor Bond dragging her all over creation while she drags that damned cello along behind her. d'Abo was cute in those days, not sexy. Real Bond girls don't do cute. - Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) License to Kill
Who?? They don't get more forgettable than this. She was so dull I'd rather see Bond sleep with TV's Madame. At least Madame wouldn't nag Bond as much and actually say something pithy now and then. Yet another Bond girl with no purpose save to get fucked in the end, Lowell made an already dull character into a harpy. Needed a good punch in the mouth she did. - Stacy Sutton (Tanya Roberts) A View to a Kill
Yet another in a series of girls reduced to helpless baggage for Bond to rescue and provide minor plot points. Roberts' wholesome yogurt-and-aerobics California image doesn't fit the Bond mould. Seriously. Could you picture Octopussy doing aerobics? How about Solitaire or Melina Havelock? Didn't think so. Sutton's unworldly, unsexy, and far too vapid to be remotely intriguing enough for Bond to want. All the casting apparently called for was an ability to shout, "JAAAAMES!!!!," with some measure of alarm. The only thing less believable than Tanya Roberts being a doctor of geology is.... - Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) The World Is Not Enough
Denise Richards playing a nuclear physicist. In the Bond world, we've been asked to believe that there are:- Spies who kill men by squeezing them to death with their thighs,
- Valets who kill people by throwing hats at them,
- Assassins who bite people in the neck,
- Master criminals who kill people with pointy orthopedic shoes,
- An entire secret fleet of space shuttles somewhere in the Amazon jungle,
- Exploding a few tons of TNT in the San Andreas fault would cause half of California to sink into the ocean,
and yet all of these fictions pale before the ultimate absurdity of Richards having even a college degree let alone a doctorate in physics. I can't deny that it's possible there are nuclear physicists who regularly wear patent leather hot pants, but I must say I believe it improbable given how long it takes for even mere geniuses to attain a doctorate in nuclear physics. Richards' take on the role was all wrong. We know Richards can do sexy, she's proved that. But she took Christmas Jones, a joke we already saw coming (ahem) in the credits, and played her as cute, pert, and perky. If Bond women are never cute, then they are absolutely never pert and perky.
Christmas Jones was almost enough to make Bond go atheist.
Special mention:
Lynn-Holly Johnson (Bibi Dahl)
For Your Eyes Only
Bibi tried to be a Bond girl, and I do mean
girl, but thankfully Bond kept his pants on and our eyes stayed open. How I wished Melina would have shot her right in the beginning. Buy the damned crossbow, walk out to the ice, and just plug Bibi right there and then. You know that's what she was thinking when she bought it. Pity she was interrupted. Children have
no place in a Bond movie.