There comes a point in every Bond movie where one tends to forget the plot and just sits back and enjoys the action. For me, and perhaps for many others, that moment comes at the arrival in Los Angeles. But if it doesn’t come there then it DEFINITELY comes during the Circus Circus sequence. And as a result, to my knowledge, I don’t think anyone has ever questioned the logic of this scene.

To set it up, after Plenty O’Toole is dispensed with, Tiffany seduces Bond into giving up the diamonds by convincing him that she’ll run off with him to Hong Kong. Bond plays along with this deception by instructing her to pick up the diamonds at Circus Circus, a major hotel and casino. To make any sort of sense in what follows, here’s what I think the plan was (which is never explicitly stated): Bond, a British Intelligence agent, was operating on US soil. For a foreign agent to legally do that, they must do so under the supervision of American intelligence which, in the case here, is the CIA and Felix Leiter. The rendezvous at Circus Circus was the contact point where Bond was to turn over the operation to Felix with Bond acting as a fail safe option should the CIA lose track of Tiffany Case by meeting her at the car rental agency. But Bond plainly stated that this is a 50/50 shot which explains why he was on Felix’s ass; if the CIA lost track of her, there was no guarantee that Bond would catch up with her. So when the inevitable happened and the Felix lost track of her and she subsequently failed to show up at the car rental agency, Bond took a blind guess and found her at her house.

If this is the case then the CIA did a piss poor job. Why would they make it painfully obvious to Tiffany Case that she was being followed? Was the plan to follow her or apprehend her? To my reasoning, it had to of been the latter in order to get her to cooperate with Bond in the British intelligence investigation. In that case, why not apprehended her immediately after she collected the diamonds? Did the CIA not want to make a scene?

I know what Cubby Broccoli’s response is: who gives a shit?

This is what they call in the biz “movie magic” where we don’t have to worry about things like “realism” or “plot”. We just have to shut our brains off and enjoy the spectacle.

And what a spectacle it is! Within the stretch of just over four minutes, we’re exposed to trapeze artists, elephants playing slot machines, human women transforming into gorillas, and even a cameo by the owner of Circus Circus himself as a mad scientist. It’s no wonder we lose track of the plot! This scene isn’t so much a part of a movie as it is an advertisement for the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino.

But there’s two moments I’d like to highlight. First is the moment where Tiffany collects the diamonds hidden in a stuffed animal. While at the blackjack table, she’s instructed to play the water balloons. She wins the “prize” (the diamonds) and a kid correctly calls out that the game was rigged. Tiffany tells the kid to “blow up his pants”, which is a line that could have only been written by Mankiewicz. To be honest, I’ve seen this movie more times than I care to admit but each time I think she’s gonna say “fart out your ass kid!”.

That’s all I got to say about that.

The second moment is when Tiffany realizes she’s being followed and enters the “Zambora” exhibit to elude her pursuers. An announcer explains “Zambora” as the “strangest woman ever born to live” which seems like a redundant statement.

But anyway! Back to the plot…

TO BE CONTINUED…