Bond, James Bond and the PERMANENT FATAL ERROR connection

The tram returning to downtown Gatlinburg.

These pictures are of the alpine tram that connects downtown Gatlinburg to Ober, Gatlinburg—an entertainment and ski complex high atop the Smoky Mountains.

One of my earliest, fondest childhood movie memories is watching an old James Bond movie with my father, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the first non-Sean Connery 007 film. It was during one of those holiday Bond marathons that seem to come around every Thanksgiving, and I ate it up with all the turkey and pies, etc. The fact we saw it in the Smokys made it even better—but we’ll get to that.

There comes a point when Bond is taken to his arch-enemy Blofeld’s latest remote hideout (the poor, evil man having lost his last one, a spiffy base tucked inside a Japanese volcano in the enticingly titled “You Only Live Twice”!). 

The head of SPECTRE’S latest pad in OHMSS is high atop a piz that can only be arrived at by tram. (Bond escapes back down the mountainside on skis—one of the best scenes in any Bond movie, IMHO, and also a wonderfully-written chapter in Ian Fleming’s original novel.)

To make his escape, Bond first has to travel hand-over-hand down the tram’s cable while it is coming up the other way. He does this in blinding snow flurries and in street clothes, using only the torn-out linings of his pockets to protect his hands from the slick, thick and oily cable that suspends the car. Loss of fingers and hands is a real risk.

Blofeld's Alpine lair in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

I get chills (in every sense) every time I watch that movie, and particularly, that scene. The idea of a place so remote that it could only be reached by such a conveyance haunted younger me.

In my novel, PERMANENT FATAL ERROR, I had to have my heroine, Ashley McKnight, travel to my “villain’s” lair in just such a tram, which fortunately exists in my present home in the Smoky Mountains.

When the time comes for Ashley to leave the mountain—and to do so under great threat—she does so by traveling down the Crockett Mountain ski lift, but under less than terrific circumstances…

The lift up Crockett Mountain from downtown Gatlinburg.