James Bond's head-first plunge into science fiction is not kindly remembered – least of all by Bond aficionados who generally dismiss Moonraker as cheap and trashy, a betrayal of everything 007 stands for. And they're right: Bond's eleventh big-screen outing is in no way cool or debonair. Ask a random movie fan to nominate their worst Bonds and chances are they'll namecheck Moonraker every time.

So besmirched is Moonraker's reputation, one might assume it went down in flames on its release in June 1979. Admittedly, the reviews were harsh, with critics on the whole appalled at the sight of Britain's top secret agent whooshing through the stratosphere in a jump suit. On the other hand, Moonraker WAS a significant hit, earning more than any Bond movie up to that point – $210 million on a $34 million budget. The Bond franchise of today, it may be argued, thus owes a great deal to Moonraker's blockbuste aspirations. A little of its DNA lives on in box office behemoths Skyfall and Spectre.

Without doubt, in certain aspects, Moonraker has not aged well. Judged strictly as lowest denominator, park-your-brain-at-the-hatstand romp, however, it's a blast. Though silly, and occasionally trite (that double take by the pigeon when 007 cranks up his hover-craft gondola – eeeugh), there's more than enough going on to keep you hooked to the end. Moore, it should be said, is terrific too - mercurial with a cruel curl to the lip and a dangerous glimmer in his eye. Self-parodying woodenness may have marred his '80s outings as 007 - there are no traces of it here.

MGM/Sony Pictures

One part of the Moonraker legend that is true is that the film was rushed into production in response to the success of Star Wars two years previously. In a post-Luke Skywalker paradigm space was suddenly sexy and Bond producer Albert R Broccoli decided to square off a little corner of the galaxy exclusively for 007. He shelved plans to follow 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me with For Your Eyes Only (which would finally see daylight in 1981) and instead had veteran screenwriter Christopher Wood cobble together a science fiction plot (very) loosely based on Ian Fleming's Moonraker.

On a strictly technical level, Moonraker was a triumph. It concludes with a deep-space shoot-out between the forces of fascist billionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) and a platoon of interstellar US marines (with the assistance of 007). That was courtesy of a budget nearly four times that of Star Wars (and the highest for any Bond movie until then) and the expertise of veteran production designer Ken Adam, who furnished the preening Drax with a retro-future lair straight out of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There's a cracking plot too - one of those gleamingly multi-faceted Bond narratives that the audience can truly get its teeth into. It starts with the thrilling mid-air theft of a proto-Space Shuttle from Nasa and from there plunges 007 into a globe-trotting mission, encompassing a speed boat chase in Venice, a thrilling duel atop a moving cable-car in Rio – starring recurring henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel) – and a breathless dash across a waterfall on the Amazon. All sprinkled with Moore's deadpan bon(d) mots.

Granted, as scheming uber-villains went, Drax was a little flabby. An aerospace oligarch and architect of a secret plan to wipe out mankind and repopulate the earth with blond, blue-eyed ubermensch (and uber-babes), Drax contained trace elements of Goldfinger and Ernst Blofeld. Yet he had none of their dash - nor any of the camp swagger of Moore's first great nemesis, The Man with the Golden Gun's Francisco Scaramanga.

MGM/Sony Pictures

Also underwhelming was Bond girl Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) – a CIA agent who appeared to find James tolerable at best, irritating at worst (even seeming distinctly irked as, per the script's demands, she clambered into bed with him). Given her visible discomfort playing glorified totty it is no surprise to learn that Chiles had turned down a part in The Spy Who Loved Me and only agreed to be in Moonraker having found herself seated next to the film's director Lewis Gilbert on a transatlantic flight - plenty of time for him to hone his pitch.

The plain fact is that Moonraker is a lark: a pedal-to-the-floor thrill ride that has the courage of its convictions and goes where other action films – certainly other Bond films – often fear to venture. There's a constant sense that 007's investigation into Drax's international conspiracy is leading somewhere massive - and the final payoff, that meticulously shot space battle, is every bit as epic as you dared hope. In that respect Moonraker foreshadows the bigger-is-better philosophy of today's generation of multiplex-fillers.

Moonraker should be cherished for its courage, ambition and, yes, its silliness, rather than dismissed for failing to chime with modern ideas of what a Bond flick should or should not be. Lest we forget, moody Daniel Craig-era Bond will eventually slip from favour too.

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