Classic Beach Boys tune, covered by Gidea Park in the pre-credits teaser of A View to a Kill. It accompanies the sequence in which Bond (Roger Moore) takes the runner from a disabled snowmobile and surfs down a glacier—continuing a trend in the Moore-starring 007 films toward including memorable musical tracks as comic relief.

“California Girls,” however, represented a low point in the trend. In the early Bond films, the filmmakers had stretched the bounds of moviemaking to create the ultimate in white-knuckle action sequences. Eventually, they started to toss in a little humor to bring the audience back into their seats. But by the time they were backing a well-directed snow-surfing sequence with a Beach Boys song, this tendency had started to undercut the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Fortunately, such touches were abandoned during the Daniel Craig era of super-serious Bond epics.