Oddjob

No Title
No Title	No information

Oddjob (often written as "Odd Job") is a henchman to the villain Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film and novel, Goldfinger. In the film he was played by the Japanese American actor Harold Sakata. Oddjob, who also appears in the James Bond animated series and in several video games, is one of the most popular characters in the Bond series. The character, from his unusual appearance, manners, strength and method of killing, forms the archetype for which many henchmen of the Bond film series were based on, which includes Jaws, Nick Nack, Chang and Gobinda.

Appearances

Novel

Oddjob's real name is unknown. He is named by Goldfinger as that describes his duties to his employer. Korean-born (all Goldfinger's staff are Korean), he is extremely strong, proven in one sequence where he breaks the railing of a staircase with his hand and a mantel with his foot. Oddjob is described as being a squat man with arms like thighs and black teeth. A black belt at karate, Oddjob is also an expert with a bow and arrow, and with his metal, razor-edged throwable bowler hat. He has a cleft palate that renders his speech unintelligible to everyone except Goldfinger. In addition to killing people who might cause trouble for Goldfinger, Oddjob functions as his personal guard, chauffeur, and manservant (though not his golf caddy, as depicted in the film). He has a taste for cats as food, apparently acquired in Korea when food was in short supply (Bond frames Goldfinger's yellow cat for destruction of surveillance film, and as punishment, sees the cat given to Oddjob for dinner).

He is killed when Bond uses a knife to shatter the window next to his seat on an airplane, which depressurises the plane and blows Oddjob out of the window, a fate transferred to Auric Goldfinger in the film version.

Film

In the beginning of the film, Oddjob is first seen only via silhouette against a wall as he knocks Bond unconscious at the Fontainebleau Hotel, after which he or Goldfinger kills Jill Masterton (with whom Bond had spent the night) through "skin suffocation" by painting her entire body with gold paint. When Bond meets Goldfinger for a game of golf, Oddjob is seen for the first time in full. He only has four lines of sparse dialogue throughout the film: in the first, upon pretending to have found Goldfinger's missing golf ball, he exclaims "Aha!" The second time, after killing Tilly Masterton, he instructs his men to dispose of her body by merely pointing at them and saying "Ah! Ah!" In the third, he says "Ah!" to order Bond to put on a gas mask before entering Fort Knox. His final line is a scream of pain when he is killed.

Oddjob acts as Goldfinger's personal chauffeur, bodyguard and golf caddy. He wears what appears to be a bowler hat (though at times it looks like a top hat) lined with a metal razor disk in the rim, using it as a lethal flying disc of sorts (this is a bowler hat in the novel, and as such, would have had a round top). It is very powerful, capable of decapitating a stone statue. He later uses it to kill Tilly Masterton by breaking her neck. Physically he is extremely strong and durable, demonstrating his strength in a number of scenes including one where he crushes a golf ball with one hand, as well as during the climactic fight scene with Bond in which he is struck in the chest by a gold bar thrown at him, and struck in the head with a wooden object used as a club. He barely flinches after both these attacks, and is otherwise practically invincible against Bond's futile hand-to-hand combat tactics. However, he is never mentioned to be a karate expert.

His demeanour remains constant throughout the film. Most of the time he is seen to smile broadly whenever he encounters Bond—even during their fight scene. The only time he shows anything resembling fear or wariness is when Bond attempts to use his own hat against him. When thrown at him, however, Oddjob simply leans to the side and dodges the hat with ease, causing it to get stuck between a pair of metal bars. When he goes to retrieve his hat and tries to pull it free, Bond grabs a sparking wire severed by the hat earlier on and thrusts the open end onto the bars. The electric current transfers to the bars and then to the metal in the hat's rim, which electrocutes Oddjob and kills him. (In the T.V. show "James Bond Jr.," it is suggested that Oddjob was merely knocked unconscious for the police to take him away.)

Other appearances

Oddjob appears in the animated series James Bond Jr. with a top hat, sunglasses and hip-hop style clothes, revealing that the electrocution did not kill him, but knocked him unconscious for the Americans to arrest him before he escapes again in the series (Also, in the series, Oddjob speaks on his later appearances.)

In the Game Boy game James Bond 007, Oddjob appears multiple times as a henchman for the game's main villain, General Golgov. The first time is when Bond encounters Oddjob at his hotel room in Maccarech. The two fight, and Bond is defeated and left stranded in a desert. Later on, Bond trails Oddjob to Tibet, only to be captured. Bond escapes confinement and obtains a shield to protect him from Oddjob's hats, which he uses to deflect back at him. Notably, in this game Oddjob actually speaks.

In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Oddjob is a henchman of Goldfinger, and initially a companion of GoldenEye. He is killed when GoldenEye tosses him over a rail into a pit inside the Hoover Dam after he betrays and attacks GoldenEye for unknown reasons.

Oddjob has appeared in the James Bond video games GoldenEye 007 and 007: Nightfire as a playable character for use in multiplayer modes. In Nightfire, he can use his hat as a unique throwing weapon that returns after 30 seconds. Oddjob is a playable multiplayer character in the 2010 remake game GoldenEye 007 for the Wii.

Homages and parodies

• In the 1965 Italian parody film Due Mafiosi Contro Goldginger, the equivalent of Oddjob is a huge black man called Moloch (played by ex-wrestler Alejandro Barrera) dressed in a black suit and bowler hat, who throws a deadly shoe to kill his opponents.
• In the 2007 Norwegian parody film Kill Buljo: The Movie, Buljo's bodyguard is named Blow Job (played by strongwoman and powerlifter Heidi Nilima Monsen) - a tough woman dressed in black suit and bowler hat. Her favorite activity is throwing cops around.
• In the film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Oddjob is parodied by a character called Random Task, who throws his shoe as a weapon.
• Another parody is in the game Fur Fighters, where a hat-throwing bear called Oddfelt appears in the last level.
• Leonardo Leonardo's publicist Plug is a parody of Oddjob in Clerks: The Animated Series.
• Oddjob's trademark hat-throwing technique can also be seen in Toy Story 2, in which Mr. Potato-Head throws his own bowler hat to prevent two doors from closing.
• In the Mortal Kombat video game series, a recurring character Kung Lao has a similar blade-rimmed hat that can be thrown at opponents.
• In the video game Alone in the Dark 2, an undead pirate nicknamed Black Hat has a blade-rimmed hat that he can throw at the protagonist Edward Carnby.
• Spider-Man has fought in a one-page Hostess advertisement a supervillain called "Demolition Derby" who throws his derby hat that bounces and cuts Spider-Man's webbing [1].
• Daredevil once fought a supervillain called Torpedo, who threw a cutting hat just like Oddjob. Daredevil remarked that he didn't expect Torpedo to pull an "oddjob" on him.
• In one episode of the cartoon series Duck Dodgers, Daffy Duck throws a hat to save himself during a mission and later says that he had learned it from someone called "Odd Ball", in which they cut to a scene where Oddjob angrily says, "Odd Ball?!!" -- something that may prove that who Daffy meant is not a parody but the same Oddjob as in the movie/novel.
• A "F.O.W.L" (Darkwing Duck) henchman Oddduck is a parody of Oddjob, ordered to kill Launchpad McQuack in "Double O Duck".
• In the cartoon series Count Duckula, the villain called The Egg has a manservant called Oddbeak, who is a parrot made to resemble Oddjob, complete with bowler and suit.
• In the film Stormbreaker film, the guard in Sayle Tower throws his hat away as he prepares to kill Alex. He also shares a resemblance with Oddjob (this is one of the many similarities Stormbreaker has with the James Bond saga).
• In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode "On Her Majesty's Sewer Service", a parody of the James Bond series, the character Mouser gains an appearance similar to Oddjob, even throwing his bowler derby hat as a weapon in one scene. Instead of cutting people, though, the bowler derby was shown to simply bludgeon them.
• The arcade video game Sly Spy, itself a homage to the James Bond mythos, features a bowler-throwing character as a boss in one of the levels.
• In the movie Inspector Gadget, Oddjob is seen in the Minions Anonymous meeting, along with Jaws. He is credited as "Famous Villain With Deadly Hat".
• In the cartoon show Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Double 'O Dale", which parodies the Bond series, Dale is watching a spy movie, featuring a sidekick called Oddshoe, a small man but not allied with the villain nor sporting a hat and suit, but a Japanese traditional martial arts white robe with a black belt, also in the episode Throw Mummy in the Train, the villain throws his hat.
• The television show MythBusters tested out the capabilities of Oddjob's weaponized thrown hat, labeling it 'Busted.'
• In the manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure a character, Robert Speedwagon, is shown to use his razor-rimmed bowler hat as a throwing weapon.
• In one episode of the MTV series Beavis and Butt-head, when the duo are watching a music video with people riding motorcycles, they say it's like a James Bond film with Beavis adding "They need that short guy Handjob to come out." obviously mistaking him for Oddjob.
• In Rio, Nico throws his bottlecap hat in a way similar to Oddjob to cut a line of evil monkeys
• In the anime Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, an antagonist's henchman resembles Oddjob in one episode; in that he wears a (brown) suit and bowler, is a martial arts expert, and uses his hat and an umbrella as primary weapons. This henchman's apparent duties are to be a butler or manservant.

Reception

Oddjob's lethal hat was ranked tenth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll of the most popular film weapons, which surveyed approximately 2,000 films fans. In 2006, Oddjob's hat was auctioned off for $36,000. In 2008, its replica joined Bond exhibition at the National Motor Museum.

In 2009, Manolith ranked Odd Job as the fourth best James Bond henchman.

External links

• Oddjob - James Bond Characters - 007james
• James Bond multimedia | Harold Sakata (Oddjob)