Yaphet Kotto died this week at 81. The 1973 James Bond outing âLive and Let Dieâ was how I came to know him. At age 12, I remember hating that movie, and at the risk of sounding more enlightened than I was, the white smoothie vs. Black scum storyline creeped me out, even then.
Itâs the most aggressively racist Bond film, which is saying something. The Caribbean dictator and heroin kingpin played by Kotto dies a grotesque, sight-gaggy death, ingesting a compressed-gas pellet and exploding like a balloon, leading to a Roger Moore quip about his dead adversary having âan inflated opinion of himself,â thereby putting the the villain of color in his place, even in death.