The “perfect” spy movie Quentin Tarantino called “a helluva lot better” than James Bond
It makes sense that Quentin Tarantino, a filmmaker who has a long and occasionally contentious history with the James Bond franchise, would declare one of the most blatant 007 rip-offs as being better than the real thing, especially when it’s a glorified B-movie.
While the two-time Academy Award winner doesn’t dwell too long on the films he could, or should, have made but didn’t, he’s brought up his abandoned adaptation of Casino Royale enough times to make it clear that he really wishes he’d had the chance to tackle cinema’s most iconic secret agent.
Spycraft isn’t something Tarantino has dealt with in his filmography, and while it would have been a jarring change of pace to pivot from the increasingly effects-heavy Pierce Brosnan era into a distinctly smaller-scale picture that featured the same actor in the lead role, the mere potential is enough to make it one of the most tantalising pictures he never made.
He didn’t even bother watching Daniel Craig’s debut for that very reason, and he wasn’t entirely sold on the star’s five-film tenure in general, with Skyfall a particular point of contention. The Pulp Fiction creator once called From Russia with Love his all-time favourite 007 adventure, so it was only natural that the pretender to the throne he considered greater than the king emerged in the 1960s.
One of the inevitable side effects of the success of Sean Connery’s initial run as Bond from Dr No onward was the deluge of spoofs and knock-offs that emerged to try and capitalise on their popularity. Henry Levin’s 1966 effort, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, was just one of many, but it holds a special place in Tarantino’s heart.
He literally said as much, too: “My favourite spy movie, right along with the James Bond movies, is Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die; Mike Connors, Terry Thomas, Dorothy Provine.” As was the style at the time, the plot followed two secret agents, one from MI6 and the other from the CIA, using their wits and gadgets to stop a wealthy villain from taking over the world, through satellite-induced sterilisation in this instance.
When it was added to the bill of the fourth annual Quentin Tarantino Film Festival in 2000, the filmmaker was thrilled that he was getting to share it with an audience. “It’s cool the way everybody is referring to Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die,” he gushed to Ain’t It Cool. “Like, that’s one of the best secret agent movies ever. That’s as good as any of the Bond movies, and a helluva lot better than any of the ones they’ve made in a long time.”
He took particular pride in opening the eyes of viewers who’d never seen it before, celebrating how “Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die is getting its place in cinema” thanks to him. “It’s cool because all of the writing I’ve read about it is like, ‘Forget everything! This is great! This is a perfect secret agent movie!'”
Is it a perfect secret agent movie? In a word, no. It was a pale and obvious 007 imitator, but it does have its cheesy charms, and it’s hardly the first time Tarantino has tried to convince the world that a bad movie is actually a masterpiece.
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