A few days back I noted how I felt the Fringe TV show episode Brown Betty appeared, to my eyes and based on the fact that my The Dark Fringe comic book trade paperback was floating around the Hollywood offices responsible for the show in and around that time, at the very least inspired the look of that particular episode (you can read the whole thing here).

Interestingly, last night my wife and I were clicking around the TV stations and I happened to stumble upon the first Roger Moore starring James Bond film, 1973’s Live and Let Die.

Now, the film has its fans (I’m one of them) and detractors.  There are those who simply don’t like Roger Moore as James Bond and who am I to convince them otherwise.  There are also those who feel this movie’s plot, which featured what was essentially an updating of the “yellow peril”/Fu Manchu evil empire, but transplanted to African Americans, bordered on being racist.

If you can get past either element, I would maintain the film is a great piece of action/adventure pulp, but that’s not why I’m writing about it.

No, when I clicked on the movie, it was in the middle of the (again, IMHO) suspenseful yet cheeky boat chase sequence.  Here is a part of it:

The thing that worked for me about the sequence was that it was a clever permutation of what was very popular in movies at the time: A suspenseful car chase.  Instead of a car chase, however, the movie’s creators presented a speed boat chase and, to my mind, it remains one of the best ever put to film.

It works because as viewers we’re dealing with a clever mix of both suspense (the people after Bond intend to kill him) and humor, some of which you can see in the above clip provided by Clifton James as the very rednecky Sheriff Pepper, who is featured throughout the speedboat chase, up to its end, to provide comic relief.  (Again, some would disagree and felt Mr. James’ performance was both stereotypical and not funny at all…what can I say, it worked for me well here, although I felt the return of his character in the next Bond film, The Man With The Golden Gun, was indeed, along with the entire movie, terrible).

As my wife and I watched the speedboat chase, I was surprised that she hadn’t seen it before.

“You’ve never seen Live and Let Die?” I asked her.

“Nope,” she said.

We watched on and, after a few minutes -and after experiencing plenty of Sheriff Pepper- she said:

“They ripped off Smokey and the Bandit, didn’t they?”

Words cannot describe how stunned I was by this statement.

Sheriff Pepper, as presented in Live and Let Die, is essentially the same humorous redneck hound-dog who won’t give up pursuing his prey (in this case, James Bond) as Sheriff Buford T. Justice, as portrayed by Jackie Gleason, was in Smokey and the Bandit.  The similarities are beyond obvious, yet I never realized them until that very moment when my wife pointed them out!

Understand: I’m a HUGE fan of Smokey and the Bandit.  I’m also a HUGE fan of Live and Let Die…and I never connected the redneck Sheriffs with each other until my wife noticed.

At all.

Here’s the kicker: My wife wasn’t quite correct, at least in one regard: Live and Let Die was released in 1973.  Smokey and the Bandit, on the other hand, was released in 1977.

So if anything, Live and Let Die “inspired” Smokey and the Bandit, and especially Jackie Gleason’s Sheriff role.

Here you have the conclusion of the boat chase.  Pay particular attention to Sheriff Peper’s final appearance in the movie, which begins at the 2:14 mark…

Sheriff Pepper’s final appearance essentially mirrors Jackie Gleason’s at the end of Smokey and the Bandit.  Both Sheriffs’ cars are demolished and barely moving and both are exasperated by pursuing -and failing to capture- their prey…

I remain blown away that I never saw the similarities.

Wild, wild stuff.