For over 60 years, James Bond has done battle with the worst of the worst: terrorists, evil industrialists, drug dealers, and even a Rupert Murdoch expy. Being a supervillain isn’t easy. All aspiring ones know you need some good henchmen by your side if you want your plans for world domination to succeed. However, most henchmen are not exactly what you’d call competent. There are a few that deserve to be celebrated and revered for bucking trends. Therefore, we will look at some of the best henchmen in the James Bond franchise.
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7 May Day - A View To A Kill (1985)
Distributed by MGM/UA
A View To A Kill is a Bond film with very little in its favor, with an incredible title song and Christopher Walken as the main villain, Max Zorin, being a few of its positives. In addition to Walken, the film pairs him with one of the most memorable henchmen in the franchise: Grace Jones’ May Day. There’s no other way to describe it, but May Day is a henchman with style. She dresses in a unique way; she’s physically imposing, as seen in the scene where she’s lifting KGB Agents above her head, and she’s very, very much the one in charge in the bedroom, as James Bond finds out. Honestly, the most incredible part about Zorin’s plan to flood Silicon Valley, was the fact that he was planning on killing off his best henchman in the process.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
6 Fiona Volpe - You Only Live Twice (1967)
Distributed by United Artists
There’s a funny moment in You Only Live Twice, where Tiger Tanaka chides Bond for getting into any car with any pretty girl. Clearly, someone has told him about the events of Thunderball, the film preceding You Only Live Twice. Of all the villainous women whose object was “seduce Bond, then kill him,” Volpe’s the one that does it the best. She’s scary competent, cleaning up the messes of other SPECTRE Agents both at the Shrublands Health Clinic and in the Bahamas. She captures Bond ally, Paula Caplan, who is forced to take cyanide mere minutes before Bond can save her, and she gets some absolutely fantastic scenes with Bond, like the scene where he discovers her taking a bath in his hotel room or when she delivers the perfect dressing down of Bond after making love to him. She’s easily the most competent assassin SPECTRE ever had on their payroll.
5 Red Grant - From Russia With Love (1963)
The first time we see Red Grant in From Russia With Love, he’s hunting down an actor playing Bond, and kills the man in less than two minutes. Tasked with killing Bond, but only after he’s recovered the Lektor coding machine, Grant actually saves Bond’s life during an attack on a gypsy camp. However, it’s onboard the Orient Express where Grant truly gets to show off what a fantastic henchman he is, and a good part of that is thanks to Robert Shaw’s magnificent performance. Grant subdues and captures Bond onboard the train, explaining the whole evil scheme to him. Grant not only has to kill Bond, but make it look like a murder-suicide and plant incriminating evidence on him. A sadistic man who wants to make Bond suffer, Red Grant is one man you definitely don’t want to get stuck in a confined space with.
4 Xenia Onatopp - Goldeneye (1995)
Anyone whose preferred killing method is crushing people to death with her thighs during sex is definitely someone a notorious womanizer like James Bond should be absolutely terrified of. At least her victims die happy, like the Canadian admiral she eliminates. Sex is not the only thing that Xenia gets off on. She very much gets a sexual thrill out of killing, too. Take the scene where she and General Ourumov massacre the Severnaya station. Xenia is having an orgasm as she slaughters everyone in her path with machine gun fire. It even makes Ourumov uncomfortable. Any henchwoman capable of creeping out another villain is easily someone who stands out in the pantheon of notable Bond baddies.
3 Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd - Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Like A View To A Kill, Diamonds Are Forever is a Bond film with very few positives. It’s a very campy film and Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, a pair of homosexual assassins tasked with eliminating everyone involved in a diamond smuggling pipeline, definitely come across as very campy villains. They are that, but they also rack up a disturbingly impressive body count over the course of the film. They have a unique and memorable verbal tic, finishing each other’s sentences, “If at first you don’t succeed, Mr. Wint.” “Try, try again, Mr. Kidd.” Any time these two show up, run as fast as you can in the other direction.
2 Jaws - The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) | Moonraker (1979)
One of the most iconic henchmen in the franchise, Jaws is massive (played by the 7'2" Richard Kiel), absorbs damage like a sponge, and has those menacing metal teeth. The character proved so popular in his debut in The Spy Who Loved Me, that he was brought back for the next film, Moonraker. Appearing in two films definitely makes Jaws a very unique villain, mostly because he survives to fight again no matter what Bond throws at him. We haven’t even discussed his effectiveness at killing anyone in his way. In fact, pretty much the only way to survive an encounter with him is either be his boss or be within ten feet of James Bond when he shows up.
1 Oddjob - Goldfinger (1964)
Like Jaws, Oddjob is a mute henchman (mostly mute for Jaws. He gets to say all of four words in Moonraker, four more than Oddjob gets in Goldfinger), but no henchman in sixty years has been able to topple this Korean manservant in memorability. He dresses nicely, has a unique weapon (a steel-brimmed bowler hat that he tosses like a frisbee), and is the first in the long line of “physically imposing henchmen who can shrug off any hit with ease.” And he does all his killing with a smile on his face. Played to perfection by wrestler and weightlifter Harold Sakata (he won a silver medal for weightlifting during the 1948 London Olympics), Oddjob earns top honors as the best henchman in the franchise, just like how his boss earns honors as the top main villain in the franchise.
