AURIC EPIDERMAL SUFFOCATION

Early in the movie Goldfinger, James Bond convinces Jill Masterson, the secretary of archvillain Auric Goldfinger, to betray her boss. Shortly thereafter, Bond and Ms. Masterson are inexplicably in Bond's hotel suite with Masterson in a highly unclad state. Goldfinger's myrmidon, Oddjob, then enters the suite, knocks Bond unconscious, and covers Masterson's entire body with gold paint. This, as explained in the movie, quickly results in her death by "skin suffocation," a condition which afflicts cabaret dancers who paint their bodies without leaving a bare patch at the base of the spine for the skin to breathe.

Skin suffocation is probably a myth, although I for one do not intend to test it. The TV show Mythbusters painted the entire body of one of the actors with no ill effect except for a very slight increase in blood pressure. It is quite possible that a person who is undergoing vigorous exercise or in a hot climate may suffer heat stroke if all of her pores are blocked or that chemicals could leach into the body over time, but these effects would not occur under normal conditions in a short temporal period.

Nonetheless, just to err on the side of caution, the director of Goldfinger made sure that there was a bare patch of skin on the actress, Shirley Eaton, when he shot the above sequence.

This sequence, by the way, is not the most memorable one in the film.  There is another one involving a 1964 Lincoln Continental which is far too visceral, traumatic, and graphic for me, as a fan of special interest automobiles, even to attempt to describe it.

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