'Goldfinger' Director Guy Hamilton Dies; Thanks for the Car Porn

Of all the Bond movies, there’s no doubt Goldfinger is the most iconic. Glamorous women, exotic locales, evil (and expendable) henchmen, nifty gadgets galore, and cars, cars, cars.

The 1964 film created the template for the movie franchise, and provided us with timeless images of vehicles we’ll probably never own in places we’ll probably never drive.

The man behind the movie, director Guy Hamilton, shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday at the age of 93. Though his career includes such classics as The Third Man, we can’t remember that film containing an ejection seat-equipped Aston Martin.

Hamilton knew what James Bond fans wanted, and he lost no time giving them exactly that.

“His directorial style successfully merged the distinctive mix of action adventure, sexual innuendo and black humour that audiences loved,” writes David Leigh at The James Bond Dossier.

Whether the setting is the Swiss Alps or Kentucky, Goldfinger heaps drool-worthy vehicles onto its audience. Who can forget the brief Furka Pass chase between Bond’s gadget-laden 1963 Aston Martin DB5 and Tilly Masterson’s 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang convertible?

What about the chase between the DB5 and the Mercedes-Benz-driving baddies, where Bond deploys his vehicle’s smokescreen and bumper-mounted machine guns?

Though it isn’t a chase per se, our kudos go out to the brassy sequence that features a timeless 1964 Lincoln Continental driven by Oddjob, Auric Goldfinger’s hat-throwing henchman, and the 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible driven by Bond’s CIA contacts.

We can’t condone the crushing of that Continental, but at the time, well, there were a lot more of them than now. It seemed expendable. Still, no one believes a Falcon-based Ford Ranchero could handle all that weight (shocker: it wasn’t the Lincoln in the Rancher’s bed).

Clearly, the Ford Motor Company got its money’s worth with this film.

Relive all the high-flying 1960s glamour with these choice clips, and a big “thank you” to Guy Hamilton for the memories.

[Image: Sean Connery in ‘Goldfinger’/United Artists]