Roger Moore’s second Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun was released precisely fifty years ago on the day I’m writing these words. It raised the camp levels so far that the film is generally regarded as one of the series’ weakest (though – while acknowledging it is clearly not at the level of the better ones – it has to be said it is a whole lot more entertaining than quite a few that have come later). Christopher Lee’s villain, Scaramanga, has 50% more nipples than the regular complement, Britt Ekland co-stars as Mary Goodnight, Roger Moore’s delivery of “forever hold your piece” makes up for any other flaws the film may contain – and it does feature in my opinion the single greatest stunt in film history, with the corkscrew car an unbelievable feat.

John Barry missed Moore’s debut, Live and Let Die, but was back in fine form for this one. Its reputation places it as one of his lesser Bond efforts, but that’s all relative – it’s a great score, full of wonderful moments. After all these years, thanks to La-La Land Records we finally have an expanded version of it – while the original album’s 43 minutes was on the generous side in terms of original Bond soundtracks, there’s more than enough other material to warrant the expansion, not to mention the huge sonic upgrade.

The song opens with a tremendous Barry hook before Lulu belts out Don Black’s lyrics – to describe their double entendres as being thinly-veiled would be greatly exaggerating the thickness of the veil. “He comes just before he kills!” she earnestly informs us. It’s not top-tier, but goodness me John Barry was good at this stuff. ‘Nuff said.

After the gunbarrel, the score gets going with a great, vintage Bond suspense theme in “The Island” – and it’s immediately obvious that unlike when he did George Lazenby, Barry didn’t feel Moore required much of an update to the sound he established in the Connery classics. That theme then forms the basis of the opening to “Scaramanga’s Fun House”, and then all of a sudden the inevitable reflection of the film’s considerably more comedic nature than those that went before is revealed as we hear a kind of honky-tonk, funfair arrangement of the title theme.

Somehow the composer almost always found ways of making the song melodies into romantic themes – anyone familiar with this film’s may have thought even he would struggle here, but of course he doesn’t – the shimmering strings of “Following Andrea”, combined with a suspenseful piano figure (which actually recalls one of Barry’s non-Bond espionage movies, The Tamarind Seed), are absolutely gorgeous. Later, the sombre “Goodnight Goodnight” features a collection of variations of a beautiful slowed-down version of the melody, a great example of the effectiveness of Barry’s favoured simplicity.

In terms of action, “Hip’s Trip” is a classic Barry/Bond cue, its first section seeing a repeated (ridiculously catchy) suspense motif leading up to a section of Asian-flavoured playful material which surrounds another romantic string-led arrangement of the title theme. The Asian flair continues into the entertaining “Chew Me”, with faint echoes of You Only Live Twice. There’s an entertaining action sequence in “Grisly Land” and shortly thereafter another in “Kung Fu Fight”, which is (surprisingly) one of the few times Barry really uses that fantastic, dynamic opening hook from the song as an action motif (it works perfectly in that role). The main time he uses it is in “Let’s Go Get ‘Em”, perhaps the score’s biggest action cue, the main theme combining with the Bond theme (heard very infrequently on the original album, but more present in the previously-unreleased material we can now enjoy) and perhaps the score’s most notorious element, the slide whistle going up and down to accompany the aforementioned unbelievable stunt. Finally, I love the dynamic, driving motif that propels “In Search of Scaramanga’s Island” forward.

Barry’s original Bond albums were impeccably-produced – they’re all well-rounded representations of their complete scores. But even if all the highlights were there already, of course it’s great to hear the whole thing – it’s a more well-rounded experience, we hear more development of the material so familiar from listening to the old album for decades – and even if you don’t want the extended presentation of the score (which now runs for 66 minutes) or the bonus material, you still get the remastered version of the original album programme – so everyone’s a winner. Is this a gold-standard, top-of-the-line Bond score? No – but it’s full of fun, features some great, classic moments and is thoroughly entertaining throughout. What a treat to hear it in this form after all these years.