Baron Samedi is a popular fictional character from the James Bond novel and film, Live and Let Die. In the film, he was a henchman to Mr Big. In Live and Let Die, Samedi was portrayed by actor Geoffrey Holder. The character is inspired from the loa Baron Samedi, a popular Voodoo figure.

Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in ‘Live and Let Die’.

Novel biography: In the novel, Baron Samedi does not make an appearance himself, although many people in Harlem and elsewhere believe the novel’s chief villain, Mr Big, to be either the Voodoo god Baron Samedi himself or perhaps his zombie. Mr Big encourages this belief by keeping a Baron Samedi totem near his desk.

Film biography: Baron Samedi is first introduced as a so-called entertainer who does a voodoo dance act for tourists, when Bond arrives at the island on which most of the action takes place. The announcer introduces Samedi as “the man who cannot die”, though Bond doesn’t seem to think much of it at the time. In the film he is described by Felix Leiter as being “nine feet tall” when in real life he is only 6 feet 6.

In the film, Baron Samedi is perhaps the most enigmatic villain/henchman the cinematic Bond has ever faced. His character is an ambiguous one, and the audience cannot tell if he is the Voodoo god Baron Samedi himself or simply a human who has assumed Samedi’s identity. Contributing to the mystery is the fact that Samedi seems to operate as an aide to Dr Kananga, aka Mr Big, but is not entirely under his control. In one scene, for instance, as Kananga interrogates Solitaire (the film’s main Bond girl), Samedi engages in an odd ritual of burning Tarot cards. The ritual seems to convey a sinister message to Kananga and Solitaire, and although it irritates Kananga, he refuses to put a stop to Samedi’s card-burning. Furthermore, the scene demonstrates that he has, perhaps, the same Tarot powers as Solitaire.

Near the end of the film, Baron Samedi is apparently killed (twice – though the first appears to be a mechanical dummy) after Bond throws him into a coffin full of snakes. But just before the end credits roll, at the point when Bond typically has achieved total victory in previous films, we see Samedi riding on the front of a speeding train laughing demoniacally, further suggesting that he is in fact a supernatural character, a first (and so far only) for the Bond films.

Samedi has never reappeared in any subsequent Bond film, unlike the henchman Jaws or the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but neither has the series endeavoured to solve the mystery of Samedi’s nature.

See also:

• Bond henchmen