Bond In Motion (Part One)

Location: London, England
Address: 45 Wellington Street
Date: Aug 2015
Website: www.londonfilmmuseum.com

  The London Film Museum at Covent Garden has been displaying the largest collection of James Bond movie vehicles ever assembled.  At the time of writing this post it has been extended until further notice.  It is also going to include vehicles from the latest Bond movie Spectre.  All of the items on display are originals used in filming.  When we were in London we could not pass up this opportunity as we have been enjoying the 007 movies our entire lives.   Below are some of the pictures we took during our visit.  We have presented them chronologically by film.  This is part one of two blog posts. ( Click here for Part Two. ) This post covers movies where Sean Connery, George Lazenby or Roger Moore play the role of James Bond.

Dr. No (1962)

From Russia with Love (1963)

Goldfinger (1964)

James Bond plants a tracking device on this Rolls Royce which belongs to Goldfinger.  Odd Job shows James how he can decapitate a statue with his flying hat and crush a golf ball with his bare hands.  Then he drives Goldfinger away.  Goodbye, Mr. Bond.

Thunderball (1965)

One of the tow sleds used by Emilio Largo and his scuba diving army during the underwater battle scene.

You Only Live Twice (1967) 

Little Nellie gets assembled from the parts kept in several cases.  Her weapons come in handy as Bond uses flame throwers,aerial mines and rockets to escape the pursuing helicopters.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo owns and drives this vehicle to help Bond escape after he is shot at in a phone booth.  The chase takes them onto a race track with a race in progress.  They finally make their escape as a snowstorm sweeps in and they take refuge in a barn.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

When Bond steals a Tectronics lunar buggy and breaks through a wall, he is pursued by several guards on these Honda ATCs.  He jumps out of the buggy and then he kicks one of the guards off his bike,steals it and drives away.

After jumping off the bike, Bond gets into this mustang with Tiffany Case and has to elude police through the old Las Vegas strip.  He finally escapes by tipping the car up on 2 wheels and squeezing through a narrow alleyway.

Bad guy Ernst Stavro Blofeld tries to escape in this sub by being lowered into the water by a crane. Bond uses the crane to swing the sub into the control room before the oil rig is ultimately blown to pieces.

Live and Let Die (1973)

Bond races this boat through the bayous of Louisiana and jumps it over Sheriff J.W. Pepper.  One of the boats chasing Bond goes straight into Sheriff Pepper's police car.  James' engine is hit by gunfire and he manages to bring the boat up on land again before switching vehicles.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

After sending Jaws' car off a cliff and into a house, Bond escapes from a helicopter by entering the water where this car converts into a sub.  A quick missile shot straight up at the copter and he and Anya Amasova are alone at last.

It doesn't last for long as some divers using this scuba equipment attack the car.  Bond escapes by emitting a black cloud like an octopus and by dropping a mine.  He then drives out of the water and up onto a crowded beach to the dismay of the sunbathers.

James rides this Wetbike in order to reach Karl Stromberg's Atlantis sea fortress.

Moonraker (1979)

This is a drawing of one of the cars that Bond and Holly Goodhead take in order to sneak in as pilots onto one of Hugo Drax's space shuttles.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Bond escapes with Melina Havelock in this little yellow vehicle.  It tips over but they are helped to right it again by some friendly villagers.  The chase continues down a windy road.  Bond's vehicle mostly takes the off road shortcuts down the hill.  The chase ends with the bad guys stuck in a tree.

This is a model of the Neptune sub that Bond and Melina use to retrieve the ATAC console from the wreckage of a ship.  They also win a battle with another submersible but no sooner do they reach the surface then Aristotle Kristatos steals the ATAC console from them.

Octopussy (1983)

James reverses this jacket to switch from a brown tweed outfit into that of a colonel so he can sneak into an army base.

The plane is disguised as the rear of a horse in a horse trailer.  The plane drives out and the wings unfold so Bond can escape.  He takes off and is pursued by a missile.  He flies through a hangar and turns just in time to make it out the back door before the missile explodes inside.  Running low on fuel, Bond manages to land and pull the plane up to a gas station.

After fighting off his attackers with the help of some street performers, Bond escapes in his taxi.  He throws out his backgammon winnings into the street and the crowds rush to collect it blocking the pursuing cab from passing.  Ultimately, they tear through a billboard and another drops down in its place hiding their exit.

 

Bond uses this gator sub to sneak onto Octopussy's private island.

Never Say Never Again (1983) 

A View to a Kill (1985)

Bond commandeers a taxi and then proceeds to jump the car onto the roof of a bus.  He then smashes through a traffic barrier that takes the roof off of his car. Another collision then splits the car in half before Bond abandons it and jumps from the Pont Alexandre III bridge and onto a boat before landing into a wedding cake.  Congratulations.

Bond jumps from a horse onto this Rolls Royce while trying to escape, only to find that it is being driven by May Day (Grace Jones) and that his friend Tibbett is dead in the back seat.

This is part one of two blog posts.  Click here for Part Two .

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Map of Our World
London Film Museum

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Post # 78

Halloween Haunt

Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
Address: 9580 Jane Street
Date: Oct 2014
Website: www.canadaswonderland.com

  For some people the rides and roller coasters at Canada's Wonderland are scary enough.   If you need something even scarier, once a year the park takes on a Halloween theme   Since 2005 the park has been open on October weekend evenings offering the usual rides along with haunted mazes and monsters.  We have never attended the evening Halloween Haunt event, but in 2014 we attended the park during the day while it was all decorated.  Unfortunately, this meant that some of the rides such as the bumper cars had been shut down and turned into a scary clown maze.

  Even the children's section of the park gets the spooky treatment, with terrifying things like the Peanuts gang or Sesame Street.

 

  Everywhere you looked were signs that Halloween was approaching.  From the orange and yellow flowers along the pathways to the prizes at the game booths.  Instead of playing to win a regular minion doll there were mummy, dracula and skeleton minions.

    One ride that reminds us of Halloween can be found year round at Wonderland.  That ride is The Bat.  First you get pulled backwards up a hill and then you hear the hiss of the release.  The coaster races down through the station and right into a bow tie loop.  It then does another full loop before stopping on the second hill.  You get pulled up the second hill until you hear another hiss.  Then you do the whole thing again, but this time backwards.  Oooh, scary stuff kids, but especially in October.

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Map of Our World
Canada's Wonderland , The Bat

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Post # 77

Back To The Future Day

Location: Universal City, California, USA
Address: 100 Universal City Plaza
Date: May 2012
Website: www.universalstudioshollywood.com

  When Marty McFly went into the future he chose the date of October 21st 2015.  He arrived in a world of hoverboards and flying cars as part of the imagined future of Back To The Future II.  By the time you are reading this post that date may have already arrived.  The future is here!  When we visited Universal Studios some 27 years after the first movie, part of our plan was to go back to where Back To The Future was filmed.
  Courthouse Square on the Universal Studios back lot is where most of the action takes place.  To visit this area you need to take the studio's popular tram tour.  As we walked through the park heading to our tour we noticed Doc Brown's Chicken which has nothing to do with the movies except that it uses the character of Dr. Emmett Brown.

   What we really wanted to see was the square from the first movie of the trilogy.  In the movie, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) time travels from 1985 back to the year 1955.  The square is changed to reflect the town of Hill Valley in both of those years.  In the sequel, Back To The Future II, he goes forward 30 years to the year 2015 and the town has changed again. Unfortunately, Universal has also undergone some changes and many of the buildings are not the same as they were during filming in the 1980s.  Some were changed on purpose and others were lost during a fire in 2008.  Back To The Future III also features the clock tower, but mainly in an opening flashback of sorts. Anyways, on with the tour!
 

  As the tram rounded the first corner and entered the square there was a gas station on our right.  We remember the Texaco gas station from the movie, but this is not it.  If it is the same gas station it is no longer where it used to be. This gas station is actually standing where Lou's Cafe was in 1955 and where the gymnastics studio was in 1985.  It was inside Lou's Cafe where Marty encounters his father George for the first time.  In the sequel when Marty goes to the year 2015 it has become a cafe again.  It has become a retro cafe called Cafe 80's.  Across the courtyard in the picture above you can see a little pointed rooftop.  This was a movie theatre and in 2015 it was playing Jaws 19.

  Since we were busy filming the gas station we missed out on getting a picture of one of the most important streets. Once we realized the courthouse was behind us we turned around, but it was too late.  The street on the left side of the courthouse is where Marty speeds down trying to reach 88 miles per hour at the exact moment a bolt of lightning hits the town clock tower.  You can see a tiny bit of the street where he enters the square on the right hand side of the picture above.  You can also see a tiny bit of the buildings and street on the left hand side of the picture below.  This part of the street would be where Doc had hung wires across hoping to harness the lightning's power.  Sadly, the end of this street was lost in the 2008 studio fire.  That means there is no longer another movie theatre down there for Marty to crash into after returning to the present, or for a theatre full of gremlins to enjoy a showing of Snow White.

  At the top of this post is a picture of the courthouse as it looked when we visited.  It is not looking quite the same as it was in the Back To The Future movies and the clock was missing.  Still it was nice to go back in time and visit a place where one of our favourite movies was created.  We wish we could go back in time and get a better picture of the DeLorean DMC-12  below. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow someone will invent a time machine or hoverboards or flying cars, or maybe they are still 30 years away in an unknown future.

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See more locations from the Universal Studios Backlot.

Map of Our World
Universal Studios (Courthouse Square)

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Post # 76