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Professor Joseph "Joe" Butcher is a supporting antagonist in the 1989 James Bond film Licence To Kill. He is a televangelist who acts as a frontman for drug lord Franz Sanchez's operation.
He was portrayed by Wayne Newton.
Biography[]
Butcher is an American televangelist who operates the Olympatic Meditation Institute in the Republic of Isthmus, which is in fact a drugs lab disguised as a Meditation Institute as a cover. He operates the sales end of Sanchez's cartel through his televangelist show, which is secretly a cocaine auction. Butcher operates this auction by announcing a goal amount of money, which is in fact Sanchez's price for a kilogram of cocaine. The amount of cocaine wanted is then sent in disguised as donations, with $500 being sent in meaning a buyer requests 500 kilos of cocaine.
After MI6 agent James Bond discovers that Butcher conducts the buying and selling of cocaine, he is taken to the lab within the Meditation Institute. As a result, his love interest Pam Bouvier goes to the Institute to save him, where she poses as a fan of Butcher and gives him a bag of cash. Butcher proceeds to take her to his "private meditation chamber" (in reality his bedroom) and attempts to seduce her, only to have a Beretta Jetfire pulled on him by Bouvier, who takes his keys to the entrance to the lab and leaves.
When Bond incinerates the lab during Sanchez's tour with a group of Asian drug lords, Butcher attempts to flee the burning Institute on foot, taking Bouvier's bag of cash with him. However, Bouvier drives past while escaping in a golf buggy, and snatches the bag from him, leaving the exhausted Butcher to run from the flames.
Following Sanchez's demise, it is unknown what happens to Butcher, but it's likely that he continued his televangelist career without Sanchez's backing or he might be arrested later..
Trivia[]
- Bond fans generally consider the villains of Licence To Kill to be symbolic of the big societal problems of the time, as Sanchez, as a drug lord, is representative of drug abuse, the biggest problem of the time, Colonel Heller, a US military official who escaped prosecution for selling weapons to Islamic extremists, is representative of the Iran-Contra Affair, Truman-Lodge, a stock trader on the run for insider trading, is representative of the Wall Street Crash and Butcher is representative of the many televangelist scandals that occurred at the time.
