Goldfinger – “No Mr. Bond I expect you to die!”
After the car crash, and after Tilly Masterson, Jill Masterson’s sister, is killed by Oddjob, Bond now is in Goldfinger’s control. He finds himself strapped to a metal table, as Goldfinger is about to demonstrate his laser beam. Here in the film, the laser beam is directed at the base of the table. It then is guided to rise-up between Bond’s legs, into his crotch and eventually kill him. In the book by Fleming, it was a table saw.
The book was published March 23, 1959, while the laser was not invented until 1960. The first working laser was built on May 16, 1960, by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories based on the theoretical work of Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow.
Goldfinger – The LASER and “No Mr. Bond I expect you to die!”
The term laser came to be an acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” Again, EON Productions was clever at integrating a real-life happening, the invention of the laser, into this film which was being shot in 1963 for release in 1964. And at the time, this was a very high-tech scene in Goldfinger! We cannot think of another film using a laser before Goldfinger, so here is another first for EON Productions!
This scene is famous the world over for the laser, and for the dialogue: Bond: “ You expect me to talk?” Goldfinger – “No Mr. Bond I expect you to die!”
A couple of noteworthy facts:
- Notice that Goldfinger is again wearing something gold – the lapels of his jacket are gold!
- When they were filming this scene, of course, the laser was a post-production add-in – they weren’t really using a laser. Instead, to get the important visual of the metal being cut by the laser, one of the production staff was beneath the table with a blow-torch and was cutting through the metal, making Sean Connery genuinely nervous!
- Goldfinger reveals the three things he loves about gold: “All my life I’ve been in love with it’s color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness.”
It is another scene where Bond was to be killed by a more elaborate scheme than necessary. But, it is burned into people’s memories (pun intended) as one of the best scenes from any Bond movie, even any spy movie.
And of course, Bond does survive this. He convinces Goldfinger that he, Bond, is worth more alive than dead because of his potential knowledge of Operation Grand Slam.
This is another great Ken Adam set design and joins other spectacular sets in Goldfinger.