Tag Archives: Lois Maxwell

James Bond Film Review: You Only Live Twice (dir. by Lewis Gilbert)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the days leading up to the American release of Skyfall, the Shattered Lens has been taking a look at the previous films in the James Bond franchise.  Today, we take a look at the 5th official James Bond film, 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

Released two years after the critically derided but financially succesful Thunderball, You Only Live Twice was a step in a new direction for the Bond series.  As Sinclair McKay explains in his brilliant book on the Bond films, The Man With The Golden Touch,  both the world and the movies changed a lot between 1965 and 1967 and You Only Live Twice reflected that change.  Director Lewis Gilbert and screenwriter Roald Dahl were newcomers to the Bond series and the film they created would serve as a prototype for the flamboyant, big budget espionage fantasies that would come to epitomize many of the later entries in the franchise.

You Only Live Twice begins with one the Bond franchise’s more elaborate precredit sequences.  During these first few minutes, the film rather boldly announces that You Only Live Twice is going to be a bit of a departure from the previous Bond films.  The film begins not with Bond but with two anonymous American astronauts orbiting the Earth in a small capsule.  The two astronauts are blandly chatting with mission control on Earth when, suddenly, another spacecraft approaches and literally swallows the American capsule whole.  One of the astronauts is hurled into space as a result and, as his body spins away, it’s obvious that Bond’s not going to be dealing with something bigger than just another guy looking to hold up Fort Knox.

The Americans blame the Russians while the Russians claim that they’re being framed by Americans and the entire world appears to be on the verge of war.  But as always happens in the Bond films, the British are there to keep everyone from overreacting.  A British diplomat is seen calming down the belligerent super powers and assuring them that MI6’s “best man” is already on the case.

(One of the undeniably charming things about the Connery and Roger Moore  Bond films is the way that the United Kingdom is portrayed as being the world’s unofficial third superpower.)

Cut to Hong Kong, where James Bond is lying in bed and asking his latest conquest, “Why do Chinese girls taste different?”  And, at this point, I think it’s fair to say that Bond is really lucky that he looks like a young Sean Connery.  Suddenly, gunmen storm the bedroom and open fire, apparently killing 007.

Oh no!  I guess the world is doomed, right?  We’re left to consider this sad reality as we watch the opening credits and listen to Nancy Sinatra sing the film’s excellent theme song.

Well, of course, James Bond isn’t really dead.  He faked his death so that he can safely go to Tokyo and investigate who was behind the attack on the space craft.  You Only Live Twice was filmed almost entirely on location in Japan and a good deal of the film’s first half is devoted to scenes of Bond simply observing Japanese culture.  It’s a bit like Lost In Translation with an espionage subplot.

After fighting a few random henchmen, Bond meets Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba), the head of the Japanese secret service.  Tanaka seems to spend the majority of his time getting massages from the dozen or so young women who wait on him hand-and-foot.  “In Japan,” he tells Bond, “men come first, women come second.”  “I might just retire here,” Bond replies.  Uhmmm…okay.  Thank you, 1967.

In order to continue the ruse that Bond’s dead, Tanaka arranges for Bond to take on an assumed identity.  After being trained on all aspects of Japanese culture and on how to fight like a ninja, Bond is heavily disguised to look like a Japanese fisherman.  Tanaka arranges for Bond to fake marry a local girl named Kissy (Mie Hama).  Kissy is probably one of the least interesting Bond girls in the history of the franchise.  Beyond walking around in a bikini while wearing high heels, Kissy just doesn’t have much of a personality.

Bond and Tanaka’s investigation lead them to a shady industrialist named Osato and his secretary Helga Brandt (Karin Dor).  Helga is about as close as You Only Live Twice comes to featuring a strong female character.  Not only is she an assassin who has no problem with killing a man who she’s just had sex with but she’s also a redhead, just like me!

Anyway, it’s not until very late in the film that we finally meet Helga’s boss.  If for no other reason, You Only Live Twice will always be remembered for featuring one of the great Bond villains.  After being seen in the previous Bond films as just a hand stroking a white cat, Ernest Stavros Blofeld makes his first on-screen appearance here and fortunately, he’s played by Donald Pleasence.

Looking at Pleasence’s performance today, the natural tendency is to compare his Blofeld to the iconic character that he inspired, Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil.  However, one reason that Dr. Evil became such a popular character is because Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld is one of the great film bad guys.  As delivered by Pleasence in his casually off-center way, every line of Blofeld’s dialogue drips with the promise of perversion and hints of the neurosis that fuels his every action.  Blofeld spends most of the movie hiding out in a secret base that’s hidden inside a hollow volcano.  He strokes that ever-present white cat and uses a pool of piranhas to punish failure.  It is a credit to Pleasence’s performance that you never, for a second, doubt that Blofeld could very well be living in a hollow volcano.

I have to admit that You Only Live Twice is not my favorite James Bond film, though there are plenty of things that I do like about it.  Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, and Desmond Llewelyn all make welcome appearances and there is a genuinely exciting scene where Bond flies around in a toy helicopter.  Working on his first and only Bond film, Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Young captured some beautiful images of Japan and Blofeld’s volcano lair is one of the franchise’s best locations.

That said, You Only Live Twice often moves a bit too slowly for its own good and, with the exception of Blofeld and occasionally Helga Brandt, none of the film’s supporting characters are all that interesting.  Charles Gray, who later took over the role of Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, has a nice cameo as a decadent retired intelligence agent but he’s killed off before he can make too much of an impression.  Perhaps worst of all, Connery spends most of this film looking like he’d rather be doing anything other than play James Bond for the fifth time.  By his own account, Connery eventually grew bored with the role and that’s certainly obvious in You Only Live Twice.

Connery’s boredom can perhaps explain why, during the shooting of You Only Live Twice, it was announced that he would not be returning to play the role in the 6th Bond film.  The Bond franchise would continue with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but it appeared that Connery would no longer be a part of it.

We’ll be taking a look at that film tomorrow.

James Bond Review: Thunderball (dir. by Terence Young)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The Shattered Lens is taking on all of the Bond Films, one a day until the U.S. Release of Skyfall on November 9th. Today, we approach the fourth Bond Picture, Thunderball. Before I start, I should note that this film actually has a bit of controversy behind it. Thunderball had the potential to become one of the first Bond films, but a law suit in 1961 stating that Ian Fleming’s novel for the story was based on the screenplay for the film. Producer Kevin McClory was able to win the lawsuit and hold on to the rights. This would later result in 1983’s Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery returning to play the same role in the same story as he did in 1965. In the meantime, Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger were released with great success.

Before watching the movie, I watched a 1965 documentary from NBC called “The Incredible World of James Bond”, which talked about Ian Fleming, James Bond, and the overall popularity of the character. By the time Goldfinger came out, you’d find lines around theatres all around the world. People were buying colognes and watches – if it had 007 written on it, it was an easy sale. Both the books and the movies were doing extremely well. So with Thunderball being the latest release, it was similar to having perhaps the next Harry Potter or Twilight film on the way. I also learned that Q (Desmond Llewelyn) actually has a name, Major Boothroyd. That was cool to discover.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed Thunderball.  It’s the only Bond film I’ve never seen and the production values for the film were some of the most elaborate around at the time of it’s release. They went out of their way to create submersible machines and other equipment, but the fact that so much of the film took place underwater really caused me to lose interest in what was going on. Granted, it may be fun for many people, but I really wanted to them to give me a few more locales under than the major underwater harpoon fight that occurs near the film’s action climax. Both Tom Jones’ theme song (which describes Bond’s approach to things) and John Barry’s score help to set the mood of the story.

Thunderball continues the SPECTRE story started with Dr. No. Originally, this was supposed to be SMERSH, but that was a real group, much like the KGB or CIA. For movie purposes, SMERSH became SPECTRE to avoid giving any of the Bond stories an anti-nation slant. This would also be done with Quantum of Solace, the organization being something private rather than being any kind of counter intelligence group. This time around, the story opens with Bond attending the funeral of one of the SPECTRE members, and on seeing his wife getting into a car on her own (something I didn’t see as wrong), he follows her to her home to confront her. It’s revealed that the widow is actually the SPECTRE agent (I wasn’t expecting the punch that revealed it), and in the fight Bond ends up killing him. He makes a quick exit and uses a jet pack to get out of the building, where his Aston Martin is waiting for him. It was kind of interesting to see that there was that kind of technology in the 60s.

SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) is given the task to acquire two Nuclear weapons and decides he’s going to blow up Miami if he doesn’t get his way. Bond is assigned to stop him, and along the way he meets Domino (Claudine Auger), who assists him on this.

At the time of it’s release, Thunderball was a major hit and even won an Academy Award. It managed to come out at the height of Connery’s career as the secret agent. It does suffer from one or two flaws. As most of the story takes place on or near a beach, there are tons of underwater sequences, including a full out battle. Even Finding Nemo took some time to stay on the surface once in a while. This doesn’t make Thunderball a terrible film at all, it simply focuses the story on one element. I would have liked a little more variety.

Q’s gadgets for Bond this time around included a Geiger Counter, a rebreather, an underwater camera, and a personal flare gun, all for the life aquatic.

Overall, Thunderball’s a good film to watch if you’re doing what we’re doing here and are watching the films in a series. You may find yourself a little bothered by the amount of underwater scenes, but the movie still manages to keep some of the spy vibe of the earlier films. Below is Tom Jones’ theme to the film. Tomorrow, the Shattered Lens will take on the David Niven / Peter Sellers version of Casino Royale.

James Bond Review – Goldfinger (dir. by Guy Hamilton)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The Shattered Lens continues the Bond Marathon leading up to the release of Skyfall with 1964’s Goldfinger. Normally, one would figure that the third film in a series is the one with the most danger of ruining everything. You’ve already had two successful stories and you’re asking audiences to come back for yet another round. Yet Goldfinger manages to be considered a favorite by many, and even managed to be the first 007 film to win an Academy Award (for Sound Effects). It does this by expanding on what was already done.

Building on the format that From Russia With Love started, Goldfinger opens with the gun barrel animation and Bond already on a mission. As he reaches what looks like an oil field under the cover of night, he manages to sabotage it (with a little help from C4 or possibly C3, given the time) and arrive back in a neighboring town before it explodes. Heading to his hotel room, he finds a young lady waiting for him who tries to capture his attentions before he catches sight of a thug in the reflection of her eyes. In the fight that ensues, Bond’s quick thinking and a bathtub full of water makes all of the difference. This prologue will become commonplace in all of the EON Production Bond films save for Dr. No (of course) and Quantum of Solace, which gives you the gun barrel at the end of that film.

Sean Connery reprises his role as MI6’s best agent, finding himself in Miami, where he interrupts the card game of one Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), cheating with the help of Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton). When Bond is caught off guard and knocked out, he wakes up to find Jill dead in her bed, covered in gold paint. The scene actually sparked a number of rumors that Eaton had died in the process of filming it, and as it was mentioned in the film, without leaving a free space near the base of the spine, the actress suffered “skin asphyxiation”. This was later tested on the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, and while skin doesn’t “breathe” the way Fleming wrote, your sweat can’t get out of clogged pores. You end up dying of heat stroke. Guess my science teachers were right there, to a degree. The image is so popular, it was even referenced by Quantum of Solace, though Oil was the substance of choice used there.

Bond is given the mission to track Goldfinger and figure out what he’s up, but not without a quick visit to Q Branch. It’s here where we find James’ new car, the Aston Martin DB5, and are introduced to one of longest professional relationships between an automotive company and a production one. Aston Martin would go on to cover nearly every Bond film save for a few (Goldeneye quickly comes to mind), but I’ll profile that relationship in a separate article. The car is outfitted with machine guns, oil slicks, smoke screens and even an ejector seat, believe it or not. Among the gadgets he’s given are two trackers (one large and one small). In terms of the overall series, this is the point where 007 seemingly becomes more of a gadget hound than relying on his actual abilities. I always felt that the ones in From Russia With Love supported him just when he needed it. In Goldfinger, they come across as utility belt like items, though functional all the same.

One of the other standouts in the film is Goldfinger’s henchman, OddJob (Harold Sakata). With a bowler hat that served as a razor disc, he’s one of the most iconic villains in the series, perhaps second only to Richard Kiel’s Jaws. Tomorrow Never Dies and even Goldeneye went on to use henchmen (or henchwomen in Famke Jassen’s case) to great effect.

In going after Goldfinger, Bond runs into Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet), who mistakenly tries to kill him. They’re eventually caught an in classic 007 Fashion, Bond is placed in a situation that causes one to ask why no one has ever tried to kill him outright. The laser scene that has Bond tied to a table features one of the most famous lines in Goldfinger. When Bond asks Auric if he expects him to talk because of the laser that’s due to cut him in two, Goldfinger stops, turns to face him and exclaims, “No, Mister Bond! I expect you to die!” Needless to say, Goldfinger changes his mind after Bond mentions “Operation Grand Slam”, a plot to seemingly rob Fort Knox. It’s only later that we find that Goldfinger isn’t out to rob the reserve, he’s planning on detonating a nuclear weapon in it that would make all of the nation’s gold radioactive (and all of his gold worth billions, as a result). This is all showcased in a grand sequence involving Pussy Galore’s flight team and some knockout gas. As a kid, I loved it.

Finally, what Bond film would be complete without a Bond Girl? For Goldfinger, we have Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore. In doing some research on this, I found that according to an article in Empire Magazine, in order to get the name by the American censors, the movie producers took them out to dinner. They decided to not interfere with the name, but it was never exactly listed in any of the US marketing promos. I’d always wondered about that, myself.

As a Bond Girl, Pussy was great in that she handled herself well with both weapons and hand to hand combat. Honor Blackman was well versed in Judo, so her action scenes with Sean Connery were easy to make. Cold and to the point, Pussy Galore wasn’t the “crying over a broken nail” type, but this being the 60’s, they still had the character succumb to Bond’s advances. Personally, I’m not exactly cool with that, but understand that given the time period and possibly the audience, it had to be written as such. Future Bond Girls would make up for it. At least it was good to see that there was a Bond Girl who could stand toe to toe with Bond.

Regarding the casting, one thing that’s also interesting to note that Gert Frobe, who played Goldfinger had a heavy German accent, so heavy in fact that his lines had to be dubbed by someone else. All of the Bond regulars from previous films make a return – Desmond Llewelyn as Q, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, in particular. Felix Leiter would be played by a different actor (my favorite being David Hedison from License to Kill).

The impact of Goldfinger has been huge over the years. It’s one of the films everyone usually recalls, and even famed Video Game creator Hideo Kojima pays homage to the film by way of the theme song used in it’s game “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater”, as the game takes place in the same time period as Goldfinger.

Overall, Goldfinger remains one of the strongest parts of the 007 saga. Tomorrow, the Shattered Lens takes on Thunderball, the Fourth Connery film and the controversy surrounding it. I’ll leave you with Shirley Bassey’s iconic theme to the film.

James Bond Film Review: From Russia With Love (dir. by Terrence Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there!  The name’s Bowman, Lisa Marie Bowman.  And tonight, I’m continuing the Shattered Lens’ look at the James Bond film franchise by reviewing 1963’s From Russia With Love.

The 2nd film in the Bond film series, From Russia With Love is considered by many to be one of the best entries in the franchise.  I happen to agree with them.  There’s a lot of talk right now that Skyfall could be the first James Bond film to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture.  Personally, I think From Russia With Love (and not Tom Jones) should have been named the best picture of 1963,  (Seriously, has anyone actually tried to watch Tom Jones recently?)

From Russia With Love opens with a tuxedo-clad James Bond sneaking around outside the type of opulent estate that every Bond villain seems to own.  Suddenly, Bond is attacked by a hulking assassin named Red Grant (played by a pre-Jaws Robert Shaw) and, as the audience watches shocked, Bond is apparently killed.  It’s only after Bond’s dead and on the ground that we learn the truth.  The man in the tuxedo wasn’t James Bond at all — instead, he was just some random henchman in a James Bond mask!  It turns out that Grant works for the villainous organization SPECTRE and this is all part of his training routine.  Now, you would be justified in wondering why SPECTRE would go through the trouble to make a next-to-perfect James Bond mask for a simple training routine but. ultimately, it doesn’t matter.  It’s a great sequence, that manages to be both fun and suspenseful at the same time.  It’s also a great set-up for the rest of the film.

SPECTRE and its mysterious leader (and this is the first time in which we get to see that iconic image of a hand stroking a white cat while a disembodied voice says evil things) want Bond dead.  The job of arranging Bond’s assassination is given to Kronsteen (played by Vladek Sheybal, who has a truly fascinating skeletal face).  When he’s not off being evil, Kronsteen is a chess grandmaster and, not surprisingly, he views his assignment as if it’s just one big chess game.  In order to kill Bond, he knows that he’s going to need a pawn.

That’s where Tatiana Romanova (played by Daniela Bianchi) comes in.  Tatiana is a cipher clerk at the Russian Embassy in Istanbul.  She is approached and given an assignment by Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), a Russian intelligence agent who, unknown to Tatiana, is also working for SPECTRE.  Tatiana contacts MI6 and tells them that she’s willing to defect but only to James Bond.  Tatiana explains that she came across Bond’s picture in a Soviet Intelligence file and the insinuation is that she fell in love (or, at the very least, lust) with that picture.

(Interestingly enough, this parallels the fact that audiences had previously seen Sean Connery in Dr. No and, like Tatiana, spent the year between the two films fantasizing about James Bond themselves.  In that way, Tatiana is the perfect audience surrogate.)

James Bond is sent to Istanbul by M (Bernard Lee) but before he goes, he meets with the head of Q branch.  Desmond Llewelyn makes his first appearance in the Bond franchise here.  In a historic moment of film history, he gives Bond his first booby-trapped briefcase.

When Bond arrives in Istanbul, he meets with station head Kerim Bey (played by Pedro Armanderiz, who tragically committed suicide before From Russia With Love was released).  With the help of Kerim Bey and Tatiana (who Bond first meets with she turns up, naked, in his bed), Bond steals the Lektor decoder device from the Russian consulate.  Though Bond doesn’t realize this, he’s aided in this task by none other than Red Grant.  Grant has been following Bond and perversely, he’s been protecting Bond from KGB assassins so that he might have the chance to kill Bond himself.

Bringing the Lektor device with them, Bond, Tatiana, and Kerim Bey board the Orient Express.  It’s on the train that they meet Nash, a British agent who says that he’s been sent by MI6 to help make sure that Bond and Tatiana safely make it back to England.  Of course, what the audience knows, is that the somewhat smug Nash is none other then … Red Grant!

I love From Russia With Love.  Everything that makes the James Bond series so special — romance, memorable villains, spectacular locations, exciting action, and a rather sardonic sense of humor — is present in From Russia With Love.  Playing Bond for the second time, Connery is more confident with the role here than he was in Dr. No and, as opposed to some of his later appearances in the series, Connery appears to be enjoying bringing this iconic character to life.  There’s none of the boredom that marred some of Connery’s later performances.  Instead, Connery is exciting to watch and it helps that he and Bianchi have a very real chemistry in this film.  As opposed to some Bond girls, Tatiana is a believable, multi-layered character and you actually care what happens to her.  The relationship between Tatiana and Bond feels real and, therefore, the film has a surprising emotional resonance to it.

As opposed to Dr. No, with its somewhat bland title character, the villains in From Russia With Love are a fascinating quartet of rogues.  Lotte Lenya brings an unexpected amount of depth to the role of Rosa and her final battle with Bond is one of the best in the history of the franchise.  Even more exciting than Bond’s fight with Rosa is his final fight with Red Grant.  As played by Robert Shaw, Grant comes across as if he’s the literal personification of Bond’s dark side.  Both men are killers and both are rather smug about it but the difference is that Bond is capable of caring about Tatiana whereas Grant has surrendered whatever emotions he may have once had.  Shaw’s performance so dominates the film that, when I rewatched the film, I was surprised to discover that Grant is only in a handful of scenes.

If Dr. No was an enjoyable B-movie, then From Russia With Love was a cinematic masterpiece that transcended the limitations of genre.  If Dr. No established the basic conventions of James Bond, From Russia With Love showed that those conventions could be used to make a great film.

Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at the third film in the Bond franchise, Goldfinger.

James Bond Film Review: Dr. No (dir. by Terrence Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there!  As you may already know, in the days leading up to the release of Skyfall, we’re going to be looking at the previous films in the James Bond franchise.  Today, we take a quick look at the first of the “official” James Bond films — 1962’s Dr. No.

Dr. No is a film of many firsts.  It was the first film to be adapted from one of Ian Fleming’s original novels.  (Though it was not the first adaptation, that honor going to the 1954 made-for-tv version of Casino Royale). It was, of course, the first Bond film to be produced by the legendary team of Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli.  It featured the first true Bond girl, with Ursula Andress playing Honey Rider and spending the entire film in an iconic white bikini.  Dr. No featured the first appearance of both M and Miss Moneypenny (played, respectively, by Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell).  That iconic theme music made its first appearance in Dr. No as well.  However, most importantly, Dr. No featured the first appearance by Sean Connery in the role of James Bond.  Even more than Andress’ white bikini, Connery is the reason why Dr. No proved to be the rather unlikely launching pad for one of the most succesful film franchises in cinematic history.

Dr. No, in fact, is a film that contains so many historic firsts that, often, it seems like reviewers tend to neglect the film itself and, instead, chose to concentrate on the film’s legacy.  And indeed, 50 years after it was first released, it’s difficult to watch Dr. No without viewing everything about it in relation to what the James Bond franchise would eventually become.  Instead of evaluating the film on its own individual merits, the tendency is to watch Dr. No and to spend a lot of time thinking things like: That’s the first time the world ever heard Sean Connery say, “Bond, James Bond.”  We tend to forget that, when Connery and director Terrence Young actually made Dr. No, they had no way of knowing that 22 sequels would follow.  They didn’t know that they were making film history.

Dr. No begins with a shooting in Jamaica.  John Strangeways, the British Intelligence station chief, is ambushed and gunned down by three assassins.  Shortly afterward, in a surprisingly brutal scene, his secretary is also assassinated.  In response, James Bond is summoned to the offices of MI6.  When he receives the summons, Bond is busy gambling and seducing Sylvia Trench (Eunice Grayson).  Sylvia, incidentally, was originally meant to be a character who would pop up in all of the subsequent Bond films.  Basically, she would have functioned as Bond’s girlfriend, the loyal woman who waited at home while Bond went to exotic countries and slept with every other woman in the world.  Perhaps wisely, this idea was abandoned after just two movies but still, Bond’s initial meeting with Sylvia (and the audience) is such an iconic moment that words simply won’t do it justice.  Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

This scene has to rank as one of the best intro scenes in film history.  In just a few brief minutes, this scene tells us everything that we need to know about both James Bond and, even more importantly, Sean Connery’s interpretation of the character.  In this scene, Connery’s Bond is the epitome of narcissistic charm, giving just a hint of the determined cruelty lurking right underneath the surface.  It’s especially interesting to compare Connery’s Bond here to Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the character.  Whereas Craig’s Bond often seems to be on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, Connery is established in his first scene as being a cool and calm professional.  Craig may be the ideal Bond for our troubled reality but Connery will always be the Bond of our dreams and fantasies.

Bond is sent to Jamaica, where he teams up with CIA agent Felix Leiter (played by Jack Lord).  Again, it’s interesting to compare this version of Felix Leiter with Jeffrey Wright’s more-recent interpretation of Felix.  Whereas Jack Lord’s Felix Leiter is a cool, calm professional (a bit like an asexual version of Connery’s Bond, to be honest), Jeffrey Wright’s Felix often seems to be mired in self-loathing.  Both interpretations are perfectly legitimate (and Felix is usually such a superfluous character that just about any interpretation will do).  Instead, they’re interesting largely because of the way that each one of them epitomizes the decade in which each film was made.

With the help of Leiter, Bond quickly figures out that Strangeways’ death is linked to the mysterious, Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), who has his own private island near Jamaica.  The natives claim that a dragon guards the island but Bond, never one to let something like that stop him (especially when it’s always his allies — like the unfortunate Quarrel — who get killed in these films, as opposed to him) sneaks onto the island.  It’s here that he first spies Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) walking along the beach.  Again, Honey’s introduction is such an iconic scene that, rather than try to describe it, it’s better just to show it:

For all the talk of how the Bond girls were often sexist stereotypes, I would have loved to have been an old school Bond girl.  Seriously, they got to be all sexy, they got to make love to James Bond, and occasionally, they got to help save the world.  Seriously, what fun!

I’ve spent so much time talking about James Bond and Honey Rider that I haven’t left much room for Dr. No.  But that’s okay because, to be honest, Dr. No is not really that interesting of a villain.  As opposed to future Bond villains, Dr. No is something of a bland character.  Joseph Wiseman plays him with a lot of menace and he has a few over the top moments but it doesn’t matter because there’s really nothing to distinguish Dr. No from any other megalomaniac that’s ever shown up in a low budget spy movie.  He’s a perfectly acceptable villain but he’s not an extremely memorable one.  (Perhaps if Christopher Lee had accepted the role when it was offered to him, Dr. No would have been a bit more of an effective character.)  Rest assured that Dr. No does have an impressive secret headquarters and, that once he does capture Bond and Honey, he takes his time to explain all of his evil plans as opposed to doing something sensible like killing them.

So, how does Dr. No hold up 50 years after first being released?

Surprisingly well.

Despite having a weak villain, Dr. No is still a lot of fun.  As opposed to future Bond films, Dr. No was a low-budget affair and, at it’s best, it comes across as an appealing B-movie.  Ultimately, the film is best known for introducing audiences to Sean Connery in the role of James Bond and perhaps that is for the best because Connery truly is the best thing in Dr. No.  Five decades later, you can still see why the world was so intrigued with both the actor and the character.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at one of my personal favorite films of all time — From Russia With Love!