A sequence in The Man with the Golden Gun that ended up on the cutting room floor. It involved the tail end of the beach duel that pits Bond (Roger Moore) and his Walther against the golden automatic of Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). Lee explained the missing sequence: “In the duel, they cut out a great deal of footage that they felt would hold up the pace of the picture. As you recall, Bond turns around and Scaramanga is gone. The next time you see me, I’m coming around the corner of the ‘fun house.’ That was the way the final film came out.

“The way we shot it originally, you could see by the expression on my face that I wasn’t going to play by the rules of the duel. So, as Bond is walking away from me, I dive out of the frame and just disappear. I had cheated, which presents an interesting psychological point, because if Scaramanga really thought he was the best assassin in the world, what was he doing cheating?

“Bond realizes I’m hiding in the rocks, and we have a long conversation, shouting at each other. Bond is thirty or forty yards away, also hiding behind some rocks. It’s all very cat-and-mouse. Bond tries to flush me out by flinging a thermos of petrol in the air and exploding it above my head. We actually shot that, and it does appear in the trailer. I dodge the thermos, and we end up in the ‘fun house.’ But in the cutting room, they decided that two men standing behind rocks shouting at each other didn’t work. And they were probably right. It was too conventional.”[1]

[1] Christopher Lee, interview by Steven Jay Rubin, Los Angeles, February 15, 1989.