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Daniel Craig’s James Bond films feature highly impressive and coordinated action sequences in incredible locations.

But perhaps the truly awe-inspiring stunts came far earlier in the film franchise’s history when the likes of Roger Moore, Sean Connery, and Timothy Dalton were at the 007 helm.

That’s because they could get away with far more daring and dangerous acts as they worked under fewer and more stringent health and safety policies.

Roger Moore may have produced the most slap-sticky Bond movies, but he also managed to pull off several spectacular stunts over the course of six films, notes Far Out Magazine.

The crocodile run in Octopussy is boast-worthy, and so is the Guinness World Record-setting boat jump in Live and Let Die.

However, nothing comes close to the stunt pulled off in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974):

There’s the classic car chase with Bond and his sidekick in a 1974 AMC Hornet when they come across a broken bridge.

Bond then decides to gain significant ground on the villains by jumping the width of the river with a daring corkscrew car twist:

First tested as a computer simulation by Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, the stunt was then performed in live action and was landed in one take by the stuntman Loren ‘Bumps’ Willert.

Driving the Hornet, Willert jumped the bridge and, with the help of the structure’s curvature, managed to achieve a 360-degree spin in mid-air about the longitudinal axis, achieving a remarkable ‘aerial twist’.

Okay, fine, it wasn’t actually Moore himself who nailed the stunt but the acclaim belongs to the 007 character.

Willert was given a $30 000 bonus on the spot for his remarkable achievement, which made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the first ‘Astro spiral’ jump on film.

As you can imagine, Moore’s Man with the Golden Gun went down as a significant addition to Bond film history.

It’s just a great pity that composer John Barry somewhat ruined the moment by adding a slide whistle sound effect over the stunt, taking away the weight of the moment and making it seem a little gimmicky.

Barry did, later on, admit that the whistle “broke the golden rule” and took some shine off what was “a truly dangerous moment…true James Bond style”.

The stunt still stands the test of time.

[source:faroutmag]