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It did make me laugh, as did the placement of the cackle after the spearing. So in that sense, I love it! :))
I would watch the hell out of that!
Having watched this thing a few times, I bet it was originally made to be funny, and was only scrambled later by someone else wanting to pass it off as a workprint. It's just too funny. "You lllying sllllut!" "Whatever!" "Muahahaha!"
The "Idiot!" could be out of Napoleon Dynamite.... :))
All I have to add is that the actress that played Lupe has family in my town & I've seen her up close twice at the supermarket. She's taller than I expected.
But afterwards I watched the deleted scenes and felt a bit frustrated. I'd say that the movie would have been better off with pretty much every deleted scene left in somewhere, though perhaps some trimming might be needed elsewhere to make up for it.
Two of the scenes give Tim a chance to be at least a bit comic, and both work well. One is when, flush with money post-Wavekrest, he buys a guy's boat with cash. It's a funny moment, Tim is great, and the level of humor isn't anything that wouldn't fit the tone of the movie. The other is a moment between Tim and Carey Lowell, where she asks for more money ("walking around money"). Bond tells her she can "walk pretty far on a quarter million dollars", or something like that. It's barely an actual joke, but it's an amusing line. And Tim doesn't have any moments in the existing film where he can exhibit this type of charm.
Another scene shows Bond and Pam arriving in Isthmus, which seems like a good moment to show onscreen, and introduces Heller and Truman-Lodge, who are not adequately explained in the film we got. The scene also shows us the lurking British agent following Bond, setting up the usual suspense from the "who's that guy?" trope they sometimes use for Felix. It's a nice scene that does a lot. No idea why it'd be cut.
A couple other scenes just happen to feature shots that add to the production value of the film, an area many would agree is lacking. There are probably more cinematic-looking wide shots in the deleted scenes than there are in the first 45 minutes of the film. Glen says in the introductions that these cuts were made to keep the film "pacey", which I understand, but as a result it feels like much of the film--at least the first half--is cutting between short scenes showing conversations pretty close up. The movie needed a few more of these minor establishing shots. One other scene, the most famous of the lot, has Bond in his hotel room being a bit dour, which is always great. But even better perhaps, he's watching Sanchez arrive at a party on TV, and the screen is full of extras. More production value.
I think John Glen is really underrated as a Bond director, and even this one looks pretty good in the second half. And when it comes to suspense and pacing, I don't think anyone's really done it better. But some of the decision making on this movie is baffling. Was there no way to trade two or three "Go home Pam and Q" scenes for some of these better moments?
I agree with Glen being underrated, I think people tend to let the flaws of both OP, and AVTAK cloud his phenomenal direction on FYEO, TLD, and LTK. It also helps that much like Peter Hunt before him, he worked his way up the ladder as both 2nd Unit Director/Editor for OHMSS, TSWLM, and MR.
I would not say there was "soap opera" in the post-Dalton films. There were genuine, adult moments in the Brosnan films (his pain at the demise of Teri Hatcher's character, and not just because they were real and they were fabulous, his conflicted feelings for Sophie Moreau's character) and the Craig films (genuine heartfelt relationships with two women and starting to understand he has a daughter) but they was NOTHING juvenile, as there was with the jealous pre-teen Pam character in LTK. Once again - Dalton was very poorly served by the scripts.
Contrast that with OHMSS, where the movie takes its time to establish the characters before actually moving forward with the plot concerning Blofeld. It's all short bursts in LTK.
Even though it's been dropping down in my rankings over the years (it used to be in my top ten, now it's just barely hovering over the bottom five) I'll always have a soft spot of the film. In spite of the flaws, it still felt very refreshing the first time I watched it way back when I was getting into Bond just in terms of how the formula was thrown away.