In A View to a Kill, Roger Moore’s final spin as James Bond, 007 surveys the corpse of a Parisian private eye, murdered at dinner with a poison-tipped fishing lure. Bond, pan deader than the victim, gravely observes: “There’s a fly in his soup.” Pause for applause, right? It’s pure, unadulterated, unapologetic Bond. Puns! Death! Fine tailoring! What more could you possibly want?
And yet, 40 years on from its release, A View to a Kill remains the worst-rated, and arguably most hated, official Bond film ever made, scoring a meagre 36 per cent on the reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also one of only two films in the 25-strong franchise ever to be nominated for a Razzie – the other, Die Another Day, is the second-worst-rated on Rotten Tomatoes, though it scored a considerably higher 56 per cent. And that has an invisible car in it.
