ROBERT COTTON Other than a modestly effective dual identity, the first Black villain in a Bond film ends up being a rewrite of OHMSS's Blofeld Mark 2. He never really gels, although the confrontation scene with Bond's finger in the balance works well in the context of the film. The Mr. Big personae could easily have been used more effectively in the first half of the film. TeeHee is not only indestructible, but has already lost an arm to his evil endeavours. Figure that one out . BILL KOENIG Yaphet Kotto´s contribution to the Bond films runs hot and cold. He has some wonderful moments such as explaining his harebrained drug scheme to Bond (“…leaving me and the phone company as the only growing monpolities in this country for years to come’). At the same time, there´s something missing. I´m not sure what, but he´s definitely a second stringer. DEBORAH LIPP Here, as with DN and DAF, we're talking about a fairly sizeable group of henchmen combining to show the size of the conspiracy. In LALD, we have the disturbingly racist vision of black people everywhere in a vast conspiracy that stretches from New York to New Orleans to the Caribbean; anywhere there are blacks, they conspire under Kananga, and communication is virtually instant. Julius Harris has terrific presence. Not much is asked of him dramatically, but he performs well enough. The only really excellent  villain in LALD is Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi. JAMES McMAHON Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big -  Slide with me, if you will, down the quality scale of Bond villains.  Here we get two bad villains for the price of one, both played by Yaphet Kotto, who's a good enough actor to have known better.  He's passable, but dull, as Kananga, but as Mister Big he's saddled with only slightly less makeup than Donald Pleasence endured with that massive scar appendage.  Mister Big comes across as cartoony and clownish and a bad stereotype.  His over-inflated balloon flight demise puts the last nail in this character's coffin. Tee Hee - No one is ever able to do those hook-hands well.  The forearm is always far too long and you know there's a hand inside the sleeve.  That's about all there is to say about this character.  It's a visual effect with an actor attached, but the actor's given little to do but wear the hook.

ED WERNER Mr. Big is one of the more memorable villains in the novels, yet one of the most forgettable villains from the movies. I don't think that's necessarily due to Yaphet Kotto's acting chops, but more due to the whole feel of the movie. To me, it seems like its just a bunch of scenes strung together a little too loosely and the film itself is as forgettable as the villain. What should have been the climactic fight scene between Bond and Mr. Big is just totally shattered in the end, where Bond crams a compressed gas pellet from a shark gun in Mr. Big's mouth, he swallows it (why?),  instantly inflates like a balloon, shoots up to the ceiling and explodes. I think I remember something very similar happening to Curly in an old Three Stooges short! TOM ZIELINSKI Kananga/Mr. Big - Yaphet Kotto does all he can and that's pretty good, but the villain's absurd plot to give away billions in heroin to create a new and huge needle-user market doesn't hold up to any logic.  Mr. Big as Superfly goes nowhere, and what is the reason anyway to have an altered appearance/identity?  All three of Mankiewicz's plots involve false identities and/or plastic surgery of the villain, and this one is the weakest. Kananga's demise at the hands of Bond is terribly conceived and executed, even for a Warner cartoon.  That scene alone damns this villain's ranking to the very bottom of the tarot deck.  Shame on you, Tom Mankiewicz. Tee-Hee - A relatively non-threatening henchman in a bad James Bond film.  It's not Julius Harris' fault though, it's all just badly written and executed.  His pincer for a left arm is boring and not really even noteworthy. PAUL BAACK LALD is such a lame James Bond film that it's hard to get worked up over its villains. Despite some minor ballyhoo about an all-black cast of baddies, there's really nothing special here. Yaphet Koto brings some small measure of humanity to his Dr. Kananga, especially in the scene where he confronts Bond over the state of Solitaire's virginity. He also has an interesting way of knife-fighting (choreographed by the film's Baron Samedi, Mr. Geoffrey Holder), and wears an unconvincing makeup disguise when he's going about Harlem as Mr. Big. As others here have pointed out, his eventual comeuppance and death scene is one of the -- if not the -- single most embarrassing moments in the entire Bond film series. So he's got that bit of immortality pretty much all to himself. There's a couple of minor henchmen: an enormously fat man called Whisper, and the jovial Tee Hee, who sports a prosthetic steel arm capable of crushing a Walther PPK -- providing it's made out of soft plastic. Julius Harris bring some measure of menace to his screen character, only in that he just never stops grinning; he's got a sort-of "what fools these mortals be" demeanor, which makes you think he's wiser, and perhaps more dangerous, than he lets on. Mr. Harris makes the most he can out of a nothing part.

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